Came across this story from Simon de Bruxelles in The Times (of London) today (Aug31 ’07):
Vicars ban “un-Christian” yoga for toddlers. It appears to “confirm” Yoga’s roots in Hinduism!
Excerpts (emphasis mine):
“A children’s exercise class has been banned from two church halls because it is teaching yoga. The group has been turned away by vicars who described yoga as a sham and un-Christian.
…
Rev Simon Farrar…( said) “We are a Christian organisation and when we let rooms to people we want them to understand that they must be fully in line with …

Please excuse the unstructured format of this post. My anger still has not subsided enough to write coherently.
Yesterday evening in Hyderabad, a cowardly act of terror claimed almost 50 lives, injuring as many (possibly more).
These were the reactions from our eminent leaders:
***
Rajasekhar Reddy appealed to the people to maintain calm and not spread rumours.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressed deep concern over the blasts.
Sherlock Holmes aka Shri Jaiswal (Union Minister of State for Home) said, “One terrorist group or the other is certainly involved in the blasts in Hyderabad”.
***
TOI began its …

Some of you may have read an article I wrote more than two years ago, titled: “Does no one remember the Hindu contribution to Mathematics?”
I stumbled across a related piece recently: “Indians predated Newton ‘discovery’ by 250 years”
Dr George Joseph at the University of Manchester suggests in his latest research that the “Kerala school” identified the ‘infinite series’- one of the basic components of calculus – in about 1350 – hundreds of years before Newton.
His team also revealed that the Kerala School “discovered what amounted to the Pi series …

Came across a great post by Sandeep on the recent assault on Taslima Nasreen in Hyderabad.
Some things stand out in this remarkable episode:

The deafening silence of the liberal activists on the incident (from Arundhati Roy onwards) � although there appears to be some condemnation of the incident from Muslims leaders (and others)
The contrast in the stance of our Government re. granting of citizenship to Taslima (the government is still “looking into it”) -  and the demand for visa for Dr Haneef (see here and here)
The avoidance of the “M-word“ by …

This has been one of my longest posts in the making…taking almost two months since I first started putting down my thoughts on this issue.
To a large extent this was because I wanted to be able to capture as many viewpoints as possible in writing this post and to get accurate references.
This has been such a “loaded” subject that I hesitated a lot before venturing into it. At the same time, it is not a topic that any seriously concerned citizen can shy away from.
So please consider this as an …

Alert reader Shefaly pointed me in the direction of this piece by Rod Liddle in the Sunday Times of UK “If Muslims revered cattle, Shambo would still be mooing” re. Shambo, a bull in Wales that had tested positive for tuberculosis. Shambo was executed by lethal injection on Thursday (26th) night despite protests from the Hindu community.
A brief excerpt from Rod’s article (emphasis mine):
“…I wonder…if the members of the (Welsh) assembly would have dared to make their decision if it were Muslims rather than Hindus who chose to revere cattle?
And …

This is one of the most extraordinary examples I have come across of contempt towards and complete disregard of Hindu sensibilities by our “secular government”.
The chart shows how proceeds from ~ 250,000 temples in Karnataka have been distributed over the past few years (pl click below to enlarge):

Sourced from BharatJagran.com
It shows that between ’97-’98 and ’02-’03, disbursements to temples for renovation and maintenance fell (more than halved) from Rs 16.5 cr to Rs 7.1 cr even as revenues collected from Temples rose from Rs 58.63 crores to Rs 79 …

A few days ago, while looking for something else, I chanced upon this site which has all the chapters of “The Story of Islamic Imperialism in India” by Sita Ram Goel.
I have not finished reading the chapters yet but two excerpts which hinted at an officially sanctioned policy of revising history caught my eye.

Here is the first one which has a quote from Mrs. Coomi Kapoor, summarising the guidelines prepared by the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) in 1982. Mrs Kapoor is quoted as saying:
“History and Language …

Boston Herald printed an AP news story last week with a dumb headline “Hindus lament divine case of erectile dysfunction” to which HAF had a very sensible and measured response.
I was struck by the contrast with the Danish cartoon controversy. For more on this, see “The Danish cartoon controversy: A contrast in protests“, Michelle Malikin’s “Support Denmark: Why the forbidden cartoon matter” and Tavleen Singh’s article, “The right to laugh at gods”
…and before someone asks, here is my position on the Danish cartoon controversy:
The point is not whether the cartoons …

From last week’s The Australian, a great commentary on some of the issues that Islam needs to face up to, by Tanveer Ahmed in Sydney: Islam must face its uncomfortable truths
Excerpts (emphasis mine):
THE latest attack in Britain shows how the Islamist threat is being driven by something much grander than mere foreign policy or feelings of grievance. The perpetrators believe they are soldiers in the perceived historical battle between good and evil.
The methods of attack are becoming more brazen, amateurish and desperate, illustrated most profoundly by the burning terrorist at …