As a student of sociology, brought up in Gujarati culture I always wondered about existence and influence of gurus, pir and babas. Some iconic personalities raised to level of divinity and worshiped as god is still an avenue of my quest. People like Ramdev Pir, Jalaram Bapa, Sai Baba, Sitaram Bapa, Bhathiji Maharaj, Swaminarayan, etc. appeared during colonial times and are today praised as god. Till date, people like Pandurang Athaval, Swami Chinmayanand, Dada Bhagwan, Shiv Baba, Stya Shree Sai Baba, Sadguru, Shree Shree Ravi Sankar, Osho, etc. are popular across country as a god’s men who are leading various sectarian cults based on Hindu doctrines. Recent outrage followed by arrest of Guru Ram Rahim Inshan and outrage followed before few years after arrest of Asharam Bapu presents an interesting grounds for sociological interpretations of process of legitimizing such bigoted institutions. Fortunately, evidences recorded by my favourite mythologist Devdutt Pattnaik served as great
The recent debate on decriminalization of Section 377 has fueled “roadside” discussion on homosexuality in India. One student of “WhatsApp University” asked about my stand on decriminalization of Section 377, in order to avoid argotic arguments, I said, I acknowledge homosexuality and then I was asked to provide a rationale for supporting homosexuality. I would like to clear my stand for acknowledging homosexuality on the blog as it would be too long for WhatsApp J I acknowledge homosexuality may be because I am brought up in Hindu tradition which allows ALL kinds of sexualities and excludes none. Hindu scriptures (mostly in Sanskrit and Pali) explains LGBT and queer sexualities (eg. Kriba, Napunsaka, Kinnara, Pedi etc.) in very detailed manner. Patanjali’s Mahabhasya (Grammer) acknowledges the third gender as Napunsaka and Charaka Samhita (Medicine) acknowledges the third gender as Tritiya Prakriti. The most interesting text to understand sexualities in Hindu tradi
Few weeks ago, I met an old friend of mine in canteen…with a sip of tea she said… “ After looking to your selfie…it feels to meet you daily…but looking to you in real…all such feeling vanishes off… ” we all at that breakfast table giggled at this lame comment on my early morning look but the word selfie stuck in my mind. Do a public image of yours really affects opinion of people about you? That made me curious about “selfie”. I came across papers/articles by social scientists discussing on Selfies on various theoretical and intellectual grounds. Such debates generally term selfie as obsession to self and pseudo individuality. The basic question is, what selfie is? This actually in itself is big question, potent enough to invite big discourse from social sciences. As of now, selfie is understood as picture of self, taken by self. Surprisingly, I found blogs, messages and mailers suggesting “methods” of taking selfie, electronic market is full of accessories for extending devic
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