Welcome to Eternal Path Musings, a newsletter geared towards content that educates, informs, and inspires the Modern Hindu!
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This week we feature: reading on DGH, Secular v Religious aspects of Hindu temples, a new devotional poem, and a graphic on the Puranas!
Reading Highlights: Short Reads
📖 Scholarly Critiques of DGH - Academic scholars from a number of different universities have come together to write a great letter debunking the claims of the “Dismantling Global Hindutva” (DGH) conference that Hinduphobia doesn’t exist. Check out the letter here. In a different letter, 75 academic scholars criticizing the shoddy methodology of DGH organizers. Indu Viswanathan has a great piece on the epistemic hubris of the organizers, questioning why they try to act like gatekeepers of Hinduism and talk down to practicioners. In a similar vein, Sankrant Sanu has another well-referenced take demolishing the claims of the DGH organizers.
🛕 Secular v Religious aspects of Hindu Temples: A False Dichotomy? - Many of our readers will be aware that the so-called “secular” Republic of India interferes in, manages, and loots Hindu temples while preventing Hindus from running their own educational institutions. Drilling down one level deeper, is there really a separation between secular and religious activities occurring at a temple. Hariprasad N lays out a very thorough argument for why economic, financial, and religious practices at Hindu temples are intertwined.
🖊️ A New Telugu Devotional Poem to Saint Andal - Vishnudasa has composed a 33 stanza poem in Telugu with 100 praises of Saint Andal, one of the 12 azhwar saints of Tamil Vaishnavism. We love to encourage and feature new devotional content! The poem is published on his blog, and features the Telugu script version, Romanized Telugu version, and English translation.