Welcome to Eternal Path Musings, a weekly newsletter for the modern and curious Hindu, featuring highlights around religious texts, practice, history, politics, people, and ways to better our engagement and personal progress.
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Short Reads
Hindus across America conducted vigils to draw attention to the plight of Kashmiri Pandits and the 30th anniversary of their expulsion from Kashmir
Amma Lucy’s Hindu Temple - Interesting feature in Hinduism Today about the small temple founded by a Chinese-Malaysian devotee in Malaysia
Devdutt Pattnaik: The Meltdown
Devdutt Pattnaik is a famous writer and author of many books on the Hindu cosmos, especially the relation of Hinduism and business. We recommend to stop using his books/articles to teach about Hinduism. He has come under harsh scrutiny recently, one for inaccuracies in his work and secondly for general lunacy.
Inaccuracies - TrueIndology (in Hindi), Aravindan Neelakandan, Kapil Routray, and Nityananda Mishra (with Rajiv Malhotra) among others have all called into question various theories Pattnaik has put forth citing his regurgitation of colonial narratives around Indian/Hindu history and his lack of Sanskrit proficiency among other things. IndiaFacts has a good profile of Pattnaik here, and all the names above are hyperlinked with their takedowns.
Lunacy - He has feuded quite a bit on twitter, and most recently was caught directing misogynistic slurs at TrueIndology (another example). In fact, misogynism is a general trait of his. A cursory look through his twitter is full of bizarre trolling and cooked up theories about people who disagree with him.
In short, don’t use Devdutt Pattnaik to teach Hinduism.
Resource Highlight: Govardhan Math
Govardhan Math is one of four cardinal maths founded by the Hindu guru Adi Shankaracharya, located in Puri, Odisha. The current Shankaracharya of Govardhan Math, Swami Nischalananda Saraswati puts out regular and insightful video content in Hindi (with subtitles available) centering on topics related to Hindu texts but also on how Hindus can navigate changes in sociopolitical environments. These speeches are reflective of the Advaita Vedanta tradition.