God & the city: Indian Hindu youth
• Hodgepodge
Part of the BBC's What the World Thinks of God:
God has a new incarnation in India - cool, user-friendly, results-oriented, upwardly mobile, and probably carrying one too. Seriously. Cell-phone ring-tones come in the tunes of popular Hindu hymns. ...
Pretty young things genuflect to patriarchy by fasting for the long-life of future husbands, even as they invoke the goddess, "Shakti", which literally means `power', to fight their social battles. ...
Rituals, surprisingly, are still important to young Hindus. In fast-paced, commuting-harried urbania, the temple comes to the worshippers' drawing room via the tele-puja and even a votive tele-viewing of the deity. ...