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By Margaret Ramirez
Chicago Tribune, July 10, 2008

Amid the noise and bustle of downtown Chicago, the groom rode a white horse, shaking to Indian drumbeats in procession to the Palmer House Hilton hotel.

Inside, the bride and groom took seats under thered mandap, or wedding canopy, and the priest began chanting in a high, melodic voice.

For some, the chants heard at the service last month sounded like a break from Hindu custom. Priests are traditionally men, but the presiding priest at this wedding was Shashi Tandon, a respected female elder in the Hindu community and the groom’s grandmother.

Since emigrating from New Delhi in 1982, Tandon has presided over countless religious ceremonies for Hindu families in Chicago, Michigan, Wisconsin and elsewhere, filling a void that has emerged because of a shortage of Hindu priests.

As more Hindu men enter more lucrative, secular professions, Tandon and a handful of Hindu women in America have begun performing priestly duties as a way of passing their faith to the next generation.

There is nothing in Hindu scripture that bars women from becoming priests, also known as pandits.

But in some parts of India and the U.S., women priests face resistance from conservative Hindus clinging to tradition. Tandon, 68, a retired teacher with a feisty attitude, recalled a group of men mocking her at one wedding she performed. They asked, How can a woman be a priest?

“I said to them, ‘I have a question for you. Can you tell me who gave birth to you?’ ” she said. “The mother is the true priest. She is the true teacher, the first teacher of the child.”

Shashi Tandon (center) presides over the Hindu wedding of her grandson, Nitin Malhotra, and Paula Shah. (Tribune photo by Abel Uribe)

Neelima Shukla-Bhatt, a South Asian studies professor at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, said more Hindu women are learning priestly functions not necessarily because they feel drawn to religious life. Rather, women—including Shukla-Bhatt—are stepping forward to meet the growing Hindu community’s needs.

According to the American Religious Identification Survey, there were about 227,000 Hindus in the U.S. in 1990, composed mainly of Asian Indians. Today there are more than 1 million Hindus in the U.S. and more than 700 Hindu mandirs, or temples. The Chicago area is home to some 80,000 Hindus, according to a Chicago-based interfaith research group.

Although no firm numbers exist, Shukla-Bhatt said fewer Hindu-American men are becoming priests. In her own family, she noted that her father’s cousins were all priests, yet none of their children took up the profession.

“At one time, it was considered prestigious, but now it is not considered prestigious at all,” she said. “If you are educated, you do something more secular. It is considered to be a sign of less educated, less sophisticated, so not many educated people are interested in becoming priests.”

Shukla-Bhatt said many of the earliest Hindu texts speak of women priests. In Hinduism’s most ancient book, the Vedas, there are multiple references to women making sacrifices and participating in philosophical debates. But, at some point, things changed.

“It’s not that women weren’t allowed to do this. It’s that somewhere along the line, it got lost, and it became mainly a male profession,” she said. “But in the most ancient scriptures, there were women priests. So, we should reclaim that.”

Tandon’s grandson, Nitin Malhotra, said having his grandmother perform his wedding last month was an obvious choice. As a child, Malhotra said his grandmother taught him the importance of faith and puja in daily life.

Puja is a sacred ritual that involves fire, bells and chanted prayers to deities. Her fluency in English and Sanskrit, and her vivid explanations of religious rituals are the main reasons that Tandon gained widespread popularity in the Hindu community.

“She taught us how to do puja and chants. And, she explains everything so well that you never felt like it was a chore,” Malhotra said. “All these people know about her and fly her to different places to do their ceremonies. We feel really blessed to have her.”

Tandon was born in Multan, which was then in India, and raised in New Delhi. Her mother taught her how to do daily fire rituals. She concedes that she didn’t like it very much at first. However, once she learned the meaning, she felt a desire to be a priest. She studied in an ashram, learned the scriptures and received training to perform all 16 samskaras, the sacraments or rites of passage for every Hindu. Later, she opened a school for poor girls to teach them the Hindu faith.

“I would sit under a big tree and teach them how to respect each other, help society, how to read scripture. I felt this was my calling,” she said.

Her three children married and immigrated to Chicago, where Tandon joined them. Recently, she moved to Kalamazoo, Mich., to live with her son, Arun Tandon, and daughter, Renu Sharma. Another daughter, Anu Malhotra, lives in Naperville.

In explaining her mother’s role as a priest, Sharma said: “It’s not a profession for her. She doesn’t do this for money. It’s part of who she is as a being.”

In India, the concept of women priests is not new. In fact, in the progressive western city of Pune, there are two schools that train women.

However, those in other regions say female priests are a violation of Vedic law. Some Hindu immigrants from those regions who have come to the U.S. have been shocked to find women performing religious rituals. Anu Malhotra said her daughter-in-law’s family, who are from Gujarat, were surprised when told the wedding would be performed by Tandon.

“In India, each state has its own culture. So for many Hindus, this is a new thing,” she said. “People don’t see it as much. It’s not the norm.”

As more women come forward, they have begun to gain appreciation and respect, especially among second-generation Hindu-Americans.

Tandon believes many women are losing touch with their religion and are not passing traditions to their children.

“Mothers came to America because they didn’t have enough freedom. Then, after getting freedom, they forgot their culture,” she said. “They are not doing prayers because they don’t know why they need to do them.”

For that reason, Tandon is training her two daughters to perform religious ceremonies. At some point, the community’s growth could lead to the creation of a school for women priests. Until then, she said she will continue to perform services, educating future generations on the rituals and their meaning.

“Every single step of worship has a meaning. Do you know why we use fire? Some Hindus don’t even know,” she said. “Fire gives us light and for us, light is truth.”

maramirez@tribune.com

By MADHUR SINGH

Time Magazine, Jul. 07, 2008

The Tirumala temple, in the south Indian city of Tirupathi, is one of Hinduism’s holiest shrines. Over 5,000 pilgrims a day visit this city of seven hills, filling Tirumala’s coffers with donations and making it India’s richest temple. But since 2002, Tirumala has also been generating revenue from a less likely source: carbon credits. For decades, the temple’s community kitchen has fed nearly 15,000 people, cooking 30,000 meals a day. Five years ago, Tirumala adopted solar cooking technology, allowing it to dramatically cut down on the amount of diesel fuel it uses. The temple now sells the emission reduction credits it earns to a Swiss green-technology investor, Good Energies Inc.

Like Tirumala, dozens of holy places across India are moving quietly towards green energy. Muni Seva Ashram, in Gujarat, which combines spiritual practice with social activism, is working to make its premises entirely green by using solar, wind and biogas energy. A residential school for 400 students is already running exclusively on green energy. Starting this year, the ashram will also sell three million carbon credits. A similar movement is afoot at the revered Sai Baba Temple in Shirdi, Maharashtra. “Our aim is to avoid pollution in every way,” says Raghunath Aher, the temple’s chief engineer. “A holy place should be pure and completely in harmony with nature.”

It’s not surprising that religious groups are in the vanguard of India’s green movement: India is the birthplace of four of the world’s largest religions — Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism, all of which revere nature and preach conservation. But the country’s environmental practice hasn’t always matched that preaching, leaving its air and water woefully polluted. According to the World Bank, emissions increased 57% in the decade following the India’s economic liberalization.

Now, however, religious groups, keen to marry spirituality with sustainability, are leading the push to reverse that trend. Deepak Gadhia, founder of Gadhia Solar Energy Systems, which provided solar cooking technology to Tirumala temple, says more and more religious organizations have approached him in recent years. “With most businesses, the first question is of economics,” he says, “But spiritual organizations look at larger issues. They want energy that is spiritually positive.”

The emergence of Indian art is further evidence of the country’s influence. An L.A. exhibition takes a look.

By Sharon Mizota
Los Angles Times, July 8, 2008

IN INDIAN artist Mithu Sen’s 2007 picture “Perhaps You,” a dark-skinned woman smiles coyly beneath a blond, ’60s-style up-do. The hair appears to be a wig — until you notice the woman’s pale neck. Is she wearing brown makeup? Then you realize that the image is a photocollage: an Indian face pasted atop a white model’s.

“I grow wild in these images,” Sen said of works like “Perhaps You” in 2007. “The wild woman is not subject to the rules that govern gender behavior in society.”

That concept — the “wild woman” who defies easy description — runs through “Contradictions and Complexities: Contemporary Art From India,” an exhibition on view at two Culver City galleries: d.e.n. contemporary and Western Project. It features Sen and five other artists, all female, whose work combines references to traditional Indian culture with present-day global concerns.

The show, however, is also the latest in a flurry of recent surveys — others have gone up in New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Illinois and Kansas — designed to introduce 21st century Indian art to U.S. audiences. They signal not only India’s rising profile on the international art scene but also the emergence of a new generation of Indian artists.

In May, for example, Subodh Gupta, 44, became the youngest Indian artist to hit the $1-million mark when his painting of a man with a luggage cart, “Saat Samundar Paar (10)” (Across the Seven Seas), sold at a Christie’s auction in Hong Kong for nearly $1.2 million. The following month, the auction house took in $25.8 million at a sale of modern and contemporary Indian art — up from what was then a record $3.7 million at a similar sale in April 2005.

A PART YET APART: Sheba Chhachhi’s photographs, including “Jater Ma,” document a little-examined Indian population: women ascetics.

The factors at work

Like the boom in contemporary art from China, the rising fortunes of Indian art are without doubt tied to the nation’s emergence as a global economic power. But Saloni Mathur, a professor of art history at UCLA, sees two major developments at work.

The first, she agrees, is “the opening up of the Indian economy and in general the whole phenomenon of globalization that’s spearheaded by the Internet.” But the other is the growth of a wealthy Indian diaspora — Indians living outside India — who have started to collect art from the subcontinent.

Yet Mathur thinks there are other factors as well behind the success of Indian art in the West. In a course she teaches on modern and contemporary Indian art, she says, she is continually impressed by her students’ enthusiasm. “There’s something about modern and contemporary art from China, Africa, India that the generation of the 21st century identifies with,” she says. Artists in these regions are dealing with “the problems of a traditional society in an era of globalization, or they’re thematizing the questions of colonial history or, like Subodh Gupta, questions of international migration and travel. These are no longer themes that you can identify as uniquely Indian.”

New Delhi gallery owner Peter Nagy, who co-curated “Contradictions and Complexities” with local dealer Patricia Hamilton, concurs. He says that “one of the reasons why Indian culture in general is becoming more important to the rest of the world — especially the Western world — is because the Western world is trying to deal now with inherent hybridity, complexity, contradiction. India’s actually done it extremely successfully for generations.” Indeed, he believes that India, with a diversity of religions, languages and cultures rivaling that of Europe, has always been a “postmodern” nation.

Some of the work in the Culver City show tackles such fragmented realities directly. Anita Dube’s video “Kissa-e-Noor Mohammed (Garam Hawa)” is a monologue by a bearded Muslim businessman that starts benignly but culminates in a lament about religious fundamentalism and fascism. When the credits roll, they reveal that the man is in fact Dube herself in drag. The work’s subtitle, “Garam Hawa” (Hot Winds), is also the title of a film about the 1947 partition of India, which separated Hindus from Muslims and resulted in the creation of the Muslim state of Pakistan.

Religious issues also figure in Sheba Chhachhi’s photographs, which document a little-examined Indian population: women ascetics. Chhachhi became interested in these women because of their in-between, often androgynous status. “They seemed to be neither wives nor mothers nor daughters but women who defined themselves in relation to the metaphysical rather than the social,” she said in a recent e-mail. “While operating within sanctioned religious codes, they challenged ideas about the domestication of traditional Indian women.”

Then there’s Chitra Ganesh, who plays with the codes of Hindu mythology to raise her own questions about feminine roles. Her digital collages remix 1970s Hindu comic-book iconography with subjective musings on sex and gender relationships to expose ingrained stereotypes and violence. Images of dismembered female bodies, lush foliage and floating deities are rendered in the cheerful colors and stylized lines of comic books.

“I’m sort of looking at the things that seem like contradictions or just the multiple layers of meaning,” Ganesh said by phone from New York City, where she lives. “I definitely am interested in portraying alternate arrangements of power and sexuality, but it’s more just trying to look at the other side of the coin which is already there.”

Although of Indian descent, Ganesh was born in New York. She is the only artist in the show not based in India. But her inclusion suggests that the label “Indian” now transcends geographical boundaries. “Because there’s a lot of India shows happening, I try to mess with it,” says Nagy, meaning that he freely mixes artists from the diaspora with artists from India.

Deepak Talwar, owner of Gallery Talwar in New York, goes a step further. “I do not put exhibitions together where the artists are only put together because they’re all Indian,” he says. Although all the artists Talwar represents are of Indian descent, he feels it is more important that they enter the international exhibition circuit as individuals rather than as Indian artists. “Geographical boundaries today are becoming so much less relevant to creative art,” he says. “It’s art first, and then it is Indian.”

Still, the category is a useful organizing principle for curators, says Mathur. “I don’t think that those issues of identity are as limiting as they once were in, say, the ’80s or early ’90s,” she says, when ethnic or national categories were often used to ghettoize artists who were not white, male and from the U.S. or Western Europe.

Nevertheless, she is concerned that the success of the Indian art market is fueling growth without a corresponding rise in scholarship and criticism. “The boom has on the one hand created incredible opportunities for Indian artists and visibility on a global scale and real value in monetary terms,” she says. “On the other hand, it represents a kind of capitulation to conditions of the market.” She jokes that the market may be increasingly driven by “Gujarati doctors in New Jersey buying paintings online to match their sofas.”

Novelty and necessity

Indeed, it remains to be seen whether contemporary Indian art is merely the latest trend — to be summarily replaced by the next big thing — or if it will become a staple of the mainstream art world.

“Markets need fresh meat,” says Nagy. “They need novelty, they need exoticism. It’s happened with the Chinese and now India. So that’s to be cynical, but the world, especially the centers, are interested in these other places. And frankly, the Indian artists are sick to death of always being in India shows.”

Heidi J. Shrager,

San Francisco Chronicle, Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Aggrieved Indians have long taken their causes to the streets. From Mohandas Gandhi’s nationalist campaigns to contemporary marches against racy movies, protests are as Indian as spicy curry.

But one group, despite its large size, has long kept silent. That silence broke Sunday, when gays and lesbians found their voice in three major cities - New Delhi, Kolkata and Bangalore - in the first large public display of gay pride India has ever seen.

“Up until now, we’ve been in the public space protesting a violation, or someone being beaten up,” said Gautam Bhan, 28, one of the New Delhi parade organizers. “Now we feel like we have enough of a foothold to celebrate a positive presence.”

While the U.S. gay-rights movement has progressed to the wedding altar, Indian activists are still fighting for decriminalization of gay sex. Efforts to reform a 19th century law banning homosexuality are galvanizing the gay community as it fights for reforms in a country where arranged marriages are still the norm.

The struggle seeks to shake loose the calcified values of an ancient civilization, most observers say. Hindu scriptures say marriage and children are sacred duties that must be performed before a man can own property, perform religious rituals or “indulge his senses.” And since sons carry on the family name and add their wives’ dowries to their family coffers, sons are prized over daughters.

In their book “Same-Sex Love in India,” authors Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwa wrote that homosexuality was generally tolerated in precolonial India as long as it didn’t get in the way of the above-mentioned duties.

Gay activists say they see hope for change in the larger-than-expected turnouts in Sunday’s parades as well as a growing number of realistic portrayals in films and books. The Internet has spurred much of the change, they say, as people flood chat rooms and online communities to learn about club nights, drop-in centers and support groups. A push in HIV/AIDS prevention is also bringing the subject of homosexuality into schools and communities.

Representatives of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community unfurl a rainbow-colored cloth during a “Rainbow Pride Walk” in Calcutta, Sunday. Associated Press photo by Bikas Das

In New Delhi, hundreds of marchers yelled “Gay! Lesbian! Bisexual! Transgender!” while brandishing rainbow flags and signs bearing messages such as “Delhi Be Proud,” and “My Sister is Gay” during the peaceful parade corralled through a phalanx of police. Organizers handed out rainbow-colored masks to those fearing the wrath of family members, employers or landlords.

Most onlookers watched with mild curiosity as the procession swirled past them. Conservative and Hindu fundamentalist groups steered clear of the events in an attempt to minimize public attention.

“We’ve heard about this in other parts of the world where this takes place,” said Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi of India’s leading Hindu nationalist political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party. “This type of parade, people of India will not accept in a good way. … It’s an unnatural thing.”

Though the crowd grew bolder and rowdier by the mile, the march proved tame by San Francisco standards; most people dressed conservatively, with the exception of a handful of hijras, or transsexuals, who wore sparkling saris.

Sporting a porkpie hat and eyeliner, Prosenjit Banerjee said he recently told his parents about his sexual identity as a woman trapped in a man’s body. “The whole concept is new for them,” said the 28-year-old New Delhi resident. “They were shocked to know about all these things.”

Coming out can be wrenching in any culture, but it is especially difficult in India.

A 22-year-old woman who opted for the mask said she was arrested last year for attempting suicide - a crime in India - after she was forced by her parents to split from her girlfriend. The two had been on the run after their parents threatened to kill them. They were tracked down with help from police, who - according to activists - often assume the role of moral guardians when women are concerned.

In fact, homosexuality has been driven so far underground that same-sex couples are often spared harassment because the possibility they might be gay doesn’t occur to many Indians. Men routinely hold hands or walk arm-in-arm in a country where contact between boys and girls before marriage is sharply frowned upon.

“They don’t really understand what we’re doing,” said a mild-mannered 25-year-old software engineer whose face was hidden under a handkerchief, speaking of herself and her similarly veiled girlfriend. “They just think we’re best friends, hanging out. It’s time people know that we are more than friends.”

As the couple rejoined the parade, they raised a sign high in the air. In bold red letters it read: “Give me support; I want to take off my mask.”
Anti-sodomy law

India’s anti-sodomy law, known as statute No. 377, was enacted by the British colonial government in 1861. It describes homosexuality as acts “against the order of nature.”

Even though activists say consensual adults are rarely charged under the statute, they say that police regularly wield the law to harass and blackmail gays and lesbians, employers use it to fire gay workers, and under it, doctors can refuse to treat them. No. 377 also restricts such legal rights as inheritance laws, child custody and hospital visits to see an ailing partner.

In the past 12 years, the fledgling Indian gay rights movement has united around two very different events: the 1996 release of the Indian film “Fire” and the imprisonment of four HIV/AIDS workers in 2001.

“Fire” is about a love affair between two women trapped in unhappy marriages. The movie’s release sparked violent protests between Hindu fundamentalists demanding it be banned and gay activists insisting the film be screened. In 1999, the national Censor Board reversed the ban, allowing a short run in art houses.

In 2001, four men working for an HIV/AIDS prevention group were arrested in the northern city of Lucknow for distributing flyers on safe sex. Charged with violating No. 377 for possessing so-called obscene materials, the health workers were imprisoned for 41 days, igniting the gay rights movement’s first nationwide protests.

Also in 2001, rights lawyers challenged No. 377 in the Delhi High Court, arguing its tenets are unconstitutional when applied to consenting adults. The case is now in final arguments, and a decision is expected by the end of the year.

E-mail Heidi J. Shrager at foreign@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page A - 8 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Effort Is Part of Bitter Debate Over the Role of Hindu Language in a Diverse Society
By Rama Lakshmi

Washington Post, Sunday, June 15, 2008

NEW DELHI — Hemant Singh Yadav, a lean and sprightly 15-year-old, was sent by his parents to a summer camp to learn to speak Sanskrit, or what he calls the language of the gods.

He had studied the 4,000-year-old classical Indian language at school for six years. He knew its grammar and could chant the ancient hymns. But he could not converse in it. During a two-week course at the camp, Sanskrit Samvad Shala, he had no choice: He was forbidden to speak any other language.

“At first I thought it was impossible. The teachers and attendants spoke to us only in Sanskrit, and I did not understand anything,” said Hemant, one of the 150 students gathered inside a Hindu temple on the outskirts of New Delhi. “I knew big, heavy bookish words before, but not the simple ones. But now Sanskrit feels like an everyday language.”

Such camps, run by volunteers from Hindu nationalist groups, are designed to promote a language long dismissed as dead, and to instill in Hindus religious and cultural pride. Many Sanskrit speakers, though, believe that the camps are a steppingstone to a higher goal: turning back the clock and making Sanskrit modern India’s spoken language.

Their endeavors are viewed with suspicion by many scholars here as part of an increasingly acrimonious debate over the role of Sanskrit in schools and society. The scholars warn against exploiting Indians’ reverence for Sanskrit to promote the supremacy of Hindu thought in a country that, while predominantly Hindu, is also home to a large Muslim population and other religious minorities.

“It is critical to understand Sanskrit in order to study ancient Indian civilization and knowledge. But the language should not be used to push Hindu political ideology into school textbooks,” said Arjun Dev, a historian and textbook author. “They want to say that all that is great about India happened in the Hindu Sanskrit texts.”

One of the oldest members of what is known as the Indo-European family of languages, Sanskrit is a beleaguered language in India today, caught in a web of widespread apathy and questions about its utility.

Mainstream Indian schools teach the 49-letter language unimaginatively through tedious grammar lessons, and children learn by rote. Many parents see little use in encouraging their children to pursue a language that is not in any official use.

“Some people are constantly saying that Sanskrit is a dead language. It cripples our psyche to hear that, because we are nothing without Sanskrit,” said Vijay Singh, 33, a teacher at Sanskrit Samvad Shala. “In the name of so-called secularism, it has become fashionable to attack any attempt to promote Sanskrit.”

In January, government funding for a major Sanskrit program in schools was abruptly cut, prompting the program’s managers to allege that officials were biased against the language.

The program, which encouraged immersive methods and developed computer-aided teaching tools and games, had been set up in 2003 by a Hindu nationalist government. One of the recommendations of the project included translations of English nursery rhymes such as “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” and “One, Two, Buckle My Shoe” into Sanskrit.

When a new government was sworn in two years later, it ordered a massive review of the program, as well as other initiatives that were seen as being infused with Hindu supremacist rhetoric.

“The Sanskrit project was initiated by the previous government. They had their own priorities. The project was so-so. How many people really speak Sanskrit in India?” said Ramjanam Sharma, head of languages at the National Council of Educational Research and Training, a government body that designs school curriculums. Defending the decision to cut the funding, he said it was not appropriate for schools to teach children how to converse in Sanskrit. “We cannot replicate the teaching methods of traditional religious schools in our mainstream schools.”

Although Sanskrit is one of the 22 official Indian languages, census figures show that only about 14,100 people speak it fluently, in a nation of more than a billion people. Still, it is prevalent in the hymns and chants at Hindu temple rituals, as well as at birth, marriage and death ceremonies. Not unlike Latin in the West, Sanskrit was long the language of intellectual activity in ancient India.

“Some people oppose anything that promotes Sanskrit because of its association with Hinduism. We were just trying to make the language a fun experience for students,” said Kamla Kant Mishra, a Sanksrit professor and a member of the government project.

“To talk about Sanskrit is very political in India today,” Mishra added. “That is the plight of the language.”

The Indian government funds many colleges and universities that teach Sanskrit literature and scriptures, but it is not uncommon for even PhD students in the language to be unable to speak it. State-run schools offer a choice between a regional Indian language and Sanskrit. Many private schools offer Sanskrit, French, German and Spanish.

“I tell my students to opt for French, because it is useful if they choose to work in the hotel industry, or fashion or legal field. But there is no tangible use for Sanskrit except that they will learn an important part of our culture,” said Vishakha Sharma, 40, a French teacher who teaches fifth- through eighth-graders in a private school. She said her school begins each morning with a Sanskrit chant. “It feels good to the ear, but students don’t understand the meaning.”

Meanwhile, some scholars are developing computer programs for Sanskrit and translating its rich repository of children’s stories online. Last month, an alliance of international scholars from the United States, France and Germany was formed for Sanskrit computing.

“Sanskrit is very suitable for computing, because its grammar is complete with 4,000 rules and has a regular structure,” said Girish Nath Jha, assistant professor of computational linguistics at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.

At Sanskrit camp, a 19-year old undergraduate said that Sanskrit is in her blood.

“When I learn any language, I learn about its history and its literature,” said Jaya Priyam. “But when I study Sanskrit, I learn who I am. It is my identity.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/14/AR2008061400892.html?hpid=topnews