“Controversy over an India Day Parade float is a slur on Hindu pride”, Religion News, August 21, 2024:
“The India Day Parade marched down Manhattan’s Madison Avenue last week, as it has every August for more than four decades, celebrating India’s independence from British colonial rule in 1947. Thousands of New Yorkers lined the parade route adorned in orange, green, and white, the colors of the Indian flag, munching on samosas and loudly cheering floats representing a mosaic of Indian culture gliding by.
One float, however, a 9-foot-by-6-foot model of the newly opened temple to Ram in Ayodhya, India, became the center of controversy. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, among other Muslim advocacy groups, signed a letter asking that the float’s sponsors, two American Hindu temples and a Hindu American cultural nonprofit, be investigated by the Department of Justice and the FBI.
As anyone who has followed the long saga of Ayodhya’s Shri Ram Janmabhoomi Tirth (Rama birthplace temple) knows, the temple has been mired in contested narratives about the history of its site. The temple to Lord Rama, one of the Hindu Dharma tradition’s most revered deities, is situated in the northern Indian city where, according to the Hindu sacred text the Ramayana, Rama’s life began……”
Read the full article at Religionnews.com
