#Migrate to Australia from India

[iraimmigration1]

Read This blog "https://medium.com/@iraimmigration1/easiest-way-to-migrate-to-australia-from-india-effddcc4a0eb" To know easiest way to migrate to australia from india

[visaexpertsblog]

Australia’s General Skilled Migration (GSM) Program is the most popular and highly preferred pathway for Indians seeking to settle in Australia. Out of all, the two highly-sought-after streams are Subclass 189 and 190 visa. Both pathways are designed to attract skilled professionals with skills needed in the Australian economy.

[aptechvisaglobalimmigration]

[migration-agents-australia]

Want to know more about how to apply for PR in Australia from India and various other immigration processes then aspirants should not waste time and visit our office to receive consultation from our best Australia PR agent at Jagvimal Consultants.

[munaeem]

Why are Indians giving up citizenship in record numbers?

In recent years, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of Indians relinquishing their citizenship. This trend has raised many questions and concerns about the motivations behind such a decision. Contrary to what one might assume, it is not just a matter of uneducated individuals seeking a different life elsewhere. In fact, many of those choosing to give up their Indian citizenship…

[reasonsforhope]

"Winning what’s been called the ‘Green Nobel’ an Indian environmental activist has been recognized for saving a 657 square-mile forest from 21 coal mines.

From the New Delhi train station to high-end hotels to the poorest communities, virtually no one in India is free from periodic blackouts. As part of the Modi regime’s push for a developed and economically dominant India, power generation of every sort is being installed in huge quantities.

GNN has reported this drive has included some of the world’s largest solar energy projects, but it also involves coal. India is one of the largest consumers of coal for electricity generation, and Hasdeo Aranya forests, known as the “Lungs of Chhattisgarh,” are known to harbor large deposits.

The state government had been investigating 21 proposed coal mining blocks across 445,000 acres of biodiverse forests that provide crucial natural resources to the area’s 15,000 indigenous Adivasi people.

Along with the Adivasi, tigers, elephants, sloth bears, leopards, and wolves, along with dozens of endemic bird and reptile species call this forest home. It’s one of India’s largest intact arboreal habitats, but 5.6 billion metric tons of mineable coal threatened to destroy it all.

Enter Alok Shukla, founder of the Save Hasdeo Aranya Resistance Committee, which began a decade ago advocating for the protection of Hasdeo through a variety of media and protest campaigns, including sit-ins, tree-hugging campaigns, advocating for couples to write #savehasdeo on their wedding invitations, and publishing a variety of other social media content.

Shukla also took his message directly to the legislature, reminding them through news media coverage of their obligations to India’s constitution which enshrines protection for tribal people and the environments they require to continue their traditional livelihoods.

Beginning with a proposal to create a single protected area called Lemru elephant reserve within Hasdeo that would protect elephant migration corridors and cancel three of the 21 mining proposals, Shukla and the Adivasi began a 160-mile protest march down a national highway towards the Chhattisgarh state capital of Raipur.

They hadn’t even crossed the halfway mark when news reached them that not only was the elephant reserve idea unanimously agreed upon, but every existing coal mining proposal had been rejected by the state legislature, and all existing licenses would be canceled.

“We had no expectations, but the legislative assembly voted unanimously that all of the coal mines of Hasdeo should be canceled, and the forest should be saved,” Shukla says in recollection to the Goldman Prize media channel.

“That was a very important moment and happy moment for all of us.”

Shukla shares the 2024 Goldman Environmental Prize with 5 other winners, from Brazil, the US, South Africa, Australia, and Spain."

-via Good News Network, May 20, 2024. Video via Goldman Environmental Prize, April 29, 2024.

[hussyknee]

If y'all want to feel sympathy for the Israelis, you better have it for every single genocider. Slavers and settlers that scalped Natives and Nazis and Imperial Japan and Stalinists and Serbs and the British East India company and white nationalists and Islamic fundamentalists and Hindutvas and Assad's forces and and and.

People do not become genociders because of victimhood. The majority of the worst colonial empires were people who hadn't been oppressed themselves in centuries. Groups become genocidal because they have power and want to take their trauma or paranoia out on someone weaker than they are. Even the ones who aren't gleefully enthusiastic go along with it because the benefits and risks of dissent outweigh your moral conscience. You're not forced to make those choices. That's not what indoctination is. Indoctrination helps dehumanization. It's making it easy to silence every doubt and qualm and instinct for empathy and compassion. But you still choose. You make a conscious decision to see a human being as a vermin to be eradicated. It's easy to do that when you have no incentive to see them as human and no consequences for treating them accordingly.

For fuck's sake, stop using the Holocaust as an excuse for Zionists. Half of them are converts or the children of converts who never lived the Jewish generational legacy of persecution. Most of their families migrated from places where they had a perfectly comfortable lives, and the other half was born in Israel and never knew what being a marginalized minority was like. Israelis are literally the least oppressed Jews in the known world. They victimize Palestinians because colonizers and oppressors live in mortal fear of the people they colonize and oppress, because they KNOW that they're crushing them and have to manufacture all sorts of narratives to rationalize and justify that they're actually the good guys.

Colonization and genocide is a result of power. I and a lot of other BIPOC have been traumatized by Zionists before we ever knew the word for them, because they keep taking out their paranoia of Jewish hate on Black people, Natives, immigrants, Muslims and Arabs and every kind of racial minority that have no systemic power to hurt them. They have such a foothold in the Jewish communities of Europe and its settler colonies (Australia, the Americas), because white Jews have assimilated into whiteness. However conditional their acceptance among white Christians, they have the same racial and institutional power over Black and brown colonized people. Which makes it easy for them to choose Zionism— the legitimizing of white colonial anxiety in place of fear of their oppressor. Antisemitism is their ready and convenient way to rationalize the racism and Islamphobia and racial superiority they already have.

Do you think Jews are the only people who have ever been genocided? The Holocaust was not exceptional, it was exceptionalized by the Western powers to launder their own atrocities that far outstripped Nazi Germany. Look at what they're doing with Ukraine. They're being genocided and colonized and they deserve empathy and help against Russia. But the West isn't concerned about Armenia the same way even though it's also an Eastern European country. They definitely weren't concerned about any of the other countries Russia has attacked or helped genocide (like Syria). Including Ukraine itself before all this. Putin has been attacking Donbas since 2014.

So why now? They care about who's genociding Ukraine, not about Ukrainians. Russia under Putin is very much a threat to NATO and Ukraine is bordered by NATO countries. The Western PR machine still had to make Ukrainians white, because Slavs are ethnically marginalized in Western Europe, and even North America to a lesser degree. They have white privilege over all Asians and Africans and Indigenous people because the colour system of race is based on European colonization, but they have only conditional whiteness in the imperial sphere of both the US and Russia. But because they're ethnically European, the US and Western Europe was able to launch a PR "Look They're Just Like Us!" campaign to elevate them to full whiteness, so that their own citizens would actually give a shit about this country they'd barely heard of before. That's why we're all more concerned about Ukraine than any other Eastern Europeans (we're all conditioned into white supremacy). After that, the US went around thumping its own chest for a full year and half, trying to launder its military image after the twenty year Muslim genocide that was the War on Terror (still ongoing).

This is exactly what they did with European Jews. High-ho, somebody victimized by the Enemy! Dust them off and lookie! They're European! People will give a shit that we liberated them if we make them all white! But uh, do we really want five million Jewish refugees in here? Oh I know, we'll thrown in with those crazy Jewish terrorists that were giving the Brits so much trouble, and give them a state! They're also from Europe after all, and Civilized™, unlike the savages!

And then the liberated Jews accepted doing exactly what the Nazis did to them. Not because they had to! They could have just lived in Palestine, that whole region of the Levant was pretty secular and multicultural. But they didn't see Arabs as human beings! Because Europeans are taught to see Black and brown people as servants and savages! They massacred Palestinians and took the place over because they could and then called it the War of Independence. The first people they victimized after that? Were Arab Jews. They colluded with Arab nationalists to have them ethnically cleansed entirely out of their countries and scooped them up to create a labouring underclass! Put them up in such squalid conditions that scores died!

And did those people look around and realize white Jews were their oppressors and they had far more in common with Palestinians? No. They threw in with their oppressors to help make Palestinians lives a generational nightmare. Because power and assimilation! This is the exact same reason why Zionists has been trying to cosy up to Nazis since before Hitler.

(Oh and by the way? Germans never regretted the Nazis or the Holocaust. The Americans "denazification" was a dead fail. They just used Israel to make a whole dog and pony show of how very sorry they were and how it was a Dark Moment in Their History™ (because nothing they've ever done to colonized people counts). They paid reparations because the West made them, but they never got over the massive post-war genocide the Allies subjected their people to, or the way they carved up the country like a Christmas turkey. But again, did they hold Britain, France, US and Russia responsible for it? Did they acknowledge that the most severe cases of post-war violence came from American GIs? Of course not. Obviously the biggest threat was...the Poles.)

If you really see all those TikTok videos of families dancing to their genocide songs, taunting starving and dehydrated Palestinians and teens lampooning Palestinian mothers grieving their dead children and think "they're also victims because Western imperialists exploited their fear and made them into monsters" then I don't even know what to say to you. That level of infantilization, wilful ignorance and need to turn sadism into victimhood is breathtakingly racist and paternalistic. Even if you believe #Not All Israelis, the point is there's enough Israelis. Also what is even there to feel sorry for?? Are Israelis about to be turned out and shot in the streets? Starve to death? Have their limbs amputated without anesthetic and still die of sepsis? Literally what??

Emotions are signifiers of your own internal biases and perspectives. They aren't indicative of justice or morality. We can't move through a deeply unequal world and believe that compassion is having the same responses, judgements and feelings for everyone. It's not empathy you're feeling for Israelis, it's conditioned philosemitism and casual racism against Palestinians. If you actually followed the videos and images and news coming out of Palestine, you would feel about as sympathetic towards them as Nazis. You would understand that this kind of atrocity doesn't come from trauma or having been victims. It comes from having zero consequences for doing them. It comes from unchecked, gleeful, sadistic power.

[h2-so-4]

AIT or Aryan Invasion Theory (debunked): A superior "race" of white, horse-riding Aryans invaded the areas of the inferior and primitive Indus Valley population, which included the Dravidians (but actually no one said that the IVC was a pure, dark-skinned Dravidian civilization so idk where that idea came from), and civilized them.

AMT or Aryan Migration Theory: A group of usually horse and chariot-riding nomads and pastoralists usually called the Aryans migrated from the Indo-Iranian region to India and mingled PEACEFULLY with the population of the late Indus Valley population (who were already highly advanced, as we know), by which time the IVC was beginning to collapse, possibly due to change of climate and rain patterns (still not sure yet), and hence the people were abandoning these settlements spreading across the subcontinent. These Indo-Aryans on arriving mixed with this population and shared their genetics, art and culture with each other, which led to the introduction of Sanskrit and Vedic culture in India.

To any leftist who keep regurgitating the former busted myth, please stop. You look stupid. And to any rightist who keep using AMT as AIT to debunk it, they're not the same. These two theories have a sky-ground difference.

The previous one makes Aryans look evil. That they were some high-level royalty who invaded India. But, in fact, they were regular people, regular migrants, just how every migration used to happen 3000-4000 years ago. Like I said, most of them were nomadic settlers.

Sure, later on, the varna system came into existence and this was the beginning of a hierarchical structure in India for the first time (since during the IVC there wasn't any sort of social hierarchy according to current sources). But who's to say it was ONLY the Aryans? Remember. They're NOT a race. They're a particular group of people. And by the time the varna system was introduced already a hell lotta intermixing had happened. Hence it wasn't JUST the Aryans (history and especially anthropological and genetic history is not that black and white LMFAO), because it was a term for 'noble', not some kinda "righteous clan" or something. Idk why people keep thinking of it as a race lol. I thought that was already debunked with the AIT.

As for the indigeneity of the Aryans, technically no one is indigenous. Many of the adivasi and non-adivasi tribes came AFTER the Indus Valley Civilization. So the "who came first" logic doesn't really work at all. (There might've been many that came before as well, who knows. Point is, again, it's all a migration salad at the end of the day)

adjective

indigenous (adjective)

originating or occurring naturally in a particular place; native:

This is the Google definition of indigenous. If we take THIS into account, there would be SEVERAL groups of people involved, instead of just one, like the IVC people, a few of the oldest nomadic tribes, mixed Indo-Aryans, etc. But I'm not gonna call ANYONE indigenous, or not indigenous. Because guess what, none of the humans are really indigenous to any place apart from the African continent. Also the Aryan migration led to the rise of a LOT of genetic subgroups, which was a key factor in leading to the most confusing anthropological history of the Indian subcontinent. It has a fuck ton of genetic markers and groups and subgroups, it's wildly confusing and historians are still trying to figure out every kind of intermixing that has happened. So STOP fighting over who is indigenous or not LMAO. Because guess what, we can never truly assert the indigeneity of a migrant species such as humans. (Yes we do call Native Americans the indigenous people of Americas, or the aboriginals the indigenous people of Australia and the Australasian archipelago, but they were also migrants at some point of time. Now before anyone says I'm disregarding the indigeneity of these groups, I'm not. All I'm saying is that we shouldn't CARE who's indigenous and who's not, because unlike the case of Americas and the Australasian islands, Aryans didn't INVADE India. They were simply another set of migrants, JUST like the IVC people, who also came from the middle-eastern region, and JUST like the adivasi tribes, who migrated from mostly the African and Australasian regions, probably, not sure again.)

I'll link the genetic studies done below because they explain it all way better than I can (and these research papers may also correct some of the incorrect statements I might've unnoticeably or ignorantly made in my own paragraphs so yeah):

Hence, at the end of the day, idk why we're banging our heads on the walls over ONE SIMPLE MIGRATION, which was NOTHING DIFFERENT THAN ANY OTHER MIGRATION. Migrations happen ALL THE TIME. Get over it, BOTH the sides of the political wings, and live in harmony lmao. The Aryans and Dravidians AREN'T RACES. They were just certain groups of REGULAR ass people jeez.

History is a complex subject, and the more evidence we find, the more we would know about our past. I have literally nothing against any of the political wings, but I do want to keep the current theories (which are NOT synonymous to hypotheses btw) and facts straight. I'm once again not saying these facts will never change, because that's not how history works. Maybe in the future, we might find out something completely different about India's past. But remember, whenever we talk about our country's past, we should keep it unbiased, unopinionated, and definitely factual and objective, without including our own views (both political and personal) into it. Interpretations? Sure. But they should remain at ONLY interpretations at best, and only the solid evidences should be claimed as facts.

[fatehbaz]

Oz Rock bands were big in Brazil in the 1990s. Australian surfers know its breaks. [...] [I]n the past decade [2005-2015] Brazil has had the second fastest rate of migration to Australia [...].

Australia’s connection with Brazil began in 1787 with the First Fleet voyage. This was thanks to the port of Rio’s location in the South Atlantic and a centuries-long British-Portuguese alliance – unique among European powers in the Age of Empires. The First Fleet had three layovers on its relatively cautious eight month voyage from Britain: a week in the Spanish colony of Tenerife in the Canary Islands, a month at Rio in the Portuguese colony of Brazil and a month at the Dutch East India Company’s Cape colony in South Africa. Fleet commander Arthur Phillip had not intended to rest and resupply at Rio but sailing conditions made it prudent to do so. And Phillip’s former service in the Portuguese navy ensured a cordial welcome from Rio’s colonial authorities.  

At this time, as Bruno Carvalho writes in Porous City: A Cultural History of Rio de Janeiro (2013), Rio enjoyed rising status within the Portuguese Empire. In 1763 it had been named the new capital of Brazil. In 1808 Portuguese royals fled to Rio to escape Napoleon and remained there at the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. As a consequence, Rio could boast of being the only American city to serve as a centre of European power.

One First Fleet official lamented how little the British knew of Rio. This came to be addressed, as Luciana Martins notes in A Bay to be Dreamed Of: British Visions of Rio de Janeiro (2006), as increasing numbers of British visitors ventured there during the 19th century. Visitors included New South Wales Governor Lachlan Macquarie, and later Charles Darwin – along with thousands of convict and free migrants on board ships calling at the port of Rio.

Writing in Connected Worlds: History in Transnational Perspective (2005), Emma Christopher observed that in Australian history books, travel from Britain to Australia seemed to have been “covered as if in the blink of an eye”.

This inspired her to write of the “watery non-places” of the journey not as voids, but rather as places where much transnational history was lived [...].

[J]ournals by intending Australian colonists such as Macquarie’s wife Elizabeth allow glimpses of colonial Rio through colonial Australian eyes. Elizabeth Macquarie assessed Rio with keen intelligence and, more challengingly – as Jane McDermid has argued in recent research on histories of the British abroad – a callously casual racism.

First Fleet journals tell us that, in 1787, convicts confined to ship at Rio witnessed enslaved West Africans rowing Portuguese fruit sellers around the anchored Fleet transports in decoratively festooned boats.

Convicts overheard and exchanged stories from officials permitted shore leave: stories of the songs of captive West Africans awaiting sale at the port marketplace; of colourful Portuguese Catholic institutions and festivities that were exotic to straight-laced British Protestants. Stories of being forbidden, on pain of death, to venture to hinterland jewel mines. Onshore at Rio, colonial migrants bound for Australia befriended Portuguese colonists, despite the language barrier. They purchased curios. They passed judgement – glowing and harsh – on the people of the Portuguese colony, its natural and built environment, just as Brazilians in turn scrutinised them.

---

Text by: Julie McIntyre. “I Go to Rio: Australia’s forgotten history with Brazil.” The Conversation. 16 September 2015. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me.]

[thebunnylord]

Traintober day 17: Holiday

Percy: hello Thomas! I see your back from your mandatory world trip that Mattel sponsored and enforced

Thomas: yes, yes I am…

Percy: so how was it? Did you get to see the Himalayan Queen in India which holds the world record for steepest rise in altitude? Meet the world’s first commercial high speed maglev train, the Shanghai maglev train? See the Bernina Express in Italy? The highest train in Europe? Meet 3801? Australia’s most famous steam engine? Oh! What about see a re-enactment of the golden spike ceremony and meet the replicas of Jupiter and Union Pacific no. 119 at promontory summit Utah?

Thomas: no, I didn’t get to do anything railroad related at all, instead Mattel had me teach kids about tai chi, kangaroos, tiger poachers, and had me loose my voice while trying to sing opera.

Thomas: which is a shame because our franchise is how a lot of kids get into the train fandom and where they learn about railroad operations and famous British railways such as the great Western Railway, along with being introduced to famous steam engines like the flying Scotsman and the city of truro. Not to mention most of our fandom is made up of autistic kids and it’s no secret that a lot of them have a fascination with trains so we would also be feeding more into their interests by giving them something cool to learn about such as how the San Francisco cable cars work, rather than dumbing things down by teaching them things that they would most likely already know, and we would also appeal to older fans of our show too by expanding our world while staying true to the source material.

Thomas: that, and I was looking forward to doing a run down the SGR in Kenya which has 14 wildlife channels to accommodate migrating wildlife… I don’t even remember what I did in Kenya… but I would have loved to hear about the struggles the workers faced when building the first railroad line through Kenya…

Thomas: oh well, at least I got my wish to see the world…. I guess…

[dropsofsciencenews]

A Record-Breaking Old Bean

ESP version ITA version

Can a seed be among the largest ever recorded in the fossil record, represent the first evidence of migration between tectonic plates towards the Australian region, and also be the only known ancestor of the Moreton Bay chestnut (Castanospermum australe)?

The answer is a resounding yes.

Who are we talking about? Its name is Jantungspermum gunnellii, a leguminous plant dating back to the Eocene period, approximately 34-40 million years ago. The discovery of this plant was the result of extreme determination and, perhaps, a bit of luck. Collecting fossils in southern Borneo is a considerable challenge: most of the surface rocks are constantly eroded by heavy tropical rains, covered by dense vegetation, and in many cases, overshadowed by buildings or agricultural land. Despite these difficulties, in 2014, a team of researchers collected three large fossil seeds from the seams of a coal mine in South Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo, the largest of which measured 7.2 cm in length, along with 43 leaves and two pollen samples. All the material was brought to the laboratory for detailed analysis.

To the great surprise of the researchers, the seeds found appear to be ancient relatives of the Castanospermum genus, of which today only one species exists worldwide. However, this lineage hides further surprises linked to tectonic movements. The collision between the tectonic plates of Southeast Asia and Australia, which began about 20 million years ago and is still ongoing, has led to a significant exchange of plant and animal species between these land masses. During the Cenozoic era, the area was affected by two major geological events: the Asia-India and Sahul-Sunda collisions. Sahul is part of the continental platform of the Australian continent and lies off the coasts of Australia, while Sunda is part of the Eurasian plate. The contact and collision between these regions allowed numerous plant lineages from Australia to migrate to Asia. This is evident from the fact that species found in the Asian fossil records are also present in the older Australian fossil records, suggesting that these plants initially evolved in Australia and later colonized Asia, providing a clear temporal signal of the migration.

But could the plants have made the reverse journey, from Asia to Australia? The rarity of plant macrofossils from Sunda has so far limited the understanding of pre-collision vegetation and the plants that migrated from Sunda to Sahul. Evidence in this regard was scarce and mainly based on palynological and molecular data. Until now. The discovery of this seed has provided the first macrofossil evidence of a plant evolutionary line that moved from Asia to Australia. Since Jantungspermum belongs to the same subfamily as Castanospermum, we can also hypothesize how the seeds may have dispersed. Today, Castanospermum disperses its seeds using floating, salt-tolerant pods that can travel for kilometers in rivers and oceans, especially after storm events. The fossil seeds of Jantungspermum were recovered from the upper Tambak Member (a member is a part of a geological formation distinguishable from the rest of the formation by its lithological characteristics) in a coastal depositional paleoenvironments, probably brackish, suggesting that their pods traveled a significant distance, similarly to its descendants, from the riparian parent plant before disintegrating and releasing their seeds.

The incredibility of this seed does not end here. These fossils also represent the oldest legume fossils in the Malay Archipelago. Moreover, the seeds are among the largest ever recorded in the fossil record, excluding coconuts and some other palms. They likely grew in a pod that reached the length of a baseball bat and could contain up to five seeds. The name Jantungspermum gunnellii derives from the Indonesian word "Jantung," which means heart, in reference to the shape of the fossil seed. "Spermum" means seed in Latin, while the specific term "gunnellii" is a tribute to the late Gregg Gunnell, a vertebrate paleontologist formerly at the Duke University Lemur Center, who led the expedition.

There are still many stories buried beneath the rock, and sometimes, a small yet big seed can reveal one of them.

source

[visaexpertsblog]

If you are planning to migrate to Australia from India, 2023 holds lots of opportunities for you. Take the right steps to live a perfect life in Down Under.

[aptechvisaglobalimmigration]

[idigitizellp21]

5 Interesting facts about Diwali

Diwali, the Indian festival of lights, is one of the most widely celebrated religious occasions across the world. Here are some of the most surprising facts about Diwali that you probably didn’t know.

1. The day Lakshmi visits her devotees

Goddess Lakshmi visits her devotees and bestows gifts and blessings upon each of them. To welcome the Goddess, devotees clean their houses, decorate them with finery and lights, and prepare sweet treats and delicacies as offerings. Devotees believe the happier Lakshmi is with the visit, the more she blesses the family with health and wealth.

2. Different Diwali stories

Many see Diwali honouring the return of the lord Rama, his wife Sita and his brother Lakshmana from exile, as told in the ancient Hindu epic called the Ramayana. To some, Diwali marks the return of Pandavas after 12 years of Vanvas and one year of agyatavas in the other ancient Hindu epic called the Mahabharata. Many other Hindus believe Diwali is linked to the celebration of Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth and prosperity, and wife of deity Vishnu. The five day festival of Diwali begins on the day Lakshmi was born from the churning of cosmic ocean of milk during the tug of war between the forces of good and forces of evil; the night of Diwali is the day Lakshmi chose Vishnu as her husband and then married him. Some Hindus offer pujas to additional or alternate deities such as Kali, Ganesha, Saraswati, and Kubera. Other Hindus believe that Diwali is the day Vishnu came back to Lakshmi and their abode in the Vaikuntha; so those who worship Lakshmi receive the benefit of her good mood, and therefore are blessed with mental, physical and material well-being during the year ahead. But mostly the festival is considered the return of the Lord Rama and Sita after completing fourteen years in exile.

3. On the day of Diwali, Lord Mahavira attained his Moksha

In Jainism, Diwali commemorates the anniversary of Lord Mahavir‘s attainment of moksha, or freedom from the cycle of reincarnation, in 527 B.C.E. Lord Mahavir was the 24th and last Thirtankar of Jainism and revitalized the religion as it is today. First referred to in Jain scriptures as dipalikaya, or light leaving the body, it is said that the earth and the heavens were illuminated with lamps to mark the occasion of Lord Mahavir’s enlightenment.

4. Sikhs commonly called Diwali Bandi Chhor Divas

Diwali, for Sikhs, marks the Bandi Chhor Divas, when Guru Har Gobind Ji freed himself and Hindu Kings, from Fort Gwalior, from the prison of Islamic ruler Jahangir, and arrived at the Golden Temple in Amritsar. Ever since then, Sikhs celebrate Bandi Choor Divas, with the annual lighting up of Golden Temple, fireworks and other festivities.

5. It is a national holiday in India, Trinidad & Tobago, Myanmar, Nepal, Mauritius,  Guyana,  Singapore, Suriname, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Fiji. And is an optional holiday in Pakistan.

Diwali is celebrated around the world, particularly in countries with significant populations of Hindu, Jain and Sikh origin. These include Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Myanmar, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Mauritius, Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, Guyana, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, the Netherlands, Canada, the United Kingdom,United Arab Emirates, and the United States. With more understanding of Indian culture and global migration of people of Indian origin, the number of countries where Diwali/Deepavali is celebrated has been gradually increasing. While in some countries it is celebrated mainly by Indian expatriates, in others it is becoming part of the general local culture. In most of these countries Diwali is celebrated on the same lines as described in this article with some minor variations. Some important variations are worth mentioning.

[radical-revolution]

More by Accident than Design

Today, we know that Buddha was born in the Himalayas in present-day Nepal, then spent his life wandering through the region of northern India that lies to the south of Nepal. Yet, three hundred years ago, after seven hundred years of Muslim rule, India had all but forgotten about the Buddha. Until, that is, a few eccentric British colonizers and tea estate managers fell under India’s spell and became fascinated by its native languages and culture.

In the course of their Sanskrit studies, they stumbled across the teachings of the Buddha. A British Army officer called Alexander Cunningham famously rediscovered Bodhgaya. Thanks to him, we can now visit the exact spot of the Buddha’s enlightenment.

Throughout the nineteenth century, European interest in the Buddha grew as reports of new discoveries in India became available. The first general historical account of Indian Buddhism, Introduction à l’histoire du Bouddhisme indien, was published in 1844 by French scholar Eugène Burnouf.

The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer famously described Buddhism as the “best of all possible religions” and even Friedrich Nietzsche became interested in Buddhism, albeit for all the wrong reasons. Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist, wrote:

I have visited the holy places of Buddhism in India and was profoundly impressed by them, quite apart from my reading of Buddhist literature. If I were an Indian, I would definitely be a Buddhist. But in the West, we have different presuppositions.

Migration also played a major part in the spread of Buddhism throughout the nineteenth century. In the 1840s, Chinese Buddhists began emigrating to America; in the 1870s they were the first to take Buddhism to Australia. In the 1950s, Vietnamese refugees fled to America where they set up the first Buddhist institutions in the West.

By the time the Tibetans were relocating to India in the 1960s, Buddhism had begun to attract a great deal of attention, thanks in no small part to the hippies, the ‘hippy trail’, weed (ganj), the Beat Generation, the Beatles, transcendental meditation and the Vietnam war.

For centuries, Christian missionaries travelled to the East to spread the gospel and convert the natives. Asians have therefore never had to seek out the Christian teachings. For westerners it was the other way around. I have heard some very touching stories about the higgledy-piggledy routes Buddhism took to the UK, America and Europe – especially about the hippies who followed The Beatles to India, accidentally bumped into Buddhism, tuned into transcendental meditation and took up yoga. But few of those who took an interest in Buddhism at that time were specifically seeking enlightenment and so they did almost no research or fact-checking. All of which made Buddhadharma’s centuries-long journey to the West haphazard, at best.

Yet, in spite of its chaotic introduction, the results of having the Buddhist teachings in Europe, America and Australia have generally been good. The only real drawback is that quite a number of new Buddhists have been left with some quite hard-to-shake misconceptions and deeply rooted habitual patterns.

Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse

Poison is Medicine - Clarifying the Vajrayana

Siddhartha’s Intent