Actually - I just remembered a fun Hindu-military fact. There is, at present, one Hindu in the history of the United States to have served in Congress. Her name is Tulsi Gabbard, first elected in 2012 from the Second District of Hawai'i. She ran for Congress largely based on her experience as a combat veteran of the Iraq War, and has angered many in her own party by calling for the U.S. to take a more aggressive stance against Iran. She also currently continues to serve in the Hawai'i National Guard.
Bro, I'm an atheist too. But hey, I was born into a Hindu family, in India! Listen, Hindus are normal, okay? We don't follow our Vedas or anything. Most of us never read our religious books. But yeah, old people are religious as hell. However, there are a FEW things that most Hindus follow. Whenever something of value (pens, books, etc.) touch our feet, we take it up and place it against our head, and then our chest. This is to show respect to such objects. Well, other than minor stuff like that, there's nothing.
Hey, you know whenever there's a festival and all, Hindu priests (known as purohits or something) sacrifice dozens of goats as an offering to the gods.
thanks for the info. this will make things easier. I do have to ask about dietary routines. completely veterinarian? or is meat allowed.
Hey, no that doesn't happen anymore. Sorry to break it to you. I admit casteism exists in some remote rural areas, but this doesn't happen in the developed places.
It all matters on stuff. Most of us are allowed to eat anything other than beef, but there are some cultures that prohibit non veg. Also, I've had beef. Haha!!
I have a jewish friend who always ask if the bacon is Kosure'ish before tucking in okay, i think then, knowing this i can skip the study of Hinduism and rather just do some basic research on Indian culture itself
If you're going to research Indian culture, pick a region now. There are tons of cultures and languages. There's a big difference between Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, and Tamil Nadu.
Sure, absolutely! Culture is gonna be hard to do. We have 29 states, each with unique cultures. 100 plus languages too.
west Bengal it is. I'll do some looking into that location. I'll come to you if i need to ask some questions
Haha. I picked three big states at random. Should have said Mizoram, Puducherry, and Sikkim so you went and looked at those. My Indian-American character is a Jain whose parents came from Assam and Nagaland - which I did on purpose to force detailed research (I'm guessing @Shuvam Das is laughing right now)
@ShadowSkippie - an atheist having faith in something - would superstitions count? You know, though you technically don't believe in anything supernatural, nonetheless you throw salt over your shoulder, or something Or it could be purely quite human - things like, someone bad gets his comeuppence and you say, "He had it coming to him!" (which technically implies a sort of justice wielded by something/someone beyond our control, fate, karma, whatever you wanna call it) I remember my atheist ex asked me about justice after his phone got stolen, because he wanted to believe the thief would get some sorta just dessert. @Mattiemae - yeah I get you. I'm probably baptist/evangelical (just cus I never paid much attention to specifically what made each denomination unique) but those are the sorta churches I grew up in. Fundamentalism and Christian culture is what I have problems with usually.
I got the info from an Indian friend - however, I have utterly forgotten where in India she's from. Given how large India is, I wouldn't be surprised at all if there're drastic differences across the country. And no need to be sorry, if the caste system has a weaker grip on life in at least some areas in India, that's a terrific thing!
Yes, superstitions would be one, i'd have to really sell it for it to be noticeable and yet not glaringly so. the being an Atheist ponce on the other hand, well that's easy
Hahahaha... Yeah. Well really... Nagaland? I've been there once... and it was completely different from any other place in India. They have 30+ tribes, each with different languages. Must've been a pain to pull that research off. Salute!!
You're assuming I've done it all - I haven't done much on Nagaland yet. Luckily "Vinya" is my sidekick not my hero. Mostly I did front end research on Jainism, and then later I decided I needed to place the character's family lineage in India so that I could paint Vinya's family when she goes home to California. I wanted to make them from the Northeast for a couple of reasons - one because it interests me and two because most of Vinya's biography is calibrated to mess with American notions of what it means to be Indian. It got to be an interesting little dynamic in that it set's her apart from other Jain-Americans who are mostly from Gujarat or Rajasthan. So I looked at bit at the Jain community in Assam, which is small but bigger than other parts of the Northeast, so that was workable - and then I wen't and looked at the census on rest of the Northeast to see if any of the smaller states had statistically significant Jain populations, and it turned out that Nagaland did (all the rest of the Northeast has almost no Jains, like less than 100 per state, but Nagaland has about 2,000 - which actually is a slightly higher per-capita Jain population than Assam given how small the state is...Assam has like 20,000 but it's also 10 times the population of Nagaland). So, I thought that statistic was interesting enough that instead of just making them Assamese Jains, I worked out a family story so that Vinya's dad came from a family of Jain bureaucrats working in Kohima in Nagaland and her mom came from Dispur in Assam...and that her mom hated Nagaland and that's why they ended up moving to the States. I haven't gone very deep into it other than just making sure that the food at the house is the right type of stuff, that Vinya's mom gives her a pet name in Assamese rather than some other language. The rest of it can wait until I have to spend more time with Vinya as a character, but I at least have a solid basis for when I need to dive into it again. Plus it helped me isolate Vinya's identity as a "minority of one" who nobody really understands - Americans don't identify with her because she's Indian, Indian-Americans don't identify with her because she's Jain, Jain's don't identify with her because her background culture is Northeastern, and her own family doesn't identify with her because she's a professional fashion blogger while they're all doctors and accountants and lawyers. That, and I just want to write a scene someday where Vinya is at some Jain-American function, and two people start code-switching from English to Gujarati, assuming she'll understand, and she ends up yelling something super-Californian to shut them up like, "Yo, time out! No habla Gujarati!"
well at least i don't have to go that far. I'm only doing a research so that certain character traits can be explained. that that people sees when they interact with others. I suppose an example is something i spot on the odd occasion. if i were to give you something or take something from you i would just give or take the item with an outstretch hand, nothing special. the Venda people though would present their hand with the other kind or supporting the first as it the action was of humility and respect. how the "respect" itself works I'm not sure but i see it a lot (although not with everyone, the younger generation don't seem to do it). Zulu on the other hand don't present this same trait, giving me the impression that it is a venda thing. know, notice how I observed these things as white male spotting something he is not accustomed to. Well the book I'm writing is told through the eyes of a western narrator. all i need to do is try grab the obvious cultural snares and nothing more, but i do have to at least figure out what those snares would be
