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Author Archives: Editors
Weekly Qata’a
قطعہ
جس طرف نکلے غبارِ زندگی درپیش تھا
گردِ ہستی میں ہمیں خاکِ پریشاں ہی ملی
گرچہ فطرت میں تھی شہبازی و پروازی رچی
گردشِ دوراں میں اشرف خاکساری ہی ملی
اشرف
” Satanic Verses” of Hinduism
Few days ago Penguin Books withdrew all books of ‘The Hindus: An Alternative History” from India in face of a lawsuit. It is being compared to banning of Satanic Verses in India by Rajiv Gandhi. The Penguin Books was expecting an adversarial decision by the court and a nightmarish scenario if Narenda Modi is elected Prime Minister in upcoming elections. Some excerpts from article in NYT;
In “The Hindus,” Author Ms. Doniger wanted “to tell a story of Hinduism that’s been suppressed and was increasingly hard to find in the media and textbooks,” she said. “It’s not about philosophy, it’s not about meditation, it’s about stories, about animals and untouchables and women. It’s the way that Hinduism has dealt with pluralism.”
“Ms. Doniger said of her source material, “I didn’t make this stuff up,” adding, “The stories are very human, and the gods are very interesting, because they have emotions, and they get in trouble and commit adultery.”
The novelist Hari Kunzru said Ms. Doniger’s opponents were “particularly exercised by her wish to reinstate sexuality at the center of Hinduism.” The original legal complaint, filed by Dinanath Batra of the group Shiksha Bachao Andolan, described a “hidden agenda to denigrate Hindus and show their religion in poor light” and called Ms. Doniger’s approach to Hinduism “that of a woman hungry of sex.”
One example of the material for which Ms. Doniger has come under fire is her writing about the Shiva linga, a large stone image that appears in many Shiva temples and is worshiped with offerings of water and flowers. Ms. Doniger approaches the linga as an abstract symbol and as the sexual organ of the god Shiva. (As she writes in “The Hindus,” “sometimes a linga is just a linga — or, more often, both a linga and a cigar.”) She compared its dual meaning to that of the cross in Christianity: “To say that the Shiva linga has nothing to do with the body of Shiva is the same as saying the cross has nothing to do with the passion of Christ, it only means God and love.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/17/books/author-resigned-to-ill-fate-of-book.html?hp
Posted by F. Sheikh
” A Historic Perspective on Sectarian Violence in Pakistan” By Zafar Khizer
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=658586504183889&set=vb.515901875119020&type=2&theater
Zafar Khizer,
