Shia Muslims finish the trek to Hussein Mosque in Karbala
This week an estimated 9 million people gathered in the city of Karbala to remember the death of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and one of the holiest figures of Islam since its founder.
Forty days ago Shiite Muslims began a period of remembrance for the third Imam, who was killed in the Battle of Karbala in 680 CE.
After being released from captivity, surviving followers of Imam Hussein
“headed towards Karbala so that they could revisit the graves of their loved ones and bury the heads of the Martyrs with the bodies. They arrived at the site of the graves and the battle of Karbala on the twentieth of Safar, or forty days after the martyrdom of Imam Hussein and his followers.” http://www.shirazi.org.uk/ashura.htm
Arba’een means 40. It’s a sacred length of time in Islam.
The Qu’ran recalls the story Moses (Musa) and his forty nights away from the people to hear the word of God. [2:51] Muhammad said,
“Whoever dedicates himself to God for forty days, will find springs of wisdom sprout out of his heart and flow on his tongue.”
The holiday this year appears to be remarkably free of violence, considering the 9 million visitors that streamed from all parts of the country. In 2004 simultaneous bombings targeted pilgrims observing Arba’een; the attacks killed 170.
“I came to Karbala with my family and children after walking for 12 days,” says one pilgrim from Basra, “We were not afraid of terrorists…We have been taking risks and if we die we will be martyrs.”
Today is the first day of Uttarayan, the 6-month season which lasts from January 14 to July 14 in India.
The festivals that celebrate the changing of the season go by many names in India. Makar Sankranti, Pongal, Lohri, and so on. They coincide with January 13th/14th in the Gregorian calendar.
The reason why Makar Sankranti is celebrated more than any other is that it marks the day the Sun starts moving north and the auspicious half of the year is characterized by increasing daylight. Of all the heavenly bodies, the Sun is the most glorious and the most important to life – and the Festival Marak Sankranti is one of the most important and happy feasts in its honor. It is the time when winter begins to loosen its grip and the days begin to grow warmer and warmer. — from Indian Festivals and Events
Sankranti means, literally, to change direction, or to go from one place to another, and Makara (a crocodile/snail/elephant hybrid) refers to the Indian predecessor of the Greek constellation Capricorn. Thus, January 14th in India marks the day the sun begins to move from Sagittarius to Capricorn in the north.
The winter harvest festivals are celebrated in different ways among the one-billion plus people who make up the cultures of India. In the south January 14th is only the first day of a four-day holiday known as Pongal, named for the special rice dish associated with the harvest festival.
Indians in Gujarat celebrate with feasts and kite festivals in which the colorful skies help waken the gods who hibernated through winter. The largest of these is the International Kite Festival in Ahmedabad.
Day One of Pongal is called Bhogi or Bogi, and is dedicated to the storm god Indra. Indra is the leader of the Devas–the gods and celestial beings that watch over the heavens and control the elements–such as wind, fire, rain, and air. Indra’s weapon is the thunderbolt. In that way he is similar to the Norse Thor, though his status is higher. Indeed, Indra is the subject of roughly 250 hymns and stories in the Rigveda, more than any other deity. He is incredibly handsome, but he has more vices than any other god. (Maybe that’s why he makes for such good stories!) And he never turns down a good cup of soma (the “Red Bull and vodka” of the gods.) Which would explain why the weather is the way it is.
Indra idol
He is known for his strength and smarts in slaying the dragon Vritra, which represents chaos and non-existence. It is one of the most famous battles in Hindu mythology. In defeating Vritra, Indra separates and supports the heavens and earth.
He is not as revered in modern Hinduism as he once was. This is partly attributed to his character flaws–his mistakes catch up to him and his power reduced–and partly due to the rising influence of gods such as Shiva, Vishnu and Devi. (And maybe we just aren’t as at the whim of the weather as we were in Indra’s prime.)
Bhogi is a day for family. Houses are cleaned and scrubbed top to bottom and all extra clutter is set aside, (the original Spring cleaning) and surfaces are prepared for decoration with a specially-prepared rice and paste concoction, Kolam, adorned with red mud.
In the fields freshly-harvested rice is cut with sickles anointed with sandalwood and paste. A bonfire is lit and all aforementioned “clutter” from the house is burned, along with agricultural waste. The fire symbolizes staying warm during the “last lap of winter.”
Over three hundred years ago the tenth and last (human) Guru of the Sikhs led his army in an historic battle against the Mughal Emperor.
But today’s holiday, Maghi Mela, actually honors the 40 followers who deserted the Guru before the fight.
At the Battle of Anandpur, Guru Gobind Singh’s men were besieged by the Mughal army. The Mughal Empire covered over 3 million square kilometers and had a population of over 120 million people.
Forty of the Guru’s men deserted him at Anandpur. Guru Gobind Singh had to retreat from Anandpur and most of his army was destroyed in the attack that followed.
When the 40 deserters returned home, their wives and families shunned them for desertion. Ashamed, the men–led by warrior woman Mai Bhago–decided to set back out to join their badly-outnumbered Guru, now in Khidrana Ki Dhab.
As the Mughal army approached Gobind Singh’s camp, they encountered the 40 former deserters. In the Battle of Muktsar all 40 warriors were killed, but the Mughal army met such heavy casualties they were forced to retreat.
Guru Gobind Singh post-humously forgave the former deserters and granted them eternal Chali Mukte–liberation from the cycle of death and rebirth and all human suffering. The site became known as Muktsar, the “tank of salvation.”
The Guru died less than three years later, but outlived his nemesis, the Sultan Aurangzeb. Aurangzeb had beheaded Gobind Singh’s father, the previous Guru, 30 years earlier for refusing to convert to Islam.
Both Gobind Singh and Aurangzeb were the last of their kinds.
The Mughal Empire declined after Aurangzeb’s death. He had ruled for half a century and was considered the last great Mughal ruler. He was succeeded by Bahadur Shah I, who reached a brief alliance with the Gobind Singh before the Guru’s death.
Guru Gobind Singh meanwhile declared that he would be succeeded not by a person, but by the Sikh holy book, Guru Granth Sahib, the writings of the ten Gurus of Sikhism. By taking the revolutionary step, Gobind Singh made the Guru immortal. Henceforth Sikhism could be guided by eternal principles instead of dependent on a mortal leader.
The site of the famous battle at Muktsar is now the centerpoint of Maghi Mela, the January 13 remembrance of the 40 Immortals.
Muktsar, site of the famous battle
In the 20th century the Sikh people have faced new, yet similar challenges. According to a 1994 study the Sikh people only make up less than 2% of the Indian population but account for 20% of the Indian Army’s officers, and 10-15% of all ranks.
Yet in 1984 a controversial Indian military operation, code-named Bluestar, killed the Sikh extremist leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and hundreds of his followers, who had declared an independent Sikh state. In retaliation two of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s Sikh bodyguards assassinated her. This in turn led to the Anti-Sikh Riots which killed 3,000 Sikhs in New Delhi alone.
In North America Sikhs have been mistaken for Muslims because of their tradition dress, turban, and beards, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Four days after 9/11 a Sikh gas station owner in Mesa, Arizona (Balbir Singh Sodhi) was gunned down as he helped a landscaper plant flowers around his Chevron station. The racist murderer claimed to have killed Sodhi because of his turban “in retaliation” for the attacks.
In Punjab, January marks a lull in the winter wheat harvest. Farmers plant wheat in October and harvest the crops in March or April. By January the wheat has sprung up and farmers rejoice in anticipation of a bountiful harvest.
The traditional Indian calendar has twelve months and two seasons: Uttarayan (January 14 to July 14) and Dakshinayana (July 14 to January 14). Today is Lohri, the last day of Dakshinayana, considered winter in the traditional Indian calendar. From here on out the days grow longer and warmer.
In the morning on Lohri day, children go from door to door singing and demanding the Lohri ‘loot’ in the form of money and eatables like til (sesame) seeds, peanuts, jaggery, or sweets like gajak, rewri, etc. — hinduism.about.com
In the evening people dance around the bonfires, throwing in til, puffed rice, and popcorn into the fire, praying for prosperity and abundance in the coming season, and singing traditional songs:
Who do you have?
The groom with the tandoor
The groom’s daughter got married,
He gave 1 kg sugar!
The girl is wearing a red suit!
But her shawl is torn!
Who will stitch her shawl?!
The uncle made choori!
The landlords ate it!
He made the landlords eat a lot!
Lots of innocent guys came,
Innocent boy got left behind.
The police arrested him!
The policeman hit him with a brick!
Cry or howl!
Give us lohri…long live your jodi!”
Yes, something’s lost in translation. [But imagine what Indians would make of “Hey Diddle Diddle!”] This folk song, sometimes called “Ho’s in the Chorus,” (The word “ho!” is sung after each lyric.) harkens back to the legend of Dulla Bhatti.
Dulla Bhatti was a Muslim “Robin Hood” figure who fought against the Mughal Empire in Punjab, in what’s now the northeast of India. In addition to distributing his loot among the poor, Dulla was famous for rescuing boys and girls who had been sold into slavery or inducted into the Mughal army. Dulla adopted girls who had been kidnapped (“her shawl is torn“) as his daughters, restored their reputations (The lyric “The uncle made choori…He made the landlords eat a lot” refers to the uncle’s responsibility to vouch for a niece’s virginity) and married them off with hefty dowries. (“The groom’s daughter got married; he gave a measure of sugar.“)
Dulla Bhatti was eventually captured and hanged at the emperor’s court in Delhi. But his legend lives on during the Lohri celebration across Northern and Western India.
Lohri is among other things a fertility rite, marking the coming of spring. That may explain why the first Lohri of a newlywed bride is especially auspicious in Punjab. New brides are the center of festivities, dressed immaculately with bangles running up and down their arms; they can expect to be pampered today, as are the mothers of newborn babies experiencing their first Lohri.
Punjab (red), Northern India
Lohri ushers in a host of mid-January celebrations across India, known in various regions as Makar Sankranti, Pongal, and Maghi.
“One of the most important battles in Europe’s modern history was fought and won in Vilnius 16 years ago.”
Carl Bildt, Swedish Foreign Affairs Minister, January 2007
In the late 1980’s a “Singing Revolution” swept through the Baltic States of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
Thousands of citizens coalesced night after night in each of the republics to sing national songs that had been banned under the Soviet regime. (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, as well as half of Poland, had been annexed by the Soviet Union in accordance with a secret corollary of the Nazi-Soviet Pact between Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin a week before the outbreak of WWII.)
On the Pact’s 50th anniversary 2 million people participated in a human chain across the Baltic States to protest the occupation.
The Lithuanian Communist Party seceded from the Soviet Communist Party, and in its first free election Sajudis, the newly formed pro-independence party, won a majority. The Lithuanian Legislature declared its independence from the Soviet Union in March of 1990.
The leaders of the Soviet Union were not too keen on this. Soviet troops entered Vilnius on January 11th and seized control of strategic posts such as the Defense Department, railway office, and Press House.
By January 12th the news had spread through the country and throngs of Lithuanians gathered at the capital to protect other locations such as the Vilnius TV tower. In the wee hours of January 13th, Soviet tanks attacked the TV tower, plowing through crowds of unarmed people. Fourteen civilians were killed.
“a small TV studio from Kaunas came on air unexpectedly. A technician of the family program that usually broadcast from Kaunas once a week, was on the air, calling for anyone who could help to broadcast to the world in as many different languages as possible about the Soviet army and tanks killing unarmed people in Lithuania. Within an hour, the studio was filled with several university professors broadcasting in several languages. The small studio in Kaunas received a threatening phone call from the Soviet army division of Kaunas. By 4 in the morning this studio received the news that Swedish news station finally saw the broadcast and will be broadcasting the news to the world.”
At the 15th anniversary of the January 13th revolution, Arturas Paulauskas, Speaker of the Lithuanian Seimas said:
“In January 1991 there was no country in the world the people of which did not help us. Every uttered word defending our freedom at that time was an invaluable contribution into our victory, especially the words by the Russian people…Just the way they won here, in Vilnius, in January 1991. And here in Lithuania, and there in Riga, Tallinn, later in Kiev, other countries. Most importantly they won in Moscow: The country that attacked and enslaved no longer exists…
“FREE is stronger than FREER and stronger than the FREEST M. Gorbachev offered us to be FREER, but all we wanted was simply to be FREE.”
Paulauska’s final thoughts explained why the Lithuanian people must remember this relatively new holiday. Yet his speech echoed the sentiments of leaders throughout history as to why we celebrate holidays:
“It is a real joy to see young people…who were not yet born in January 1991…gathered at the fire and signing patriotic songs. However all this does not yet mean that this young generation knows what to do with freedom defended in 1991.
“Our generation still has to hand down to them Lithuania with alive spirit of freedom and true values. From hands to hands, from minds to minds, from hearts to hearts…Let us never forget this responsibility. In the name of those who were killed 15 years ago. And in the name of those still to come.”
The glory of Krishna is not that he was Krishna, but that he was the great teacher of Vedanta…Persons are but the embodiments, the illustration of principles. If the principles are there, the persons will come by the thousands and millions.
But if the principle is lost and forgotten and the whole of national life tries to cling round a so-called historical person, woe unto that religion, danger unto that religion!
Swami Vivekananda
Over a third of the 1 billion+ Indian population is under 15. Two-thirds are under 30. So when this country celebrates Youth Day, you better pay attention.
The United Nations and much of the world celebrates Youth Day on August 12, but India chooses to celebrate on January 12, the birthday of Indian scholar and teacher Swami Vivekananda. Vivekananda was an activist for the common people and the Spiritual Ambassador of India to the West during the late 19th century.
Swami Vivekananda
Swami Vivekananda
Vivekananda caused a spiritual earthquake in the U.S. when he spoke at the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago 1893. This was at a time when Hindus could be “outcast” simply by crossing the Atlantic.
One witness said: “No photograph or description can give a correct idea of the power of his eyes. They were wonderful. Like the Ancient Mariner in Coleridge’s famous people he ‘held you by the eye.’” (A. Srinivasa Pai)
One of the most powerful principles he taught and lived was that of “Jiva is Shiva,” that each individual is divinity itself. He believed that no one is truly free until all are truly free, even to the extent that personal salvation be secondary to helping others achieve salvation. He coined the term daridra narayana seva — serving God through less privileged human beings. His teachings heavily influenced the young Mahatma Gandhi.
Vivekananda was not without opponents. He believed that science and observation were the basis of religion, and thus religion taken on faith alone was the equivalent of superstition.
“I would rather have every one of you be rank atheists than superstitious fools, for the atheist is alive and you can make something out of him. But if superstition enters, the brain is gone…”
He espoused the revolutionary idea that religion be based on direct personal experience, rather than pure faith.
Religion is not going to church, or putting marks on the forehead, or dressing in a peculiar fashion. You may paint yourselves in all the colours of the rainbow, but if the heart has not been opened, if you have not realised God, it is all vain.
Vivekananda died on July 4, 1902, just shy of his 40th birthday. Today his memory serves as an inspiration to young people throughout India and the world.
If you have lost your wealth, you have lost nothing;
if you have lost your health, you have lost something;
if you have lost your character, you have lost everything.
Okay, here I’m using ‘American’ in its broader sense. A Chilean once told me how he didn’t like the word ‘American’ or ‘America’ referring to one country. America stretches from the Arctic to Tierra del Fuego and encompasses two continents, he reminded me. Why let one country hijack the name? I suppose it’s because it’s shorter than saying ‘United States citizen’.
Today is the birthday of (North) American hero John A. MacDonald, the first Prime Minister of Canada and an unabashed drunkard.
But my Canadian sources tell me no one in Canada knows or cares.
So instead let’s look south to the island of Puerto Rico to celebrate the birthday in 1839 of another American hero, a man called “the Citizen of the Americas”: Eugenio Maria de Hostos.
Eugenio Maria de Hostos
[observed 2nd Monday in January]
Hostos is considered one of the great modern thinkers of education. He wrote scores of books and hundreds of essays in numerous disciplines, from the most revered discourse on Hamlet in the Spanish language, to La Peregrinación de Bayoán, his 1863 novel promoting Cuban independence. His seminal works on education preceded those of John Dewey by two decades, and…
“…Although Hostos did not conduct rigorous experimental research pertaining to the mind and its development, his encyclopaedic knowledge of philosophy, linguistics, psychology, sociology, history and other disciplines gave him a coherent conceptualization and an operational model of mind.”
Hostos was born in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico in 1839, the year Spanish poet Salas Quiroga magnanimously declared, “Puerto Rico is the corpse of a society that hasn’t been born.“
From inauspicious beginnings, Hostos went on to attend secondary training at the University of Bilbao, Spain, and law school at Central University in Madrid. There he joined the Spanish republican movement, protesting government restraints on basic freedoms, but he was disillusioned in 1869 when the creators of the new Spanish constitution dashed all hopes for an independent Puerto Rico.
Hostos then sailed to New York City, where he became a Cuban revolutionary 90 years before Che made it hip. In those days Cuban revolutionaries fought for independence from Spain rather than U.S. imperialism. Hostos believed that a free Cuba would lead to a free Puerto Rico, and a “Federated Antillean Republic”, composed of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic.
Hostos trekked across the Americas speaking on this and other various causes:
In Chile, he lobbied successfully for the education of women.
In Argentina, he helped establish a trans-Andean railroad.
In the Dominican Republic he founded the first Teacher’s College.
In Cuba, he hastened the abolition of slavery.
And wherever he traveled he espoused the basic rights of all peoples and the importance of progressive education throughout the Americas as both a means and an end.
In order for humans to be humans, that is, worthy of realizing their life goals, nature bestowed them with awareness of herself, the ability to know their own origins, their own strengths and frailties, their own transcendence and interdependence, their rights and obligations, their own freedom and responsibilities, the capability for self-improvement and for self-enobling of their ideal existence.
Eugenio Maria de Hostos (1839-1903)
However, Hostos was gravely disappointed when in 1898 the United States annexed Puerto Rico and Cuba from Spain, rather than granting them independence.
Hostos died in the Dominican Republic in 1903.
Cuba won its independence from the United States 18 months before Hostos’s death. Hostos requested that his remains be transfered back to Puerto Rico only when his homeland gained its independence. Needless to say, Hostos has been resting in the Dominican Republic’s National Pantheon for a hundred years and counting.
For the centennial of his birth, the 8th International Conference of America bestowed upon Hostos the title “El Cuidadano de las Americas”: Citizen of the Americas.
Gentlemen, I don’t have to tell you who I am. I am an American. I have the honor of being a Puerto Rican and a federalist. Being a colonial, a product of the colonial despotism, and hindered by it in my feelings, thoughts and actions, I took vengeance upon it by imagining a definitive form of liberty and I conceived a confederation of ideas, given the impossibility of a political confederation. I am a federalist because I am American, because I am a colonial – because I am Puerto Rican.
