Buddhist Voice Issue 3

Over two decades, a holy man from eastern Maharashtra (Marathwada) has made it his mission to reestablish the archaic, multi-fire Vedic sacrificial system as an important element in public religious life in India. Drawing his inspiration from Dayananda Saraswati’s idealized and abstract vision of Veda as the original and pure piety, this “saint,” Ranganath Selukar Maharaj, innovates in his attempt to revive the full Vedic shrauta sacrificial cult (minus the animal victims) as a vehicle for unifying and re-empowering Hindus — religiously, socially, and politically — whose culture and society has been weakened by centuries of “foreign” rule. Simultaneously evoking Vedantic renunciant ideals, Maharashtrian regional bhakti traditions, and nationalist heroism (citing Selukar's participation in the movement to liberate Marathwada from the Muslim state of Hyderabad in the late ‘forties), his movement has been effective in attracting support from a range of social groups through the annual multi-week Vedic festivals he organizes. While his revival of priestly ritual vividly affirms the value of traditional piety, he argues that the ritual is essentially scientific and rational, and will have salutary effects on Hindu society, the Indian state, and the natural environment. This combined appeal to prestigious, pan-Indian traditional authority, regional sympathies, and scientistic rationalism, all articulated both in preaching and in print, and dramatized by spectacular public acts of piety, seems calculated to persuade the educated and professional middle castes (a sort of middle class) while repackaging archaic Brahmanical ritual in a way that appeals also to an illiterate, rural clientele.

Almost the entire content of the medical texts, as well as the therapeutic practices carried out daily by the practitioners of the scholarly medicine of Ladakh, Northwestern India, are of a technical medical and a-religious nature. However, medical ethics and elements of medical epistemology are based on Buddhism, and all healers underscore the importance of the moral dimension in the practice of medicine, a dimension that refers expressly to religion. The ethnography presented in this article therefore shows the importance of religion for medical practice in both moral and practical points of view. The author argues that it is because religion is not constitutive of medicine (like medical theory is), that it can be considered as an "ensemble of supportive paradigms" of medicine.

IIC Quarterly , 2022

CapeComorin Journal

Abstract: In the recent times, it has been often reported that different rituals are being practiced and many deities are being worshipped to ward off the Covid-19 pandemic when the human beings are facing disorder and uncertainties and the large medical institutions are failing to invent vaccine as soon as the world demands. It has proved the claim of Victor Turner and Arnold van Gennep that rituals arise and become popular at the time of disorder, uncertainty, and anxiety. The practice of religious rituals of different deities to prevent illness and disease has also been very prominent still in the 21st century in the areas deprived of timely and advanced medical facilities as found in the different parts of West Bengal, India. In Bengal, many folk deities like Shitala, Olabibi, Ateshwar, Babathakur, Basalee, are worshipped to get rid of the diseases like smallpox, cholera, diarrhea, infertility. This dependency of the folk people on gods and goddesses to get relief from illness has shaped the cultural activities of the Bengalis as Ernesto de Martino defines culture as „result of the victorious struggle of the health of the pitfalls of disease?. This paper aims to argue how „disease?, „illness?, and rituals have been intertwined for a long period, and find out how many deities, some of them having no human form, have been worshiped since the pre-medical times to achieve a disease-free life in Bengal. It also seeks to explore how a different culture has been formed with the rituals. Keywords : Ritual, Disease, Sickness, Bengal, Folk Deities, Culture

Juni Khyat Journal (UGC CARE Group I) (ISSN:2278-4632) , 2022

Background: The Hindu society was built on a system of graduated inequity. The four 'Varnas', as well as thousands of castes and sub-castes, were ranked one above the other, with contempt for those below one's Varna or caste and reverence and dread for those above one's Varna or caste. The most extreme type of scorn was 'untouchability'. The upper castes were tainted by the touch and even the shadow of the Untouchables. Even the Gods were tainted by the Untouchable's touch and admittance into the temples. Dr.Ambedkar laboured valiantly for Hindu social change. When he realised that reforming or reconstructing Hindu society from within was impossible, he turned to Buddhism. He hoped to employ Buddhism as a counterbalance to Hinduism. In 1956, Dr.Ambedkar and his followers adopted Buddhism, igniting a Buddhist revival movement (Neo-Buddhism). It was unusual in the history of any religion that such a large number of people changed to a specific faith at the same time, and in the case of our single individual. Even after Dr.Ambedkar's sad death, the conversion effort continued uninterrupted. He desired to reorganise the centuries-old social order around the democratic ideas of liberty, equality, fraternity, and social justice. Aim and Objectives: The purpose of this article is to look at the philosophical implications of Dr.Ambedkar's Buddhist perspective and the progressive democratic transformation process along with Neo-Buddhist revolutionary movement propounded by Dr.Ambedkar in India. Methodology: The Researcher has collected data from a variety of sources, including websites, journals, articles, e-books, reports, commissions and articles published in local, national, and worldwide publications. Secondary data sources for this review study include books, articles, libraries, reports, personal sources, journals, newspapers, websites and online data. Conclusion: Dr.Ambedkar abandoned Hinduism and converted to Buddhism, urging his millions of followers to do the same in order to create a model society based on equality, fraternity, and social justice, devoid of inequity, disrespect, pollution embarrassment. He hoped to employ Buddhism as a counterbalance to Hinduism. In 1956, it was Dr.Ambedkar and his followers who embraced Buddhism and helped to revitalise the Buddhist cause.

American Ethnologist, 2010

PM Modi a senior seasoned swayamsevak of RSS who describes himself as 'Hindu nationalist' misses no opportunity to denigrate minorities of India specially Muslims. The latest was when on September 25, 2016 while addressing a national level BJP conclave at Kozhikode, Kerala he did not forget to share his belief with his captive audience about Muslims being 'other' or 'different from 'us' borrowing directly from RSS archives. For him Muslims were not like any other citizens of India but a problem and to put across his message with more clarity he quoted a senior ideologue of the RSS, Deendayal Upadhyaya (1916-1968). According to Modi: " Fifty years ago, Pandit Upadhyaya said 'do not reward/appease (puraskrit) Muslims, do not shun (tiraskrit) them but purify (parishkar) them'. Do not treat Muslims like vote ki mandi ka maal (vote banks) or ghrina ki vastu (object of hatred). Unhe apna samjho (regard them as your own) " This statement of Modi was widely reported by media. But the most shocking aspect was that Hindi word ‘parishkar’ which means ‘to purify’ was changed to ‘empowerment’ by English media and ‘sashaktikaran’ by the Hindi media. Even media houses which are supposed to be objective did it and same was with the print media except few exceptions like The Tribune and The Telegraph. It is to be noted that in none of the Hindi/Sanskrit to English dictionaries ‘parishkar’ is translated as ‘empowerment’. Why this ‘creativity’ was done in changing the meaning of a word spoken by PM Modi is not difficult to explain. The media is working overtime to present Modi as a great democrat despite his Hindutva and anti-democratic/secular leanings. http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/09/29/resurrecting-pandit-deendayal-upadhyay-who-died-a-mysterious-death-for-shudhi-of-indian-muslims/

Religious Studies Review, 2012

2009