The Venerable Wonhaeng, leader of South Koreas Buddhist Jogye Order, visited Pakistan for a week. The founder of Korean Buddhism came from what is now Pakistan. The Jogye Orders chief abbot met Pakistans president and prime minister in Islamabad. Peaceful coexistence between religions in Pakistan is possible.

Seoul (AsiaNews/Agencies) The Pakistani government has authorised the Jogye Order to build a Buddhist temple at a site that is historically connected to Buddhism. The leader of the order, the Venerable Wonhaeng, made the announcement during a visit to the South Asian country at the helm of a delegation of monks.

The abbot rarely travels and this one carries great symbolic value. His visit to Pakistan lasted from 16 to 24 November. Upon his return, he analysed the results of his visit, speaking about it following a religious ceremony in Seoul a few days ago.

I was deeply moved, he said, when I first stepped into Pakistan because it is the home country of the Ven Marananta, who brought Buddhism to Korea about 1,600 years ago.

During his stay, the abbot met privately with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan followed by another tte--tte with President Arif Alvi.

Khan himself said that he authorised the construction of a temple linked to the Order in one the sites most closely associated with Buddhism.

For his part, the Venerable said: I was impressed by the Pakistani government's ceaseless efforts to preserve historic sites having a trace of Buddhism.

Likewise, President Alvi stressed that religious groups can live peacefully in Pakistan. He went on to say that he hopes to see many South Korean Buddhists visit his country.

At present, Pakistani Buddhists number 1,500 out of a population of 197 million people. South Korea has a population of 52 million citizens with more than 20 million Buddhists (mostly members of the Jogye Order), but their numbers are down as there is no official registration for membership in the group. Christians are 26 per cent of the population, over 11 per cent Catholic.

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SOUTH KOREA PAKISTAN A Buddhist temple to boost the friendship between S Korea and Pakistan - AsiaNews

Written by Badri Narayan | Updated: December 7, 2019 9:15:47 am Dr. Ambedkar, Founder and Chairman, the Peples Education Society; in his office at Siddharth College, Anand Bhawan, Fort, Mumbai in 1946.

B R Ambedkar once said, I was born a Hindu but I will not die as a Hindu. Hence, before his death, he chose Buddhism. Inspired by him, a section of Dalits also converted to Buddhism. So soon after his Mahaparinirvan Divas, December 6, we need to ask: What is the relationship between the ideals and lived reality of Dalit life in the context of growing Hindutva?

There is a trend among members of a section of newly-educated Dalits in north India of adopting Buddhism. But during field work in the villages of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, we observed that their conversion, in terms of religious memories from Hinduism to Buddhism, is not yet complete: Some, for instance, are unable to stop themselves from celebrating Hindu festivals and worshipping Hindu deities, alongside worshipping Buddha and Ambedkar.

In UP, one may find Ambedkar statues in and around the Dalit bastis of many villages. Ambedkar is a symbolic inspiration for Dalits and the marginalised. This kind of symbolism provides them social confidence. In some of these bastis, the youth offer their prayers to Ambedkar statues after achieving any success in life or on special occasions. They find a kind of divinity in the symbol of Ambedkar. The Hindu Dalits, Dalit followers of Kabir and Ravidas, worship Ambedkar alongside their panthic deities and gurus: As we know, most Dalits in North India are followers of Hinduism, the Kabir panth and Ravidas panth. Despite criticism of the caste system, these sects comfortably interact and work within various Hindu religious public spheres.

Ambedkar remained strongly critical of the Hindu caste system. However, the Hindutva movement is trying to reconfigure Ambedkar as a symbol that is respectable for everyone by downplaying his criticism of the caste system. They want to extricate the criticism of the Hindu caste system from the version of Ambedkar they are trying to propagate. If all Hindus across castes start respecting Ambedkar, then his criticism of Hinduism maybe sidelined from the memory of Dalits and subaltern communities.

Ambedkar is also projected as the brand ambassador of the samrasta campaign run by the Hindutva parivar. One may find Ambedkar calendars and portraits at many RSS offices and public programmes. The BJP has taken various steps to showcase its concern, and respect, for Ambedkars memories and memorials: More than what the Congress did when it held office.

Although Kabir panthis and Ravidasis presented an alternative religious space and identity, they have a close relationship with Hindu religious memories due to their roots in the Bhakti movement. The aspiration to assert themselves as Hindu is growing among a section of subaltern communities. In villages near Allahabad, Sonbhadra and Mirzapur, smaller Dalit castes like Nats and Mangata who had liminal religious identity till a few years ago are now worshipping Hindu deities.

These communities aspire for social dignity by appropriating mainstream religious identities. Hindutva forces understand these growing aspirations, and try to project themselves as a social-cultural group working for the welfare of all Hindus. They also assert themselves as political-cultural groups following the ideals of Ambedkar. It is not easy for the Hindutva parivar to appropriate the symbol of Ambedkar, but they are consistently producing narratives visual, cultural and political to create a selective remembrance, and forgetting of, the original image of Ambedkar.

The social memories created by the Hindu religion, and the Hindutva version of Ambedkars symbol, are creating a situation where the Hindutva parivar is easily accessible to a section of the larger Dalit community. It is interesting to observe that an emphasis on Hindu religion and values once a major criticism of the RSS by Dalits and subalterns is now providing fertile ground to the Hindutva parivar.

This article first appeared in the print edition on December 7, 2019 under the title Ambedkar without caste. The writer is professor, Govind Ballabh Pant Social Science Institute, Allahabad.

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Ambedkars legacy is being re-engineered to suit the Hindutva agenda - The Indian Express

In the seventh century, the Chinese Buddhist monk Xuanzang made an epic journey through the Gobi desert and over the Himalayas to the holy places of Buddhism in India. On the way, he noted to what extent the world he passed through was dominated by Indic ideas, languages and religions. People of distant places, with diverse customs, he wrote, generally designate India as the land they most admire.

The account that Xuanzang wrote of his journey, Buddhist Records of the Western World, makes it clear that the places he saw on his 17-year, 6,000-mile pilgrimage looked to India as the centre of world learning. In particular, its huge Buddhist universities, such as Nalanda and Vikramashila, with their tens of thousands of learned monks, were regarded with deepest reverence as though they were a sort of cross between Oxbridge, the Ivy League and the Alexandria Library.

For around 1,000 years, from c. 200 to 1200 AD, India was a confident exporter of its own civilisation in all its forms. At the same time, the rest of Asia was the willing and eager recipient of a startlingly comprehensive mass transfer of Indian soft power in culture, religion, art, music, technology, astronomy, mythology, language and literature. Just as Greece had radiated its philosophies, political ideas and architectural forms over an entire continent first to Aegean Turkey and Rome and then to the rest of Europe not by conquest but by sheer cultural sophistication, so at this period the sophistication of Indian civilisation and thought won devotees not just in south-east and central Asia but also, to some degree, in east Asia too.

Out of India came not just artists, sculptors, traders, astronomers and the occasional fleet of warships, but also missionaries of three rival Indic forms of religion:

Shaivite and Vaishnava Hinduism, and Buddhism. Sanskrit, the language of the gods in the world of men, was the lingua franca across the region, as is still clear from place names dotting the map all the way from Kandahar (Sanskrit: Gandhara) to Singapore (Sanskrit: Singhapura), and such fabled Indic monuments as Angkor Wat and Borobudur.

If the scale and breadth of this extraordinary cultural diffusion is not as well known as it should be, then that is partly due to a tendency to study the process as two separate disciplines, each the preserve of a different group of scholars. The many Buddhist monuments scattered around Afghanistan and the Taklamakan desert, through which Xuanzang passed, are usually viewed today as the first step in the story of the spread of Buddhism, or as a dogs-leg in the history of the Silk Road, a term only coined in the late 19th century to describe the trade routes linking China with the Mediterranean.

Conversely, the spread of Indian, and especially Hindu culture, literature and religion south-eastwards to Burma, Thailand, Sumatra, Vietnam, Laos, Indonesia, Java and the Malay peninsula tends to be studied as part of the story of the Sanskritisation of Indo-China. Separated from each other by different university and museum departments, one extraordinary civilisational story has come to be polarised into two very different historical narratives.

Indias golden age as the centre of the Indophilic Sanskrit cosmopolis lasted an entire millennium. From 1200 onwards, however, it was Indias fate to be drawn into a second transregional world. The first Islamic conquests of India happened in the 11th century, with the capture of Lahore in 1021. Persianised Turks, from what is now central Afghanistan, seized Delhi from its Hindu rulers in 1192. By 1323, they had established a sultanate as far south as Madurai, towards the tip of the peninsula, and other sultanates were founded all the way from Gujarat in the west to Bengal in the east.

Today, the 13th-century conquests of the Persianate Delhi sultans are usually perceived as having been made by Muslims, but medieval Sanskrit inscriptions dont identify Indias Central Asian invaders by that term. Instead, the newcomers are identified by linguistic and ethnic affiliation, most typically as Turushka Turks or as the lords of the horses, which suggests that they were not seen primarily in terms of their religious identity. And although the conquests were initially marked by carnage and by the mass destruction of Hindu and Buddhist temples and places of learning, India quickly transformed the new arrivals.

Within a few centuries, a hybrid Persianate, Indo-Islamic civilisation emerged out of the meeting of these two worlds. As Richard M. Eaton writes at the beginning of his remarkable new book India in the Persianate Age 10001765:

The story of the encounter between the Persian and Sanskrit worlds is both rich and complex. Much of Indias history between 1000 and 1800 can be understood in terms of this prolonged and multifaceted interaction.

For the next few hundred years, India was not just the centre of what remained of its own Sanskrit cosmopolis, but also part of a transregional Persianate world, dominated by Persian language and culture and bound together by a canon of texts that circulated through ever-widening networks across much of western Asia. As Eaton writes:

India would quickly grow to become a major centre in its own right for the production, and not just the reception, of Persianate culture. Over the course of the next 600 years, India not Iran would become the worlds principal centre of Persian dictionaries. The first major anthology of Persian poetry would be compiled not in Central Asia or the Iranian plateau, but in the southern Punjab By 1700, India was probably the worlds leading centre for the patronage of Persian literature and scholarship, with an estimated seven times more people literate in Persian than Iran.

By 1264, a bilingual inscription carved on a newly founded mosque in Veraval, near the great Hindu temple of Somnath in Gujarat, gives a picture of a town where two worlds were coming into intimate contact. The Persian text refers to the deity worshipped in the mosque as Allah, and describes the patron who raised it as the sultan of sea-men, the sun of Islam and the Muslims. By contrast, the Sanskrit text identifies the deity worshipped in the mosque as Visvanatha (lord of the universe) and Sunyarupa (one whose form is the void) and Visvarupa (having various forms), while the patron is described as dharma-bhandaya a supporter of dharma, the righteous cosmic order of justice and duty, as understood in classical Indian thought.

At the same time, in the eastern Gangetic plains, the earliest genre of Hindi literature the so-called premkhyans, or Sufi romances were being written in the Persian script. These

narrated the seekers mystical quest for union with God, but did so using characters who were ostensibly Hindu in name and cultural and religious practices, in a landscape saturated with Indian deities, mythology, flora and fauna.

Before long, in medieval Hindu texts from south India, the sultan of Delhi was being talked about as the incarnation of the god Vishnu.

This cultural mixing took place with ever greater thoroughness and complexity throughout the subcontinent over the next 600 years. Entire hybrid languages notably Deccani and Urdu emerged, mixing the Sanskrit-derived vernaculars of India with Persian, as well as Turkish and Arabic words. It was a process that went both ways. The great Hindu rajas of Vijayanagara described themselves as sultans among Hindu kings, and adopted Islamicate dress: Persian tunics of Chinese silks called qabas, and tall, brocaded, brimless Persian headgear called kulahs. At the same time, the Mughal Emperor Akbar adopted a vegetarian diet and shortened his hair in the manner of religious ascetics. He also abolished pilgrimage taxes on non-Muslim institutions and the jizya head tax on non-Muslims, banned the killing of cows and peacocks, and began giving generous land grants to Hindu temples.

In his court, Persian translations of the Mahabharata and Ramayana from Sanskrit were commissioned, just as elsewhere Persian romance narratives such as Nizamis Layli va Majnun and Jamis Yusuf va Zulakha were being translated into numerous Indian languages. By the 17th century, Akbars great grandson, the crown prince Dara Shikoh, had composed a singular study of Hinduism and Islam, The Mingling of Two Oceans, which stressed the affinities of the two faiths, and what he believed to be the Vedic origins of the Koran.

Under the Mughals, India grew to be an industrial powerhouse, overtaking China as the worlds leading exporter, notably of manufactured textiles. The global success of Mughal weavers attracted European traders, among them the East India Company. India is rich in silver, noted the English merchant William Hawkins in 1613, for all nations bring coyne and carry away commodities.

In the 19th century, following the expansion of the Company across India, English gradually replaced Persian, and south Asia was drawn into a third transnational world: the westernising Anglosphere. Mastering English now became the route to advancement, and Indians who wished to get ahead had to abandon, or at least sublimate, much of their own culture, both Sanskrit and Persian, becoming instead English-speaking brown sahibs, or what V.S. Naipaul called Mimic Men. Literacy in Persian has now been lost to most Indians. Richard Eatons brilliant book stands as an important monument to this almost forgotten world.

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As English spread over the subcontinent, India lost forever its rich Persianate literary heritage - Spectator.co.uk

The Rinzai school of Zen, in Japanese Buddhism, has an unusual tradition of higher thought. As astrophysicist David Darling explains in his book Zen Physics: The Science of Death, the Logic of Reincarnation, it puts the intellect to work on problems that have no logical solution. The point of such exercises, Darling writes, is to induce a kind of intellectual catastrophe, or a sudden jump which lifts the individual out of the domain of words and reason into a direct, non-mediated experience.

Its a kind of holy rite for the super-cerebral: problem-solving as religion.

Darlings account of the intellectual catastrophe in Buddhism appears toward the end of the video game The Witness, hidden on a tape recorder that only the eagle-eyed will find and play. It proves very illuminating. Its not exactly a mission statement, Jonathan Blow, the games reclusive, ridiculously brilliant creator told me several years ago, when I spoke with him for a profile. But it is an analogy. We can do some very interesting things if we put down language as a crutch for communication. Thats the experiment of this game: just dont use language at all. I wanted to see what kinds of knowledge and experience we could build up without it.

Released in 2016, The Witness is a puzzle game. Rather its the puzzle game. By the standards of scale and complexity, it seems pretty much definitive, an unimprovable exemplar of the form. The Witness is set on a large, uninhabited island furnished, maybe by the hand of God, with an enormous number of gridded, chessboard-sized puzzles, elaborately wired and fixed to various doors, walls, fences and trees. Each puzzle has the same objective: to maneuver a slim line from one end of the board to the other. The obstacles introduced over the course of the game to impede that objective, however, are wildly frustrating and utterly ingenious a catalogue of impediments involving sound, light, and colour thatll challenge, and ultimately blow, your mind. There are more than 600 puzzles arranged across the island. It could take a hundred hours or more to solve them all.

The hours I spent immersed in The Witness were some of the most taxing and arduous of my adult life. There are no hints or tips. There are no arrows to guide you, manuals to consult or winning strategies of which to be apprised. There isnt the softest whisper of instruction or council. There is simply your mind and the puzzle direct, non-mediated experience. Sit in front of one hopeless problem for an evening, head aching terribly, as in mounting desperation you attempt to fruitlessly reverse-engineer your way back to an answer you are evidently missing: you will swear with sincere certainty that the game is broken and that no solution insists. But stick with it long enough and the solutions will occur to you. The sensation when they do is indescribable.

Triple-A video games have a tendency toward childishness, broadly speaking. They are like blockbuster movies: entertaining, but superficial. The greatness of The Witness, meanwhile, is less a matter of difficult than seriousness intellectual and philosophical, it is a work of serious thought.

When I sit down to try to make a game, Blow has said, its not that different from what a seriously novelist tries to do. Im seriously wrangling with an idea that Im trying to express in a particular form. What Blow expressed with The Witness is something akin to the intellectual catastrophe of the Japanese Buddhists, forcing with its maddening puzzles the individual out of the domain of words. Its aggravating and beautiful, and there hasnt been anything like it in gaming before or since.

The 10 best video games of the decade:

10. Her Story 9. The Stanley Parable 8. L.A. Noire 7. Undertale 6. Bloodborne 5. Life is Strange 4. Portal 2 3. Cuphead 2. Red Dead Redemption 2 1. The Witness

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Nothing else compares to the greatest video game of the decade - National Post

My Hero Academiaaka Boku No Hero Academiahas been a massive hit with the fans. It is an example of a classic shonen series and thus far it has entertained with its likable characters, great artwork and intriguing story arcs. One of the most fascinating story arcs in the show is the 'Shie Hassaikai' arc which literally translates to the 'Eight Precepts of Death'.

In order to get Season 4 started, fans need to know who the villain Kai Chisaki of the 'Eight Precepts of Death' and his teammates are. For starters, he heads the Shie Hassaikai Yakuza crime family. He has been catapulted as the biggest antagonist of Season 4.

Here are the top ten facts about Shie Hassaikai.

RELATED:My Hero Academia: 10 Things You Didn't Know About Overhaul

Shie Hassaikai is the branch of Yakuza in My Hero Academiaworld. They are the chief antagonists of the Internships Arc. The Shie Hassaikai consists of eight members who are lead byKai Chisaki, villain name 'Overhaul'. They are the main antagonists of Season 4 of My Hero Academia. After their head became bedridden, Overhaul stepped into his shoes and took control of the Shie Hassaikai.

The Shie Hassaikai aren't the only but the remnants of the Yakuza or Japanese mafia. Along with numerous fractions, they used to control the underworld of Japan. As the hero society rose, Yakuza's power was nullified. They were rendered helpless in wake of Heroes such as All Might. Hence their ideology is committing themselves to the doom of the Hero Society.Yakuza follows a strict code of conduct for the order of business.

The 'Eight Precepts' is a direct reference to Buddhism and its eight founding principles. The Eight guidelines laid down in Buddhism are meant to be strictly followed by Buddhists throughout their lifespan. Lord Buddha prescribed an Eight-fold path for ethical living.

RELATED: My Hero Academia: 5 Times Deku Deserved To Be The Next Symbol Of Peace (& 5 Times He Didn't)

However, in the Shie Hassaikai arc, the members constantly disobey these eight precepts. Shie Hassaikai bases itself on the corruption of Buddhism, more importantly, these eight precepts.

Due to the fall of the Yakuza order, the Shie Hassaikai possesses limited to scant resources. Hence they are known to be a small gang of criminals. As a result, Overhaul, the leader has a pretty lenient recruitment process. He takes in his wing anyone and everyone willing to serve him. This includes thugs and scums with no impressive records, therefore, most of Shie Hassaikai consists of unimpressive thugs.

Not much is known about the Boss, other than the fact that he ran Shie Hassaikai prior to Kai Chisaki. He took Kai under his wing and raised him to be a fierce Shie Hassaikai leader. The Boss firmly believed in Yakuza's strict code of ethics, such as their chivalry. According to him, this is what distinguished Shie Hassaikai from other thugs and villains. He tried to form a level playing field, a way in which villains could survive in the current world. However, Kai Chisaki chose to absolute disobey the Boss in this regard.

Before being inducted into the Shie Hassaikai family, he was living on the streets. As the Crime family took him under his wing, he slowly blossomed into a ruthless villain. Kai is committed to bringing back the lost glory of the Shie Hassaikai family.

RELATED: My Hero Academia: The 10 Best Melee Student and Heroes, Ranked

Along with that, his other obsessions and commitments are to return the world to the way it was before the Quirk phenomenon.

Hari Kurono is the next to Chisaki. He is his assistant and his Quirk 'Chronostasis'. His hair is always hidden under his mask. If Hari stays put, his hair extends, pierces, and slows down time for his enemy.

The General manager is Joi Irinaka who is codenamed 'Mimic'. He's deeply committed to gaining control of society and make Yakuza the single greatest power. His Quirk is mimic. It lets him warp himself into objects and control them. His tiny size, however, is a constant detriment.

The squad consists of members of the 'Eight Precepts of Death' called the Eight Expendables. Each of these is madly devoted to Kai Chisaki. The first one is Shin Nemoto who possesses the Quirk of 'Confession' which lets people confess things to him. After him comes Rikiya Katsukame, a muscular man who possesses the 'Vitality Stealing' Quirk. Rikiya can steal the stamina of literally anyone by touching them.

Deidoro Sakaki with the Quirk 'Sloshed' causes people to trip and lose their balance. Toya Setsuno, is the next member, part of a three-member team within the Expendables. His Quirk is 'Larceny' that lets him teleport things from people into his hand.

Yu Hojo possesses the Quirk 'Crystallization'. He can protrude crystals from his body that can be used in any physical combat. Soramitsu Tabe follows next, who possesses the Quirk 'Food'. It means that he can eat anything, from any indigestible material to his enemy!

Kendo Rappais next, who possesses the Quirk 'Strongarm', that gives his shoulders extreme agility. As a result, Kendo is an ace punching man. He is followed by Hekiji Tengai who possesses the Quirk 'Barrier', and his mind can create a strong line of defense barrier with this Quirk.

The Quirk is a superhuman ability that a being can possess. Starting with a newborn in the city of Qingqing, the phenomenon spread far and wide. Each individual possesses a specific ability, so to say, Quirk.

Not only does Kai look down upon Quirks, he firmly believes in the old theory that they come from rats. Quirks in Kai's opinion have plagued humanity, so he wants to exterminate them from the world. He believes that their so-called heroic sacrifices are a sickness termed "Hero Syndrome".

Beset with the singular goal of being 'Leader of the Underworld", Overhaul believes in the total extermination of the Quirks. In his opinion, once the Earth is rid of them, the Yakuza can reclaim their lost power. The original leader of the Shie Hassaikai was a man named the 'Boss'. Ever sinceKaiwas picked up from the streets and nurtured by Shie Hassaikai, Kai feels indebted to the Boss.

Now that the mantle of Shie Hassaikai has passed on to Kai Chisaki, he is committed to exterminating the Quirks because they ruined the Boss's life.

NEXT:My Hero Academia: 5 Reasons Mina is Best Girl (& 5 Why It's Momo)

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My Hero Academia: 10 Things You Need To Know About The Shie Hassaikai - CBR - Comic Book Resources

The Jew In The Ashram"

When a young woman travels from New York City to an ashram in India to overcome her struggles with mental health, a cheerful gurus lessons provoke reflections on prayer, Jewish summer camp, and the role of Judaism in the lives of her late father and his biological mother, a Holocaust survivor he never met. At select moments, the audience is invited to move, chant, and reflect on their own spiritual journeys and identitiesthe ones we inherit and the ones we make for ourselves. A funny, poignant, lightly interactive solo show about spiritual healing and identity. Written and performed by Amanda Erin Miller. Directed by Rachel Evans.

Devastating, hilarious, comfortably interactive and piercingly real. -Sarah Sokolic, Executive Director, Lab/Shul

Amanda Miller is a gem of a storyteller. Fringe Review

Amanda Erin Miller (Writer, Performer) is an NYC-based writer, actor and Jewish educator. She has performed The Jew in the Ashram in a variety of settings including Temple Beth Shalom of Hastings, NY; The Kings Bay Y in Brooklyn, NY; Brandeis Collegiate Institute in Simi Valley, CA; Minnesota and Charm City Fringe Festivals, yoga studios and more. In 2013, her memoir "was published on Lucid River Press. Since 2010, Amanda has been combining theater arts, yoga and Jewish education in her work with synagogues and camps including Lab/Shul, Kolot Chayeinu, Temple Emanu-El, Union Temple and Sprout Brooklyn. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from The New School and a BFA in Acting from NYU.

Rachel Evans (Director) is a theatre maker, drama teacher and Jewish educator. She has acted Off Broadway and regionally with various theatre companies, including Irondale Theatre and Mirror Repertory Company. Her one-woman show, Jew Wish, debuted in the NY Fringe Festival and subsequently was performed at Eldridge Street Synagogue. She has taught and performed at Kolot Chayeinu, Lab/Shul, PJ Library and JCC Harlem. She has collaborated with Amanda Miller on sketch comedy, Purim spiels, and theater for social change, and is excited to be tackling this exciting and important show. She holds an MA in Applied Theatre from CUNY and a BA in English and Theatre from Tufts.

**** For information on Los Angeles theatre, tickets to theatre in North Hollywood's NoHo Arts District, theatre reviews, the NoHo Event Calendar, restaurants, news and local businesses in NoHo, or anything and everything about the NoHo Arts Community, bookmark nohoartsdistrict.com. Follow us on Twitter @OfficialNoHo. On Instagram@NoHoArtsDistrict and Facebook @NoHoArtsDistrict.

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The Jew In The Ashram - noho arts district

An Indian fugitive holy man accused of rape and other crimes has announced he has set up his own country and will run its economy with cryptocurrency.

Nithyananda, from Tamil Nadu, attracted followers in a spiritual centre known as an ashram he opened in Bengaluru during 2005, but cops claimed he raped and assaulted a woman at the ashram under the guise of giving her religious teachings.

Officers also allege the 41-year-old beat children and forced them to earn money for the ashram.

He fled India and has now declared a Hindu sovereign nation called Kailaasa after buying his own island off the coast of Ecuador, reports the Times of India.

A website has been registered in Panama with its IP located in the US state of Dallas. However, mystery surrounds Kailaasas exact location.

As well as a flag, constitution, and emblem, the website says the nation will have its own economy that is not contaminated by fiat currency.

Kailaasa is off the coast of Ecuador but its exact location is a mystery

It adds: Imagine that this currency is the only one accepted in the Paramashiva economy to participate in the Dharmic economy, one that is aligned with the cosmic laws, one that will give them enormous spiritual rewards and multiple returns on investment, people have to use this currency.

An ideal way to create such a currency is through cryptocurrency.

In February, a private city in Norway ditched cash for its own cryptocurrency.

Liberstad, which was established in June 2017 in the south of the Scandinavian country, is a self-proclaimed libertarian city.

A spokesman said: City Coin is a secure and innovative cryptocurrency based on City Chain, a smart city platform that enables the design, implementation, and use of next-generation services for smart cities and their inhabitants.

The post Wanted holy man to use crypto to run new island nation appeared first on Coin Rivet.

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Wanted holy man to use crypto to run new island nation - Yahoo Finance

By Express News Service

NEW DELHI:In order to ease traffic congestion in one of the major bottlenecks in the city, the Delhi government has approved the extension of Ashram flyover. Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday announced the decision to extend the flyover up to the DND flyway.

According to the CM, the extension of the flyover will fulfil a threefold objective eradicate the narrow stretch and the choke-point between the Ashram-DND Flyway, decrease the travel time between Noida and Ashram, and decongest the Ashram flyover which is one of the busiest roads in the city, especially during peak traffic hours.

Briefing the media on the extension plan, the chief minister said, The Ashram flyover is congested during peak hours and the Ashram- DND stretch is heavily jammed. To combat this issue, a proposal has been passed by the PWD to extend the Ashram flyover up to DND Flyway. The extension project will be completed within a span of one year and the total expenditure of the project is Rs 128 crore.The decision has been taken to decongest the Ashram Crossing and nearby areas.

A rotary and pedestrian subway is going to be constructed under the flyover to join Kikroli and Maharani Bagh stretches, Kejriwal said. Construction of a subway on the existing Ashram flyover is also underway, a PWD official said.

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CM Arvind Kejriwal announces Ashram flyover extension to end traffic woes - The New Indian Express

What do you do when youve been charged on counts like kidnapping children and keeping them in confinement, rape and sexual assault? Run away from the country and start your own nation, of course!

At least thats what the plan was for one controversial Indian self-proclaimed godman named Nithyananda, who among other things, is also known for his bullshit pseudoscientific teachings. The man from Tamil Nadu, who gained followers after he started an ashram in Bengaluru in 2005, provided a kind of enlightenment that has made many compare his teachings to that of Osho: yet another controversial spiritual leader that you probably last spotted raging about hard drugs and sex in the Wild, Wild Country.

However, in 2010, after a sex tape of Nithyananda and a famous actress came to surface, so did many other allegations which basically said he was a sexual predator. Charged with raping and assaulting a woman at his ashram under the guise of giving her spiritual teachings, as well as picking up children, beating them up and forcing them to earn money for the ashram, the police booked him for abduction, wrongful confinement, voluntarily causing hurt, intentional insult to provoke breach of peace and criminal intimidation as well as other charges under the Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act. However, Nithyananda fled the country last year as soon as these charges were laid against him and has been absconding for over a year. But even as the Gujarat police are trying to get to him, the godman released a video on his YouTube channel on Tuesday, delivering a sermon that authorities traced back to the islands of Trinidad and Tobago.

Turns out, instead of doing jail-time and trying to make amends for his heinous crimes, this rape-accused fugitive has instead bought his own island off the coast of Ecuador, which is being projected as Kailaasa, a brand new Hindu nation. This new nation even has its own website and claims to have a dedicated flag, passport, emblem and even a separate currency which will expand into a cryptocurrency. Describing it as a nation without borders created by dispossessed Hindus around the world who lost the right to practice Hinduism authentically in their own countries, this Hindu nation is built on a temple ecosystem, teaches things like the science behind the third eye, runs on a Gurukul schooling system and even offers free food, education and healthcare to all devotees wanting to join the mission. Theres just one small problem with this projected Hindu Utopia: no one can seem to figure out where its actually located, making it all the harder for authorities in Karnataka and Gujarat to track the absconding godman. The closest they have come after tracking the websites IP address is that it was registered in Panama and can be traced back to the city of Dallas in the US.

While police have been puzzled as to how Nithyananda fled the nation since his passport expired a year ago in November 2018, turns out the nation of Kailaasa has its very own passport, one that features the fraudulent man along with Nandi, the holy cow used as a vehicle by the Hindu god Shiva.

Still, its all pretty shady since no one, especially not a fugitive with serious charges, can just run off and start their own nation. Other countries have to accept it as a nation and the United Nations too has to recognise it. It is not like going to Gurugram, buying a piece of land and declaring it as a nation, sources from the Ministry of External Affairs told The New Indian Express, adding that the ministry was not taking it seriously.

This is especially scary when you think about other such similar concepts that spiritual leaders convicted of criminal charges like Osho or Jim Jones tried to do, including mass murder attempts. But even as the criminal godman remains at large, the Gujarat court rejected the bail plea of two of Nithyanandas aides who were arrested along with him.

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Rape-Accused Godman Nithyananda Fled India, Bought an Island and Has Now Started His Own Hindu Nation - VICE

The Allahabad High Court on Wednesday granted bail to the law student charged with trying to extort money from Swami Chinmayanand, the BJP leader whom she has accused of rape and aasault. Chinmayanand, whose trust runs the Shahjahanpur law college where the woman studied, was arrested under section 376-C of the IPC. In a related case, the 23-year-old woman and her three friends were booked on Chinmayanands complaint that they had demanded Rs five crore from him. He alleged that they had threatened to make video clips public that showed him getting massages from the student. The bail comes after a span of two months after she had been arrested on charges of extortion.

The case came out in the public when the student went missing on August 24, after putting up a Facebook post without naming the politician. Chinmayanand is currently lodged at the Shahjahanpur jail. Here are the major developments in the case till now:

Sept 25: Law student, who accused Chinmayanand of rape, arrested on extortion charges and sent to 14-day judicial custody.

Sept 24: The woman filed an interim bail plea in a local court seeking protection from arrest over extortion charges.

Sept 21: The student and her three friends booked by the SIT for allegedly trying to extort money worth Rs 5 crore from Chinmayanand.

Sept 20: SIT arrests Chinmayanand from his ashram and sends him to jail under 14-day judicial custody.

Sept 16: Complainant records statement in front of judicial magistrate Geetika Singh. Chinmayanand falls ill, suffers from diarrhoea.

Sept 14: Law students father hands over a pen drive having 43 video clips of Chinmayanand to the SIT.

Sep 10: A video purportedly showing Chinmayanand and a girl in the middle of a massage session goes viral. On the same day, a video of a group of men in a car, with the law student in the back seat, talking about an 'extortion message' surfaces.

Sept 5: Law student files a 12-page rape complaint at Lodhi Road police station in Delhi which was later handed over to the SIT in UP on September 7.

Sept 4: Chinmayanand calls allegations against him a 'conspiracy' to defame his educational institutions.

Sept 3: UP DGP sets up SIT under IG Naveen Arora after receiving instructions from UP chief secretary Rajendra Kumar Tiwari.

Sept 2: Supreme Court directs UP government to set up SIT headed by IG-rank officer to look into the charges against Swami Chinmayanand levelled by the law student. Court urges Allahabad HC Chief Justice to constitute a bench for monitoring the investigation in the two FIRs lodged in the matter.

Aug 30: The law student is found by UP police near Mehandipur Balaji temple in Dausa (Rajasthan) along with her friend Sanjay Singh. Supreme Court takes suo motu notice. The woman is produced in the apex court.

Aug 27: District police register FIR against Chinmayanand under sections 364 (kidnapping or abducting in order to murder) and 506 (criminal intimidation)

Aug 25: Law student vanishes; her father approaches Shahjahanpur police and files a complaint of abduction and sexual harassment against Swami Chinmayanand. Chinmayanands lawyer OM Singh lodges FIR in extortion case.

Aug 24: The 23-year-old law student of SS Law College run by Mumukshu Ashram of Swami Chinmayanand posts a video on her Facebook wall alleging harassment and sexual abuse by the former Union Minister.

(With inputs from PTI and TNIE)

Continued here:

A timeline of the Chinmayanand case: How the law student and former minister's saga unfolded - EdexLive