Viewpoints: Environmental Awareness: The Hindu Perspective

The oldest religion of the people of India is Hinduism. It is a religion which was not propounded by a single individual, but was evolved out of the developments spanning several millennia. It has the distinction that it has assimilated the unique features of all the ages through which it evolved. From the time of its appearance it has grown by adapting itself to its environment. Several works have come forth as an expression of its doctrines from the very beginning. But there is no single gospel for Hinduism as, say, the Bible is for Christianity. The Vedas, the Brahmanas, the Upanishads, the Puranas, the Ithihasas, all reflect the thought of Hindu religion

Grounds for Mutual Growth

I was asked to share the way in which my view of Hindu-Christian dialogue has changed over the years and it is a joy to try to do so. Forgive me if, instead of a formal article, I write in a more personal vein as, maybe, a swansong, a last testimony to what has become more and more central in my life. After all at 83 I am likely very soon to be singing my last song

Naming the Deity, Naming the City: Rama and Ayodhya

This paper studies the predicates associated with the name of the Hindu god Rama, as they come to inhabit the temple town of Ayodhya. My intention is to show how the name Rama is linked to the topography of Ayodhya, but also to a landscape that is marked by the absence of the Babri Mosque, demolished by members of the Hindu right in 1992. The name Rama imagines Ayodhya to be both a pastoral setting and a site of national regeneration. This is achieved by coupling the architectural spaces of Ayodhya to the many names of Rama, and to his kingdom. I suggest that the Rama deity, installed in the place of the mosque, acquires life in this combination

Theology of Karman: merit, death and release in the case of Varanasi, India

In this article, the focus is on the question as to what motives the pilgrims may have for performing pilgrimage, and, in doing this, the author deals especially with the Hindu tradition, namely with pilgrimage to Varanasi, Banaras or Kāśī, which is often considered the Hindu sacred city par excellence by both Hindus and Westerners alike.The sacred power of Varanasi has three sources: the eternal presence of Śiva from the time of creation, the cremation ghāṭand the presence of the river Gaṅgā. Furthermore, we found that the most characteristic thing about the power of Varanasi is its connection with death and its power to confer on the pilgrim the fruit of complete release from the circle of birth, death, and rebirth, something which is normally the privilege of the adherents of ascetic and other non-worldly systems. This feature is still reflected in the fact that many elderly people come to Varanasi in order to die and get cremated here, and many people from the surrounding areas still take the bodies of their dead relatives to Varanasi for cremation

Mountain, Water, Rock, God

In Mountain, Water, Rock, God, Luke Whitmore situates the disastrous flooding that fell on the Hindu Himalayan shrine of Kedarnath in 2013 within its broader religious and ecological contexts. For centuries, the enmeshing of Shiva with the Himalayan environment has animated how Hindus conceptualize and experience Kedarnath. The floods publicly affirmed the fundamentally Himalayan and Shiva-oriented character of this place. At the same time, the floods made it clear that the patterns of commercialization, development, and regulation of recent decades in Uttarakhand, patterns that arose in response to new statehood and an influx of middle-class pilgrims and tourists, were starkly out of place. People connected to Kedarnath today therefore understand both the floods and the recent short-sighted development that multiplied the impact of the floods both as the natural consequence of human fault and as an indication of a growing disconnect with the Himalayan environment and its resident divine powers. Whitmore explores the longer story of this powerful realm of Shiva through a holistic theoretical perspective that integrates phenomenological and systems-based approaches to the study of religion, pilgrimage, place, and ecology by thinking about Kedarnath as a place that is experienced as an ecosocial system characterized by complexity. He argues that close attention to places of religious significance offers a portable theoretical model for thinking through connections between ritual, narrative, climate change, tourism, religion, development, and disaster, and shows how these critical components of human life in the twenty-first century intersect in the human experience of place