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This roundtable discusses the future of research in critical Kashmir studies through a close consideration of questions of power, ethics, and positionality that have come to the fore in recent years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the everyday processes of othering and exclusion of particular religious communities in expanding urbanscapes. It maps how deliberate contests are produced over cities’ histories, politico-cultural legacies and spatial arrangements, to isolate and displace communities. Specifically, it addresses how exclusion of Muslim residents is constructed in social and spatial terms in contemporary urban India. Focussing on the middle-sized central Indian city of Bhopal, I explore the emergent tensions that have steadily consolidated invisible, yet often impermeable, mental borders within that setting. In doing so, I highlight the disturbing implications of these processes of boundary making and solidification. I discuss what they mean for the everyday existence of people and communities, and how they produce fractured urbanisms. Drawing upon a mixed approach, I piece together archival records, press reports and a wide selection of other literature, as well as on-field conversations and observations, to examine how the city of Bhopal is sought to be reimaged as Hindu, and its socio-spatial character reconfigured, isolating and disenfranchising its Muslim residents. Finally, I reflect on the manner in which such shifts frame the exclusion of specific communities and produce a contested urban. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractMythologies, in most religions, are regarded as knowledge keepers of ancient societies. They preserve knowledge in various forms and have spread worldwide since time immemorial. Hindu mythology is one such mythology that has had a broad reach across the Indian subcontinent for a long time. It has taught many ways of life to the world. Though Hindu mythology has love, peace, humanity, and righteousness as the primary pillars in its appeal, it is criticized in disability discourse as it associates Karmic philosophy with disability. However, on the other side, Hindu mythology has also normalized disability by integrating people with disability/ies into society. Thus, this paper examines the representation of disability in Hindu mythology by referring to some characters from the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Landslides are devastating geological disasters in mountainous terrains around the world. The Chitral Valley, situated in the Eastern Hindu Kush Mountain ranges, is highly exposed to recurrent landslides posing a significant threat to urban growth, society, and the surrounding ecosystem. To assist in understanding and mitigating the landslide impacts, this study utilized statistical and geospatial modeling tools to develop a landslide hazard map and subsequently evaluate the vulnerability of the infrastructure and settlements to derive a risk map. A comprehensive landslide inventory was developed through on-screen digitization and field verification and compared with the predominant causative parameters to establish a landslide susceptibility index (LSI). The LSI map was analyzed with the precipitation and peak ground acceleration (PGA) data to generate the landslide hazard index (LHI). A semi-quantitative multi-criterion evaluation (MCE) technique was applied for the vulnerability assessment. Physical, environmental, and social vulnerability indexes were determined using direct and pairwise comparison matrices and integrated into a landslide vulnerability index (LVI). The landslide risk index map was developed by combining the hazard and vulnerability. The findings reveal that 37.25% of the region is categorized as shallow risk, with the remaining sections classified as low (62.22%), moderate (0.37%), high (0.11%), and very high risk (0.05%). The study findings are critical for the local authorities and policymakers to develop plans and policies for landslide-induced disaster risk reduction, landuse planning, and public involvement to reduce the vulnerabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we, members of a dharmic* scholars collective, share the outcomes of our discussions over the last three years centered on the question: what shifts in research and practice are necessary to enable higher education to address the concerns of dharmic* (Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, and Hindu) students in the US? Topics we have focused on in our discussions relate to (1) the pervasiveness of Christian hegemony, normativity, and privilege in US higher education that leads to a general misunderstanding of dharmic* traditions and the students from them; (2) systemic and institutionalized challenges to affecting change; and (3) racial, ethnic, and political tensions that shape the experiences and concerns of dharmic* students. In the end, we describe our hopes for the future and invite others – dharmic* scholar-practitioners and aspiring allies alike – to join us in working toward greater understanding, appreciation, and care for dharmic* and all religiously minoritized students. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of myths, I claim, must consider ways in which discursive formations inscribe subjects in the material contexts of their experiences. Situated within this larger objective, this essay examines the process by which being a member of any one of the diasporic Hindutva organizations in the US now measures as a subscription to a transnational communication network that identifies itself with a conservative religious revivalist movement. In my reading of the pedagogic materials produced by the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangha—a Hindu religious organization based in North America—I analyze the critical communicative role that lessons in history and myth play in inciting diasporic Hindus to embrace religious nationalism. Essentially, I argue how persuasive methodologies are emplaced to conflate historical and mythical events, dislodging them from their secular domains and recasting them as sacred bodies and narratives. Cloaked in moderate to extreme incendiary rhetoric, these newly minted subjects of transcendental faith stand as representatives and vanguards for all Hindu religious values, censoring slightest indications of disagreement. This project observes how a transnational and homogenous Hindu Indian identity is invoked through a striking linguistic reconstruction in which cultural myths are indexed as historical facts and nationalist histories are calibrated to mythical scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Topic classification is a challenging task in order to comprehend the subject matter or theme of the Indian mythology. It will enhance the performance of NLP-based systems, such as recommendation and semantic search engines, when dealing with texts containing mythology. This research focuses on developing transformer based models for automated topic classification of Indian mythological documents, which addresses the challenges of organizing and analyzing this rich and diverse corpus. We introduce PouranicTopic, a new annotated dataset containing over 200k verses from 7 major Hindu texts with canto, topic, and sentence labels. Additional datasets Similarity-based and Log-likelihood-based are created using sentence clustering techniques. The BERT, RoBERTa, and DistilBERT models are evaluated for canto and topic classification on these datasets. Clustering greatly improves the results on the Similarity-based dataset, but Log-likelihood-based dataset remains challenging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parimēlaḻakar was a commentator and scholar who lived around the late thirteenth century CE and wrote commentaries on two major works of Tamil literature: the Paripāṭal and Tirukkuṟaḷ. While Parimēlaḻakar has been regarded as both a hero and a villain in Tamil literary history, this article argues that he is neither hero nor villain, but a capacious thinker who sought to harmonise the Sanskrit and Tamil literary traditions. First, the article shows that Parimēlaḻakar's Tirukkuṟaḷ commentary is a natural outgrowth of and response to the broad intellectual currents of his time, in which Tamil literary culture was deeply informed by Sanskrit. Second, the article examines Parimēlaḻakar alongside Paripperumāḷ, another Tirukkuṟaḷ commentator, to highlight the range of choices made by commentators in bridging the worlds of Sanskrit and Tamil during the first half of the second millennium. Ultimately, the article advocates on behalf of a more nuanced portrait of Parimēlaḻakar's legacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article I look at the social media activism of two queer activist groups based out of India, one Muslim and one religiously nonaffiliated. I ask how they navigate and deploy languages of secularism, paying particular attention to their use of art and their interactions with current events. I argue that both groups rely on shifting secular tropes within their activism to build community and respond to challenges, but that their relationship to secularism is complicated by tensions in what secularism means, both to their members and to the nation more broadly. In examining these shifting tropes, I identify two broad approaches to secularism, a pluralist approach and a universalist approach. By exploring how both groups navigate between these two approaches and examining how universalist conceptualizations of queerness and humanity underpin their activism, I consider the implications of their deployment of languages of secularism for their activism. Drawing connections between a universalist approach and Hindu nationalist strategies, I suggest that the universalist aspects of both groups' approaches can unwittingly support Hindu nationalist projects, even as they position themselves against the Hindu right. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2017 a seemingly small change in Pakistan's questionnaire for the upcoming national census sparked vociferous debates about religious identity and the politics of recognition. The questionnaire added "Scheduled Caste" as a separate religion, whereas previously it had appeared as a Hindu subcategory. Some saw this bureaucratic shift as a cynical attempt to further diminish Pakistan's precarious Hindu minority, reopening old wounds about religious nationalism. Anti‐caste progressives, however, saw an opportunity to imagine alternative political horizons for minority citizenship. How do untimely state projects render new political aspirations legible? As shown through ethnographic attention to rumors, enumerative practices, and census campaigns, the tools of bureaucratic documentation can reactivate unsettled histories, helping people imagine new possibilities from the state's margins. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Hindu Kush high-altitude regions of Pakistan are currently experiencing severe consequences as a result of global warming. In this sense, increasing soil erosion and the quick melting of glaciers are two particularly evident effects. In such a scenario, understanding long-term temperature changes is crucial for making accurate forecasts about how the Hindu Kush region may experience regional temperature changes in the future. In this study, the climate tree-ring width (TRW) analysis designated a positive and significant correlation (r = 0.622, p < 0.001) between the TRW chronology and the June to September (summer) mean maximum temperature (MMT). Using the tree-ring width of Pinus wallichiana A. B. Jackson, we reconstructed summer temperatures in the Hindu Kush region from 1790 CE. Statistical analysis showed that the reconstruction model has explained 38.7% of the climate variance during the instrumental period of 1967 to 2018 CE. Five extremely warm summer periods (≥ 4 years; before the instrumental period 1967–2018 CE) of 1804–1830, 1839–1862, 1876–1879, 1905–1910, 1923–1935 CE, and six cold summer periods of 1790–1803, 1832–1838, 1863–1875, 1880–1904, 1911–1922, and 1936–1945 CE have been observed during the past 229 years. Individually, the year 1856 CE experienced severe warmth (31.85 °C), whereas 1794 CE was relatively cooler (29.60 °C). The spectral multi-taper method (MTM) shows significant (p < 0.05) cycles, which take place about every 9.3, 5.7, 4.2, and 3.6 years. In particular, the 9.3-year cycle, which closely aligns with the 11-year solar activity cycle, suggests a potential correlation between solar activity and local temperature fluctuations. Moreover, our reconstruction demonstrates a significant degree of consistency when compared to actual climate data and regional temperature reconstruction series, reporting a strong logic of trust in the reliability and accuracy of our findings. This evidence reaffirms that our reconstruction shows significant and dependable regional temperature signals, notably being representative for the Hindu Kush region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Faced with myriad societal norms, children must decide which norms to accept and which to reject. These decisions hold consequences for how norms change over time. Decisions about norms are particularly salient for religious children in pluralistic societies, who encounter norms both from their own as well as from other religious and non-religious communities. Although children follow norms and disapprove of their violation from early in life, this should not be taken to mean that children approve of the norms themselves: a person can disapprove of a norm that they follow and enforce upon others. The present study examined religious children's views about the authorship, utility, changeability, and changeworthiness of norms. Ninety-seven Hindu and Muslim 9- to 14-year-olds (46 female and 51 male) in India were interviewed about familiar religious, moral, and conventional norms. As predicted, children's views about whether a norm should be changed (its changeworthiness) were predicted by how good they perceived the norm to be (its utility). Also as hypothesized, children's views about who, if anyone, could change a norm (its changeability) was predicted by their views about who made the norm (its authorship). Children distinguished between norms based on their perceived authorship, utility, changeability, and changeworthiness. Age and religious differences also emerged. Together, these findings elucidate how children come to accept or reject norms, which ultimately affects how norms persist, change, or disappear over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 8th century, Indian traders have brought Hindu/Buddhist practices to Java, influencing the culture of sitting low. When furniture came to Indonesia during the colonial era, the Javanese started using low-wooden benches called dingklik for work and informal interactions. Despite having a simple form and being often hidden, dingklik underwent a transformation through socioeconomic activities in Java during the colonial period. Contemporary paintings, photographs, and films were used to analyse dingklik in terms of content, visual elements, and height in socio-economic activity. From an economic perspective, the shape of dingklik was oriented towards mobility so that for carry-on traders, the dingklik had smaller and lighter legs, making it easy to carry. Meanwhile, socially, the form of dingklik was influenced by philosophical symbolism, and for Javanese nobles, it had decorative features similar to royal chairs as symbols of power. This study highlights the shift in the value of traditional Javanese sitting facilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Sadhu Bela temple in Sukkur, Sindh established by the Udasi community has attracted interest among Pakistani journalists and social scientists. These accounts variously refer to the site as ‘Hindu,’ ‘Sikh,’ or syncretic between the two. In this visual essay, we draw upon texts that the Udasi community has produced to understand the community’s self-definition. We show how Sadhu Bela continues to have significance in the devotional lives of Punjabis and Sindhis across the India-Pakistan border. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractRenewables in India are presented as modern technologies ensuring a pathway towards sustainable development and unlimited growth. But this story entails problematic land politics and the reconfiguration of space for resource frontiers’ expansion, local state formation, and ethno-religious authoritarian agendas: for the past 20 years, Kutch district of Gujarat state in Western India has experienced several waves of land liberalisation and industrialisation programmes, including wind power projects, but its proximity with Pakistan and the presence of Muslim pastoral populations on both sides of the border have also fostered Hindu nationalist movements since 1947. The development of wind energy projects in Western India follows traditional patterns of a regime of dispossession: a set of “inscription devices” assemble and disassemble land in a discursive, bureaucratic, and violent way and affix an official stamp of legality on damaging mechanisms of dispossession within a state-specific regime. But as wind projects move to borderland territories, their associated regime of dispossession aligns with long-term exclusive ethno-religious conceptions of space as Hindu. The unfolding land politics endorses the Bharatiya Janata Party’s electoral strategy to capture the remaining constituencies and co-opt minority leaders, while agents enforcing wind’s regime of dispossession see an opportunity to assert upper-caste Hindu supremacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the mid‐20th century onwards, diverse groups — whether formerly enslaved populations or victims of mass atrocities — have demanded reparations as part of a wider struggle for justice. However, in the current global climate of right‐wing resurgence, both the recognition of victimhood and demands for justice are in danger of being subverted and hijacked. These developments create additional obstacles to addressing genuine reparations demands. This manifests in at least three ways. First, there is a selective application of victimhood status and recognition, often along old fault lines of race or religion. In this way, the oppression of some groups is no longer recognized as a legitimate object of reparations; indeed, their claims to justice are seen as unfair demands against dominant groups. Second, we see the blatant continuation of the very practices that the reparations movement has sought to establish as wrongs. Third, not content with negating existing demands for reparations from below, powerful groups are going a step further and, as part of supremacist projects, asserting their own right to reparations. In doing this, they use the language and moral claims of reparations and decolonization that have emerged through the global reparations movement. This article seeks to illustrate these developments through the examples of India and Israel, including the demand for 'restoration' of sacred sites to Hindus and Jews. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study explores the Hindu tradition's profound connection to sustainable development, emphasizing the importance of harmony with nature, as dictated by the principles of Dharma (duty) and Ahimsā (non-violence). The Hindu tradition, found in sacred texts such as the Vedas and the Bhagavad Git?, underscores humanity's ethical and moral obligation to protect and nurture the environment. Key concepts such as vegetarianism, reverence for all life forms, and eco-conscious rituals are integral to this philosophy, offering practical approaches to modern sustainability. Additionally, the paper examines the global perspective promoted by the concept of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, which underscores our interconnectedness with the world. In conclusion, the Hindu tradition provides a valuable perspective on sustainable development, emphasizing the unity of all life and our shared responsibility to safeguard our planet, underscoring the significance of living in harmony with nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the making and unmaking of a shared shrine culture at an integrated religious site in north India, known for the entanglement of Hindu and Islamic religious figures. In particular, what prompts Hindu devotees to protect 'the otherness' of two Muslim saints from the attacks of right-wing Hindus who, after recent political developments in India, began to challenge the religious others' presence next to Hindu sacred figures, Shiva and Hanuman. Following Carla Bellamy, it is shown that Muslim saints represent power ready to be used and harnessed by Hindus if they are willing to transcend their religious boundaries, which in turn, following Levinas, creates an ethics of responsibility for 'the other' demanding protection of the Muslim saints' ontological being and their symbolism of devotion and unique power among Hindus. Hindu devotees, it is argued, exercise cooperative segregation and emphasize the importance of distinction to save the religious culture associated with the two Muslim saints and preserve the symbolism of otherness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reader is offered a Ukrainian translation of the first chapter of the Śvetāśvatara-Upaniṣad. The Upaniṣads are a late Vedic genre of ancient Indian literature that completes the formation of the Vedic corpus of sacred texts. The first texts of the Upaniṣads appear around the 8th century BC. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of the Upaniṣads for the study of the origins of Indian religious and philosophical thought. Leading Indian philosophers developed the ideas of the Upaniṣads, quoted them in their own works, and, starting with Gauḍapāda, wrote their own commentaries on them. They are the first component of the triple canon (prasthānatrayī) of the Vedānta philosophical school. For more than a century, not only in world Indological circles, but also among much wider intellectual circles of various countries, primarily in Europe and North America, there has been a steady interest in the Upaniṣads. The Śvetāśvatara-Upaniṣad is one of the most authoritative and well-known Upaniṣads. It received its high recognition not only in Hindu, but also in scientific circles. And although its studies and translations have a long history, there are still many controversial and unresolved issues. Our publication is intended to renew the existing Ukrainian academic interest in the Upaniṣads, which was interrupted by the Soviet authorities in the 1920s and 1930s, and to draw attention to some still insufficiently researched aspects of the Śvetāśvatara-Upaniṣad. Thus, emphasis is placed on the features of the description of the Highest principle (reality), the soteriological component of the ancient Indian text, on the role played by sages in the Upaniṣad, on the features of text creation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the two waves of the COVID-19 pandemic in India in 2020–2021. It disaggregates the different narratives constructed by the Hindu right-wing in online circles. It shows that by instrumentalizing the interactive and multimodal features of social media, the Hindu Right amplified the notion of Muslims as contaminants in the first wave of the breakout, accusing them of weakening the otherwise sacred, virus-resistant Indian nation. During the second wave, the Hindu Right downplayed the role of the Kumbh Mela, a major Hindu pilgrimage and festival, as a super-spreader event. Criticisms of the Hindu festival was deemed a foreign conspiracy aimed at harming India's body politic. The article argues that the Hindu Right capitalized on the COVID-19 crisis to promote religified and somatisized ideals of a 'muscular Hindu India' weakened by the Muslim Other from within. This narrative heightened the schism between Hindus and Muslims in India, with long-lasting effects that outlive the pandemic itself. Finally, the article problematizes the notion that digital technologies and virtual spaces necessarily overcome physical barriers and divisions, arguing instead that in the case of the right-wing Hindu Twittersphere, social media congealed intra-communal solidarities and inter-communal antagonisms online echoing divisions in the non-digital, offline world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Water is the basis for human survival and growth, and it holds great importance for ecological and environmental protection. The Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) is known as the "Water Tower of Asia", where water influences changes in the global water cycle and ecosystem. It is thus very important to efficiently measure the status of water in this region and to monitor its changes; with the development of satellite-borne sensors, water surface extraction based on remote sensing images has become an important method through which to do so, and one of the most advanced and accurate methods for water surface extraction involves the use of deep learning networks. We designed a network based on the state-of-the-art Vision Transformer to automatically extract the water surface in the HKH region; however, in this region, terrain shadows are often misclassified as water surfaces during extraction due to their spectral similarity. Therefore, we adjusted the training dataset in different ways to improve the accuracy of water surface extraction and explored whether these methods help to reduce the interference of terrain shadows. Our experimental results show that, based on the designed network, adding terrain shadow samples can significantly enhance the accuracy of water surface extraction in high mountainous areas, such as the HKH region, while adding terrain data does not reduce the interference from terrain shadows. We obtained the water surface extraction results in the HKH region in 2021, with the network and training datasets containing both water surface and terrain shadows. By comparing these results with the data products of Global Surface Water, it was shown that our water surface extraction results are highly accurate and the extracted water surface boundaries are finer, which strongly confirmed the applicability and advantages of the proposed water surface extraction approach in a wide range of complex surface environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People's lived experiences of distress are complex, personal, and vary widely across cultures. So, too, do the terms and expressions people use to describe distress. This variation presents an engaging challenge for those doing intercultural work in transcultural psychiatry, global mental health, and psychological anthropology. This article details the findings of a study of common distress terminology among 63 Kannada-speaking Hindu women living in Mysuru, the second largest city in the state of Karnataka, South India. Very little existing scholarship focuses on cultural adaptation for speakers of Dravidian languages like Kannada; this study aims to fill this gap and support greater representation of this linguistic family in research on mental health, idioms of distress, and distress terminology. Between 2018 and 2019, we conducted a 3-phase study consisting of interviews, data reduction, and focus group discussions. The goal was to produce a non-exhaustive list of common Kannada distress terms that could be used in future research and practice to translate and culturally adapt mental health symptom scales or other global mental health tools. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This chapter starts by briefly decluttering how religion is defined through western theistic attributes, then explores students' Hindu experiences while centering a counter socio‐religio‐cultural narrative of lived religion. I look into systemic institutional misalignments stemming from white Christian supremacy and lastly, aspects of student leadership on campuses. The chapter closes with critical reflections on scholar‐practitioner essays that address campus dynamics and my recommendations therefrom. Practical Takeaways: Supporting Hindu students requires a deeper understanding of Hindu traditions' sociological, historical, and geographical roots as well as its contemporary manifestations in the US American diaspora and its complex relations to transnational social constructs.Decentering white Christian manifestations in higher education settings for Hindu students can look like not requiring proof of "authenticity" for observances, alleviating programming and facilities hurdles, providing resources for physical spaces or offering reliable rides to places of worship, accommodating lacto‐vegetarian dietary needs, hiring dedicated staff that equitably enhance the internal diversity, and expanding interfaith engagements beyond Abrahamic faiths to include variably‐denominated Hindus.Developing inter‐functional‐area policies to redress multiple layers of marginalized religious, spiritual, and secular identities in their relations to other identities including race, caste, ethnicity, tribe, gender, (dis)ability, sexuality, and class. This includes critically interrogating internalized forms of oppression. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article charts the different modalities of political transgression that marked an act of religious conversion and inter-faith marriage performed by a Muslim female subject in contemporary India, and the subsequent misreading of this transgression; a misreading made possible by liberal political thought's delineations of the conceptual category of "interest". Existing legal, political, academic, and popular discourses have read the prominent 2016 event of the conversion of a Hindu woman named Akhila into Islam, as either the "false consciousness" of a "vulnerable" individual whose self-interests were unintelligible to herself, or, as an unambiguous case of a "mature" woman in a "modernising" Kerala "choosing" to opt for an inter-faith marriage and to convert; a liberal idiom of choice that thereby needs to be safeguarded via Constitutional provisions. The article, even while acknowledging the political need to adhere to the latter reading/constitution of the female (Islamic) subject's sovereign desire to convert, shows some of the limitations of both these ideologically antithetical positions. It argues that the desire of Hadiya (Akhila's new name after converting to Islam) to convert remains unreadable by both the right-wing Indian judiciary, backed up by Hindutva forces, as well as the "left-liberal" feminist intelligentsia that sought to support her autonomy. In fact, both these ideologically opposed stances often legitimised each other. By examining the legal debates that took place in the Indian courts, the article shows how construing Hadiya's act of conversion solely through the legal-juridical prisms of "religious freedom" and "choice", pegged to the concept of self-interest, is vigorously insufficient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sacrifice (yajña) is considered to be one of the most mentioned words in the Hindu texts, and Panikkar understands it in relation to the preservation, continuation, and regeneration of the universe in existence. While Panikkar's interpretation of sacrifice focuses mainly on creation, this article extends his arguments to interpret the Hindu apocalypse as a yajña from four major angles, including the end of a kalpa and the concept of declining dharma in the successive yugas, the journey from the cosmological to the transcendental brahman, entire creation being the food of sacrifice, and the apocalypse as a reflection of the yajña. This study incorporates both śruti and smriti texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India today exemplifies the making of an "ethnocracy," a polity in which the dominant ethnic group obtains political control and deploys the state apparatus to ethnicize territory and society. I illustrate the making of India's ethnocracy by documenting key political and policy practices of Narendra Modi's rule. I do this by offering evidence of this process by documenting: (1). the contest between the dominant Hindus and minority Muslims over territorial space and the public realm; (2). solidifying Hindutva ethno-nationalism; which builds on and consolidates; and (3). long-term political and economic stratification between Hindus and Muslims. However, the making of India's ethnocracy has not gone unchallenged. Therefore, I direct attention to the resistance mounted against India's ethnocratic turn in the institutional, political and social terrains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In vernacular settlements, it is a common practice to venerate religious icons. The figure of the God Shiva Mahadeva is one of the icons of Hinduism generally venerated in India. Interestingly, this figure is carved on the relief of the Buddhist temple, Borobudur in Indonesia. The visualization shows that the figure is God Shivam and its presence can be interpreted as a form of visual communication representing the interactions between the Hindu and Buddhist communities living in the surrounding vernacular settlements of the Borobudur temple. This article reviews the art historiography and raises several research questions regarding the visualization of Hindu icons in this Buddhist temple. The study examines the visualization of the figure of God Shiva in one of the relief panels of the Borobudur temple. The paper employs a case study method. It produces visual comparisons of approaches to artistic practice and art history delineated through the characteristics of the visual elements of God Shiva in the 104 Gandavyuha relief panels. Data was collected through photo documentation, visits to the Borobudur temple, photograph tracing, making lithography, and comparing visual findings with published literature. This is to ensure the accuracy of the visualization and investigate Hindu-Buddhist interactions in Java in the 8th--9th centuries. It concludes that the figure carved on panel 104 in the second gallery of the Gandavyuha reliefs is God Shiva, a Hindu icon as per the Gandavyuha Sutra text where God Shiva is mentioned as a spiritual guide who has carried out dharma as a bodhisattva. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper revisits Punjab's ethnic composition at the time of the 1947 Partition of India by tracing the ethnic and cultural experiences of a subregional ethnic group from the princely state of Bahawalpur. This group was displaced from the rural parts of Bahawalpur in 1947 and resettled in remote areas of the Hindumalkot international border in Rajasthan after being allotted land in the region by the Indian state. Through an ethnographic engagement with the community, the paper's first section traces its experiences of displacement and of the ethnic-linguistic shift after the resettlement in Rajasthan. The survivors' testimonies illustrate that despite their desire to sustain a vernacular identity as Bahawalpuris, social, economic and administrative pressures hastened an ethnic-linguistic amnesia. However, as the second section illustrates, through a linguistic and cultural renewal among the second and third generations, the Bahawalpuris have tried to dissociate themselves from a homogenised Punjabi Hindu identity and renew a subregional identity as Bahawalpuris. This section traces subregional sites of ethnicity and culture in the later generations that draw their meaning from memories of collective performances of pre-Partition life in rural Bahawalpur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hinduism is considered one of the most ancient religions in the world. Although the technological innovation of modernization has undermined the reliance on their traditions, Hindus may still rely on Hindu Scripture when making decisions. From their standpoint, contrary to Western medicine, human lives cannot be reduced to statistical and empirical facts. They focus more on preserving the spirit, rather than considering survival as one of the goals of medicine. Consequently, when a preterm infant is born, Hindu parents might struggle to understand the goals of Western neonatologists. This divergence may create misunderstandings when discussing end-of-life decisions. Since they value relational aspects to be of utmost importance, they may accept treatments only in the likelihood of good neurological outcomes. Being able to interact allows Hindus to act virtuously with the aim of purifying their soul toward moksa. When it comes to end-of-life decisions on behalf of newborns, Hindu parents may opt to forgo treatments and let the baby peacefully die, while praying for their soul to have a better rebirth. This paper aims to evaluate quality-of-life assessment in the Hindu tradition in comparison with the Catholic tradition. It draws parallelisms between these two different religions to investigate whether an inter-religious dialogue is possible. This work will help Catholic, and more broadly Western, doctors to have a better understanding of the Hindu end-of-life views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is a special issue of the journal Religions on the topic of "Continuity and Change according to Hindu and Buddhist Religious Philosophies." The document explores the concepts of continuity and change in Hindu and Buddhist religious and philosophical traditions. It discusses the views on temporal finitude and the cycle of suffering in Hindu and Buddhist soteriologies, as well as the emphasis on impermanence and nonsubstantiality in Buddhist philosophy. The document also examines the debates between Hindu and Buddhist scholastic philosophies regarding the existence of enduring objects and selves. The articles in this volume provide insights into various aspects of Hindu and Buddhist philosophies of continuity and change. [Extracted from the article]

This study proposes a framework to develop a high-resolution snow cover area (SCA) product from freely available spaceborne remote sensing data and utilizes the Sentinel-1 multi-temporal products and MODIS surface reflectance data. The proposed methodology focuses on using the sensitivity of the parameters retrievable from the Sentinel-1 datasets to snow. Different parameters such as the dual polarimetric entropy, mean scattering angle, backscatter coefficients, and the interferometric coherence are integrated with a spatially resampled normalized difference snow index (NDSI) from MODIS data to estimate an equivalent NDSI, which is used for the determination of the SCA at 15 m spatial resolution. The equivalent NDSI is derived using a machine learning-based regression based on support vector machines (SVMs) and the multilayer perceptron (MLP). The experiments are performed for the high elevated regions of the Kunduz and Khanabad watershed of the northern Hindu Kush mountains for the peak winter and early melt season of 2019, corresponding to February and March. The reference SCA for evaluating the results is generated by thresholding the NDSI derived from pan-sharpened Landsat-8 imagery. As compared to MLP, the SCA generated based on the SVM regression showed better performance. Further, compared to spatially resampled MODIS NDSI, both the SVM and MLP results showed better accuracy for snow classification, as determined by the mean conditional kappa coefficients of 0.75, 0.83, respectively, over 0.62. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the lives and activities of Afghan Sikhs living in the United Kingdom. Rather than analysing Afghan Sikhs as a one-dimensional "community" defined in relationship to a singular "identity" based on a shared geographical origin in Afghanistan, the article emphasises the ways in which they have formed multiple and dynamic networks across shifting geographical and historical contexts. Ethnographically, it focuses on the importance of commercial spaces, practices, and relations to the formation of such networks and the modes of social life within which these are entwined. The article argues that particular forms of everyday cosmopolitanism arise in the context of participation in long-distance commerce. Cosmopolitan sensibilities coexist with distinctions based on caste, language, and regional background, and are consciously regarded by some of the traders as markers of skill and social accomplishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the impact of religious identity on political mobilization through a comparative analysis of Hindu and Muslim leadership in British colonial India. The objective is to understand how religiously inspired political movements emerged and their implications on identity construction and political processes. The background highlights the significance of religious identity in shaping political strategies and the need to fill gaps in comparative literature. Methodologically, the research employs archival research, oral testimonies, and cross-temporal comparisons to identify patterns and divergences in political actions. The results reveal that both Hindu and Muslim leaders utilized religious symbols and ideologies to mobilize support, with Hindu leaders merging religious and nationalist sentiments, while Muslim leaders focused on asserting Muslim identity. The study recommends adopting a multi-dimensional analytical approach to understand the complexities of historical processes, which can provide valuable insights into contemporary communal dynamics and the role of religious identity in political trajectories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the effects of climate change on achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is critical, especially in the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region, which is experiencing a rate of warming nearly triple the global average. Despite the region's importance in supporting major ecosystems and a vast population, the impacts of climate change on specific SDGs and their interconnections remain underexplored. This viewpoint article discusses the influence of climate change on the interplay among various SDGs, with a particular emphasis on SDG 6, SDG 7, and SDG 15. By offering insights into these challenges, this article aims to aid in the formulation and achievement of more effective strategies for meeting the SDGs in the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hindu sacred scriptures are a rich interweave of cosmological revelation that is embedded in melopoeia (melodic poetry) and sung in designated meters during rituals, liturgical services, festivals, and personal prayers. Revelation is conveyed through enigmatic dialogues, debates, parables, anecdotes, legends, and narratives. These occur between mendicants and saints, kings and mystics, and sometimes fables that include the natural world. These narrative accounts appeal to the young and the old and influence the body–mind–sense complex. A growing body of evidence attests to the positive effects of music and storytelling in the classroom setting. Drawing from these data and Hindu understandings of sacred mantric sound and storytelling, I discuss my experiments with musical frameworks and storytelling in my classes at the Graduate Theological Union, the Jesuit School of Theology of Santa Clara University, and Starr King School for the Ministry in California. I contend that the incorporation of parables, tales, legends, and narratives within a musical melodic framework, as is used in Hindu texts, is an effective means of imparting Hindu–Christian theological education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are more than 150 (grand and micro) theories of emotion. Even as European phenomenological perspectives do mention self and agency, the mainstream discourse on emotion in psychology is quite limited in presenting a coherent theory of affective process. A key aspect of Euro-American theories of emotion is that, these theories are topographically flat, thus, unable to provide mechanisms of transformation of emotion relevant for well-being. In this paper, a theory-based framework for emotional transformation through understanding Indian concepts in āyurveda, yoga sutras and the nātya is discussed. Second, the paper proposes that it is Śānta (the Indian conceptualisation of peace) alone, that permits a substantive possibility to a radical re-emotion or experiencing and articulating well-being. The concept for a radical re-emotion is called Bhāvanā, indicating the possibility of conscious and radical re-creation and re-imagination of affective relationships with objects, concepts, processes and people in the world, re-orienting from the isolated 're-appraisal', 'self-regulation and control' of emotion as discussed in the mainstream paradigm. The paper contends that these culturally relevant models educate and inform global psychology theory and applied practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper centers on the godfather of the civil rights movement, Howard Thurman, and his most influential work, "Jesus and the Disinherited", as a pre-eminent text into early 20th century intercultural philosophy. Building upon Kipton Jensen's analysis in "Howard Thurman: Philosophy, Civil Rights, and the Search for Common Ground", this presentation will reframe Howard Thurman's unique philosophy as one that integrates spirituality, interculturality, and critical social analysis. It is well known that Thurman's treatise on the oppressed was carried in the pocket of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. throughout the civil rights movement for the ways it empowered nonviolent resistance for those marginalized by the dominant culture of the United States, which was (and still is) built on racism, military violence, and class-based oppression. This paper advocates that Thurman came to his philosophical conclusions through deep engagement with various cultural and philosophical traditions, most notably the Hindu spiritual–political paradigm of Mahatma Gandhi, and sought to harmonize these insights for African Americans in the USA. By investigating the intercultural foundations of "Jesus and the Disinherited", this paper will encourage scholars to explore how interculturality enriched Thurman's philosophy and how this fostered a more expansive vision of community in pluralistic societies. This article traces the roots of the development of "Jesus and the Disinherited", looking back to presentations Thurman gave as early as 1922, concluding with the publication of his book in 1949. And via this study, we will see the progression of Thurman's ideas and the impacts interculturality had on his philosophy and vision for social justice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indian news channels and headlines meticulously cover ongoing legal suits seeking the 'restitution' of the Gyanvapi mosque in Banaras (Varanasi) to Hindus, with the site dubbed 'Ayodhya 2.0' by several commentators. The recent construction of the monumental Kashi Vishvanath Corridor next to the contested Gyanvapi mosque and the 2019 Supreme Court verdict in favour of a grand Ram temple in Ayodhya seem to be the main developments prompting an escalation towards Ayodhya 2.0. This article, however, complicates the above reading by showing that the current 'unmaking' of Gyanvapi as mosque does not result straightforwardly and solely from these recent judicial and spatial developments. By combining analysis of legal proceedings with a longitudinal ethnography of the site, I unpack the longstanding cross-fertilisation of judicial discourses and rituals of place in representations of the site and point to the progressive co-option of both spheres in the pursuit of Hindu majoritarian claims. The article expands scholarship on the subtle but relentless entrenchment of Hindu majoritarianism by illuminating ways in which petty disputes, situated understandings of place and religious practices not necessarily related to, or aligned with, the majoritarian ideology may be co-opted by and finish up nurturing it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Divya Cherian's book, "Merchants of Virtue: Hindus, Muslims, and Untouchables in Eighteenth-Century South Asia," provides a detailed examination of the influence of merchant castes in the kingdom of Marwar in western India during the eighteenth century. Cherian's use of archival records reveals how merchant castes played a role in transforming local governance and creating a new Hindu identity that was defined against Dalits and Muslims. The book highlights the growing ability of the state to surveil and discipline its subjects, while also acknowledging the limits of its enforcement. Cherian's study offers a nuanced understanding of caste mobility among elite and middle classes, as well as the history of discrimination against religious minorities and disadvantaged castes. [Extracted from the article]