The Nandi Temple

The Nandi Temple

Hindu New Year

Hindu New Year is celebrated at different times of the year by people of different states. Many regions have different calendars with some starting in March while others begin at the time of Diwali, the festival of lights in autumn. Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra states celebrate New Year on the different days called ugadi in andhra pradesh. Hosavarsha in Karnataka .^[14], but West Bengal, Punjab, Assam,Tamil Nadu and some parts of coastal Karnataka celebrate the New Year at different time (April 14). The names of the new year vary also. For example Bengali people call their new year as Poila Boishak and Assamese people call it Bihu. Marathi people call new year Gudi Padwa while Kannadigas & Telugu people call new year Ugadi.^[14] Tamil people call their new year as Varusha Pirapu. People from coastal Karna14th of April). People from other northern states celebrate Holi as their New Year day which is first day of first month Chaitra according to Hindu calendar.^{[citation needed]} The Hindu new year is also celebrated in Nepal in the month of April, usually falling on the 14th of the month. Nepal is the only Hindu country (now a secular nation) where the Hindu calendar, known as Bikrama Sambat, is the official calendar. 14th April in 2007 will herald the beginning of the year 2064 BS.[citation needed

Sixteen Sanskars (Rituals)

These are various rituals necessary within a life of Hindu. These Sanskras are applied during different phases of life. Some of those are:

1] Jatkarma (worshipping those instruments which are used for living based on profession eg. when a child was 5 day old.)

2] Namkaran (Name ceremony)

3] Annaprashan(Start of Eating)

4] Kesharpan (First time hair cut at around age of 1)

5] Upnayan (thread ceremony –only applicable to three varnas among four but can also be applicable to last Varna in some exceptional cases)

6] Vidyarambh(start of education)

7] Nikhkraman

8] Vivah(Marriage)

9] Garbhadhan

10] Antim Sanskar( last rites before cremation of corpse)

Some Hindus, may perform initiation ceremonies like Upanayana or Janoy or 'Bratabandha'. These ceremonies have variants depending on the caste, the culture and the region.^{[citation needed]}

In a ceremony administered by a priest, a coir string, known as Janoy or Poonal, is hung from around a young boy's left shoulder to his right waist line for Brahmins and from right shoulders to left waistline by Kshatriyas. The ceremony varies from region to community, and includes reading from the Vedas and special Mantras and Slokas.^{[citation needed]}

Young females (prepubescent until married) do not have similar ritual passage as young males. However, some young Hindu females, especially those from southern India, may follow annual Monsoon Austerity Ritual of Purification by not eating cooked food for one or two weeks, depending on age of child. This is known as "Goryo" or "Goriyo".^{[citation needed]}

Generally speaking, Hindus are free to join an order or inner circle, and once they have joined it they may submit to its rites and way of living. But this type of joining is voluntary and has the possibility of leaving the order at any time without serious objection from fellow followers as long as one says and does things without associating them with the order which he or she has left. It is a social form of co-option of life style. It is said in Sanskrit that, "dharmo hi hato hanti, dharmo rakshati rakshitah", which translates to "Dharma, when destroyed, destroys; dharma protects when [it is]protected", meaning the path of righteousness will protect one as long as one upholds and follows it. The initiation (diksha), a sort of purification or consecration involving a transformation of the aspirant's personality, is regarded as a complement to, or even a substitute for, the previous initiation ceremony rite of consecration that preceded the Vedic sacrifice in ancient India; in later and modern Hinduism, the initiation of a layman by his guru (spiritual guide) into a religious sect. In the soma sacrifices of the Vedic period, the lay sacrificer, after bathing, kept a day-long (in some cases up to a yearlong) silent vigil inside a special hut in front of a fire.^{[citation needed]}

Some Hindus will give offerings to their gods by placing rice or flowers in a bowl above the stove every morning before they eat, and behind this bowl may be a picture of one of their gods. Along with giving offerings they might also pray to the god they gave an offering to.[citation needed

Linguistics of Hinduism

Although the Vedas, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana were composed and recorded in language Sanskrit, several other important religious and philosophical works were written in languages like Pali, Prakrit, Tamil, Hindi, Nepali, Kannada, Assamese, Punjabi, Malayalam, Telugu, Gujarati, Marathi, Oriya, Bengali,Bhojpuri, and Maithili.

Many modern discourses, essays and analysis of Hindu religion and society, as well as retellings of its greatest epics, are published in the

Customs and traditions

Ethnic and cultural fabric

Hinduism, its religious doctrines, traditions and observances are very typical and inextricably linked to the culture and demographics of India. Hinduism has one of the most ethnically diverse bodies of adherents in the world.^{[citation needed]} For some,^[who?] it is hard to classify Hinduism as a religion because the framework, symbols, leaders and books of reference that make up a typical religion are not uniquely identified in the case of Hinduism. Most commonly it can be seen as a "way of life" which gives rise to many civilized forms of religions.^{[citation needed]}

Large tribes and communities indigenous to India are closely linked to the synthesis and formation of Hindu civilization. Peoples of East Asian roots living in the states of north eastern India and Nepal were also a part of the earliest Hindu civilization. Immigration and settlement of peoples from Central Asia and peoples of Indo-Greek heritage have brought their own influence on Hindu society.^{[citation needed]}

The Indus Valley Civilization is often taken^[who?] to represent the historical continuum of Hinduism. The roots of Hinduism in southern India, and amongst tribal and indigenous communities is just as ancient and fundamentally contributive to the foundations of the religious and philosophical system.^{[citation needed]}

Ancient Hindu kingdoms arose and spread the religion and traditions across South East Asia, particularly Thailand, Nepal, Burma, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia and what is now central Vietnam. A form of Hinduism particularly different from Indian roots and traditions is practiced in Bali, Indonesia, where Hindus form 90% of the population^{[citation needed]}. Indian migrants have taken Hinduism and Hindu culture to South Africa, Fiji, Mauritius and other countries in and around the Indian Ocean, and in the nations of the West Indies and the Caribbean.[

Who is a Hindu?

The actual term “Hindu” first occurs as an Old Persian geographical term (derived from the river sindhu), to identify the people who lived beyond the River Indus. However, the modern origin is derived from the Arabic texts - Al-Hind (the Hind) referring to 'the land of the people of modern day India' - which then got vernacularised as Hindu.^[3] In the world history “Hindu” was also used by all Mughal Empires and towards the end of the eighteenth century by the British to refer to the people of “Hindustan”, the area of northern and adjoining northwestern India. Eventually “Hindu” became equivalent to anybody of “Indian” origin who was not otherwise Sikh, Jain, or belonged to a religion of Abrahamic denomination, thereby encompassing a wide range of religious beliefs and practices.^[4]

One of the accepted views is that “ism” was added to “Hindu” around 1830 to denote the culture and religion of the high-caste Brahmans in contrast to other religions. The term was soon appropriated by Indians themselves as they tried to establish a national identity opposed to colonialism. ^[4]

Due to the wide diversity in the beliefs, practices and traditions encompassed by Hinduism, there is no universally accepted definition on who a Hindu is, or even agreement on whether Hinduism represents a religious, cultural or socio-political entity. In 1995, Chief Justice P. B. Gajendragadkar was quoted in an Indian Supreme Court ruling:^[5]

"When we think of the Hindu religion, unlike other religions in the world, the Hindu religion does not claim any one prophet; it does not worship any one god; it does not subscribe to any one dogma; it does not believe in any one philosophic concept; it does not follow any one set of religious rites or performances; in fact, it does not appear to satisfy the narrow traditional features of any religion of creed. It may broadly be described as a way of life and nothing more."

Thus some scholars argue that the Hinduism is not a religion per se but rather a reification of a diverse set of traditions and practices by scholars who constituted a unified system and arbitrarily labeled it Hinduism.^[6] The usage may also have been necessitated by the desire to distinguish between "Hindus" and followers of other religions during the periodic census undertaken by the colonial British government in India. Other scholars, while seeing Hinduism as a 19th century construct, view Hinduism as a response to British colonialism by Indian nationalists who forged a unified tradition centered on oral and written Sanskrit texts adopted as scriptures.^[7]

A commonly held view, though, is that while Hinduism contains both "uniting and dispersing tendencies", it has a common central thread of philosophical concepts (including dharma, moksha and samsara), practices (puja, bhakti etc) and cultural traditions.^[8] These common elements originating (or being codified within) the Vedic, Upanishad and Puranic scriptures and epics. Thus a Hindu could :

• follow any of the Hindu schools of philosophy, such as Advaita (non-dualism), Vishishtadvaita (non-dualism of the qualified whole), Dvaita (dualism), Dvaitadvaita (dualism with non-dualism), etc.^[9][10]

• follow a tradition centered on any particular form of the Divine, such as Shaivism, Vaishnavism, Shaktism, etc.^[11]

• practice any one of the various forms of yoga systems; including bhakti (devotion) in order to achieve moksha.

In 1995, while considering the question "who are Hindus and what are the broad features of Hindu religion", the Supreme Court of India highlighted Bal Gangadhar Tilak's formulation of Hinduism's defining features:^[5]

Acceptance of the Vedas with reverence; recognition of the fact that the means or ways to salvation are diverse; and the realization of the truth that the number of gods to be worshipped is large, that indeed is the distinguishing feature of Hindu religion.

Some thinkers have attempted to distinguish between the concept of Hinduism as a religion, and a Hindu as a member of a nationalist or socio-political class. Veer Savarkar in his influential pamphlet Hindutva: Who is a Hindu? considered geographical unity, common culture and common race to be the defining qualities of Hindus; thus a Hindu was a person who saw India "as his Fatherland as well as his Holy land, that is, the cradle land of his religion".^[12] This conceptualization of Hinduism, has led to establishment of Hindutva as the dominant force in Hindu nationalism over the last century.^[13]

Hindu

A Hindu (pronunciation (help·info), Devanagari: हिन्दू) is an adherent of the philosophies and scriptures of Hinduism, a set of religious, philosophical and cultural systems that originated in the Indian subcontinent.

When and how the word 'Hindu" was coined is not precisely established. It is absent in early sacred literature of Indian origin. It was used by ancient Persians, without religious connotations, for the people inhabiting the lands of river Indus. Regular usage of the word is encountered in the accounts of foreign invaders of the medieval period, to describe collectively the followers of Indian religions. British Raj, with the help of the academia, defined Hindus precisely for demographic and legal purposes.^{[citation needed]}

There are approximately 920 million Hindus of the world population making Hinduism the third largest religion in the world after Christianity and Islam; of these, about 890 million live in India, and 30 million in the Hindu diaspora.^[1] Other countries with large Hindu populations include Bangladesh, Myanmar (Burma), Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Fiji, Guyana, Nepal, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, South Africa, Kenya, Mauritius, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Canada, Netherlands and United Kingdom.^[2]

Demographics

With an estimated population of 5,281,927 in the year 2007, Bangalore is the third most populous city in India and the 27th most populous city in the world.^[58] With a decadal growth rate of 38%, Bangalore was the fastest-growing Indian metropolis after New Delhi for the decade 1991–2001. Residents of Bangalore are referred to as Bangaloreans in English or Bengaloorinavaru in Kannada. Kannadigas formed about 39% of the population, by some estimates^[59][60], while non-Kannadigas form the rest of the population.

The cosmopolitan nature of the city has caused people from other states of India to migrate to Bangalore and settle there ^[61] Scheduled Castes and Tribes account for 14.3% of the city's population. Apart from English and Kannada, other major languages spoken in the city are Telugu, Tamil and Hindi.^[62]

According to the 2001 census of India, 79.37% of Bangalore's population is Hindu, roughly the same as the national average.^[63] Muslims comprise 13.37% of the population, which again is roughly the same as the national average, while Christians and Jains account for 5.79% and 1.05% of the population, respectively, double that of their national averages. Anglo-Indians also form a substantial group within the city. Women make up 47.5% of Bangalore's population. Bangalore has the second highest literacy rate (83%) for an Indian metropolis, after Mumbai. Roughly 10% of Bangalore's population lives in slums^[64] — a relatively low proportion when compared to other cities in the developing world such as Mumbai (42%) and Nairobi (60%).^[65] The 2004 National Crime Records Bureau statistics indicate that Bangalore accounts for 9.2% of the total crimes reported from 35 major cities in India. Delhi and Mumbai accounted for 15.7% and 9.5% respectively.^[66]