Jagat

 Yogiraj Prem Prakashji responded to a recent article addressing environmental concerns and I started to answer, but it spun out of control and became too long for a comment. And it was also becoming incoherent. So I decided to give it a little more thought and write it as a separate article. The environmental issue in Vrindavan is really a big deal. It is so everywhere in the world, but here we can feel it much more acutely. People in the "first world" can only imagine the kind of environmental degradation that is ongoing in India. Just think: India has four times as many people and only one-third the terrain of the US, what to speak of Canada. Many people are enthused by India's material progress and the rapid urbanization, but it is a bit harder for me to join the chorus. Every so-called step forward simply means more of the same haphazard construction of ugly buildings surrounded by heaps of refuse and open, garbage-filled drains emptying into what were once c...

Vrindavan is, I have taken to repeating, the de facto spiritual capital of India. The main reason for this is the proximity of Vrindavan to Delhi and the increasing ease of access through modern communications. It is no longer a labor to get from the metropolis to Vrindavan. And speakers of the Bhagavata currently dominate the religious television networks.   But the second reason for Vrindavan's rise in status is the acceding to power of the BJP. The BJP is considered by outsiders to be a party of religious nationalism and an engine of identity politics in the interest of the traditional dominant caste of India, the brahmins. Commentators from other political perspectives condemn Hindu nationalism because they associate it primarily with certain backward social ideas, especially racism and communalism. Therefore they make facile comparisons of the BJP to the rise of the racist right wing in the USA (with the politically incorrect Donald Trump) and Islamic fundamentalism.   A ...

A number of different things coming together here, so I will try to pull them together as best I can. (1) Just finished reading Lajja by Taslima Nasreen, in the Hindi translation. The story here is really that of Muslim violence on Hindus in Bangla Desh, in all its historical manifestations from Partition in 1947 to 1992, when the Babri Masjid incident set off a series of communal clashes in India. This also gave Bangladeshi Muslims yet another opportunity to engage in a round of ethnic cleansing in their country. The book is about a Hindu family that both loves their country and considers themselves non-religious, even atheistic. Despite their identification as Bengalis first and nothing else, they are forced into a communal identity by circumstances. In the end, despite a long-held determination to stick it out, in the faith that this was their country, they make the decision to leave. There is no longer any place for them in their own country. That is their "shame" ( lajj...