Hindu Festival Quotes

It was not until I began meeting people of other faiths in their most sacred spaces that I learned how bruised some of them were by Christian evangelism. Worshippers at the Hindu Temple returned to the parking lot after one of their major festivals to find Christians by their cars with pamphlets demeaning their holiday. Muslims were used to Christians saying malicious things about the Qur'an. Native Americans were tired of being asked what God they prayed to. The shared consensus is that Christian evangelists are not very good listeners. They assume they are speaking to people with no knowledge of God themselves. They are disrespectful to other people's faith.

Recently, the Google Internet search "Diwali greetings" was the second-most popular search worldwide during Diwali.

This Diwali; empower someone to enjoy the Festival of Lights, by making their life bright.

Throughout the year, in all regions, in all seasons; we HINDUS find reasons, to worship almost anything and everything, anyone and everyone; from people to Gods; from animals to plants; from planets to stars. So our spirits are always high with small surprises of life, we cherish meeting and greeting people, for in SANATAN DHARMA we celebrate every aspect of being human. We believe Bhagwan (God) is in every single particle and OM is in every single ATOM of the universe.

In many parts of the world, ghosts are not considered to be a creation of local folklore, but a fact of life. In China the dead are understood to co-exist with the living, a belief which gave rise to the practice of ancestor worship, while in South America the deceased are honoured with annual festivals known as the Day of the Dead which suggests that the material world and the spirit world might not be as distinct as we might like to believe. In the Eastern and Asiatic religions it is believed that death is not the end, but simply a transition from one state of being to another. The Hindu Upanishads, for example, liken each human soul to a lump of salt taken from the ocean which must ultimately return to the source.

It seems to begin before dawn with the Muslims, when a mosque at the edge of the mangrove forest softly announces, in a lullaby voice, the morning call to prayer. Not to be outdone, the local Christians soon crank up pop-sounding hymns that last anywhere from one to three hours. This is followed by cheerful, though overamplified, kazoo-like refrain from the Hindu temple that reminds Less of the ice cream truck from his childhood. Then comes a later call to prayer. Then the Christians decide to ring some bronze bells. And so on. There are sermons and live singers and thunderous drum performances. In this way, the faiths alternate throughout the day, as at a music festival, growing louder and louder until, during the outright cacophony of sunset, the Muslims, who began the whole thing, declare victory by projecting not only the evening call to prayer but the prayer itself in its entirety. After that, the jungle falls to silence. Perhaps this is the Buddhists' sole contribution. Every morning, it starts again.

For instance, detractors trumpet that Aurangzeb destroyed certain temples without acknowledging that he also issued many orders protecting Hindu temples and granted stipends and land to Brahmins. They denounce that he restricted the celebration of Holi without mentioning that he also clamped down on Muharram and Eid festivities. They omit altogether that Aurangzeb consulted with Hindu ascetics on health matters and employed more Hindus in his administration than any prior Mughal ruler by a substantial margin.

Sankranti is the Sanskrit word in Hindu astrology which refers to the transmigration of the Sun from one Rashi—or sign of the zodiac—to another. Hence, there are twelve such Sankrantis in all. However, the Sankranti festival usually refers to Makar Sankranti or the transition of the Sun from Dhanu Rashi, or Sagittarius, to Makar Rashi, or Capricorn.’ ‘The winter solstice marks the beginning of the gradual increase in the length of days. Scientifically, the shortest day of the year is around the twenty-first or twenty-second day of December, after which the days begin to get longer and the winter solstice begins. Hence, the Uttarayana, northern movement of the Sun, is actually 21 December, which was originally the day of Makar Sankranti too. But because of the Earth’s tilt of 23.45 degrees and sliding of equinoxes, Ayanamsa, longitudinal change, occurs. This has caused Makar Sankranti to slide further down the ages. A thousand years ago, Makar Sankranti was on 31 December and is now on 14 January. Five thousand years later, it shall be by the end of February, while in 9,000 years it shall come in June.

Principal sahib, all festivals I celebrate, in every name of God I exhilarate, be it Allah, Christ or Mahadev. And all this naturally comes to me because the Hindu that at heart I be. That’s why I wish to remain a Hindu, you see.”   Narayan Sambhan paused and then added quietly, “But I am speaking principal sahib only for myself entirely.”   The

Bhagwan Ram won't fight the evils for you but you can pray him to bless you courage like him to fight evils all by yourself and celebrate Diwali.

Wajid Ali Shah, denounced as effeminate and inept and deposed a year later by British imperialists, was the last great exponent of the Indo-Persian culture that emerged in Awadh toward the end of the Moghul empire, when India was one of the greatest centers of the Islamic world, along with the Ottoman and the Safavid empires. Islam in India lost some of its Arabian and Persian distinctiveness, blended with older cultures, but its legacy is still preserved amid the squalor of a hundred small Indian towns, in the grace and elegance of Najam's Urdu, in the numerous songs and dances that accompany festivals and marriages, in the subtle cuisines of Northern India, and the fineness of the silk saris of Benares, but one could think of it, as I did, as something just there, without a history or tradition. The Indo-Islamic inheritance has formed very little part of, and is increasingly an embarrassment to, the idea of India that has been maintained by the modernizing Hindu elite over the last fifty years.

What has been missed out here is that the Indian traders of eastern India have discovered the Monsoon patterns many centuries before Hippalus. It was their knowledge of the wind patterns in the Eastern Sea that helped them navigate to Southeast Asia with the retreating Monsoon in late October and sail back to India with the advancing Monsoon in May. The event of starting off the sea voyage is still symbolically celebrated in Odisha as the festival of Bali Jatra (voyage to Bali). The festival is celebrated on the full moon of the Hindu month of Kartik (fifteen days after Diwali).

Many Jains worship at Hindu temples and participate in Hindu festivals. These issues are, of course, greatly complicated by the fact that the status of "Hinduism" as a unified religious tradition is itself doubtful and contested, and that "Hindu identity" is a historically recent phenomenon. The modern tendency is probably in the direction of a Jain identity separate from that of Hindus, but this transformation is far from complete and will probably never be completed. There appear to be, moreover, countervailing forces. For example, my own general observation is that, as religious politics has become increasingly important in India, large numbers of Jains have identified with the Hindu nationalist viewpoint with hardly a second thought.

Diwali is to pray and invite the powers of Bhagwan Ram to your heart to bless you thoughts of purity and power to fight evils.

Other states also reoriented their telling of regional and national history. In Maharashtra, in the rewriting of history textbooks, a drastic cut was made in the book for class 7: the chapter on the Mughal Empire under Akbar was cut down to three lines.78 Uttar Pradesh simply deleted the Mughal Empire from some of its history textbooks,79 while the University of Delhi drastically reduced the study of this period in its history curriculum.80 In the syllabus of Nagpur University, a chapter that discussed the roles of the RSS, the Hindu Mahasabha, and the Muslim League in the making of communalism has been replaced by another one titled “Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) Role in Nation Building.”81 Alongside official examinations in Uttar Pradesh, the Sangh Parivar organized a test of general culture open to all schools in the state. According to the brochure designed to help students prepare for this test, which Amit Shah released in Lucknow in August 2017, India was a Hindu Rashtra, and Swami Vivekananda had defended Hindutva in Chicago in 1893.82 In Karnataka, after canceling Tipu Sultan Jayanti, the festival that the state used to organize to celebrate the birth of this eighteenth-century Muslim ruler, the BJP government also dropped the chapter dealing with this historical figure from the class 7 textbook in 2019.83 This decision was made in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic that had led the government of India to ask all states to reduce syllabi for students in classes 1 through 10 by 30 percent, in light of the learning challenges brought about by the lockdown.84 The decision of the Karnataka government, in fact, fit in with a larger picture. Under cover of the pandemic, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), India’s largest education board, decided that all over India “government-run schools no longer have to teach chapters on democratic rights, secularism, federalism, and citizenship, among other topics.”85 To foster assimilation of knowledge that amounted to propaganda, final exams have increasingly focused on the heroic deeds of Hindu icons and reforms initiated by the Modi government, even on the person of the prime minister.

My mother celebrated every Hindu festival with the appropriate rituals, but no one acknowledged birthdays. My parents never hugged us, kissed us, or said, "I love you.". Love was assumed. We never shared fears or hopes and dreams with our elders. They just were not the kind to have those conversations.

Diwali is celebrating with diyas, lighting up in heart too, for inner illumination.

Light up the lamps of Joy and let there be smiles.

This Diwali welcome the thoughts, rich in peace, to your abode called heart.

Diwali is not just a festival but way of celebrating the true homecoming, welcoming your true-self to your mind, body and soul.

Shubh Diwali; the festival of illumination for inner and outer world.

During the last fifty years, owing to the gradual impoverishment of the country and migration from the villages, these religious festivals have been considerably reduced and in some cases have ceased altogether. This has affected the circulation of money within the village economy and on the social side has made life dull and drab.

While it is quite true that the alchemical retort symbolizes the creation, it also has a far more significant meaning concealed under the allegory of the second birth. As regeneration is the key to spiritual existence, they therefore founded their symbolism upon the rose and the cross, which typify the redemption and transmutation of man through the union of his lower temporal nature with his higher eternal nature. The rosy cross is also a hieroglyphic figure representing the formula of the Universal Medicine. [i] The rose is also an Egyptian symbol of rebirth; an attribute of the Hindu Prosperity goddess Lakshmi; and a part of the Rosalia festivals associated with Dionysus who was an important patron of the mysteries of Eleusis.[ii]

Up until 1833 Hindu and Muslim holy men had blessed the colours of sepoy regiments,[19] and the British took part in Hindu ceremonies and festivals. Thereafter, such practices were discouraged.

Deepawali - The holy light Yesterday it was the festival of lights, Bright, sparkling, endlessly shimmering lights, With children running on the lanes that led everywhere, Because on this day happiness takes a stroll everywhere, It was a scene of joy and happiness, A moment to celebrate togetherness, While many indulged in savouring sweets, Many felt just walking and talking on these ever stretching streets, That on this day, led everywhere, Because on this day everyone seemed to appear in these streets from nowhere, Life had acquired an eloquent rush, life was in a flow of its own, And one felt the the joy of a holy kiss unknown, They say on this day good prevailed over evil, But I say, on this day humans realised nothing is more beautiful than a beautiful human will!” In the night the sky was lit with fire crackers that carried someones joys into the sky, And when I saw them bursting in the sky, I thought of you often my love, not just by and by, Until it was late in the night and the playfulness of the festive day decided to repose, And I too called it a day, as my imaginations, now your beautiful dreams composed!

The origin of the Pasch eggs is just as clear. The ancient Druids bore an egg, as the sacred emblem of their order. In the Dionysiaca, or mysteries of Bacchus, as celebrated in Athens, one part of the nocturnal ceremony consisted in the consecration of an egg. The Hindu fables celebrate their mundane egg as of a golden colour. The people of Japan make their sacred egg to have been brazen. In China, at this hour, dyed or painted eggs are used on sacred festivals, even as in this country. In ancient times eggs were used in the religious rites of the Egyptians and the Greeks, and were hung up for mystic purposed in their temples. From Egypt these sacred eggs can be distinctly traced to the banks of the Euphrates.

Hindu civilisation is the only great classical culture to survive intact from the ancient world, and at temples such as Madurai one can still catch glimpses of festivals and practices that were seen by Greek visitors to India long before the rise of ancient Rome. Indeed, it is only when you grasp the astonishing antiquity, and continuity, of Hinduism that you realise quite how miraculous is survival has been.

By then I’d played with a couple of college bands, doing clumsy covers ofrock staples. There were other bands that would produce note-perfect imitationsof songs by Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd and drive audiences wild. If a bandcould play something exactly as it was on tape, the consensus was that they mustbe good. But after a period of proving themselves this way, most bands became alittle more ambitious, and a day would come when they’d go up on stage duringa college festival and introduce a song with the dreaded words, ‘This is anoriginal composition.’ Almost always, these originals were listless pastiches ofthe covers the band played, the lyrics apparently not about anything at all. Thesewere skilled musicians, but their chosen form seemed to preclude any realengagement with their own lives or the lives of their audience. This was mostevident in the Death Metal bands, where you might have a good Hindu boygrowling menacingly about his affinity for Satan. This was a cargo-cult, amimicking of someone else’s rebellion.