[Buddha-l] Dallas Conference Explores Key Hindu Issues

[curt]

 >> DALLAS, TEXAS, October 14, 2007: What happens when 200 men and 
women, all sharing a profound love of Hindu dharma, meet for three days 
in East Texas, site of John Kennedy's assassination deep in the Bible 
Belt? The fifth annual Human Empowerment Conference (HEC) concluded here 
today. The 200 spiritual and community leaders, scholars, academicians 
and activists attended the intense, three-day conclave, examining some 
of the most pressing issues facing the Hindu community today. Sponsored 
by the Sanatana Dharma Foundation of Dallas, (click here), the 
conference's name comes from the Vedic dictate, Krunvanto Vishwam Aryam, 
"Ennoble all humanity." <<

full article here: http://www.hinduismtoday.com/hpi/2007/10/17.shtml

Further on the article touches on how Western academics approach Hinduism:

 >> The final talk of the evening was "Hinduphobia" by Rajiv Malhotra. 
His wide-ranging and provocative discourse began with the thesis that 
the California sixth grade social studies textbooks deliberately hide 
the positive aspects of Hinduism, such as yoga, vegetarianism, music, 
etc., in order to "demonize the culture." The whole of South Asian 
studies today in the West, he stated, were divisive, emphasizing, and in 
some cases, creating, division between Dalits and brahmins, Dravidians 
and Aryans, women and men, minorities and Hindus. "India's problems are 
not seen as historical, or economic, but the result of a flawed culture, 
a flawed DNA." He explained how his analysis found three specialties in 
Hinduism: caste, minorities and women, all of them negative. He 
complained about the tendency toward deconstruction by scholars who 
claim "India is not even a nation state at all." Those same scholars 
turn this same strategy against Hinduism by claiming it is a product of 
19th century British scholars and not a religion at all. "India is the 
only major civilization whose study has been controlled from the 
outside," he lamented, and compared the situation to that of China, 
whose government has sponsored hundreds of Confucian institutions which 
are the main force in scholastic investigation of China. <<

Curt Steinmetz