When you think of
Hinduism, you probably don't think of suburban
Lilburn, Georgia, yet it is home to
BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir, at over 30,000 square feet the
largest Hindu
temple in the world outside of India. The
beautiful temple was assembled from 34,000 pieces of Turkish limestone, Indian pink sandstone, and Italian Carrara marble hand-carved by some 1500 craftsmen in India, then shipped to Georgia, where about 900 volunteers put in over a million man-hours to bring the architects' vision to
fruition (YT), at a cost of about US$19m.
[more inside]
posted by notashroom
on Aug 12, 2009 -
36 comments
India, as she is today,
was carved out of
British India, in 1947 when the left and right hand sides of the country became the new nation of Pakistan (
East and
West) respectively. While the history of Islamic influence and
subsequent tolerance and intolerance goes back centuries to the first advent of the
Mughal invasion, it has been said that the
post Independence troubles of the modern nations of India and Pakistan
stem from this sundering. In
1971, war brought
forth Bangladesh from the former East Pakistan on India's eastern border.
The Partition, as this holocaust is known,
embedded in
current day Indian memory,
history, culture,
movies,
books,
TV serials and music, was an
unimaginable horror of
slaughter and bloodshed. This separation was
not in the plans of the Mahatma, and it is said he was assassinated by Hindu
fundamentalists for letting it happen.
What future awaits the Hindus and Muslims who have lived
side by side for hundreds of years?
posted by infini
on Nov 26, 2008 -
37 comments
The Festival of Lights, Good vs. Evil Diwali is the Hindu
Festival of Lights that falls each year in October or November.
This year, Diwali is on the 21st of October 2006.
Legends
about Diwali are many, from
the story of
Prince Prahlad, immortal in his faith in the universe to the
story of Ram and Sita returning from exile to Ayodhya. My favourite is not a story so much as a snippet of what
is actually said to happen tonight, not
the mythology behind it.
Lakshmi walks tonight, she is the
Goddess of Wealth and Prosperity, and lamps [diya or deep] are lit and placed at hearths and entrances so as to help her find her way. Accompanying her is the
elephant headed one,
Ganesh, the
remover of obstacles and giver of
knowledge. Just welcome them into your home.
posted by infini
on Oct 21, 2006 -
22 comments
70 private cars, 50 000 kilos of flowers, 3000 candles, 65 000 yards of fabric. Those are just a few of the figures
from the wedding of New York playboy and (wait for it) hotel heir
Vikram Chatwal to model
Priya Sachdev. Last year,
Lakshmi Mittal (the world's third-richest man, according to Forbes) spent over $60 million for his daughter Vanisha's wedding.
What kind of wedding does $60 million buy? A song-and-dance by
Aishwarya Rai, among other Bollywood luminaries; ceremonies at the Tuileries and Versailles; and top chefs and designers at your beck and call. In 2004, the Sahara Group's
Subrata Roy built three mock palaces on the edge of a lake in Uttar Pradesh;
his sons' double wedding had 11 000 guests. Mr. Roy's company
paid for the weddings of 101 couples (numbers ending in '1' are considered auspicious) who couldn't afford to get married, and also fed 140 000 poor people across the country (all as part of the festivities).
All of this sound like idle gossip? The wedding business is
huge in India; it's a $10bn business (and growing at 25% annually), and the demand for gold wedding jewelry, according to analysts, "helped lift the metal's price to a 25-year high last month."
Appliance retailers offer discounts during weddings season; there are personal loans available for weddings; and there's even an entire mall devoted to weddings.
As the Christian Science Monitor
notes, the minimum a middle-class Indian family will spend on a wedding is $34 000. (The average American wedding? $26 327.) And who makes up the Indian middle class? "Those making $4,545 to $23,000 a year."
More on Indian wedding traditions
here.
posted by anjamu
on Mar 6, 2006 -
58 comments
What Was True. From the mid 1950s through the early 1980s,
William Gedney (1932-1989) photographed throughout the
United States, in
India, and in
Europe, and filling
notebook after notebook with his observations. From the commerce of the street outside his Brooklyn apartment to the
daily chores of unemployed
coal miners, from the lifestyle of hippies in
Haight-Ashbury to the sacred rituals of Hindu worshippers, Gedney
was able to record the lives of others with clarity and poignancy.
Gedney's America is a nation of averted eyes, and broken automobiles, and restlessness, a place Edward Hopper would recognize, but so, also, Walt Whitman.
posted by matteo
on Apr 27, 2005 -
11 comments
Stories of Krishna: The Adventures of a Hindu God is a lovely interactive Flash presentation from the Seattle Art Museum: Click an image and hear the accompanying tale (or read the transcript), then click "close the story" and mouse over the image icons to explore the characters and view details. After you are finished you can test what you've learned with a drag and drop card game. No broadband? View images of Krishna
here and
here, and
read some background.
posted by taz
on Nov 14, 2003 -
6 comments
The Essential Hinduvta Orgchart by Suman Palit in his weblog
the Kolkata Libertarian. I'm not from Calcutta, and I'm not Libertarian, but I found the information design in this chart of the relationships between the Hindu nationalist party BJP and various other Hindu institutions fascinating. Note that not only each organization block, but most of the relationship lines, have individual links. What specialized knowledge do you have? What tools would help you share it with the world?
posted by dhartung
on Mar 17, 2002 -
4 comments
Time to wash up for Hindus. Now don't get me wrong, I'm all for religion and such. But if you wash your sins away in
this river, you might wind up with something that
won't wash off.
posted by CRS
on Jan 9, 2001 -
8 comments
