Exploring Hinduism Today’s April/May/June Issue, Now Available

Source: www.hinduismtoday.com

KAPAA, HI, USA, March 2, 2010: The April-May-June edition of Hinduism’s flagship spiritual magazine, Hinduism Today is now available on bookstores and newsstands everywhere and also in digital format. This issue brings you a new installment of our acclaimed Hindu History for Children insight and a feature on the power and magic of Hindu festivals.

In this issue we explore 15 of the major Hindu holy days in the 32-page feature “Festivals!” It’s a marvelous romp through the year, stopping every month or so to tell about our celebrations. Festivals bind Hindu culture to the devotees, touching our lives, connecting families and neighbors, bringing together entire cities. Soumya Sitaraman, author of Random House’s “Following the Hindu Moon” helped the Hinduism Today editorial staff by contributing fascinating details, typical holiday recipes and her mother’s marvelous photography. The editors added “Fact & Fiction” sections to explore (and emend) some of the gnarly myths that people in the West hold about Sanatana Dharma. This is a great resource that can find its way into the schoolroom, the summer camp, anywhere students are learning about Hinduism past and present. As you would expect, it is elegantly designed by the HT team. See more about this interactive initiative to strengthen the Hindu world in the next HPI article, below.

A 16-page history lesson is the fourth in our series aimed at a sixth-grade audience. It covers the period from 1850 to 1947, when India was colonized by the British. As our readers know, Indian history in Western textbooks for children is appallingly inaccurate and skewed toward the strange. This segment continues our effort to rectify that, to give well-researched lessons that tell the true story of India’s place in the world down through the centuries. Here we present the facts about the British occupancy, their economic exploitation and sometimes ruthless repressions. Get ready to discover lots of new insights into those difficult days before Independence.

When our publisher, Satguru Bodhinatha Veylanswami, was in Melbourne in December, he gave a wonderful keynote talk on yoga and its place in the world, particularly its applicability to nonHindus. His current editorial gives us a glimpse of that talk, “Can Everyone Benefit from Yoga?”

And Bodhinatha’s Australian itinerary included the 2009 Parliament of the World’s Religions, touted as the world’s largest interfaith meeting–a reprise of the 1893 meeting that featured Swami Vivekananda. As part of the 2009 program, a rare gathering of Hindu leaders from around the world met to discuss key modern issues, trends and challenges. Our story brings you the opinions of the swamis who attended from all over the world. Their views of climate change, one of the key topics in Melbourne, will inform and perhaps surprise you.