Stories from India
How a Trans Activist and a Priest are Creating Inclusion in India’s Catholic Church
Twenty years ago, Inba Ignatius felt she didn’t belong in her Catholic church in suburban South India. Ignatius, who is now 48 and a transgender activist, recalled that during a Christmas midnight Mass, a priest at her asbestos-covered church refused to administer Communion to her and three of her transgender friends until they “repented.”
(Photo by Priyadarshini Sen)
In East India, a Marian Shrine Draws in Christian, Muslim and Hindu Pilgrims
BANDEL, India (RNS) — Each week for the last 13 years, 28-year-old Rimpa Chowdhury, who describes herself as a devout Hindu, has visited the Basilica of the Holy Rosary — a historic 16th-century Catholic church on the banks of the Hooghly River in eastern India with a shrine to the Virgin Mary.
Survivors of Hindu-Muslim Riots Find Healing in Women’s Empowerment
DELHI, India (RNS) — Five years after riots swept through her neighborhood in northeast Delhi, the region around India’s capital, 18-year-old Anam Sa still wakes up in the middle of the night flushed, breathing fast, arms shaking.
(Photo by Priyadarshini Sen for RNS)
How a Tibetan Buddhist Nunnery is Shifting Gender Norms
DHARAMSHALA, India (RNS) — When the nonsectarian Dolma Ling Nunnery transitioned to female leadership earlier this year, for the first time in its three-decade history, it marked a radical shift in the landscape of Tibetan Buddhism in exile.
Devotees of Krishna Bridle at Updates to India’s Ancient Pilgrimage Town
VRINDAVAN, India (RNS) — When the protests against a state government plan to redevelop a world-renowned Hindu temple began in May, Varsha Otwani, a 64-year-old homemaker, joined the women’s chorus, donning her sequined red veil, lining her eyes with kohl and smearing her hands with henna.
(Photo by Priyadarshini Sen)
“Drag Is My Devotion”: The Sacred Power of Queer Faith
Wearing an off-white sari with a red border, a motif of the Hindu goddess Durga on her cotton blouse, 33-year-old drag queen Patruni Sastry capered across the dance floor. She was full of energy, her bright red wig flowing about her while onlookers clapped as the curator…
(Photo by Priyadarshini Sen)
“Sacred-Centered Work on the Margins: A Nun’s Mission from the Tea Gardens of Assam to the Borders of Mizoram”
Three years ago, Sister Rose Paite had an important task. Tribal teenager Romila Murmu had been abducted from her village surrounded by acres of tea gardens in the remote Kokrajhar district of Assam. She was then ferried through mountainous terrain to Nagaland, 550 miles away in Northeast India.
(Photo by Priyadarshini Sen)
The Transgender Priestess of Chennai Who Built a Temple for the Excluded
When the fisherwomen in their bright cotton saris make their way to the Kasimedu harbor to haul up creels of fresh fish from the sandy shores every morning, Sowndharya Gopi offers an urn of water to the Hindu goddess Kali. Kali, the divine feminine…
Love in a Sacred City: How One Priest Builds Peace Through Theatre and Interfaith Dialogue
In the sweltering May heat under the shade of a lush mango tree, 66-year-old Catholic priest Rev. Anand Mathew’s voice rang clear. “We need to preserve Varanasi’s pluralism,” said Mathew, wearing a homespun cotton tunic and a stole around his neck. The low caste village leatherworkers…
(Photo by Priyadarshini Sen)
Where Faith Meets Medicine: Reclaiming Dignity Through Sacred Listening in Maharashtra
Arms outstretched, eyes glazed, 15-year-old Aman could barely walk under the harsh April sun. When onlookers asked what was wrong, his mother hurriedly chimed in: “the spirit has got him.” Sufism is a mystical and ascetic dimension within Islam emphasizing personal experiences with God…
(Photo by Priyadarshini Sen)
Worshippers Say They Lack Spiritual Access After Reforms at Delhi Historic Complex
NEW DELHI (RNS) —Sitting on a rock on the lawns of the sprawling 14th-century Feroz Shah Kotla Fort complex in Delhi, Aarif often writes letters to spirits. His love interest, Neha, sits on the rock opposite him. “Every Thursday, we tell the djinns (spirits) to help us,” said the 28-year-old Muslim software professional, who’s been in a secret relationship with Neha, who is Hindu, for four years…
In India, Catholic Women Evangelists Live up to Pope Francis’ Call for Female Leadership
MEGHALAYA, India (RNS) —Eight days before Christmas last year, Senseful Dkhar, a 55-year-old schoolteacher, led her fellow Catholics in prayer at a small village church in the northeastern corner of India, where the terrain changes from the lush Garo Hills to the highland meadows of the West Khasi Hills. It’s not unusual for women to lead prayers in this district, home to the Indigenous Khasi community, one of the world’s few remaining matrilineal societies…
How Does India’s Sadhan Village Continue to Resist Religious Polarization?
AGRA, India (RNS) — For 83-year-old Riyaz Ahmed Khan, the ivory-white Taj Mahal is more than a symbol of love. The monument, to him, mirrors his village, Sadhan, located about 25 miles away. “For generations, Hindus and Muslims have lived together in harmony here,” said Khan, a practicing Muslim and a retired teacher of Sanskrit, the sacred language of Hinduism. “If the Taj is an ode to love, our village has many Taj Mahals…”
Hindu Governing Body Shuts Out Muslim Vendors from World’s Largest Religious Festival
DELHI, India (RNS) — For more than three decades, Mohammed Mehmood, a Muslim, had been hired by Hindu holy men to light their tents during celebrations of Kumbh Mela, a festival that every 12 years draws hundreds of thousands of devotees to Prayagraj in northern India for what’s billed as the world’s largest single gathering of humanity…
(AP Photo/Karma Sonam)
Sufi Shrine on India-Pakistan Border Promises Thread of Unity
KHEM KARAN, India (RNS) — Only 25 meters from the border that separates India from Pakistan, a shrine to the Sufi saint Sheikh Brahm draws thousands of devotees every Thursday. On the Indian side of the border, at the break of dawn, 55-year-old Sikh farmer Mohar Singh helps prepare langar — a simple communal fare of sweet rice, flatbread rounds and lentils — for the shrine’s devotees in Mianwala village…
From Ayodhya to Janakpur: How Hindu Nationalism Crossed into Nepal
Ayodhya/Kathmandu: On a blistering afternoon in the north Indian town of Ayodhya in early April, Mahant Kamal Nayan Das—a white-robed seer and a spokesperson of the Ram Temple Trust—spoke on the expansion of Hinduism before an audience of saffron-clad devout Hindus…
(Photo by Priyadarshini Sen)
Neo-Buddhists Push Back Against Hindu Claims on Ancient Cave Monasteries in India
GUJARAT, India (RNS) — Every morning at the Momai Mata temple, near the southern tip of the Gujarat peninsula, a Hindu priest offers prayers. The temple, carved out of rock in an ancient cave by Buddhist monks, is one in a complex of 62 caves chiseled into the rocky slopes of Gujarat’s lush Sana Hills where thousands of monks once worshipped…
In India, a ‘Hindu’ Mosque Aims to Heal Divisions
KOLKATA, India (RNS) — Last Eid, 49-year-old Partha Sarathi Basu added a fresh coat of paint to the Amanati Mosque in the Barasat district of Bengal, 15 miles north of Kolkata in eastern India. For Basu, the refurbished mosque with its arched gate and two light gray minarets in a Hindu-majority neighborhood isn’t just a shrine to Allah — it’s been part of his family’s identity for more than 50 years…
‘Fanaticism is all About Aggression’: One Man’s Journey from a Hindu Nationalist to a Humanist
Wreathed in flowers and colorful banners, the alleyways near the renowned Banke Bihari Temple in the northern Indian city of Vrindavan come alive every summer during the Narasimha Jayanti festival. Hundreds of devotees join in processions to celebrate the half-man-half-lion incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu…
Faith Metamorphosis in Hindu Nationalists
On August 5, a year after India’s only Muslim-majority state of Kashmir was stripped of its autonomy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi laid the foundation for the Ram Temple in Ayodhya City. The site of a historic 16th century mosque destroyed by Hindu extremists in 1992 had sparked violent communal riots across India, where over 2,000 people were killed…
Why They Broke With Hindu Nationalism: Four Former Zealots Speak Out
NEW DELHI, India (RNS)—Mangala, a laboratory manager from Maharashtra, India, was 19 years old in December 1992, when she joined thousands of fellow Hindu zealots in chanting fiery slogans as they tore down the Babri Masjid, a 16th-century, three-domed mosque in Ayodhya, in northern India…
India’s Christian Leaders Work to Convince Modi Government to Curb Attacks
DELHI (RNS) — In June, Bindu Sodhi, a 32-year-old tribal woman from a small village in the densely forested state of Chhattisgarh, in central India, was killed by her neighbors. Sodhi was tilling her ancestral land with her family when irate villagers — armed with bows and arrows, axes and knives — attacked her with stones and killed her on the spot…
India Slowly Expands Protections for Ostracized Interfaith, Mixed-caste Couples
MAHARASHTRA, India (RNS) — At the beginning of June, Abhijit and his wife, Nikita, ran away from their village south of Mumbai to seek shelter in a safe house for interfaith couples in Pimpri, about 50 miles away. “I belong to the upwardly mobile Maratha caste with political clout, but my wife is from a backward caste,” said the tall, reflective Abhijit, 30, who married Nikita 23, in a secret ceremony four months ago…
Parsis in Mumbai Fight Existential Decline in Aspirants to Priesthood
MUMBAI, India (RNS) — In a leafy neighborhood of central Mumbai, classic “Parsi-style” bungalows with their deep porches and balconies adorn the streets, a historic Parsi school has been recently renovated and at the Dadar Athornan Institute, 14 students dressed in T-shirts and skullcaps are immersed in learning the sacred scriptures and rituals of the Zoroastrian faith…
(RNS photo by Priyadarshini Sen)
How a Hindu Architect Became the ‘Mosque Man’ of Kerala
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM, India (RNS) — At his traditional villa in a suburb in southern India, Govindan Gopalakrishnan, an 87-year-old, self-taught architect, gently traces the photographs of monuments he’s helped build in his coastal city and in the nearby state of Tamil Nadu over the past seven decades…
In Remote Himalayan Desert, Buddhists, Muslims and Christians Unite to Protect Land and Heritage
NEW DELHI (RNS) — On Jan. 26, when 56-year-old Buddhist engineer-innovator Sonam Wangchuk started his hunger strike in the remote Himalayan desert of Ladakh, Muslims and Buddhists — communities divided for more than six decades — rallied around him…
Hindus Only: How Religious Nationalism has Spread Through India’s Villages
KADAPA, India (RNS) — A decade ago the residents of Kesalingayapalli, a village in the south Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, succeeded in building a temple to the Hindu god Ram, modeling their home as a place “rooted in Indian culture and tradition.” Three years later, during the festival commemorating Ram’s birth, Bandi Venkatramana, a local farmer, erected an urgent red-and-white sign, known here as a saffron board…
(Photo by Priyadarshini Sen)
Transgender Activists Highlight the Impacts of Climate Change and Environmental Issues on the Community
Five years ago, Kalki Subramaniam, a Coimbatore-based climate activist, began raising awareness about the impacts of climate change and environmental pollution on transgender people. Subramaniam is part of the growing number of South Asian transgender activists leading intersectional climate change action, amidst political crackdowns, religious backlashes and major climate disasters that are deeply impacting the already marginalized community…
(Photo by Priyadarshini Sen)
A Priest from Odisha Overcomes India’s Anti-Christian violence to lead interfaith dialogue
NEW DELHI (RNS) — When riots engulfed Tiangia, a village in remote Kandhamal in eastern India, in 2008, Vikas Nayak was 15 years old. Nayak sought refuge in the area’s dense tropical forests as marauding mobs of Hindu fanatics set fire to hundreds of Christian homes in his village. He heard the mobs chanting slogans as they killed Christians, attacked churches and torched properties using rods, swords, tridents, guns and kerosene crude bombs…
Ancient Indian Temples are Designated ‘Iconic,’ Worrying Preservationists
KHAJURAHO, India (RNS) — The ancient, ornately carved Hindu and Jain temples outside this central Indian city have been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1986, and they are on the Archaeological Survey of India’s list of national treasures. Now, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government is moving toward designating the Khajuraho group of Hindu and Jain temples an “iconic tourist destination,” causing many in this area to despair for their future…
(RNS photo by Priyadarshini Sen)
In Remote Himalayan India, Buddhist Monks and Indigenous Tribe Fight Government Hydropower Projects
TAWANG, India (RNS) — The sixth Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso, born in 1683, is known for his poems extolling the beauty and uniqueness of the black-necked cranes that live in the remote Tawang Valley in Himalayan India, and to this day the people of the valley’s Indigenous Monpa tribe take pride in a small shrine called Lama Tsabtsey, which they believe contains the lama’s footprints…
In a Maoist-impacted Region of India, an Indigenous Activist Continues to Fight in Memory of the Children She Couldn’t Save
DELHI, India (RNS) — When the students fled her village school in 2011 to join Maoist rebels in the Central Indian state of Chhattisgarh, Soni Sori knew it would be yet another defining moment in a life marked by activism, tragedy and seemingly insurmountable odds. But Sori was not there when her children fled. She was in jail…
Outcry Over Jesuit Priest Stan Swamy’s Arrest and Intimidation Tests Indian Authorities’ Anti-terror Sweep
NEW DELHI (RNS) — Faith has never been only sacramental for 83-year-old Jesuit priest the Rev. Stan Swamy, but, rather, it has been a conduit to empower the poor and marginalized. That stance, captured in his motto, “Faith that does justice,” has led to his arrest by the National Investigative Agency, India’s counterterrorism task force…
Faith Leaders Pair with Health Officials to Save India’s Largest Slum from COVID-19
MUMBAI, India (RNS) — Dharavi, the vast slum at the center of India’s most populous city, is filled with rows of 1,000-square-foot homes separated by narrow lanes, often choked by residents coming and going or simply looking for relief from their crammed residences. When the coronavirus arrived in Mumbai in March, this densely populated urban sprawl was considered the most vulnerable spot for the virus to spread…
As Faith Leaders in India Shun Covid Dead, Sagai Nair Offers Last Rites
PUNE, India — Death does not scare Sagai Nair. She lowers the deceased into coffin boxes, carries them by foot to the graveyard with five other volunteers, uses a shovel to dig six feet inside the earth, and recites verses from the Bible for the grieving families. After paying her last respects, she burns her protective gear, sanitizes herself, and prepares for the next burial…
The Women of Kochi Have Gathered to Bead Rosaries for 200 Years
Turning beads into elegant rosaries isn’t merely Vilma Antony’s sustenance. It’s her spiritual calling. She counts the prayers of thanksgiving, devotion, and confession as she strings her silver beads, interspersing this activity with gospel readings at her village home a few miles from the South Indian port city of Kochi. She’s joined by 10 other women who sing and narrate folk stories as they string…
A Catholic Priest Takes on Interfaith Fight Against COVID-19 in a Sacred Hindu City
VARANASI, India (RNS) — Wearing a lilac tunic with a coarse cotton towel around his neck, the Rev. Anand Mathew directed actors from his theater troupe recently in a village on the outskirts of this polyglot sacred city on the banks of the Ganges. The 61-year-old Catholic activist priest and playwright was staging an Indian mythological drama to explain COVID-19 to Varanasi’s poor, many of them Muslims and other religious minorities…
India’s Pioneering Transgender Activist Defends Gains in Pandemic
KOLKATA, India (RNS) — Well past midnight one day in late June, Ranjita Sinha, a transgender activist based in this city of nearly 15 million, arranged packets of rice, lentils, cooking oil, medicines and biscuits in her dimly lit drawing room. Fastening the packets with red paper hearts, she surveyed her pile of supplies…
(Photo by Shivansh Thakur)
Making his Kitchen his Pulpit, Indian Priest Highlights the Pandemic’s Hungry
MUMBAI, India (RNS) — From his kitchen in a suburb of North Mumbai, 50-year-old Catholic priest Warner D’Souza preaches across a kitchen counter laden with garden-fresh vegetables and finely ground spices for a one-pot meal. The mini homily is a prelude to an episode of his YouTube program, “Food for the Soul,” a series of lockdown lessons about food and spirituality…
Hindu Nationalists in North India Open Self-Styled Religious Courts as a Rebuke to Sharia Law
ALIGARH, India (RNS) — At her self-styled Hindu court in this city noted for its large Muslim minority, Pooja Shakun Pandey, a 37-year-old Hindu ascetic with a radical hate for Mohandas Gandhi, dispenses justice. Draped in a saffron sari, Pandey, who considers herself a disciple of Nathuram Godse, the assassin of Gandhi who shot him at point-blank range in 1948…
A School Where Muslims and Hindus Pray Together Stirs Strife in Divided India
ALIGARH, India (RNS) — Every morning at the Chacha Nehru School, 10-year-old Mahanand recites verses from the Quran to a roomful of his fellow students. He then walks over to a consecrated space for Hindus in the same room, and amid the lighting of ritual lamps for Hindu deities, chants Vedic mantras…
(RNS photo by Priyadarshini Sen)
Pollution of a Sacred River Becomes a Symbol of India’s Environmental Challenges
BANGALORE, India (RNS) — In the pre-dawn light, Srikara Sudarshana circumambulates the Gali Anjaneya Swami Temple at a busy intersection in this city in southern India, known as the country’s tech capital. The 20-year-old priest chants Sanskrit mantras in front of a 700-year-old saffron-colored idol of the god Hanuman. According to ancient tradition the priest then bathes the deity…
In Kashmir’s Warn-torn Landscape, Imams Take up the Environmental Cause
SRINAGAR, India (RNS) — In his starched kameez pajama and a blue turban —vestments of distinction in this northernmost part of India — Sartaj Sofi holds the gaze of over 500 devotees during Friday prayers. “We need to follow the teachings of Islam to practice sound ecology in our valley,” says the 30-year-old religious preacher, his voice rippling through the large prayer hall…
Atheist Ashram on Lord Krishna’s Home Turf Roils India’s Hindu Nationalists
VRINDAVAN, India (RNS) — In this major pilgrimage center for the Hare Krishna movement, Purnendu Goswami survives as a rare atheist. Goswami, 44, runs the Bindu Seva Sansthan ashram in this northern Indian town that is considered sacred in Vaishnavism, one of Hinduism’s main branches. Dressed in a white robe like any local guru…
Refurbishing Holy Site, India’s Modi Levels Ancient Spiritual Landscape
VARANASI, India (RNS) — Even now, with the courtyard of his 600-year-old home reduced to a heap of debris, Ram Nath carries a pitcher of holy water from the River Ganges every day to perform his rites to the Hindu god Shiva. “For generations, we ritually purified our Shiva deities before daybreak,” says Nath, 68, pointing to the ruins of the house’s sanctum, where he performs puja…
Indian Prime Minister Modi Touts Hometown’s Buddhist Links as Vote Nears
VADNAGAR, India (RNS) — For generations, folk tales passed down by northern Gujarat’s nomadic goat herders described an ancient well atop Dhagolia hill in the Taranga mountains. Then, last May, Abhijit Ambekar, a deputy superintending archaeologist with the Archaeological Survey of India, hit upon something that corresponded to the herders’ stories while excavating the weather-beaten site…
India’s Hindu Nationalists Vow to Restore Deity’s Birthplace to Former Glory
AYODHYA, India (RNS) — It has been 11 years since Mihir Sharma, a 29-year-old software engineer from Australia, visited this northern Indian city that is considered the birthplace of Rama, the most exalted of Hindu deities. Sharma, an observant Hindu wearing a starched cotton dhoti, has opted for a few personalized tours around Ayodhya’s historical sites…
(RNS photo by Priyadarshini Sen)
India’s Supreme Court Threatens Hereditary Priesthood at Jagannath Temple
PURI, India (RNS) — For centuries, the priests at the Jagannath Temple in this city on India’s east coast have enjoyed unfettered control over the temple’s rituals. But in July, India’s Supreme Court proposed ending the hereditary rights of the community of more than 2,000 priests, threatening a livelihood that depends almost entirely on donations…
Neglect and Paradoxical Rules on Preservation Threaten India’s Historic Hindu Sun Temple
BHUBANESWAR, India (RNS) — Brigitte Viollet, a French businesswoman, spends three months of every year in the company of the Sun Temple in Konark, an ancient settlement on the east coast of India. Built in the 13th century by King Narasingha Deva I, the Sun Temple was designed as a colossal chariot mounted on 12 pairs of ornamented wheels to honor the Hindu god of the sun, Surya…
India’s Durga Puja Celebrates the Divine Feminine with Modern Takes on Ancient Ritual
KOLKATA, India (RNS) — Every year, Durga Puja is celebrated across India during the seventh month of the Hindu calendar, marking the victory of female power over the buffalo-demon Mahishasura. Durga Puja festivities, which took place this week, overlap with the nine-night Navaratri, also celebrating the divine feminine, in other traditions of Hinduism. But while worship of the 10-armed goddess…
India’s Durga Puja Celebrates the Divine Feminine with Modern Takes on Ancient Ritual
KOLKATA, India (RNS) — Every year, Durga Puja is celebrated across India during the seventh month of the Hindu calendar, marking the victory of female power over the buffalo-demon Mahishasura. Durga Puja festivities, which took place this week, overlap with the nine-night Navaratri, also celebrating the divine feminine, in other traditions of Hinduism. But while worship of the 10-armed goddess…
Indian Court Raises LGBT Hopes of Finding Home in Traditional Faiths
NEW DELHI (RNS) — It has been nine years since a Delhi High Court ruling decriminalized sex between consenting adults of the same gender. Sukhdeep Singh — today a 30-year-old software engineer from Kolkata — came out as a gay Sikh after that court decision. “The verdict gave me ammunition to assert my identity,” he said. “I could claim I’m Sikh and homosexual in the same breath…”
India’s Bnei Menashe Community Sets Sights on Immigrating to Israel
MANIPUR, India (RNS) — Wearing a pale-yellow tallit — the traditional Jewish prayer shawl — Aharon Vaiphei points to a map of Jerusalem at the Shavei Israel Hebrew Center in Manipur in northeastern India. “This is the land of our ancestors,” said Vaiphei, 32, a Bnei Menashe Jew who hopes to make aliyah (immigrate to Israel) this year…
Far from Home, Rohingya Muslim Refugees Count their Blessings at Eid
KOLKATA (RNS) — Last year, Hasan Sharif, a 27-year-old Rohingya, observed Eid al-fitr while hiding from Myanmar soldiers in a stranger’s home. His village had been reduced to ash. “My father was arbitrarily arrested and died in custody,” he said. “Out of 74 members in my family, 34 have been killed. I had to leave or else I would be killed too…”
Indian Women Breaking Down Barriers to Religious Leadership
PUNE, India (RNS) — Wearing a single piece of unstitched cloth and a grass girdle around his waist, 8-year-old Harshal Kulkarni chants Vedic mantras. A sacred fire is kindled to initiate him into his second birth at a villa in Pune’s old city. Harshal, a highborn Hindu in the social hierarchy, is set to transition from childhood to student life in the Upanayana…
(RNS photo by Soumyadeep Mondal)
Sufism, the Mystical Practice of Islam, Takes Root in the City of Angels
LOS ANGELES (RNS) The rhythmic chanting of 15 “beloveds,” as they call themselves, ripples across a prayer room in a family home in the San Fernando Valley. They stand in a circle with their hands clasped and eyes shut, swaying gently. Their mantra grows louder as one of them weeps, and others seem immersed in a trance…
(RNS photo by Priyadarshini Sen)
Indian Muslim Artist Seeks to Reinvent Syncretic Spaces
FAIZABAD, India— On the grey banks of the River Sarayu in Ayodhya, Syed Ali Sarvat Jafri plans to deliver the final blue and yellow touches to a life-size portrait of the Hindu deity Rama. The 36-year-old Muslim artist lives only a few miles from the hypothesized birthplace of Rama in Ayodhya, the north Indian city that witnessed violent intercommunal rioting after Hindu nationalists tore down a 16th century mosque — the Babri Masjid — in 1992…
(Photo by Priyadarshini Sen)
The Jesuit Priest Linking Indians and Pakistanis As Unlikely Pen Pals
NEW DELHI— When 80-year-old Jesuit priest Joseph Kalathil took 32 letters in a cloth bag from India to Pakistan in 2012, little did he know he’d become a pivotal messenger of cross-border peace. With the peace letters written by schoolchildren to friends unknown to them across the border, he set out to build bridges between India and Pakistan—neighbors scarred by decades of conflict and hostility. The challenge seemed not only risky but insurmountable. Yet, Kalathil remained determined…
(Photo by Nadeem Anthony)
In India, A Catholic Priest Is Healing Addicts With Yoga
NEW DELHI — When the lights come on, Father Joseph Pereira—propped up against a bookshelf laden with volumes on meditation— recites a serenity prayer. He then launches an hour-long zoom session to empower addicts through healing. When the focus shifts to the participants’ experiences of addiction intensified by the COVID-19 pandemic, the session transforms into an act of collective healing…
(Photo by Kripa Foundation)
In India, a Baul Mystic is Singing COVID-19 Advice to Rural Communities
NEW DELHI — Circled by gathering passersby on the outskirts of Shantiniketan—a university town 152 km north of Kolkata—Gautam Hazra Baul plucks his khamak, a stringed percussion instrument used by mystic minstrels in Bengal. A cascade of rhythms dispels the afternoon’s stillness around a small shack where tea in earthenware cups is passed around to bystanders. The minstrel’s robe of coarse patchwork cloth sways…
In India, a Baul Mystic is Singing COVID-19 Advice to Rural Communities
NEW DELHI — Circled by gathering passersby on the outskirts of Shantiniketan—a university town 152 km north of Kolkata—Gautam Hazra Baul plucks his khamak, a stringed percussion instrument used by mystic minstrels in Bengal. A cascade of rhythms dispels the afternoon’s stillness around a small shack where tea in earthenware cups is passed around to bystanders. The minstrel’s robe of coarse patchwork cloth sways…
These 24 Indian Villages are Eliminating Caste Names to Fight Discrimination
JIND/HISAR, India — Drawing puffs of smoke from a brass-bottomed hookah at his village home in Barsola, about a four-hour drive north from Delhi, Satbir Pahalwan recounts the caste-based violence that rocked a nearby village nine years ago. “Eighteen houses of low-caste Dalits were set ablaze by an irate mob,” said Pahalwan, the head of Khera Khap, a community organization of 24 villages in the North Indian state of Haryana…
South Asia’s Cradle of Sufism is Losing its Traditional Music
SRINAGAR, India — Holding two finely crafted wooden mallets between his index and middle fingers, Ustad Mohammad Yaqoob Sheikh strikes his santoor, a hundred-stringed instrument from the majority-Muslim Kashmir Valley. The metallic “ting” notes overlap to create a choral ensemble, performed with rapid fluidity atop carpets while Sheikh sits cross-legged. In the fading sunset, the music gives Sheikh’s home…
(Photo by Priyadarshini Sen)
For the First Time, Indian Transgender Gurus Bless Followers at Mass Hindu Pilgrimage
PRAYAGRAJ, INDIA— Every 12 years, small tents dot more than 3,600 acres with red, yellow, blue, green and orange tarpaulin, transforming the small Northern Indian city of Prayagraj, also called Allahabad, into the mass Hindu pilgrimage known as the Kumbh mela. From Jan. 15 to Mar. 4, the Indian government estimates more than 150 million pilgrims will participate at various locations, more than the population of Russia…
(Photo by Priyadarshini Sen)
Ayodhya, Ghar Wapsi, Gau Raksha: How BJP, RSS & Affiliates Used Kumbh Mela to Push Hindutva
PRAYAGRAJ, INDIA— “Sita isn’t an archetypal wife,” says Trikal Bhavanta, the 65-year-old Shankaracharya of Pari Akhara. “Without her, there’s no Ram temple.” Bhavanta — a Vaishnava renunciate who commands a group of 50,000 women ascetics across India — holds forth at her ashram in Prayagraj. Set on the banks of the Yamuna, her ashram, a 500-year-old cavernous Shiva temple on the fringes of the Kumbh Mela, is a far cry from the vibrant camps that dotted the fairgrounds until February…
How a ‘Low’ Caste Hindu Became a Priest at the Kumbh Mela
PRAYAGRAJ, INDIA— Flanked by gun-toting sentries on Prayagraj’s sprawling Kumbh Mela grounds, 32-year-old Kanhaiya Prabhu Nandgiri extols the inclusive tenets of Hinduism. “Only the Sanatan Dharma has space for untouchables,” says the high priest of the Juna Akhara – the largest order of sadhus in India, with over 4,00,000 members…
In Today’s Polarized India, this UP Village is the Epitome of Hindu-Muslim Harmony
AGRA, INDIA— The inner courtyard of Shaukat Ali’s house, circled by five other hutments, seems like any other village household near Agra. Six brothers sit on a string cot under a leafy peepal tree smoking a hookah. A pleasant breeze wafts the grey smoke away. Nothing seems out of tune in this bucolic milieu until a muezzin’s azaan call breaks the afternoon lull…
Freedom in Fluid Lines: This Year’s Kumbh Mela Had its First Ever Transgender Art Fair
PRAYAGRAJ, INDIA— “Of course I hate those prying eyes,” says Sanjana Patil. “Who does not like to work freely?” The 40-year-old transgender artist from Nashik pauses for a while, wields her paint brush over the ample contours of Renuka, the patron goddess of transgender people in the Hindu pantheon, and smiles. “But here we don’t hide, we paint…”
(Photo by Ritu Raj Konwar)
COVID-19: Kerala’s Muslim Woman Cremator Shows Bereaved Needs Empathy, Not Religion
NEW DELHI, INDIA— Subina Rahman spent Eid overseeing funeral rites at a crematorium in the Irinjalakuda town of Kerala. As the Covid-dead piled up at the crematorium, she gently loaded them onto carts before rolling the bodies into two electric furnaces. When the fires crackled, she prayed for the deceased…
