For the first time, an International Yoga Day will be celebrated on 21st of June this year. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had suggested this honour for yoga and his suggestion got overwhelming support from 177 countries. Yoga has indeed become popular all over the world. Many millions practice it – from schoolchildren to senior citizens – and courses are held down to the village level in many countries of the west. But strangely, in its home country India, yoga was not valued even till a few decades ago. The reason was that under British colonial rule, Indian tradition was projected…
Author: Maria Wirth
Maria Wirth
Maria Wirth is a German with psychology studies from Hamburg University. She visited the Ardha Kumbha Mela in Haridwar in April 1980 where she met Sri Anandamayi Ma and Devaraha Baba, two renowned saints. With their blessing she continued to live in India. She dived into India’s spiritual tradition, sharing her insights with German readers through articles and books. You can nd more of her writings at mariawirthblog.wordpress.com
There is probably no other country where members of other religions were as safe as in India. Hindus always gave shelter to those who were persecuted in their homelands. Jews gratefully acknowledged that India is the one country where they were never persecuted. Syrian Christians under their leader Thomas of Cana (Thomas the Apostle did not come to India) were given refuge in the 4th century. Parsis came in the 10th century to escape the Muslim invaders in Persia. And in 1959, some 100,000 Tibetan Buddhist refugees found shelter in India – only 12 years after the British had left…
This article is about a conference on Indian psychology that took place in 2002 in Pondicherry. I posted it here again, as unfortunately not much has changed since then. The hopes at that time that “after ten years” there will be a big change have not come true. Meanwhile, “consciousness studies” have taken off in the west, where India should have been the natural leader. Maybe now, finally, there is a chance for Indian psychology to be re-discovered in India as well.Indian psychology has been invisible as a subject in Indian academia. But exist it does, preserved in ancient texts…
Though I’ve lived in India for long, there still are some points that I find hard to understand – for example, why many so-called “educated Indians” become agitated whenever ‘Hindutva’ is mentioned. The majority of Indians are Hindus. India is special because of its ancient Hindu tradition and Westerners are drawn to it. Why this resistance by many Indians to acknowledge the Hindu roots of India? Why do some even give the impression that an India that values those Hindu roots is dangerous? Don’t they know better? Their attitude is strange for two reasons.Where is the Cultural IdentityFirst, these people…