Author: Maria Wirth
Many years ago in a dream, I saw a map of India before me as one can see it sometimes on TV, with mountain ranges and the Himalayas distinct. Looking at it, my heart expanded with great love. Still dreaming, I was surprised that one can love a country so much. Yet it was not love at first sight. Only on my second visit – intended as a stopover on my way to Australia that lasts meanwhile 40 years – India that is Bharat, showed me what amazing treasures she hides under her noisy and often challenging surface. I realized…
Last year, Mahashivaratri was on 11 March. I was at the Kumbh Mela in Haridwar and an amazing incident happened on that day. I share it here, because I feel it can be inspiring and may help, not to judge sadhus too quickly in a negative way. I was standing at the roadside with other people, watching the Akhara of Naga Sadhus passing by to Har-ki-Pauri for Ganga Snan. There were some Babas on horses, some in carts and the majority walked, most of them naked and smeared with ash, some in saffron cloth. One of the naked Babas stopped…
A Pakistani woman, Zainab A. Khan, keeps warning Hindus on Twitter (@ZainabAKhan2) that they have no chance against Muslims if they don’t realise the danger, they are in. She seems to be genuinely caring towards Hindus, which finds an explanation in her pinned tweet. It reads: “Who am I? Lawyer. Dated & married an amazing Hindu guy, who was killed by my family when he visited Pakistan after being promised safe visit. Lost my voice after being shot but still working full time as a lawyer. This should settle this. Stop asking if I’m Muslim or Pakistani.” She recently put…
Someone asked me this question in the course of an interview. Here is what I replied: Oh, there is so much uniqueness that it is hard to put it briefly. Sanatana Dharma is the original, complete knowledge about what is true I consider Vedic knowledge or Sanatana Dharma as the original, most ancient and complete knowledge about what is true regarding us and the universe. It is called today inadequately ‘Hinduism’. An ‘ism’ usually means a fixed doctrine that must be believed, and Hinduism is the opposite of that. It allows the greatest freedom to connect with one’s essential Self,…
Things are finally changing for the better for Hindu Dharma. For too long, many educated Indians, including the first Prime Minister Jawahar Nehru, had accepted the biased view of the British that Hinduism is inferior to the Abrahamic religions, without realizing, that this was a clever strategy to hide the fact that Christianity and Islam are based on a ‘must-belief’ story and Hinduism in contrast, is based on verifiable insights of the Vedas and a genuine enquiry into the truth. For the first time in independent India, now a postgraduate course in Hindu Dharma is included at the Benares Hindu…
An article in the Indian Express from 8th January, 2022 caught my attention. It was titled “Your silence emboldens hate voices: Faculty, students of IIMs to PM”. 16 Professors and 167 students of IIM Ahmedabad and Bangalore had signed a letter to the Prime Minister’s Office. It urges PM Modi to steer the country away from “forces that seek to divide us”, and rued, “Your silence, Honourable Prime Minister, emboldens the hate-filled voices and threatens the unity and integrity of our country.” Almost two years ago, I also had written a letter to the Prime Minister and had attached a…
In 1999, the Pope declared in Mumbai that in the 21st century the cross will be planted in Asia. Strangely, there was not much objection in the media that the Pope expressed so openly his eagerness to convert Hindus. Not only the Pope but also the different evangelical sects want to convert Hindus in big numbers. And unfortunately, they are doing it successfully because they have lots of money. In the last 20 years, after the Pope made his statement, Christian missionaries have become increasingly visible, blatant and controversial. As I grew up as a Christian, I would like to…
It is becoming a fashion to declare Hindutva as bad and Hinduism as good, mostly by people who don’t know from own experience what it means to be a Hindu, like recently Rahul Gandhi or before him Salman Kurshid. Yet there are also people with Hindu names who endorse this view. A few days ago, there was an article in Garhwal Post by Dr. Satish C. Aikant, who felt that Salman Kurshid, “by denouncing Hindutva for its deviation from Sanatan Dharma, he was indeed making a case for Hinduism.” I wrote a reader’s letter to Garhwal Post. Here it is:…
Introduction: Something incredible happens since quite some time: Tigers claim with a lot of media and ‘academic’ support that deer are eating up tigers. And the deer only say, “No, it’s not true” but do not give proof that they are vegetarians while tigers killed and ate already millions of deer. The attacks on Hindus are unrelenting. Now even a British MP tweeted about a “Hindu terrorist” when there cannot be terrorism in the name of Hindu Dharma, because it is never dharmic to kill or injure at random innocent people. The narrative goes like this: only certain deer are…
This is a true story about a Hindu who had converted to Christianity, and who felt the need to convince his family also to convert. Once on a flight from Germany to India, one of those bright, young Indians sat across the aisle. We started talking. He was a science lecturer at an American university. When food came, he ordered non-veg and I ordered veg. I teasingly asked him “non-veg”? He replied, “Yes, I started to eat meat when I converted to Christianity eight years ago.” “You… converted… to… Christianity?” I asked in disbelief. “How could you do this? Are…