Invincible India

Hinduism

Symbol: The symbol of the Hindu is called Aum (Ah-oo-m). Hindus believe this is a holy sound. They believe that is a way of describing Brahman.

Creator and Founder: Hinduism has no founder, is developed out of Brahmanism. The religion of Hinduism originated in Northern India, near the Indus River, about 4000 years ago and is the world’s oldest existing religion.

Place of Worship:

Shrines: the shrine may be in a room of its own and they put an image of one or more of the gods or goodness. The shrine is surrounded by flowers and perfume.

Puja: it’s making offerings to an image or picture of one of the god. It takes place at least once a day. They do Paja to spend time with God and this is the point of worship.

Temples: it is a special place and the Hindu people called “mandir”. They have priest and people goes several times in a day.

Beliefs: Reincarnation: it’s the belief that your soul moves on to another being when you die. The soul is called “atman”. Atman moves in a series of steps. “Samsara” is the repeated cycle of birth and death.

Celebration: Divali: it takes place at the end of the Hindu month of Ash win (October-November). Divali means light and people decorate their house. They used small lamps made of clay to guide Rama back home and to welcome Lakshmi which means good luck.

Holy book: The most ancient sacred texts of the Hindu religion are written in Sanskrit and called the Vedas. The Vedas scriptures guide Hindu in their daily life. Hindus have developed their system of worship and beliefs from the Vedas.

Holy Places: Hindus have many holy places but Badrinath is the holiest place for the Hindus. It is a temple to the Hindu god Shiva and it is built by the great Indian scholar and teacher Shankara.

Muslim

Symbol: It is translated as the Night of Forgiveness. Many people believe that in the night your destiny is fixed for the year ahead.

Creator and Founder: The prophet Muhammad found the Muslim. He was born in Saudi Arabia and he was the last prophet to be sent by Allah.
Place of Worship: The Muslim building for communal worship is called a mosque. Muslim often refer to the mosque by its Arabic name, masjid. Very often Mosques have a domed roof and a tall tower called a minaret. There are no pictures or statues in a mosque because Muslims use prayer mats for prayer. There is often a fountain or pool to wash their hands, mouth, nose, ears, arms, throat and arms. This is a sacred wash. Women don’t pray in the same place as men.

Belief: Muslim has 6 main beliefs

1. Belief in Allah as the one and only God.
2. Belief in angels.
3. Belief in the holy books.
4. Belief in the Prophets.
5. Belief in the Day of Judgment (the day when people assessed to decide whether they go to heaven or hell).
6. Belief in Predestination. (That Allah has already decided what will happen. Muslims believe that this doesn’t stop human beings making free choices).

Celebration: Ramadan is the major festival in Muslim. It is a time when Muslims across the world will fast during the hours of daylight. Muslims believe that the gates of heaven are open and the gates of hell are locked for the duration of Ramadan. Ramadan concludes with the celebration of Eid al-Fitr. It is the festival for the day after Ramadan. They celebrate with good food and presents for children, and giving to charity.

Holy Book: The Muslim’s holy book is called the Holy Qur’an. Muslims believe it is the word of God. Muslims treat the Qur’an with great respect because they believe that the Qur’an is from Allah, and every word and every letter is sacred.

Holy Places: Mecca, Madinah and Jerusalem are the holy places of Muslim.

Mecca is the Muslim’s holiest city in modern day of Saudi Arabia. It is holy place because it was the most important city in the Arabian Peninsula.

Buddhism

Symbol: It’s a wheel with eight spokes and it reminds the eight ways of living called Noble Eightfold Path (Right viewpoint, Right thought, Right speech, Right action, Right living, Right effort, Right awareness and Right concentration).

Creator and Founder: The teaching of Siddhartha Gautama founded the Buddhist tradition. He was called the Buddha and lived in the 4th or 5th century in India. He found the path to Enlightenment. Buddhism was founded over 2500 years ago in very old India.

Place of Worship: Buddhist worship at home or at a temple. Worshippers may sit on the floor and it is very important that their feet face away from the image of Buddha. They listen to monks chanting from religious texts. The best known Buddhist temple is called pagodas of China and Japan. Buddhist worship is called puja. When Buddhist is alone, they usually read the holy books.

Belief: There are three Buddhist central beliefs. These are known as the three jewels.
1. Belief in Buddha.
2. Belief in Dharma (the teaching of Buddha).
3. Belief in the Sangha. (The Buddhist community made up of ordinary people as well as the monks to help others to move on the way towards enlightenment.

Celebration: The Vesak is the major Buddhist festival of the year as it celebrates the birth, enlightenment and death of the Buddha on the one day, the first full moon day in May.

Holy book: The holy book of Buddhism is called the Trip taka. It is written in an ancient Indian language called Pali which is very close to the language that the Buddha himself spoke. Trip taka is a very large book.

Holy Places: The birthplace of the Siddhartha Gautama, Lumbai, is one of the holy places of Buddhism.

Compare and Contrast: Personal Response

I think the articles that explained about the issues of India were a great report. They give us an idea about the strengths and weaknesses of India. The first article talks about what India has to offer to other countries. But the second article is about what is missing in India, which is water. The reason of why conflicts have resulted is that the government is having a problem controlling the environment properly. It was redefined that it is also a problem environmentally in which people are looking for new technologies to solve these issues. Luckily, there are still people who can view that the survival rates of the animals have declined since India is the main problem for resource scarcity as well. Happily, there are some groups and organizations helping out on importing materials to other countries for a trade. It will surely help on their economy in the future since it will always be growing.

Compare and Contrast: Questions

1. What will happen to India’s economy if they do not solve these problems immediately?
2. Why do all birds don’t get as much water as possible?
3. What materials are India exporting into Egypt?

Venn Diagram: http://tinypic.com/view.php?pic=axmcki&s=3

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7350118.stm

aaaThis article is about the endangered tigers in India and how people try to smuggle their body parts and skin to northern Asia. People of the west have come to the conclusion that India alone cannot stop the radical decrease of the numbers of tigers, so Neena Gill, a president of the European Parliament’s India delegation has brought attention to this topic. She believes that this year is a great time to bring awareness to this issue, because China, one of the main consumers of the tiger skin, will receive a lot of attention (through the Olympics) and therefore some of that attention can be linked to the tiger-business. This is the income of many people in India, Nepal and China though it is illegal. It is believed that 100 years ago, there were 40,000 tigers in India while now there are only around 1000 left.
aaa Raising awareness for the endangered animals is very important. What used to be only animals on this world is gone now and the humans have replaced them. It is scary how the numbers of endangered species, not only tigers, have decreased over the last few centuries. I really believe that this year is a great timing to raise awareness, because this is a serious topic. It is a great idea to get not only the east included in the project of saving the tigers. India is the home to almost half of all the tiger population; therefore I think that the majority of NGOs and other government based organizations should concentrate on India and its environment/animals.

Why haven’t people bothered saving endangered species such as the tiger before?
How can one help save the animals?
What would happen to India if the tigers would die out?

The Uncomfortable Rise of the Rupee

This article talks about the Indian Rupee, and how strong it is becoming. “One poor wretch, pressed against the car window at a Delhi traffic light, tries to change a dollar bill she presumably cadged off a tourist. She wants 50 rupees for it.:” The rupee is growing so fast that the poor can not even keep up with it. In just one year, 2006-2007, the rupee went from 46 rupees to a dollar down to 39 rupees to the dollar (US). This is mainly caused by the help of other nations. “The net inflow amounted to almost $45 billion in the year to March, compared with $23.4 billion a year earlier.” So in a span of one year, the net inflow of India almost doubled its amount. From all of India’s exports to other countries in 2007 came to $23.4 billion US dollars. The Reserve Bank of India (RBI), India’s central bank, is doing its best to keep the rupee from growing too fast. “Printing rupees to buy the incoming dollars keeps the currency cheap but also adds to the money supply, stoking inflation.” Some people fear that the high priced rupee will make India take a step backwards, and tighten its controls on capital inflows.
I do not believe that the Indian rupee will not rise so quickly that it will make the country have to make a step backwards. Like the article said, the RBI (Reserve Bank of India) will do something about the problem before it will do any harm to the country. One paragraph in the article did say that some on this is a good thing, because India is also getting foreign money which it can use to make the country better.

1. How is the rupee growing so fast?
2. How is the RBI keeping the rupee cheap?
3. Why do you think that the high priced rupee will make India take a step backwards.

Kris M.

Marriage Dowries
Brooke, James. “Dowry Too High. Lose Bride and Go to Jail..” The New York Times May 17, 2006:

Marrying with money
Aggressive grooms
Rupees demanded under the marriage tent
Reports of abuse
Infinite tradition
Always a burden for the bride’s family
Giving money away with no profit of their own
Expected with marriage

Demanding grooms, that no women can oppose
Obligatory
Woman’s nightmare
Rescuing needed ASAP
Ironic, marrying with money not with your partner
Easy money for the men,
Seding grooms to prison, the women will try to fight back

The article that I looked at was about women’s rights and marriage dowries that were pressured on women when getting married. I think that it is very unfair for the women who have to pay just to get married to the one they love and unfair that the men use marriage as a way to make money, and you know, marriage is supposed to be a girl’s happiest day of her life. The dowries and marriages based on money break that happy dream and turn it into a nightmare. The tradition exists in many countries, but in my opinion I think that India has the worst stories. Because in many cultures that had dowries, they got rid of it, or the women pay only a small amount, just as a celebratory allowance for their new lives. In India, the money they have to spend is not an amount of an allowance, and they pay to the groom’s family and not to their new lives. The men in India who use the women to make money should be arrested, and to prevent dowries from being a huge problem, I think that schools should educate the children about dowries and discourage it. Also, so that changes occur instantly, the government should set a maximum amount of money that a dowry can be so that the groom’s family does not ask for impossible amounts.
1. Why was the dowry tradition created?
2. How have the women of India tolerated this issue until a few decades ago?
3. What is the government doing to get rid of the dowry?

Haruka Fukukawa