Category Archives: Indian religions

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January 6, 2024 · 9:32 pm

Reviewing Chatterjee’s Book on Anti-Muslim Riots in Gujarat in 2002

Nishkula Suntharalingam, presenting a book review in Asian Affairs 2023 ….. https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/raaf20 …. of the book by Moyukh Chatterjee. Composing Violence: The Limits of Exposure and the Making of Minorities. Duke University Press, Durham, 2023. pp. 166. Notes. Bibliog. Index. Ackmts. Hb. $94.95. ISBN 9781478017028. Sb. ………….$24.95. ISBN 9781478019664

Moyukh Chatterjee was an eyewitness to the aftermath of the 2002 riots in the west Indian state of Gujarat; three days of communal violence during which Hindu mobs attacked Muslims, their businesses and homes, leaving over a thousand people dead. This book focuses on how and why, in multi-ethnic, democratic states like India, targeted violence and anti-minority politics persist. In doing so, the author suggests an alternate approach to understanding violence against minorities while raising disquieting questions about the formation of modern states and the ways that ideas of “minorities” and “majorities” are produced and reproduced.

401733 08: Indian state police patrol the streets of Ahmadabad, India after rioting between Muslims and Hindus March 1, 2002 in Ahmadabad, India, two days after a Muslim mob attacked a train, killing 58 people in the Indian state of Gujarat. Indian troops arrived in the riot-torn western state of Gujarat but were unable to quell the Hindu-Muslim violence that has claimed the lives of 251 people. (Photo by Ami Vitale/Getty Images)

Filed under accountability, anti-racism, authoritarian regimes, centre-periphery relations, chauvinism, communal relations, demography, disparagement, economic processes, ethnicity, fundamentalism, historical interpretation, Indian religions, life stories, politIcal discourse, power politics, racist thinking, religious nationalism, riots and pogroms, self-reflexivity, trauma, vengeance, violence of language, zealotry

September 22, 2023 · 5:49 pm

Scrutinizing Sri Lanka’s Past in ATITA

A New Investigative Website …. https://atita.org/

About Atita: Atita is dedicated to the investigation of historical events in Sri Lanka. Taking its name from the Pali word for “past” (atīta), Atita serves to fill in gaps in English-language literature of Sri Lankan history.

All are welcome to read our work, but those already familiar with Sri Lankan history since 1948 will find it the most enriching. Our primary focus is on events from 1948 to 1972, when Sri Lanka was still called “Ceylon.”

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July 28, 2023 · 8:31 pm

Hindu Zealots of the RSS target Sri Lanka

PK Balachandran in Email Note to Roberts, late July 2023, … with highlighting being my imposition

The RSS has begun exploiting the Tamil issue to spread its Hindutwa ideology. The idea is to win over the Lankan Tamils to its side by discrediting the secular Tamil identity in SL. None of the speakers listed has any knowledge of the Lankan Tamil issue. Tamil Nadu BJP leader K.Annamalai has already visited Sri Lanka and is trying to put up an RSS-BJP unit here. Very dangerous development. The Sri Lankan government should make certain that Sarath Weerasekara and the monks don’t do anything anti-Hindu. It is sad that this ís happening when India-Lankan relations are improving thanks to the correct policies of Modi and Ranil. Continue reading →

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July 9, 2023 · 7:44 pm

Islamic Women’s Veils: Some Desultory Thoughts

Michael Roberts

On re-reading an entry in Thuppahi on the Burqa with two striking illustrations that contrasted

X …..a photograph of a Western woman in a see-through net dress walking stark naked in a busy street ….. WITH …

Y …. Illustrations of the various types of veiled Islamic women, ……

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June 26, 2023 · 2:07 am

Kochi: A Jewish Town without Jews

Christabel Lobo, in Times of Israel, 20 December 2020 ,where the title reads thus: “India’s Jew Town only has a few Jews left, but traditions and landmarks remain”

A sign denotes Kochi’s ‘Jew street,’ as it is known locally, which once was a hub of Indian Jewish life. (Christabel Lobo/ via JTA)

KOCHI, India (JTA) …………Take a walk down this coastal city’s “Jew street” today and you’ll find bustling Kasmiri storefronts selling Persian antiques, pashmina shawls and traditional Islamic handicrafts — a stark contrast to the neighborhood’s heyday when every household was Jewish.

“There are only two people left in Jew Town. One very old, who spends most of her time in Los Angeles, and one other,” said Shalva Weil, a senior researcher at the Seymour Fox School of Education at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a leading figure on the Jewish communities of India.

Once a vibrant community of approximately 3,000 at its peak in the 1950s, only a handful of elderly Jews now remain in a city of some 677,000. According to Weil, there really is no community in Kochi anymore

“You won’t find more than five or 10 Jews,” she said.

Unlike other dwindling Jewish communities around the world, the Jews of Kochi did not leave their country due to persecution or hardship. Rather, it was the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 that attracted many from the mostly Orthodox community to emigrate and start a new life in the Jewish homeland.

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June 19, 2023 · 1:04 am

Amitav Ghosh: Straddling the Mediterranean & Indian Worlds

Dr. Shalva Weil, in https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/in-an-ancient-land-trade-and-synagogues-in-south-india/

The Calcutta-born novelist Amitav Ghosh tells the tale, in his novel In an Ancient Land, of a medieval traveler by the name of Abraham Ben Yiju who conducted an import/export business from Cairo through Aden to India. Ben Yiju was a member of the Synagogue of Ben Ezra, or the”Synagogue of the Palestinians”, as it used to be known while it was still standing, in Cairo, at the end of the nineteenth century. It was in that synagogue that congregation members used to accumulate and store their papers and manuscripts. The last In an Ancient Land Revisited Trade and Synagogues in South India document that is known to have been deposited in this Genizah was a get, a divorce settlement, authorized in Bombay (today Mumbai).

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May 26, 2023 · 4:30 pm

Love Across All Language Barriers

An Item from Wikipedia sent by David Sansoni of Sydney

“Historia de un Amor” (Spanish for “the story of a love”) is a song about a man’s old love written by Panamanian songwriter Carlos Eleta Almarán. It was written after the death of his brother’s wife. It is also part of the soundtrack of a 1956 Mexican film of the same name starring Libertad Lamarque. The song tells of a man’s suffering after his love has disappeared. It holds the world record as the most popular song to be translated and sung across the world in various languages by various singers from the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Africa.

a groom ties the THALI round the bride’s neck…. https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/862931978596501453/

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March 1, 2023 · 12:38 am

Encirclement in Religious Practice & Deadly War Strike

Michael Roberts, inspired by interaction & dialogue with Douglas Farrer of the National University of Singapore in the years 2009 to 2014**

VISIT 2012 “Encompassing Empowerment in Ritual, War & Assassination: Tantric Principles in Tamil Tiger Instrumentalities,” in Social Analysis, sp. issue on War Magic ed. by D. S. Farrer, 2014 ……………………………… https://www.berghahnjournals.com/view/journals/social-analysis/58/1/sa580105.xml

ABSTRACT: This study highlights the Tantric threads within the transcendental religions of Asia that reveal the commanding role of encirclement as a mystical force. The cyanide capsule (kuppi) around the neck of every Tamil Tiger fighter was not only a tool of instrumental rationality as a binding force, but also a modality similar to a thāli (marriage bond necklace) and to participation in a velvi (religious animal sacrifice). It was thus embedded within Tamil cultural practice. Alongside the LTTE’s politics of homage to its māvīrar (dead heroes), the kuppi sits beside numerous incidents in LTTE acts of mobilization or military actions where key functionaries approached deities in thanks or in preparation for the kill. These practices highlight the inventive potential of liminal moments/spaces. We see this as modernized ‘war magic’—a hybrid re-enchantment energizing a specific religious worldview.

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December 26, 2022 · 12:12 am

The Paravas in Sri Lanka and South India in the Sixteenth Century

Chandra R. de Silva

It is likely that the paravas (also known as Bharathas in Sri Lanka to indicate their Indian origin) were working as fishermen and mercenaries in South India and the north western coast of Sri Lanka well before the sixteenth century. Tradition links them to the evolution of the catamaran (a small craft with two hulls) and with a major role in pearl fishing in the Gulf of Mannar. They were also proficient in chank (turbinella pyrum) fishing: chanks being seashells that were used to make ornaments and drinking vessels. The coming of the Portuguese to the region in the sixteenth century provides us many Portuguese records that illuminate the history and seafaring skills of this community.. Historian Jorge Manuel Flores, for example, quotes a mid-sixteenth century Portuguese document which records thanks to a parava convert named Duarte de Miranda for assistance in navigating the seas off South India.