Miley WHO?

I watched a video last night about Miley Cyrus that looked like a home video taken without the participants knowing…. It was raunchy and downright offensive. But again, I just thought it was a home video, and you know how bad those can get!

But then I watched the number she pulled on live TV at the MTV VGAs, and man……… I can’t even come up with the right words! I was AGHAST! Here was the TALENTED singer who can obviously dance, but she is using everything she’s got to…what…send a message? To whom??? And for what? Nobody sees her as a staunch supporter of anything HOLY or WISE, and now most of us don’t see her as a worthwhile “act” to watch! She’s… simply OFFENSIVE!

In generations past, we had Madonna, who also crossed the line as to what should be seen on public broadcasts. But she got away with it, because she did it with a STYLE that we, the American public, could accept. And I believe she suffered way more at the hands of the opposite sex than Miley ever did.

And then there was the lead singer of The Doors. If you want illicit and seductive, he wrote the book! And the very things that made him so…..illicit, took his life way before his time!

Then you have Whitney Houston. Her music shaped pop music as a genre! She can honestly be labeled as the Queen of Pop! But she too succumbed to recreational drugs and ended up DEAD before her time.

But Miley? Who is she? We know of a teen actress who engaged us in movies like Nick Spark’s Last Song. She was fabulous there! Her acting even trumped her hunky costar, Liam Hemsworth. But whereas Hemsworth went on to IMPROVE on his game, Miley deteriorated. And she is STILL falling. Won’t someone put us all out of our misery and stop putting her on stage???

HAF NEXTGEN Essay Contest Winner for 2012

The Hindu American Foundation has held an annual essay contest in its ongoing efforts to build Hindu solidarity. In 2012, Suneeta Israni won First Place. Below you will find and excerpt from her winning essay. She wrote to the following prompt: If I were elected President of the United States, my Hindu principles would inspire me to... 

                 If I were President of the United States, my Hindu principles would inspire me to plant a lotus in the White House Garden. For if I planted a Lotus, I would have the privilege of seeing that even though its petals close each night and sink to reside within the murky darkness at the bottom of the pond, it nonetheless will rise each dawn to display its beauty.

                I would have the privilege of learning that no matter how hard I tried to bend its stalk, the stem of the Lotus flower will never break.

                I would have the privilege of remembering that the distance between the Lotus flower and the water, instituted by the stem, represents what the Honorable Siddhartha Gautama’s once said, “the [spotless] spirit of the best of men, like the new lotus in the [murky] water which does not adhere to it.”

                I would have the privilege of appreciating that at every stage for any purpose, whether raw or cooked, roasted or boiled, roots or leaves, it would be safe and beneficial to consume. These privileges, however, do not come alone. They bestow upon me the responsibility to extract the lessons from the Lotus flower and apply them to the world we live in today.

Whose History Is It Anyways?

I was scanning the headlines on the HAF (Hindu American Foundation) website this evening when I came across an article about India's history. I found it interesting because I have been doing my own research on the topic over the past year or so. Instead of trying to summarize the key points of the article for you, I have chosen a portion of it to share with you, below. If it sparks a reaction in you, please leave feedback in the comments section.

There are winners and losers when history is assessed, and there are protagonists and antagonists. Historians recognize the onerous burden of their profession in these times when a spare use of the word "genocide" in the House of Representatives to describe events in Armenia decades ago led Turkey to recall its ambassador. And politics infuses the narratives of history. Anti-Semitism, Marxism, white supremacy, all are known to prejudice renditions of peoples, cultures and religions. Historian Wendy Doniger, professor of the History of Religion at the University of Chicago Divinity School, finds herself in the midst of a history book kerfuffle of her own. Doniger, long enjoying exalted status as the doyen of Hindu studies in the American academy, faces scrutiny now in an unfolding drama involving her latest book, "The Hindus: An Alternative History". An online petition asking Penguin Press, the publishers of the book, to hold publication and demand revisions is approaching 10,000 signatures. And when the book was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, Hindu activists staged a rare protest outside the award ceremony last week (the book did not win).
Hindus know that Doniger was derailed before. In 2003,Microsoft retracted a chapter on Hinduism written by Doniger for its online encyclopedia after a heavily publicized internet campaign protested factual and interpretive errors in her essay. In the end, a Hindu writer, providing the insider's perspective, wrote an entry that depicted Hinduism in the light that practitioners would actually recognize.