{"id":248335,"date":"2023-12-04T12:00:40","date_gmt":"2023-12-04T12:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=248335"},"modified":"2023-11-14T08:12:56","modified_gmt":"2023-11-14T08:12:56","slug":"religions-and-religious-flavours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/12\/religions-and-religious-flavours\/","title":{"rendered":"Religions and Religious Flavours"},"content":{"rendered":"

As we all know there are many religions in India \u2014 Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Jainism, Sikhism,\u00a0\u00a0Islam, Judaism, Baha\u2019i Faith, Zoroastrianism and some other smaller faiths such as\u00a0\u00a0Dev Samaj<\/em>. Every religion has its important days that are celebrated by its followers. Each religion has its important temples.<\/p>\n

For example, church or cathedral is the main temple of Christianity and Christmas is the principal day of this religion. The Sikhs have beautiful gurudwaras \u00a0<\/em>where people are served with langar (food and water) etc. Some big and gorgeous gurudwaras allow you to spend a night or two in the Sikh temple.<\/p>\n

For Hinduism, there are many temples all over the country and quite a few overseas also where Hindus celebrate their important religious days.<\/p>\n

One of the important religious days of Hindus is\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Diwali \u00a0or\u00a0Deepawali where its followers light\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Diyas<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0(earthen lamps) by having a wick in a diya filled with oil.\u00a0\u00a0Every year there are reports that so many hundreds of thousands of\u00a0Diyas\u00a0<\/em>have been\u00a0\u00a0lit up \u2014 breaking previous records of the number of Diyas lit. Of course, these days apart from earthen lamps, electric bulbs light up the festival. This festival is celebrated in many other countries also \u2014 USA, England, Nepal and other countries where significant number of Hindus live.<\/p>\n

This festival of Diwali is linked with the happy return of Lord Ram along with his wife Sita and brother Lakshman to his kingdom in Ayodhya after a fourteen year exile. He was also accompanied by Hanuman who is also feted and adored by Hindus. This year the festival of Diwali has recently been celebrated on 12 November which incidentally is a night of the new moon. Another important Hindu festival is\u00a0\u00a0Holi<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0which falls on a full moon night (Poornima<\/em>) where people celebrate by\u00a0\u00a0colouring one another with colours \u2014 both dry and liquid.<\/p>\n

While celebrating\u00a0\u00a0Diwali or Holi\u00a0<\/em>or other festivals, the anglicised people wish each other by saying\u00a0\u00a0Happy Diwali<\/em> or Happy Holi<\/em> etc. The people use the term. Happy very often. Even on the\u00a0Teachers Day \u00a0 that<\/em>\u00a0is related to the birthday of the first Vice President and second President of\u00a0\u00a0independent India,\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0S Radhakrishnan,\u00a0<\/em>people generally wish\u00a0\u00a0Happy Teachers Day.<\/em><\/p>\n

The word\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Happy<\/em>\u00a0\u00a0has become very popular in India even by people who are not anglicised. So they wish each other \u2018Happy Birthday\u2019 or Happy Anniversary or Happy holiday etc. Are we so unhappy that we need to say\u00a0Happy \u00a0so\u00a0<\/em>often?\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Not really, but some words or expressions enter our vocabulary unknowingly.<\/p>\n

Anyway, let me wish Antonio well and hope he is enjoying himself in the early period of Winter and also sharing his happiness with his numerous followers all over the world.<\/p>\n

______________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Dr Ravi P Bhatia is a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/em><\/a>, an<\/em> educationist, Gandhian scholar and peace researcher. Retired professor, Delhi University. His new book, <\/em>A Garland of Ideas\u2014Gandhian, Religious, Educational, Environmental was published recently in Delhi.<\/em> ravipbhatia@gmail.com<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As we all know there are many religions in India \u2014 Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, Jainism, Sikhism,\u00a0\u00a0Islam, Judaism, Baha\u2019i Faith, Zoroastrianism and some other smaller faiths such as\u00a0\u00a0Dev Samaj.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":166069,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[759,107],"class_list":["post-248335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-india","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248335"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":248340,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248335\/revisions\/248340"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/166069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}