Avinash Giri
Featured
Spray nozzles called bum guns, water pots called lotas in South Asia and bidets have been keeping behinds clean for many years without toilet paper, in line with Islamic and Hindu texts urging purification of the body with water.
The coordinated Easter 2019 terrorist attack in Sri Lanka killed 290 people and injured about 500 others at three churches and three hotels. Survivors struggle to pay for their medical treatment and regain financial stability, despite government compensation, and insist their faith in Jesus has grown even stronger.
More than 24 people who attended a Sunni Muslim gathering earlier this month in Delhi have tested positive for COVID-19, according to the health ministry. Some of the ruling Hindu nationalist party’s leaders and supporters have taken to social media to blame Muslims for the inevitable spread of the virus in the nation of 1.3 billion people.
Nearly 42 people were killed, including a Delhi cop, and more than 200 injured. The violence began when Hindu mobs clashed with Muslims in northeast Delhi protesting a new citizenship law that fast-tracks citizenship for religious minorities of all major faiths coming from some neighboring countries, except Islam.
The night before President Trump’s arrival, Indian police arrested several activists involved in protests against a controversial citizenship bill and register seen as anti-Muslim. Police released the activists after the "Namaste Trump" event was over and Trump left to visit the Taj Mahal.
Arrests of Hindu activists protesting India’s new citizenship bill that excludes Muslims has energized Muslims and Christians who support a pluralism over what they see as attempts to make India a Hindu nation.
Thousands gathered in the small Muslim neighborhood of Shaheen Bagh on the outskirts of India’s capital to protest against the new citizenship law that excludes Muslim migrants and a proposed citizenship register, calling Jan. 1 a “black day” rather than a holiday.
A new citizenship law that excludes Muslim migrants is the latest and boldest move by India’s Hindu nationalist government, igniting protests by Indians who support the country’s secular founding and worry about increasing authoritarianism in the world’s largest democracy.
Mass protests in India show a public resistance to Prime Minister Modi and his party’s vision for a Hindu nation over a long-held secularism that treats all religions equally.
After a Supreme Court ruling that allows Hindus to rebuild a temple over an illegally demolished mosque, Hindu nationalists are looking to claim another Mughal-era mosque in one of Hinduism’s holiest cities.
One of the largest Hindu festivals is also celebrated by Sikhs, Jains and other faiths. In India’s capital, Diwali featured a laser show to discourage firecracker smoke, which in past years has polluted the city with days or weeks of smog.
India’s affirmative action policy for Dalits excludes Muslims and Christians. A petition filed by several human rights activists and Christian organizations is challenging the policy’s constitutionality.
Many young Tibetan exiles feel solidarity with Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement and want a free Tibet independent from China, a more radical view than the Dalai Lama’s Middle Way approach. But living in India under asylum means they have to be cautious about protesting against China.
The Indian government is building detention camps for those left off the citizenship list, many of whom have lived in India for generations, fueled by suspicions of Bengali Muslims migrating illegally.
After prayers at their mosque, hundreds of Kashmiris shouted slogans for India to leave Kashmir and prevented security forces from entering the area. Security forces responded with tear gas, pellet fire and chili grenades.
The Dalit and indigenous Indians in eastern India who converted to Christianity were attacked by Hindu extremists in 2008. The survivors are still waiting for a government investigation and courts to hold the perpetrators accountable.
Skeptics believe that the Sri Lankan president’s move is aimed at increasing his support in the approaching elections. After the Easter bombings that killed more than 250 people, President Maithripala Sirisena’s leadership has come under sharp attack.
The Hindu nationalist-led Indian government has stripped Muslim-majority Kashmir of its agreed-upon terms of accession, a special status granting autonomy under the Indian constitution, and sent in more than 40,000 troops to the already heavily militarized region. Kashmiris there are living under curfews without access to phones, Internet or cable TV channels while elected representatives are under house arrest.
After Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s election in 2014 and reelection this May, brutal mob attacks by Hindu nationalist groups against India’s Muslim and Christian minorities have continued to steadily rise.
The practice, enforced by some conservative Sunni clerics and condemned by others, requires a divorced Muslim woman to consummate a marriage with another man before she can remarry her first husband.
A recent report estimates 60,000 organ transplant surgeries happen in China every year, an industry adding $1 billion a year to the economy and cracking down on religious groups seen as a threat to the Communist Party.
The arrests of several Muslim activists amid the coronavirus lockdown is seen by critics of the Modi government as a way to blame Muslims for the Delhi riots that killed more than 50 people in February and squash protests of a citizenship law passed in December seen as discriminatory against Muslims.