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On 22 January, 2024, Paramahamsa Vishwananda was an honoured guest for the inauguration of the new Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir, in Ayodhya, India. It was Gurudev’s first visit to the birthplace of Lord Rama and He was excited to take part in this historic event.
In recent satsangs leading up to the event, Guruji has been talking about the significance of this event as a triumph of Santana Dharma and how it has been positively uniting Hindus around the world in the Name of Sri Ram.
Gurudev was interviewed by reporters, showing up on international news reports when asked for His perspective on this historic occasion. ‘For the history of India, it is very important, because it is the birthplace of Lord Rama. I think for India, it is something amazing.’
paramahamsavishwananda.com
bhaktimarga.org
A model of the dreamt Vishwa Hindu Parishad mandir in Ayodhya at ground zero. There are large boulders strewn across the compound, some of them carved into specific pieces. A small team of labourers from outside Ayodhya waits in Karsevak Puram to begin work.
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in history. no Saddam or Osama, he was a popular communist leader (and democratically elected). But why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. .
too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decidef~r themselves", and instead forced theChileans tosufferPinochet's .
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declared that it would be made a "'national home"fortheJewish people. This day marks the beginning oftrail ofinjustice and .
Sept. 11. 1922: On this day, the British Government declared a mandate in Palestine-that is they colonized itand .
colonial occupation, which robbed lakhs Of Palestinians oftheir own homeland. .
Sept. 11, 1982: On this day, Ariel Sharon (then Israeli Defense Minister) declared that "2000 Palestinians terrorist" .
were hiding in the refugee camps ofBeirut. Just before that ceaseflre had been declared between the Palestinian Liberation Organisation and Israel, underwhich the PLO had vacated their headquarters in Beirut. Sharon not only violated the ceasefire. he took advantage of PLO's absence to send in the Israeli army to surround the Palestinian refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila with tanks and troops. Then, in an inci9entcomparable only to the Jallianwala Bagh massacre, the notorious Phalange militia raped, bombed and massacred over 3000 unarmed refugees for forty hours while the Israeli army blocked all the escape routes. Even now. Sharon faces trial in Belgium for this crime. Remember that Sharon, prior to the formation of .
Israel belonged to Zionist outfit Hagnah which specialised in terrorist attacks on Arab villages. Two days back, the Israeli which the assasination of an elected leader of another country, is a "diplomatic option"! If this is not terrorism, what is? Deputy PM publicly stated that for his government, "killing Arafat is an option". Imagine the audacity of Sharon's govt., for .
This is the same Sharon who Is the BJP's new 'best friend', its new ally in the "struggle against terror". But the truth is that it is the likes of Sharon and US who are the real sources of terrorism in the world -and the BJP, whose mascot is Modi, would love to be part of the team. The imperialist terror and wars launched on countries like Afghanistan and Iraq by .
the US, colonial massacres by Israel, or communal genocide like Gujarat may try to pass themselves of as "fight against .
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terrorism". But they only spark offmore terrorism. Terrorist 'retaliations' to state sponsored massacres are highly condemnable and counter-productive in defeating imperialism. That cycle can only be broken by strengthening the international anti-imperialist movement and defeating the likes of Bush and Sharon. .
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On 22 January, 2024, Paramahamsa Vishwananda was an honoured guest for the inauguration of the new Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir, in Ayodhya, India. It was Gurudev’s first visit to the birthplace of Lord Rama and He was excited to take part in this historic event.
In recent satsangs leading up to the event, Guruji has been talking about the significance of this event as a triumph of Santana Dharma and how it has been positively uniting Hindus around the world in the Name of Sri Ram.
Gurudev was interviewed by reporters, showing up on international news reports when asked for His perspective on this historic occasion. ‘For the history of India, it is very important, because it is the birthplace of Lord Rama. I think for India, it is something amazing.’
paramahamsavishwananda.com
bhaktimarga.org
‘House’, 1994
From the series Shelter, 1994–99
Vivan Sundaram
Kalamkhush handmade paper, steel, wood, water, glass, brake grease, acrylic paint, video
Vivan Sundaram transitioned from painting and drawing in the early 1990s to embrace a broader, spatially oriented approach. ‘House’ portrays his reflections on the changing political landscape and communal tensions in India at the time.
Held by a metal armature, the installation elaborates on the concept of refuge. A walled sanctuary cast in kalamkhush (paper handmade from khadi, the hand-spun, natural-fibre fabric promoted by Mahatma Gandhi during India’s anti-colonial struggle), ‘House’’s surface carries embossed emblems of the tools of labour and speaks to collective struggles against power.
Alongside a mineral hue reminiscent of coagulated blood, the outer walls exhibit marks of brutality:
scattered limbs, jagged outlines of weapons, and closed windows. Within, a pedestal bears a wide-brimmed vessel filled with water, and flickering through the transparent base of the bowl, a fiery video projection conveys an allegory of simmering injustice.*
On 6 December 1992, an organised mob of Hindu activists demolished a sixteenth-century mosque, the Babri Masjid, in Ayodhya, India. They contended that the mosque had been built upon the site of a Hindu temple that had commemorated the birthplace of the god Ram – a mosque-temple debate ongoing since the nineteenth century. The destruction of the mosque triggered riots across the Indian subcontinent, in which some thousands were killed. This communal violence had a profound impact on many members of India’s artistic community. Vivan Sundaram recalled that there was “enormous despair”, which “shook the belief system of those brought up with Nehruvian ideals of secularism. There was a crisis.” Several artists were compelled to make works in response, and some, such as Rummana Hussain and Sheela Gowda, radically re-oriented their practices. It was within this context that artists began to experiment with installation, cross-media and performance in an effort to directly address issues of secularity and to deconstruct essentialised ideas about India’s modern and pre-modern past.*
Taken from the exhibition
The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975–1998
(October 2024 — January 2025)
The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975-1998 surveys artistic production from across the Indian subcontinent during a 23-year period marked by social upheaval, economic instability and rapid urbanisation. The exhibition unfolds in a loosely chronological manner, framed by two significant national events in the history of independent India: the declaration of the Emergency in 1975, when democratic rights were suspended, and the nuclear tests of 1998, when the country relinquished its non-violent ideals to assert its place in a new global order. Some artists responded unequivocally to developments in the public arena, while others captured shared experiences and private moments. Amongst the 30 artists featured in this show some committed themselves to representational painting; others evolved personal iconographies in a variety of mediums, including employing installation in the 1990s. All of them combined social observation with individual expression and innovative forms to make work about friendship, love, desire, family, religion, violence, caste and community. This has determined the four axes that shape the exhibition: the rise of communal violence; gender and sexuality; urbanisation and shifting class structures; and a growing connection with Indigenism.
The exhibition takes its title from Sudipta Kaviraj’s essay The Imaginary Institution of India, in which he writes persuasively about the intellectual process of conceptualising the Indian nation. Artworks consider the state’s inability to abide by the progressive character of its Constitution, conceived as an instrument for radical social transformation. They also confront government failure to uphold secularism, social justice, welfare, minority rights and affirmative action in the face of a rising Hindu right wing and pro-capitalist economic agendas. They demonstrate that solidarity and protest existed, and were expressed in many registers, from the strident or intimate to the despondent or poetic, both anguished and hopeful, in the street and in the home. We witness the quiet defiance and resilience which truly defines this imaginary institution of India. In the words of B. R. Ambedkar, the Indian Constitution’s main architect, “Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy.".
[*Barbican Centre]
Taken in the Barbican
On 22 January, 2024, Paramahamsa Vishwananda was an honoured guest for the inauguration of the new Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir, in Ayodhya, India. It was Gurudev’s first visit to the birthplace of Lord Rama and He was excited to take part in this historic event.
In recent satsangs leading up to the event, Guruji has been talking about the significance of this event as a triumph of Santana Dharma and how it has been positively uniting Hindus around the world in the Name of Sri Ram.
Gurudev was interviewed by reporters, showing up on international news reports when asked for His perspective on this historic occasion. ‘For the history of India, it is very important, because it is the birthplace of Lord Rama. I think for India, it is something amazing.’
paramahamsavishwananda.com
bhaktimarga.org
Ram courts sita at the Ayodhya forest before the golden deer (Shonar Horin in Bangla) appears. Sita wants Ram to hunt it down.
Photograph by:
Gufran Khan & Shariq Naqvi
News link: twocircles.net/2012oct02/report_sadbhavna_delegation_faiz...
Sarayu river, Ayodhya, India
Barely visible in the background is a modern steel automobile bridge. The only visible form in a picture that could otherwise be timeless. The cremation grounds are located on the terminus of a sand bank stretching out and isolated from the rest of the shoreline by a ramshackle barrier separating the dead from the living.
Playing at the Pierre Menard Gallery in Cambridge, MA on 3-27-09.
Blogged about on antigravitybunny.blogspot.com
Photograph by:
Gufran Khan & Shariq Naqvi
News link: twocircles.net/2012oct02/report_sadbhavna_delegation_faiz...
नवमी तिथि मधुमास पुनीता,
शुक्ल पक्ष अभिजीत नव प्रीता,
मध्य दिवस अति शीत न घामा,
पवन काल लोक विश्रामा।
श्री राम नवमी की हार्दिक शुभकामनाएं
Rummana Hussain
Wood, paint on acrylic, gheru, terracotta
These five works by Rummana Hussain were among her first installations. Having painted figuratively to express the political throughout the 1980s, she felt the need for object-oriented art which could respond to immediate realities.
When the Babri Masjid was demolished in 1992, Hussain was living in Bombay (Mumbai), one of the cities worst affected by communal riots. As a Muslim woman, she was forced to temporarily flee her home with her family.
Emerging from this traumatic experience, the works displayed here, in which the shattered terracotta pot is a recurrent motif, were in her first solo show, ‘Fragments/Multiples’, at Bombay’s Gallery Chemould in 1994.
Hussain used the pot allegorically: the shards of terracotta resemble broken domes, destroyed homes, and the human body undone, each alluding to the violent fracturing of social unity. From these pots, everyday materials, such as gheru (a powdered red clay) and rubble, spill onto mirrors. Their reflections are interrupted, distorted, evoking a desolate landscape of ruins.*
On 6 December 1992, an organised mob of Hindu activists demolished a sixteenth-century mosque, the Babri Masjid, in Ayodhya, India. They contended that the mosque had been built upon the site of a Hindu temple that had commemorated the birthplace of the god Ram – a mosque-temple debate ongoing since the nineteenth century. The destruction of the mosque triggered riots across the Indian subcontinent, in which some thousands were killed. This communal violence had a profound impact on many members of India’s artistic community. Vivan Sundaram recalled that there was “enormous despair”, which “shook the belief system of those brought up with Nehruvian ideals of secularism. There was a crisis.” Several artists were compelled to make works in response, and some, such as Rummana Hussain and Sheela Gowda, radically re-oriented their practices. It was within this context that artists began to experiment with installation, cross-media and performance in an effort to directly address issues of secularity and to deconstruct essentialised ideas about India’s modern and pre-modern past.*
Taken from the exhibition
The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975–1998
(October 2024 — January 2025)
The Imaginary Institution of India: Art 1975-1998 surveys artistic production from across the Indian subcontinent during a 23-year period marked by social upheaval, economic instability and rapid urbanisation. The exhibition unfolds in a loosely chronological manner, framed by two significant national events in the history of independent India: the declaration of the Emergency in 1975, when democratic rights were suspended, and the nuclear tests of 1998, when the country relinquished its non-violent ideals to assert its place in a new global order. Some artists responded unequivocally to developments in the public arena, while others captured shared experiences and private moments. Amongst the 30 artists featured in this show some committed themselves to representational painting; others evolved personal iconographies in a variety of mediums, including employing installation in the 1990s. All of them combined social observation with individual expression and innovative forms to make work about friendship, love, desire, family, religion, violence, caste and community. This has determined the four axes that shape the exhibition: the rise of communal violence; gender and sexuality; urbanisation and shifting class structures; and a growing connection with Indigenism.
The exhibition takes its title from Sudipta Kaviraj’s essay The Imaginary Institution of India, in which he writes persuasively about the intellectual process of conceptualising the Indian nation. Artworks consider the state’s inability to abide by the progressive character of its Constitution, conceived as an instrument for radical social transformation. They also confront government failure to uphold secularism, social justice, welfare, minority rights and affirmative action in the face of a rising Hindu right wing and pro-capitalist economic agendas. They demonstrate that solidarity and protest existed, and were expressed in many registers, from the strident or intimate to the despondent or poetic, both anguished and hopeful, in the street and in the home. We witness the quiet defiance and resilience which truly defines this imaginary institution of India. In the words of B. R. Ambedkar, the Indian Constitution’s main architect, “Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy.".
[*Barbican Centre]
Taken in the Barbican
Ayodhya, India
An old woman makes her solemn morning offering to a shrine to Rama and Sita on the bank of the sacred river Sarayu while children play on the wooden prayer platforms in the background.
This Sarayu played a vital role for the city and life of Ayodhya, and according to the great Sanskrit epic Ramayana, is where Rama, the seventh Avatar of Vishnu immersed himself to return to his eternal, real Mahavishnu form, when he retired from the throne of Kosala. His brothers Bharata and Shatrughna also joined him, as did many devoted followers. The Sarayu is also the river upon whose banks King Rama was born.
On 22 January, 2024, Paramahamsa Vishwananda was an honoured guest for the inauguration of the new Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Mandir, in Ayodhya, India. It was Gurudev’s first visit to the birthplace of Lord Rama and He was excited to take part in this historic event.
In recent satsangs leading up to the event, Guruji has been talking about the significance of this event as a triumph of Santana Dharma and how it has been positively uniting Hindus around the world in the Name of Sri Ram.
Gurudev was interviewed by reporters, showing up on international news reports when asked for His perspective on this historic occasion. ‘For the history of India, it is very important, because it is the birthplace of Lord Rama. I think for India, it is something amazing.’
paramahamsavishwananda.com
bhaktimarga.org
Playing at the Pierre Menard Gallery in Cambridge, MA on 3-27-09.
Blogged about on antigravitybunny.blogspot.com