Voice of India has posted Prabhu Jambavan Das's excellent article on Marxism:

Although possessing the noble-minded purpose of promoting Egalitarianism, the economic system of Communism would fail to bring about equality among men in any nation in which it was implemented. The reason for this shortcoming on the part of Communism is due to its inability to abolish greed from the hearts of men. The only way by which greed can be eradicated is by providing men with an inner sense of fulfillment. This can be achieved only when men of all social classes recognize the true proprietor of all resources-God-and serve His interests.

On January 14, the Samprajña Institute will attend an online meeting in which Joshua DuBois, Excecutive Director of the White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, will speak to the Hindu Community.

For this event, the Samprajña Institute has submitted two questions that we hope Rev. DuBois will have the opportunity to address at the meeting:

• What is the Obama Administration's position on social conflicts in India centered on religious conversions?
• What role do you see the Hindu community in America playing in the Global War on Terror?

Please write to us if you have any particular views on these questions that we could express if they are discussed.

Dear Friends and Supporters, Namaste and Hare Krishna.

All of us at the Samprajña Institute wish you and your family a happy and auspicious Diwali. Please read and enjoy the Samprajña Institute’s latest newsletter, as published below.

Daso ‘smi,

Krishna Kirti Das
President

This article and accompanying slide presentation is from a presentation delivered at the Hindu Mandir Executives Conference, 2009, held in Linthicum, Maryland, USA. The presentation describes the issue of the Hindu-American community's high out-of-group marriage rate, explores the impact two different conceptions of religion ("universalist" and "multiculturalist") has on marriage, and explores what these different approaches imply for future generations of Hindu-Americans.

A summary of the article "The Future of Christian-Hindu Conflict" has been published at Voice of India, the historic think tank founded by Sita Ram Goel. The original article can be found here.

Namaskara and Jaya Shri Krishna,

"The Future of Christian-Hindu Conflict: The Theology of Conversion" is a just-published working paper posted at http://samprajna.org/sites/default/files/christian-hindu-conflict.pdf There are three other parts are to follow. The abstract is printed below.

Yours faithfully, Krishna Kirti Das

ABSTRACT - The Future of Christian-Hindu Conflict

Regarding the historic interfaith dialog between Christians and Hindus in India, Mumbai, Swami Chidananda Saraswati is quoted as saying, “Apni apni bhakti, parantu sabse badhkar rashtra bhakti.” (Let us love and follow our respective faiths, but keep love of the nation above all.) - (Indian Express). What is interesting about this remark is the emphasis it places on matters of this world rather than matters of the next world, or of moksha.

This article by Amit Raj Dhawan highlights misrepresentations of Hinduism as found in the Encyclopedia Britannica. His article is posted here with his permission in the accompaning attached PDF file.

Dear Friends,

Namaskara and Hare Krishna.

This is the debut of the Samprajña Institute’s first newsletter. In this issue, we report some of the important milestones passed in the Institute’s first year. Just a few days ago, the Samprajña Institute has made its first major press release, which was very successful in reporting our review and analysis of a book that has been very important to the Hindu community in the U.S. The details of our press release are reported below.

In September of this year, the U.S. Internal Revenue Service granted the Samprajña Institute its 501(c)(3) non-profit tax-exempt status. Special thanks and appreciation is given to one of the Samprajña Institute’s supporters, and coming projects and our business model is also described.

Getting to where we are now has been hard but enjoyable, and we hope to share with you our future successes throughout the coming years.

With warm regards,

Krishna Kirti Das
President
The Samprajña Institute

The Samprajña Institute has just published a review of the book Invading the Sacred, which documents a decade-long controversy surrounding the misrepresentation of Hinduism by scholars connected with the American Academy of Religions (AAR) and its branch known as Religions in South Asia (RISA). The Samprajña Institute review, titled “Understanding and Misunderstanding Hindu Tradition,” explains why this book signals a new intellectual movement within Hinduism and some of the challenges this new movement will likely face.

• Invading the Sacred is important because it signals a new intellectual movement that is effectively creating a new Hindu self-identity. “Expatriate Hindus are a minority in their host countries,” says Samprajña Institute President, Krishna Kirti Das, “so they cannot afford to ignore the negative things said about them in the halls of higher education. Furthermore, because they are trying to preserve their identities as Hindus outside of India, doing so necessarily implies understanding what it means to be ‘Hindu’ separate from Indian nationalism and politics. Our review explores the implications of this new search for self-identity. If this new intellectual movement carries over to India, it could eventually change Indian politics and culture in significant ways.”
• The book, Invading the Sacred (editors: Krishnan Ramaswamy, Antonio de Nicolas, and Aditi Banerjee; published by Rupa & Co, India; 545 pages), describes how a number of American scholars have portrayed Hinduism in a plainly derogatory way, a way that few practicing Hindus could ever have imagined possible. Examples as found in the book describe how American scholars have
  • Called the Bhagavad Gita “a dishonest book,”
  • Declared Ganesa’s trunk as a “limp phallus,”
  • Described Devi as the “mother with a penis,”
  • Portrayed Shiva as “a notorious womanizer” who incites violence in India.
• The book further documents how the Hindu community in America responded to these negative characterizations as well as how American academics and the media reacted to the American Hindu community’s dissent.

The Samprajña Institute’s “A Review of Invading the Sacred: Understanding and Misunderstanding Hindu Tradition” is available free of charge to the public in both English and Hindi at http://publications.samprajna.org

For further information, please visit the Samprajña Institute’s website at http://samprajna.org or email press@samprajna.org with the subject heading “Invading the Sacred Review.”