Quote:

---

Orginally posted by DesiTiger

leave the dogma behind in India and carry only the religion. Think of religion as your contract with God, and as all contracts, this too is solely your Business

---

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Recommended Services- Servicedomino.com
http://www.servicedomino.com

Quote:

---

Orginally posted by jake3d

Quote:

---

Orginally posted by DesiTiger

leave the dogma behind in India and carry only the religion. Think of religion as your contract with God, and as all contracts, this too is solely your Business

---

lately i find myself agreeing with you a lot DT http://www.canadiandesi.com/read.php?TID=9044&page=4

I am still trying to figure out if its a good or bad thing

---

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Microsoft - Which end of the stick do you want today?

CANADIAN808 IS JUST A INSECURE PERSON. DONT BOTHER REPLYING HIM TOO...WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT HINDUS...YOU DONNO NUTHING....IDIOT

Perhaps Hindu leaders should lighten up



There is no more sacred or universally identifiable religious symbol than the cross.

Two billion Christians, whatever their denomination, revere it.

But the crucifix has also been adopted, or co-opted, as a pop-culture icon, far removed from what it actually represents. Madonna — the singer, not the Virgin — used to bedeck herself with crosses during her inside-out underwear phase. And while she had been raised a Catholic, no one thought for a moment that there was any religious significance to the adornments. It was secular jewellery, iconography as fashion accessory.

More provocatively still, there have been numerous schlock horror films made wherein the crucifix denotes something sinister or, even worse, when it's used as a luridly pornographic prop. Remember what Linda Blair did with a crucifix in The Exorcist?

The Catholic Church — as primary custodian of the crucifix — may not like the sacrilegious purposes to which it has been subjected. But the Vatican has long since stopped making a fuss about it.

There is no patent on the cross.

It's not often that I can point to the Catholic Church and say: Follow their example. As in lighten up, back off, and turn the other cheek.

But it would behoove Toronto's Hindu community — or at least some of their most overtly aggrieved leaders — to climb down from the wounded and truculent posture they have assumed since a charity fashion event last month so offended their religious sensibilities.

The Fashion Cares Bollywood Cowboy show — and I've no idea what Bollywood has to do with cowboys since the genres would seem to be worlds apart — was sponsored by the AIDS Committee of Toronto, a firmly established good-works agency. Their sin was to commit an inadvertent fashion crime, dipping into the symbology of Hinduism to illustrate the show's cultural motif.

Elements of the presentation included a nearly nude depiction of the goddess Lakshmi as well as drag queens who, goodness me, were smoking and drinking whilst in costume as various other deities in the vast Hindu firmament. Further, postcards of divine characters were trampled underfoot where patrons had carelessly dropped them.

This alleged disregard for their sacred images sent many Hindus into a tizzy. Although ACT subsequently apologized for any unintended disrespect — because we must all grovel before the great god of multiculturalism — the Hindu Council of Canada stomped up to Queen's Park on Thursday, there to assert all manner of absurdities, confident in the knowledge that any minority group can make a mountain out of a molehill so long as the descriptor "racist" is affixed to their complaint.

Naturally, the Canadian Race Relations Foundation took a seat on the dais of discontent. "This goes beyond irresponsible," its executive director was quoted as saying. "It demonstrated a callous disregard for non-European values and beliefs."

Oh please.

It did no such thing. And few sensible people — beyond societies where zealots go around smacking citizens in the head for exhibiting any hint of vice or non-pious behaviour — could possibly argue that a populist democracy need be so extremely diversity-sensitive that the religious observances of any particular creed should be imposed on secular activities.

It was a fashion show, for heaven's sake. Nobody was promoting hatred toward any identifiable group, which is a damn sight more than can be said for many religious factions that are openly and unapologetically homophobic. Not, oh no, that the show's queer factor had anything to do with these objections from the Hindu religious leaders. They are quite specific about that. And we must take them at their word, although they won't take the word of ACT officials that no disrespect was intended, or that they have apologized sincerely for their benign ignorance.

One spiritual leader from the Vishnu Hindu Temple in Richmond Hill even went so far as to make what can only be described as a threat, as if ACT — and by extension the gay community — has not had quite enough of those.

"If they do not apologize or dialogue with us to show us they have some remorse, then we will have to take some appropriate action like a march, and there will be a lot of people,'' warned Budhendra Doobay, according to a story in yesterday's Star.

In the process of respecting all cultures, faiths and races — a noble endeavour — we have increasingly diluted the central tenets of our own Canadian ethos; that this is a country of free expression, even when that expression causes hurt feelings. We cannot all live up to the threshold of approval and sensitivity as determined by others, particularly special interest groups whose grievance radar is so finely tuned to all perceived injury.

It has become common to whinge about the "appropriation of culture," as if we should all speak only in the voice to which we can formally lay claim. This implies an exclusionary form of ownership, as if only Hindus can utilize Hindu symbols, only Catholics can paint the Madonna, only black women can write novels about black female characters, only Jamaicans can play reggae music. Or, equally troubling, that "outsiders" can cross the boundaries only when the content of their work is vetted and deemed satisfactory. This is madness.

There is such a thing as the public domain, to say nothing of artistic expression, which is actually a great big something. While I'm no fashionista and have some difficulty including the rag trade among the arts, even I recognize that designers have always plundered other cultures to create a theme or a trend or a look. Indeed, the Bollywood/Indian mysticism motif is hardly new.

But nobody was getting all hot under the Nehru collar about it three decades ago.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rosie DiManno usually appears Monday, Wednesday, Friday and

Saturday.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
reporter

The link for the above is:

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1120255821640&call_pageid=970599119419

-----------------------------------------------------------------
reporter

I wonder if Rosie DiManno would write the same article about a Christian Group protesting against a Fashion Show where some Drag Queen was dressed up as Christ or where a model dressed as the Madonna was almost nude?

Also note the second line of the article " There is no more sacred or universally identifiable religious symbol than the cross."

So for her to tell us that the Cross is "the most sacred" symbol is OK but if someone "under the Nehru Collar" demands the same recognition and respect for Hindu religious symbols, he is called a zealot. Hummmm

Please guys, I'm not trying to criticize any religion, just this article. I think it stinks with hypocrisy. What do you think?

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Microsoft - Which end of the stick do you want today?

Quote:

---

Orginally posted by DesiTiger


Please guys, I'm not trying to criticize any religion, just this article. I think it stinks with hypocrisy. What do you think?

---

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Recommended Services- Servicedomino.com
http://www.servicedomino.com