Interesting! (To me in terms of cultural tradition/myths)
Ganesh Chaturthi 2021: History, Importance and Rituals of Vinayaka Chavithi
Ganesh Chaturthi, an elaborate Hindu festival celebrating the birth of Lord Ganesha, starts today and spans over 10 days.
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Feel free to reply to any comment by clicking the "Reply" button.RIDICULOUS
It is one of the many many Hindu festivals in India that creates tons of wastages of money, time, creates heavy noise pollution and keeps people in dark ages. The whole story of Lord Ganesh is ridiculous.
MORE RIDICULOUS MYTHOLOGY
His father Lord Shiva (who wears skulls and snakes around the neck) comes home from meditation in the Himalayas and his wife Parvati has asked their son Ganesh to guard the door while she is taking a shower in her hut. Go figure... he one of gods in the Supreme Hindu Trinity. So Lord Shiva does not like this little boy stopping him at the door. So he cuts off his head and when his wife Parvati comes out an sees it... she says... what the fuck, what have you done? He says... I am sorry, I am going to do something. So he sees an elephant walking by. He cuts the elephant's head off and implants on the body of his son and puts life into him and gives him tons of boons. From that point on the son became Lod Ganesh with a human body and the elephant head. How much more primitive can you go?
THE FESTIVAL
So Hindus in India are heavily superstitious and only go to temples to ask for boons. This festival is about bringing a small to large slay statue from the market, install it at home or business of public square and do an evening worship every day for 7 days. At the end, take the statue to a flowing water (creek, river, ocean) and immerse the statue and come back to freaking home. Do nothing else. Help no one, donate to no hospital, shelter, school or any other useful cause. It is all about asking God something for yourself.
WASTAGE OF MONEY, TIME AND TRAFFIC AND NOISE MENACE
Neighborhood associations, clubs, gangsters, politicians, political parties take a lot of advantage by exploiting shop owners, small business of donations. The funds collection is huge and there is no accounting or audit of expenditures. I know it because I ran one for two years in our neighborhood in middle school. There are public loud speakers at every other corner and they continue playing Bollywood movie and devotional songs late into the night.
My sister was in an ICU dying in a private expensive Mumbai hospital and a local group entered in the compound right below the window of her room and started playing music and dancing until mid-night. To my shock, the security guard joined them too. Many were drunk. There was nothing I could do except wanting to go back to the US fast.
ENVIRONMENTAL DISASTER
Every city struggles the next day the clean up mess left by processions and immersing of statues. There are some places in the world that have remained backward and will remain so. This is one of the reasons why. They learn nothing from how the rest of the world is changing and progressing.
St-Sinner
Level 9
Sep 10, 2021
1
Often various municipalities contract out collection and immersed Ganesha statues. Here is one example of how those are disposed.
Idols thrown into a creek... Lol
11 killed when a boat capsized
Ryo1:
I knew you would come on. Lol! Thanks for your insights. Very interesting!
Ryo1:
@St-Sinner You do know that there are environmental activists (if you call them that) in India. They are rather self-effacing, quiet radicals; they are not noisy like Western counterparts, but they've been planting trees for decades to create forests and they've developed technology by which they can build roads with plastic waste. I believe that there is good stuff happening in your homeland.
@Ryo1
Their numbers, effect and activity all are miniscule and unimpressive. They will not stop any bad environmental activity nor make any difference whatsoever now or in the near future in India. The Indian government is fully and completely in the pockets of industrialists - very openly, not secretly.
Largest slum dwellings of the world are in India and slums are the outcomes of badly handled private land developments.
@Ryo1
If it is not Modi, the alternatives are as bad. It is not leaders or businesses who make a great country. It is the people who are mostly religious, sycophants, ignorant, jingoist and backward in thinking and behavior. It is unlikely that India will every rise with soft power. It will not have any. The biggest strength it has the large population and English language the gift that British left.
According to me, there is a better way to help prosper India. India should begin training new generations in information technology, AI and all futuristic technology and encourage them to go work in other Western countries. Send people in every corner of the world and just give them 20 years. Second generation Indians will be in leading positions in every country. You will see them in politics, media, corporate, technology, business and so on. Just the money transfers from the Indian diaspora from around the world will make India prosperous. We have a prototype of this idea in India. It is called the state of Andhra Pradesh. In my childhood, it was one of most impoverished states with low education, high poverty and high unemployment. One man made a difference. He ran for governor on the promise in 1980s that he would put a computer in every home. He saw the future. I was in India and had heard about computers but never seen one. He got elected, he opened 60 engineering colleges and started churning out engineering students. Today go to any US corporate IT department and ask where the software employees are from. They will say from Andhra Pradesh. They don't even need to come here to study. They have job letters in the US directly out of college in India at the ages from 21 to 24. It may happen nationwide. Let us see but they have tasted the blood. Today, Indian IT is everywhere including in Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark Australia, New Zealand etc.
Take a look at the Sikh Indian community in Canada, how many Sikh ministers in Trudeau's cabinet, Ireland's Ex PM, British Indian ministers, MPs etc.
Nothing to see here as Lord Ganesha is as much a myth as I AM.
rainmanjr
Level 8
Sep 10, 2021
0
Ryo1:
Exactly. It is a myth, so there is no harm reading about it, is there? I'm interested in different cultures, and one cannot talk about cultures without religious connections.
Ryo1:
@rainmanjr That's your take, and you have that perspective, which I'm not against, probably based on your very personal experience because I believe that you live in the "culture" where being atheist is almost like a crime. I don't live in that culture, so I can take religion and mythology as a subject , like maths or science, and I can learn about them in an objective manner.
Don't know exactly why, but I was reminded of a Disney short - Sanjay's Super Team.
Beowulfsfriend
Level 9
Sep 10, 2021
1
Ryo1:
I bet you are not alone.
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