Eideard

Too late now…

Tens of thousands of Indian couples tied the knot Sunday, one of the luckiest days in the Hindu calendar.

“There are 50,000 weddings happening today” in Mumbai alone, said wedding planner Jarret D’Abreo of Marry Me….

There are only a few lucky dates per year in the Hindu calendar. Sunday’s is called Akshaya Tritiya.

“All the stars are aligned during this day. Whatever offerings and work you do on this day will go right. It’s one day of the year which will bring immense good luck,” Indian astrologer R.K. Sharma said.

The exact date of the festival is based on the alignment of the moon, the stars and the planets….

“Whatever is celebrated during this day — be it purchasing a car or a house or gold or even getting married — brings good luck and that effect is multiplied. It’s the most auspicious day of the year,” Sharma told CNN by phone.

I’ve sat at the same table with Christians lamenting the poor, lost, superstitious Hindus. A few months from now, they’ll be sitting in church to hear how astrologers from the east (whom they call wise) followed a star to locate somebody to save the world. But that’s different!

The High Court will consider a legal challenge from a 70-year-old Hindu today that would allow him to have an open-air cremation when he dies. The judicial review at the Royal Courts of Justice will hear a case brought by Davender Kumar Ghai, founder of the Anglo-Asian Friendship Society, who wants the law changed to allow traditional Hindu funeral pyres in Britain.

Newcastle City Council has refused him a permit to be cremated in line with Hindu ritual, arguing that a pyre outside a crematorium is prohibited by the 1902 Cremation Act.

Although there have been Hindu cremations in the the past in Britain, in recent years the authorities have become stricter about enforcing the rules. There are more than 600,000 Hindus in Britain and many families pay thousands of pounds to fly the bodies of their loved ones to India for a traditional cremation.

Three years ago the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to prosecute after Mr Ghai organised a funeral pyre in Northumberland for Rajpal Mehat, 31, from India.

Hindus believe that cremation is essential to free the soul from the body after death. The dead person’s oldest son is usually expected to light the fire. Monks and children, having no children of their own, are sometimes buried instead of cremated. The pyre must take place at a site on which the sun shines directly at noon and which is close to running water.

Yup. Let’s expand the precedence of religious law over secular, national law. We followers of the Flying Spaghetti Monster have a few rituals of our own we’d like to introduce – in the States and the U.K.

Or does the number of member of a religion – registered to vote – enter into the equation?

UPDATE: The High Court has ruled against Mr. Ghai’s request.

The leader of a right-wing group is among a number of new arrests that have followed an assault on women drinking in a bar in the city of Mangalore.

Pramod Mutalik heads the little known local group called the Sri Ram Sena (Army of Lord Ram) in the southern state of Karnataka. Mr Mutalik says it is “not acceptable” for women to go to bars in India. He has argued that Saturday’s assault on the women was justifiable because his men were preserving Indian culture and moral values.

The BBC’s Sanjoy Majumder in Delhi says the attack – which was filmed and then broadcast on national television – has shocked many Indians. Television pictures showed the men chasing and beating up the panicking women – some wearing skirts. Some of the women, who tripped and fell, were kicked by the men.

Women’s groups have strongly condemned the attack which has been described by the country’s Women’s Minister Renuka Chaudhury as an attempt to impose Taleban-style values.

Right-wingers of most nations are often cowards. They prefer to attack people without comparable means of defense – like a pack of hyenas. What we call in my neck of the prairie – bushwhackers.

Mutalik’s gang seems no different.

Daylife/Getty Images

Some day Farhang Jehani might patch up the bullet holes and cover the shrapnel pockmarks. But for now they are the Leopold Café’s new decor.

“We are going to let it be,” Jehani said over the din of his crowded restaurant, where eight people were killed in the Mumbai terrorist attacks. “It’s part of history.”

In the two weeks since the attacks, this Mumbai neighborhood of narrow streets shared by street urchins and the well-to-do has staggered back onto its feet. But at the Leopold Café, it is often standing room only.

The restaurant has become a sort of shrine of defiance against terrorism. That, at least, is how Jehani portrays it. “I want it to go on the same way – as if nothing has happened,” he said…

Six patrons and two waiters were killed. The gunmen then walked down a narrow street to the back entrance of the Taj hotel, where they then terrorized guests and hotel staff for more than two days.

Both waiters at the Leopold who died, Peer Pasha and Hidayat Khazi, were Indian Muslims. A note at each table, placed under the glass tabletop, advises diners that donations for family members of the “deceased staff” can be made at the cashier.

Stand up for a normal life. It’s never easy. If you believe in your family, your community – it’s what you must do.

Daylife/Reuters Pictures

For the first time in this Hindu-majority nation of 1.1 billion people, the police have announced the arrest of people who are accused of being part of a Hindu terrorist cell.

Police officials in western Maharashtra State said they had arrested the nine suspects and charged them with murder and conspiracy in connection with the bombing in September of a Muslim-majority area in Malegaon, a small city. Six people, all Muslims, died in the explosion, which was among a string of terrorist attacks in Indian cities in recent months…

Among those arrested by the police antiterrorist squad in Maharashtra over the past two weeks is a Hindu nun with links to the principal opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and an army colonel, who is suspected of having supplied ammunition and provided training to the bombers.

The Indian Army has long viewed itself as being free of ideological or political bias, so the arrest of an army officer was deeply troubling to the military. “I can tell you that we are taking it seriously,” said the defense minister, A. K. Antony…

Officials in the Central Bureau of Investigation told reporters in New Delhi on Saturday that investigators had established a link between the Nanded group and the Malegaon bombing…

Dinesh Aggarwal, an inspector in the antiterrorist squad, said that the suspects were part of a larger conspiracy. “Their precise role will be known after the investigation is completed,” he said.

I preface my feelings about politics in India by admitting I know only historic generalities. My expertise in terrorism is something – gained over years – usually under accusation of supporting so-called terrorists fighting for national liberation against colonial rulers.

Eventually, sectarian, anti-democratic sophistry comes down to supporting “your” terrorists or “mine”?

Hundreds of Christians in the Indian state of Orissa have been forced to renounce their religion and become Hindus after lynch mobs issued them with a stark ultimatum: convert or die.

The wave of forced conversions marks a dramatic escalation in a two-month orgy of sectarian violence which has left at least 59 people dead, 50,000 homeless and thousands of houses and churches burnt to the ground. As neighbour has turned on neighbour, thousands more Christians have sought sanctuary in refugee camps, unable to return to the wreckage of their homes unless they, too, agree to abandon their faith.

Last week, in the worst-affected Kandhamal district, The Observer encountered compelling evidence of the scale of the violence employed in a conversion programme apparently sanctioned by members of one of the most powerful Hindu groups in India, the 6.8-million member Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) – the World Hindu Council…

The roads between the villages are rough and potholed, adding to the difficulties in accessing what is already a remote region, a six-hour drive from the state capital, Bhubaneshwar. The remoteness has undoubtedly played a part in the continuation of the violence, making it harder for police to move about quickly, even if they were minded to do so. Christian leaders, though, have accused the authorities of dragging their feet, claiming they are reluctant to antagonise the majority Hindu community in the run-up to parliamentary elections next year.

Yet the VHP is unrepentant and appears to be involved, at least at grassroots level, with the campaign of forced conversions. One priest who converted 18 Christians in the village of Sankarakhole last week told The Observer that he had been approached by local VHP representatives to carry out the ceremony.

Long, detailed and very sad article. So many people around the world wish the people of the Indian sub-continent well. So many of us want to see these ancient cultures united and thriving, viable in the 21st Century.

Theocrats, sectarian bigots fear the future as much as any truth.

Toxic chemicals from thousands of idols of Hindu gods immersed in rivers and lakes across India are causing pollution which is killing fish and contaminating food crops.

Hindus across India celebrate various religious festivals in September and October, paying homage to deities like Lord Ganesha, the remover of obstacles, and Goddess Durga, the destroyer of evil. Elaborately painted and decorated idols are worshipped before they are taken during mass processions to rivers, lakes and the sea, where they are immersed in accordance with Hindu faith.

Environmentalists say the idols are often made from non-biodegradable materials such as plastic, cement and plaster of Paris and painted with toxic dyes. After the statues are immersed, the toxins then contaminate food crops when villagers use the polluted water for irrigation, said Shyam Asolekar, science and engineering head at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai.

“Even small traces are extremely toxic as they persist in the body for a long time and accumulate in the human tissues,” said Asolekar.

People who follow traditions and customs that are centuries old are unlikely to respond to “modern” cautions. It would be nice if the opposite were true.

A powerful Hindu-nationalist political party in western India has called for Hindu suicide squads to counter Islamic terrorism, causing outrage and embarrassing the national opposition with which it is allied.

“Islamic terrorism is on the rise in India and in order to counter Islamic terrorism, we should match it with Hindu terrorism,” the unsigned editorial said in Marathi.

“Just like Islamic extremism, to safeguard the country and Hindus we must create Hindu suicide squads if Hindu society is to be saved…”

The editorial, titled “The dud bombs of Hindus! Why embarrass us?”, was prompted partly by two low-intensity bombs that were planted in theatres in northern suburbs of Mumbai earlier this month. One exploded and injured a handful of people, the other was defused by police…

The Saamana editorial called the bombs “ridiculous and stupid” because they succeeded only in hurting a few people who were Hindus, and had no impact against Islamic extremism.

Theocrats and anarchists share the same demented and counter-productive ideology. So-called direct action against a civilian population is an admission of political weakness and failure.