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Re: Is Improvement of Hindu Newsgroups the Goal?
In article <4d2a2t$6oi@babbage.ece.uc.edu>,
Ajay Shah <editor@rbhatnagar.csm.uc.edu> wrote:
>Namaskar,
Namaskar!
>If improvement of the presentation of the Hindu newsgroups is the only
>goal that the proponents of SRH re-organization espouse, then the
>solution is very simple.
It is clearly one of the goals, as Vivek mentioned from the FAQ
>I have already proposed that those who favor better representation of
>Hindu dharma on the net welcome, with open mind several new Hindu
>newsgroups. These newsgroups may be
>a. philosophy oriented, along the lines of SRV, such as
>soc.religion.hindu.shivism, etc.
Well, I don't know if you've been following the "Definition of Hindu"
thread on SRH (which sometimes also pops up on SRV), but pretty
much everyone has agreed that Lingaayats/Virashaivas have the right to consider
themselves non-Hindu if they like (and, indeed, there was one Virashaivite
who had posted on news.groups during the SRV debate that said she
was a non-Hindu), and there is no doubt in anyone's mind that Lingaayats
are Shaivites. So once again, this may be a case of a poorly named proposal.
As far as I can tell, Ajay, you are not a Shaivite, and neither am I,
so we have no business trying to start up a Shaivite group. Mind you,
if some Shaivites, like the Hinduism Today paper or a Lingaayat group,
_want_ to start such a newsgroup, I will be the first to vote YES for it
and will help them in any way that I can with my newsgroup creation
experience.
>b. Specific scriptures oriented, such as:
>soc.religion.hindu.vedas
>soc.religion.hindu.bhagwadgita
Once again, poorly named; the Vedas and Bhagavad Gita are _universal,
non-sectarian_ scriptures, so they cannot be tied just to Hinduism
in this fashion. Furthermore, neither Vedas nor Bhagavad Gita
is a religion; they are scriptures that establish a religion. I know
of no soc.religion.christian.bible, for example.
>etc.
>c. Oriented towards customs etc. such as
>soc.religion.hindu.bhajans
>soc.religion.hindu.yoga
Once again, this is not the best choice of names. Bhajans are not
specifically Hindu; Lingaayats have bhajans, Sikhs have bhajans,
etc -- in fact, it seems to me that bhajan is just the Sanskrit word
for "devotional song", so technically _every_ religion has bhajans.
If you're specifically talking about bhajans from the Indian
subcontinent, we may prefer rec.music.indian.classical.bhajans -- and if you
are interested in starting such a group, I will be glad to help you
out. I'm sure we could find lots of interest in such a group.
Similarly, yoga is by no means exclusively Hindu. Yoga is also practiced
by atheists, Buddhists, new-agers, etc. (and even some Christians I know
that practice hatha-yoga). If you want to propose a yoga newsgroup, maybe
we can start soc.yoga, or something like that; then you can have underneath
that soc.yoga.karma, soc.yoga.hatha, etc, as the time became appropriate.
>etc.
>I am surprised that the proponents have shown no aptitude to such broad
>minded expansion of Hindu dharma on the net.
The proponents are being very broad minded by not trying to unnecessarily
divide in this fashion. For example, if I wanted to talk about Shaivite
bhajans, where would I do it under the scheme you've proposed?
>It is their lack of will on this account that makes on suspecious of
>their ultimate motive of control over the Hindu newsgroups originating
>from my personal opinion that the word Hindu be included in the name of
>Vaishnava newsgroups.
whatever.
Yours,
Vijay
submitted around Fri Jan 12 16:01:46 CST 1996
>regards,
>
>ajay shah
>editor@rbhatnagar.csm.uc.edu
>ajay@mercury.aichem.arizona.edu
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