So this lady goes to a dollar store and buys what she thinks is gift wrapping paper. Comes home and horrors! sees that the red and gold paper is covered with “swastikas”.The local press gets involved and the result is this.

(Image: from wesh.com)
Its pretty obvious that this was some cheap wrapping paper made in India or China and targeted to the Diwali gift market. Post -Diwali, the paper finds its way to the dollar store and creates a sensation. Not helping the situation is the Rabbi quoted in the article:
But …

For the record I’m not for any kind of religious celebrations sponsored by tax payer dollars, but since that appears to be unavoidable I might as well blog about it. (tip Krupali via Über Desi on Twitter)
The Obama White House deserves a lot of credit for sharing their videos on the world wide interwebs via the U-tubes. Penn Masala makes an appearance, and I’m a big fan of them, but their choice of song appears to not jive with the occasion. Barack Obama flanked by a sea of South …

Rediff reports:
Obama’s Diwali celebration upsets Indian-American community.
Here’s the back story – ex-president Bush started the practice of hosting a Diwali event since 2003, courtesy request of the Indian-American community and it’s been a practice ever since. Some of the events have been full fledged and upto two hours long, while some, like last year’s,  have been less flashy.
While the article about the first Obama-era Diwali, quoted above, points out reasons why Indian Americans are upset (mostly elderly immigrant Indians), the rest of the article quotes two second generation desis – …

One most important thing that is inherently Indian, is the respect given to Gurus in India. The first question as a graduate student the first week in Amrika was do I stand up when the professor walks in? I mean, logically I would follow what the rest of the class does, assuming there were non-Indians in the class . And from what I understand this is not the normal practice in American schools. But as a kid growing up (and fully grown up),  students in schools were expected to …

Lisa Miller’s Newsweek article talks about a significant change in America’s religious demographic – in terms of how people view the concept of God, self, eternity, etc. [Newsweek] (tip Sidhu via email)
The most traditional, conservative Christians ………….. learn in Sunday school that their religion is true, and others are false. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.”
Americans are no longer buying it. According to a 2008 Pew Forum survey, 65 percent of us believe that …

The latest tempest-in-a-teapot appears to over Burger King putting the picture of Hindu goddess Laxmi on a burger wrapper with the slogan (translated from Spanish) – ‘The Sacred Snack’. (Karthik+Prathima+Sidhu+Runa via email) [TOI]
Publicity hound, Rajan Zed, of course, could not stay away from the action. [Scoop]
Burger King has since withdrawn the ad with an apology. From my point of view, growing up in a Hindu household, I could see how something like this may draw a few “aiyo”s from some elderly family members. But then again they would never actively …

India, home to over 150 million Muslims was conspicuously absent from Obama’s Cairo speech. Oversight or snub?

Earlier we blogged about the fatal shooting of a Sikh preacher in Vienna, Austria and before that about Walmart opening it’s first store in India. Ironically, we get to talk about both in this story in a cause-effect situation. [WSJ]
India deployed paramilitary troops to the northern state of Punjab Monday to quell riots in several cities sparked by the fatal shooting of a preacher at a Sikh temple in Vienna Sunday.
The violence delayed the scheduled opening Tuesday of Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s first Indian store, in Amritsar.
BBC has on the root …

Tom Friedman, he of “The World is Flat” fame, admonishes the people and religious leaders of Pakistan for the lack of a stronger response to the Mumbai attacks and I largely agree with his view point. [NYT]
If the Muslim leaders in Pakistan could launch large scale rallies to protest cartoons in a Danish newspaper, they could surely protest the mass murders of innocent civilians in neighboring India, reasons Friedman.
In one powerful sentence, Friedman drives home the point of what would happen had the situation been reversed.
After all, if 10 young …

Happy 10th birthday, stem cell research!
Stem-cells hit the headlines almost exactly 10 years ago. (link)
The first report that the human cells had been isolated and grown by scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison appeared in the journal Science, triggering a decade of fierce debate and great hope.
In 2001, President Bush passed an executive order banning executive order banning federal research funding for new human embryonic stem cell lines and effectively limiting funding to research on the 11-odd known lines at that point. Per today’s report, this is one …

In case you missed it, Republican Colin Powell, a retired four-star general and former Secretary of State endorsed “that one“. [Goog]
I believe his exact words were:
“I think we need a transformational figure. I think we need a president who is a generational change and that’s why I’m supporting Barack Obama, not out of any lack of respect or admiration for Sen. John McCain.”
Now, given Powell’s stature and the respect he garners on either side of the aisle and among independents and moderates, this endorsement is apparently a big deal to …

Its a truth universally known that guys will say all kinds of things to impress gals. When I was a teenager , a favorite line ( usually after tossing down a couple of drinks ) was “Do you know that if you listen to a tape of “Stairway to Heaven” backwards you will hear ” I love thee Satan”. And I’ve heard it myself !” ( Those days, kids, we listened to tape not CDs!) To this day, I meet people who swear that there are Satanic messages …

Now if you are reading this, it’s proof enough, the world hasn’t ended yet (I’m not talking about married folks, for you, it has ).
Nataraj image at the CERN centreSource: about.com
One of the largest science experiments in recent times, recreation of the Big Bang, the beginning of this world as we know it (and something the creationists from all religions won’t agree with). The Large Hadron Collider experiment, taking place near the French-Swiss border in a 27 kilometer long tunnel underground (link) has been the subject of intense …

Every desi knows the drill, be it at a temple or a church. Incense has always been a big part of our tradition. However a new study claims that prolonged exposure to incense could lead to cancer.
Image from abrinsky
"Given that our results are backed by numerous experimental studies showing that incense is a powerful producer of particulate matter and that incense smoke contains carcinogenic substances, I believe incense should be used with caution," said study author Dr. Jeppe Friborg, of the department of epidemiology research at Statens Serum …

Our regular readers know that we at Über Desi have been following with interest the controversy over the recent Mike Myers’ debacle “The Love Guru”. (See all previous posts here :1,2,3,4,5 and more).Its no secret which side of the controversy I stand on : I believe that the protests by Hindus were misguided and stated so (1,2).
The dust has somewhat settled and the movie made a paltry $ 14 million on its opening weekend (Note to Mike Myers:You don’t want to mess around with a religion that has …

Last year, Outlook India published a list of ‘villains’ that Über Desi blogged about here, and what struck me was an entry into the list that is probably the most relevant today, the faceless terrorist. This entry made it into a list in a respected Indian journal. Would you ever see such an entry in a magazine of international repute like say, Time? I would say, probably never.
We do not have a specific individual in a specific group to point to, like the world sees in Bin Laden, the …

After calling for Hindu suicide bombers, Thackeray’s people now want to anoint the Taj Mahal a Hindu temple. [TOI]
Taj Mahal is really Tejo Mahal per Shiv Senaimg: via NYT
In an attempt to reclaim the Taj Mahal as a Hindu temple, a few Sainiks entered the Taj premises disguised as tourists and started a ritual or parikrama with folded hands. When asked to stop by the authorities, they got into a scuffle which ended with them being shipped to the nearest police station.
There is no mention if the Sena activists, a.k.a …

* Murti = idol in Hindi
Them Hindoos currently are nowhere close to being a dominant force when it comes to electorate size in the US [UD]. But that doesn’t stop from trying to influence the outcome of the November elections. Back in April, when Hillary Clinton won Pennsylvania, she was gifted a Ganesh murti [UD]. Unfortunately, even Lord Ganesh couldn’t save Hillary Clinton’s campaign. We @ Über Desi occasionally dabble in exotic arts, but matters involving the supernatural are beyond even our jurisdiction. So we were unable to explain how …

(scroll to the bottom for an update)
The makers of the new Mike Myers homage to juvenile toilet humor, have managed to garner support from an unlikely source. The same source that the movie parodies, well sort of.
The North American Chapter of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON) has just urged Hindus protesting Guru Pitka’s on-screen antics to lighten up and be enlightened. And pleasantly surprised as we are at UberDesi, all we are going say about it is “asphinctersayswhat”.
Say what? Exactly!
Perhaps the first Hindu organisation to comment on the …

The Pundit of Pizazz, Stephen G. Colbert, helps Barack Obama find a new religion by exploring Hinduism with Hindu Temple Society of North America President Uma Mysorekar and presents some Hin-do’s and Hin-don’ts.