Magh Purnima, Vik. Samvat 2082, Yugabda 5127 : 1 February, 2026: SM 7021 (For Private Circulation only)
1.
FESTIVALS : MAHASHIVRATRI, celebrated on Phalgun Krushna Chaturdashi
(February 15 this year) commemorates the marriage of Bhagwan Shiva and Maa
Parvati, and the occasion of Shiva performing tandava nritya. It is observed by
remembering Shiva and chanting prayers, fasting, and meditating on ethics and
virtues such as honesty, non-injury to others, charity, forgiveness, and the
discovery of Shiva.
2. PROGRAMS OF SARSANGHCHALAK DR MOHAN BHAGWAT:
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Sarsanghchalak (RSS) Dr Mohan Bhagwat, while
addressing the Samajik Sadbhav Ghosthi at Muzaffarpur on January 25, said that
self-reliance is essential to overcome fear, and through self-reliance,
challenges can be effectively addressed.
3. REPUBLIC DAY OF BHARAT: The 77th Republic Day
celebrations of Bharat was organised around the theme ‘150 Years of Vande
Mataram‘. The theme ran across the Republic Day Parade, cultural performances,
tableaux, public competitions, and outreach programmes.
BrahMos and Akash weapon systems, the rocket launcher system ‘Suryastra’ with
deep-strike capabilities, and the Main Battle Tank Arjun were among the main
military platforms that were presented.
Around 2,500 artists representing different states and dressed in colourful
attire showcased Bharat’s rich cultural diversity through folk and classical
forms. Thousands of artists came together and performed a choreographed dance to
the tune of the national song Vande Mataram.
Beating Retreat ceremony, marking the culmination of the 77th Republic Day
celebrations, was held at Vijay Chowk in New Delhi on January 29.
President Droupadi Murmu approved gallantry awards for 70 Armed Forces
personnel, including six posthumous awards, on the eve of the 77th Republic Day.
Group Captain Shubhanshu Shukla, who made history by becoming the first
Bharatiya to visit the International Space Station, has been honoured with the
Ashoka Chakra, the country’s highest peace time gallantry award.
4. ‘VANDE MATARAM’ CELEBRATIONS IN INDONESIA: On January
24, Jawaharlal Nehru Indian Cultural Centre of the embassy of Bharat and Jakarta
Geet Mandal held a cultural event in Jakarta, Indonesia, to commemorate 150
years of ‘Vande Mataram’. Filled with patriotism, musical devotion, and
collective spirit, the celebration brought together 151 participants for
patriotic songs and soulful performances. Solo performances, group singing, and
emotionally rich compositions thrilled the audience.
5. 50 YEARS OF HSS CELEBRATED IN HONG KONG: The Hindu
Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS) in Hong Kong marked a historic milestone, its 50th
anniversary, with a vibrant cultural celebration that also honoured 100 years of
the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in Bharat. The event took place on January
24 in Tung Chung community hall to packed audiences, reflecting the collective
energy of five decades of seva and unity.
Founding-Chairperson of the New People's Party and Member of Executive Council,
Hon’ble Regina Ip Lau Suk-yee and Rajesh Naik, the Consul General of Bharat to
Hong Kong and Macau were the chief guests on the occasion.
Dr. Manoj Motwani (Secretary General, HSS HK), N.K. Rathi (President, VHP HK)
and Dr. Rakesh (VHP HK) were also present on the occasion. -GoTop
6. SNY AND MAKAR SANKRANTI UTSAV : HSS TAIWAN: Hindu
Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS) Taiwan organized the Soorya Namaskar Yadnya (SNY) from
January 14 to 25, the sacred period from Makar Sankranti to Ratha Saptami. The
Yadnya sessions were conducted daily online from 7:00 am to 7:30 am.
Swayamsevaks who were unable to join the online sessions due to unavoidable
reasons performed the Yadnya offline at their respective places and at other
convenient times, and reported their Surya Namaskar counts.
7. TEXAS CITY HONOURS SEWA INTERNATIONAL: The City of
Kerrville in Texas honoured Sewa International and partner Bharatiya American
organisations for their leadership and service during the July 4 flash floods
that devastated the city, recognising their role in emergency response and
long-term recovery efforts.
City officials expressed appreciation for Sewa International’s early and
sustained support, noting that many volunteers travelled from Houston and San
Antonio and arrived within hours of the disaster.
Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring said, “Helping others is how we serve God, and Sewa
International embodied that spirit every single day. Their volunteers brought
hope, structure, and humanity when our community needed it most.” -GoTop
8. HOUSTON MARATHON TO SUPPORT SEWA: Sewa volunteers and
runners had an incredible experience at the Chevron & Aramco Houston Marathon on
January 11 - an event that showcased the very best of Houston’s spirit and
community. The Marathon drew 30,000 runners, 7,000 volunteers, and an estimated
250,000 spectators, with participants from all 50 U.S. states and 118 counties.
51% of the Half Marathon runners were women.
Sewa also hosted a breakfast booth near the GRB Convention Center, serving hot
tea and breakfast for runners and volunteers. This was the 4th year of Sewa’s
engagement in the biggest sporting extravaganza of Houston. This is also the 2nd
year of Sewa being an Elite Charity, supported by the Marathon Committee’s ‘Run
for A Reason’ program. -GoTop
9. BHARAT LEADS GLOBAL BUDDHIST DIALOGUE: The two-day
Second Global Buddhist Summit, held on January 24-25, was organised at Bharat
Mandapam, New Delhi, by the International Buddhist Confederation (IBC) in
collaboration with the Ministry of Culture, Government of Bharat. Held on the
theme ‘Collective Wisdom, United Voice, and Mutual Coexistence’, the summit
brought together around 200 international representatives from across the world,
including leaders of major Buddhist organisations and scholars of the Dhamma.
For the first time, Buddhists from Israel, Turkey, Spain, Argentina, and Finland
participated in the event.
The Second Global Buddhist Summit concluded by reaffirming Bharat’s position as
the land of the Buddha and a global torchbearer of collective wisdom, peaceful
coexistence and shared human values. -GoTop
10. BHARAT GIFTS 61 VEHICLES TO NEPAL FOR ELECTIONS:
The first tranche of election-related assistance from Bharat was handed over to
the Minister for Home Affairs of Nepal, Om Prakash Aryal, by the Embassy of
Bharat in Kathmandu. 61 double-cab pickup vehicles and other supplies were
handed over by Deputy Chief of Mission Dr Rakesh Pandey as a part of the
assistance sought by the Government of Nepal, in connection with preparations
for the upcoming elections in the country. Home Minister Aryal said that the
vehicles would be utilised for making the smooth management of the election.
The ongoing cooperation and support from the Bharatiya side is not only an apt
reflection of the multi-faceted and multi-sectoral development partnership that
exists between both countries, but also symbolises the deep mutual trust and
friendship between the people of Bharat and Nepal. -GoTop
11. BHARAT SENDS 30 TONNES OF HUMANITARIAN ASSISTANCE TO
PHILIPPINES: The Bharatiya aircraft C-17 carrying 30 tonnes of humanitarian
assistance departed for the Philippines on January 19 after the recent Super
Typhoon in the country.
12. BHARAT COMPLETES THIRD BAILEY BRIDGE IN SRI LANKA:
Bharat has completed another major infrastructure project in Sri Lanka under its
USD 450 million post-Cyclone Ditwah assistance package. The 120-foot Bailey
Bridge on the B-492 Highway was jointly inaugurated by Bharat’s Deputy High
Commissioner to Sri Lanka, Dr Satyanjal Pandey, and Nuwara Eliya MP Manjula
Suraweera Arachchi. The bridge linking Kandy and Ragala has been completed in
Sri Lanka’s Central Province. This is the third Bailey Bridge built by Bharatiya
Army engineers as part of Bharat’s recovery support.
The project reflects Bharat’s commitment to people-centric assistance in Sri
Lanka. New Delhi continues to combine emergency relief with long-term
reconstruction, underlining its neighbourhood-first approach and MAHASAGAR
vision. -GoTop
13. NEW BHARATIYA CONSULAR CENTRE OPENS IN SEATTLE: In
an official release said January 27, Bharatiya authorities have announced the
opening of a new Bharatiya Consular Application Centre in Seattle to improve
access to consular services for the Bharatiya diaspora in the Pacific Northwest.
14. INSV KAUNDINYA COMPLETES VOYAGE TO OMAN: Skippered
by Commander Vikas Sheoran, the 16-member crew of INSV 'Kaundinya' reached
Muscat as planned. After 18 days at sea, INSV 'Kaundinya' successfully completed
its historic voyage to reach Muscat, Oman, on January 14.
INSV Kaundinya is based on a 5th-century CE ship depicted in the paintings of
Ajanta Caves. The vessel's construction was undertaken using a traditional
method of stitching by a team of skilled artisans from Kerala, led by master
shipwright Babu Sankaran. Over several months, the team painstakingly stitched
wooden planks on the ship's hull using coir rope, coconut fibre and natural
resin.
Named after Kaundinya, the legendary first-century Bharatiya mariner who sailed
across the Indian Ocean to the Mekong Delta, the ship serves as a tangible
symbol of Bharat's long-standing traditions of maritime exploration, trade, and
cultural exchange. -GoTop
15. FOOD FOR THOUGHT: True happiness is not dependent
on other people, possessions, or outcomes, but arises from self-realization,
detachment, and inner discipline. — Bhagwan Mahavir. -GoTop
JAI SHRI RAM
---
CRISIS OF CONTINUITY: HINDU AMERICA NEEDS INSTITUTIONS OF LEARNING NOT JUST
TEMPLES
Dr. Jai G. Bansal
On a typical weekend in many
American cities, the Hindu presence is easy to see. Newly built temples rise in
suburban landscapes. Diwali celebrations fill convention centers and public
squares. Yoga studios, Sanskrit terms, and Hindu symbols circulate comfortably
in mainstream culture. By outward measures, Hindu identity in the United States
appears visible, confident, and socially secure.
Yet this visibility obscures a structural shift that should give us serious
pause.
Across many Hindu households, intergenerational transmission is thinning.
Children often grow up knowing that they are Hindu, but with limited
understanding of what that identity entails as a way of life. Temple attendance
is common, but explanatory depth is not. Festivals are celebrated but rarely
shape the rhythm of the year. Rituals are performed, yet their meanings remain
opaque. Identity is present but lightly held.
Many young adults continue to identify as Hindu in a cultural or ancestral
sense, but struggle to articulate beliefs, practices, or ethical frameworks in
their own terms. This is not always experienced as loss. Professional success,
social integration, and public affirmation create little immediate pressure to
notice what is thinning. Prosperity can obscure erosion, allowing continuity to
appear intact long after its foundations have weakened.
The challenge, then, is not external hostility or social exclusion. It is
continuity under minority conditions. When a tradition is visible without being
formative, celebrated without being taught, and affirmed without being
structured, erosion proceeds quietly, often unnoticed.
Ambient Dharma Meets Minority Reality
The weakening of transmission did not begin with indifference or a conscious
rejection of tradition. It emerged from the interaction of inherited habits and
new conditions. Hindu families who migrated to the US were disproportionately
drawn from educated, urban, and professionally mobile backgrounds. Academic
credentials and economic stability enabled rapid integration, but they also
reduced reliance on collective institutions that had once carried civilizational
continuity.
Many parents brought with them an upbringing shaped in urban India after the 1960s, where dharma functioned less as something explicitly taught and more as an ambient presence. Religious meaning was absorbed through participation rather than instruction. The calendar followed Hindu rhythms. Festivals, fasting days, and life-cycle rituals structured the year. Language, food habits, and social customs carried familiar references. Children learned by living inside a civilizational environment that quietly reinforced belief and practice.
In that context, formal teaching
was often unnecessary. Even when rituals were not explained in detail or texts
studied systematically, the surrounding society filled the gaps. Public life
echoed religious vocabulary. Social expectations reinforced shared norms. Dharma
appeared self-sustaining.
In the US, however, this model is often reproduced without adjustment, despite
fundamentally different conditions. The broader environment offers little
reinforcement. Schools, peers, media, and public institutions reflect a
different civilizational framework. Yet household practices frequently remain
informal and episodic. Prayer is irregular. Engagement with texts is limited.
Civilizational history is discussed, if at all, in fragments. Hindu culture
surfaces mainly during festivals or family ceremonies rather than shaping daily
routines or moral reference points.
Economic success makes this drift easy to overlook. Children perform well
academically, navigate social spaces with ease, and move confidently through
American institutions. There is little immediate cost to cultural thinning.
Continuity is assumed rather than cultivated.
Over time, familiarity replaces understanding. Children recognize symbols and
participate in rituals, but struggle to explain meaning or significance. Dharma
remains visible but peripheral. What once worked in a civilizational majority
setting begins to falter quietly in a minority one.
Interfaith Homes and Western Education
As foundational grounding weakens, other forces tend to accelerate the drift.
Two of the most significant are the structure of interfaith households and the
nature of the American education system. Neither operates through hostility or
exclusion. Both work through default settings in a society where minority
traditions require deliberate effort to sustain themselves.
Interfaith marriage has become
increasingly common among Hindu Americans, particularly among the US-born and
highly educated. Most such marriages are entered with goodwill and a sincere
desire to honor both backgrounds. Children are often raised with language that
emphasizes balance and openness: both traditions matter, both belong to the
family story, and identity choices can be made later.
Yet households require coherence to function. Daily routines, school calendars,
moral language, and social reference points tend to follow a single framework.
In the US, that framework remains shaped by Christian-derived norms, even when
families describe themselves as secular. Without intentional structure, the
minority tradition recedes, appearing mainly during festivals or moments of
cultural display. This is rarely deliberate. It reflects how default
environments operate.
Education reinforces this imbalance. At the K–12 level, Hindu civilization is
often introduced through a narrow focus on caste, hierarchy, and social
inequality, treated as defining features rather than historically contingent
categories shaped by colonial interpretation. Philosophical diversity, ethical
reasoning, and metaphysical inquiry receive limited attention, while Hindu
contributions to mathematics, astronomy, linguistics, and logic are frequently
absorbed into the Western canon without attribution.
At the university level, critique increasingly displaces comprehension. Hindu
traditions are examined primarily through frameworks of power and identity
politics. Terms such as “Hindutva” circulate as charged categories, often
detached from civilizational context. Students with strong grounding can
navigate these narratives critically. Those whose inheritance is already thin
often cannot.
In such cases, external narratives fill the space left by weakened transmission.
Distance replaces curiosity, and critique becomes a substitute for
understanding. None of this requires hostility to be effective.
Where Institutions Fall Short
In principle, institutions exist to stabilize what households cannot sustain on
their own. In practice, many Hindu institutions reflect and reinforce the same
patterns that weaken transmission at home. Temples remain central to community
life, but they are rarely structured as institutions of sustained formation.
Programming emphasizes celebration and devotion over education. Festivals fill
calendars and cultural events draw crowds, while structured curricula, trained
educators, and long-term pedagogical planning remain limited. Children learn how
to attend, but not how to understand or explain what they are doing.
This institutional thinness mirrors household-level ambiguity. In many families,
a familiar framing prevails: all religions are essentially the same, differences
need not be emphasized, and spirituality matters more than form. Offered in good
faith, this language signals tolerance and avoids discomfort. Yet it leaves
children unclear about what their own dharmic inheritance actually consists of.
Institutions rarely correct this ambiguity. More often, they normalize it.
This outcome is not inevitable. The experience of the BAPS shows what changes
when institutions take transmission seriously. In BAPS communities across the
United States, temples function as integrated educational ecosystems. Children
move through age-specific programs combining scriptural study, ritual practice,
ethical discipline, and seva. Attendance is regular, expectations are clear, and
learning is sequential. Youth are entrusted early with responsibility, including
teaching younger students. Difference is explained calmly and confidently,
without hostility and without dilution.
This seriousness does not isolate
participants from wider society. BAPS youth are widely represented among
accomplished professionals in medicine, engineering, science, law, and business.
Continuity and modern achievement reinforce each other.
Elsewhere, philanthropy entrenches the opposite pattern. Hindu Americans have
the resources to build durable educational institutions, yet significant giving
flows toward elite Western universities and cultural organizations that signal
social arrival. Hindu educational infrastructure remains fragmented and
volunteer-dependent. This reflects not a lack of capacity, but a misalignment of
priorities.
The Cost of Inaction
The consequences of doing nothing are no longer abstract. As the first
generation of immigrants passes, lived memory and embodied knowledge disappear
with them. Over one or two generations, Hindu identity may persist in name and
visibility while hollowing out as a lived framework. Temples may remain active
and festivals well attended, yet dharma no longer shapes everyday conduct or
moral reasoning.
This erosion is cumulative and difficult to reverse. Once transmission weakens
beyond a certain threshold, continuity cannot be restored through symbolism or
occasional engagement. Communities that delay investment in formation lose the
capacity to explain themselves, renew themselves, or prepare the next generation
to engage the world with clarity. Identity survives, but coherence does not.
The priorities that follow are
collective. Continuity under minority conditions requires treating dharmic
education as foundational, building institutions designed for long-term
formation, and aligning philanthropic resources with civilizational needs rather
than external prestige. Goodwill and tolerance remain important, but they cannot
substitute for structure.
What is at stake is not whether Hindu identity remains visible, but whether it
remains lived – capable of shaping meaning, responsibility, and moral
imagination rather than surviving only as memory or display. (Bansal is Vice
President of Education at the Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America and a member of
its Governing Council and Executive Board. He has been a Chief Scientific
Officer at a petrochemical firm and advisor to the US Department of Energy.)
https://indiawest.com/crisis-of-continuity-hindu-america-needs-institutions-of-learning-not-just-temples/ -GoTop
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