Tag Archives: religion

Ellora Caves

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The Ellora Caves are a World Heritage Site consisting of 34 cave temples carved into the bare rock of a hillside near Aurangabad. They date from three separate periods, from the 6th to 11th centuries CE, and are arranged in three groups, representing the dominant religion of each period.

Which means the good thing about the Ellora Caves is that they’re multi-genre. Just as you’re starting to get bored with Buddhist devotional sculpture, it switches to Hinduism, and then again to Jainism for the final act.

Cave 10 at Ellora, a Buddhist chapel with vaulted-effect ceiling and a massive Buddha in front of a stupa, surrounded by bodhisattvas

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Kumbhalgarh Fort

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Two of the items on my list of places to visit in Rajasthan were Kumbhalgarh Fort and the Jain temple at Ranakpur. Both of these were doable in a single day trip from Udaipur, arranged by my hotel.

It took about two hours for Jabar, my chauffeur and guide for the day, to drive us out to Kumbhalgarh. On the way we passed through the Aravalli region, where the scenery reminded me of California: hills of red-brown rock and scree, scattered trees, green irrigated fields in the valley. We passed the Banas River, and stopped to see a cattle-powered water wheel in action.

Cattle with painted horns turn the lever which brings up water from the well behind

This was all reasonably interesting, but only a teaser for the main show, Kumbhalgarh. I was worried that after covering most of Rajasthan, I might be all forted out and unable to appreciate it, but I needn’t have worried. Kumbhalgarh is absolutely stonking.

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Udaipur, City of Lakes

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It wasn’t the most auspicious introduction to a new city: I arrived in Udaipur on an uncomfortable nightbus, on which I’d been kept awake most of the night by a full bladder. I hadn’t found a couchsurfing host, and the recommended hotel had messed me around and eventually told me they were full, so I’d had to book a more expensive one down the road. Arriving at 7am, I’d had to wake up the duty manager who was asleep on a mattress in the foyer.

For several days before I travelled there, everyone had been telling me how beautiful Udaipur was. I’d been sceptical – I’ve seen a lot of places in India which are sort of beautiful, but ruined by filth and human activity – but eventually my expectations couldn’t help but be influenced by the repeated message.

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Ajmer

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To move on from Pushkar, I booked a berth on a night bus to Udaipur, leaving from nearby Ajmer, with the intention of having a look around the town during the day.

Ajmer is a big Muslim pilgrimage town, containing a major tomb/shrine to India’s top Sufi saint, a “miraculous” mosque and a ruined fort on an overlooking hill – which contains yet another Muslim tomb.

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Durga Puja

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If you’ve read my post on Amritsar, in which I criticise Sikhism for its tendency towards idolatry, then you might be wondering how I feel about Hinduism, the most idolatrous religion of all.

Actually, I have a bit of a soft spot for Hinduism. Obviously, it’s just as wrong as every other religion. But you’ve got to love the way it goes all out, celebrating life and sensuality and excess as sacred.

Also, it wasn’t idolatry per se that I had such a problem with regarding Sikhism. Idolatry is a basic human instinct. It’s craven and misguided, and should be resisted, but it’s just a particular way of doing religion. What I really hate about the religious practices of Christianity, Islam and Sikhism, among others, is the hypocrisy: they were all founded on the basis that idolatry was wrong, but then descended into it themselves. Hinduism doesn’t commit the same hypocrisy, as it never denies that there’s anything wrong with idolatry in the first place. On the contrary, it rejoices in it.

A whole load of idols being worshipped

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Amritsar: dirt and idolatry

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All religion is essentially idolatry.

Apart from those few religions which started as conscious scams – Mormonism, Scientology – most begin when some well-meaning person has a sincere spiritual or moral insight, and tries to pass it on to others. But 99% of the human race are not in the market for sincere spiritual or moral insight. They just want something to bow down to.

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Child marriage, GDP and sharia law

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Today’s Richard Dawkins-centred Twitter row is about child marriage and Islam. It was sparked by his circulation of a Huffington Post article on the tragic case of an 8 year old girl in Yemen who died of internal injuries caused by the wedding night sex with her new 40 year old husband. A 2009 law to set the minimum age of marriage in Yemen at 17 was repealed by conservatives as “un-Islamic”.

Many of the religious apologist responses pointed out that poverty, not Islam (or any other religion), is the key factor in the prevalence of child marriages. Indeed a recent report by World Vision UK, linked from the Huffington Post article circulated by Dawkins, identifies the girls most at risk of child marriage as tending to be “poor, under-educated and … rural” and living in areas with high death rates, civil conflict and “lower overall levels of development including schooling and healthcare”. “Poverty, weak legislative frameworks and enforcement, harmful traditional practices, gender discrimination and lack of alternative opportunities for girls (especially education) are all major drivers of early marriage,” the report summarises.

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Beyond Belief on organ donation

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I don’t usually listen to BBC Radio 4‘s religious discussion programme, Beyond Belief, but I happened to be driving yesterday while it was on. The programme, broadcast on Monday 12th August 2013, and as of the time of writing, available on iPlayer, dealt with the ethics of organ donation.

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