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Thursday, March 29, 2018

1841 AD- Satguru Ram Singh Ji created the Namdhari sect within the Sikh religion

Image result for NamdhariNamdhari is an Indian religious group. They consider themselves a sect of Sikhism, but insist that the line of Sikh Gurus did not end with Guru Gobind Singh, but continued through the Namdhari leaders.
Namdhari Sikhs, also called Kuka Sikhs, is an austere sect within Sikhism, a religion of India. The Namdhari movement was founded by Balak Singh (1797–1862), who did not believe in any religious ritual other than the repetition of God’s name (or nam, for which reason members of the sect are called Namdharis). His successor, Ram Singh (1816), introduced the sect’s distinctive style of wearing the turban bound straight across the forehead rather than at an angle, of dressing only in clothing made from white handwoven cloth, and of frenzied chanting of hymns culminating in shrieks (kuks; hence the name Kuka). Under Ram Singh’s leadership, the Namdharis sought a resurgence of Sikh rule in the Punjab. In January 1872, British police apprehended and executed by cannon about 66 Namdhari at Malerkotla. Ram Singh was exiled to Rangoon, Burma afterwards. The Namdhari Sikhs believe in a living human Guru instead of the finality of the Guru in the form of the Sri Guru Granth Sahib as believed by mainstream Sikhs. They believe in 16 Gurus with the present living human Guru being Sri Satguru Dalip Singh Ji, having succeeded the previous living human Guru Sri Satguru Jagjit Singh Ji.
  • The Namdharis do, however, consider themselves as Sikhs.
  • Namdharis believe that Guru Gobind Singh went into seclusion after surviving the attempt on his life and passed the Guruship on to other human Gurus to this day.
  • The Namdharis were founded by their Guru—Balak Singh (1797-1862) in north-west Panjab.
  • They were organized into a movement by Baba Ram Singh of Bhaini who fell under the influence of Guru Balak Singh while serving in the Khalsa as a Risaldari of Kanvar Nau Nihal Singh.
  • Guru Balak Singh was succeeded by Guru Ram Singh, Guru Hari Singh, Guru Partap Singh, Guru Jagjit Singh and the present living human Guru being Sri Satguru Dalip Singh Ji.
  • They are also known as Kookas, Kukas, kooke, kooka or kookeh 'criers', for their shrieks (kuks) given in ecstatic meditative trance.
  • The men are distinguished by their white, "round" turbans with their ears fully exposed.
  • The more orthodox Kukas also wear attire which included very tight pants and long kurtas.
  • They have many non-Sikh traditions like the worshiping of fire (havan), which is more akin to Hinduism than Sikhism
  • They are distinguished by their white garb and round turbans, reminiscent of the turbans worn during the Sikh Empire era of Maharaja Ranjit Singh.
  • The Namdharis have also preserved the classical musical traditions for singing the Sikh hymns known as kirtan, which have partially been lost by the mainstream Sikh panth.

Role in Indian freedom movement

The British Indian records list the extremist activities of the Namdhari Sikhs during the 1870s. While they were occasionally hailed as freedom fighters, their activities included attacks on cow slaughter issue, resulting in killings of some Muslim butchers in Amritsar and Ludhiana in 1871.[1][2] A group of 66 Namdhari Sikhs were blown up by a cannon in 1872 for protesting against the British; there is a memorial to them at Namdhari Shidi Smarg Malerkotla in Indian Punjab.[3]


Wednesday, March 28, 2018

1836–1886 AD-The life of Ramakrishna, saint and mystic of Bengal

Ramakrishna Paramahamsa About this sound Ramkṛiṣṇa Pôromôhongśa ; 18 February 1836 – 16 August 1886),[1][2][3][4][5][6][7] born Gadadhar Chatterjee or Gadadhar Chattopadhyay[8] (Bengali: [Gôdadhor Chôṭṭopaddhae]), was an Indian mystic and yogi during the 19th century.[9] Ramakrishna was given to spiritual ecstacies from a young age, and was influenced by several religious traditions, including devotion toward the goddess KaliTantraVaishnava bhakti,[10] and Advaita Vedanta. Reverence and admiration for him amongst Bengali elites led to the formation of the Ramakrishna Mission by his chief disciple Swami Vivekananda.[11][12][13] His devotees look upon him as an incarnation or Avatara of the formless Supreme Brahman as described in the Vedanta while some devotees see him as an avatara of Vishnu.


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Modern Bengal RegionBengal (/bɛŋˈɡɔːl/;[3] Bengaliবাংলা/বঙ্গlit. 'Bānglā/Bôngô' [bɔŋgo]) is a geopolitical, cultural and historical region in Asia, which is located in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. Geographically, it is made up by the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta system, the largest such formation in the world; along with mountains in its north bordering the Himalayan states of Nepal and Bhutanand east bordering Burma.
Politically, Bengal is divided between the sovereign Republic of Bangladesh, which covers two thirds of the region, and West Bengal which is now part of India. In 2011, the population of Bengal was estimated to be 250 million,[4] making it one of the most densely populated regions in the world.[5] An estimated 160 million people live in Bangladesh, while 91.3 million people live in West Bengal. The predominant ethno-linguistic group is the Bengali people, who speak the Indo-Aryan Bengali languageBengali Muslims are the majority in Bangladesh. Bengali Hindus are the majority in West Bengal. Outside Bengal proper, the Indian territories of AssamJharkhandBihar and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, are also home to significant communities with Bengali heritage.[6]
Dense woodlands, including hilly rainforests, cover Bengal's northern and eastern areas; while an elevated forested plateau covers its central area. In the littoral southwest are the Sundarbans, the world's largest mangrove forest and home of the Bengal tiger. In the coastal southeast lies Cox's Bazaar, the longest beach in the world[vague], at 125 km (78 mi).[7] The region has a monsoon climate, which the Bengali calendar divides into six seasons.
Bengal has played a major role in history. At times an independent regional empire, the historical region was a leading power in Southeast Asia and later the Islamic East, with extensive trade networks. In antiquity, its kingdoms were known as seafaring nations. Bengal was known to the Greeks as Gangaridai, notable for mighty military power. According to Greek historians Megasthenes and ArrianAlexander the Great withdrew from South Asia anticipating a counterattack from an alliance of Gangaridai.[8] Later writers noted merchant shipping links between Bengal and Roman Egypt.
The Bengali Pala Empire was the last major Buddhist imperial power in the subcontinent,[9] founded in 750 and becoming the dominant power in the northern Indian subcontinent by the 9th century,[10][11]before being replaced by the Hindu Sena dynasty in the 12th century.[9] Islam was introduced during the Pala Empire, through trade with the Abbasid Caliphate.[12] The Islamic Bengal Sultanate, founded in 1352, was absorbed into the Mughal Empire in 1576. The Mughal Bengal Subah province became a major global exporter,[13][14][15] a center of worldwide industries such as muslinsilkpearl,[16] cottontextiles,[17] and shipbuilding.[18] It was conquered by the British East India Company in 1757 and became the Bengal Presidency, which experienced deindustrialization and famines under British rule.[19] Upon independence, the partition of Bengal (1947) split the region into West Bengal in India and East Pakistan, the latter becoming the independent nation of Bangladesh in 1971.
Bengali culture has been particularly influential in the fields of philosophy, literaturemusicshipbuilding, art, architecture, sports, currency, commerce, politics and cuisine.



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Welcome fellow traveller… fellow maenad, fellow satyr, fellow lover of the dithyramb, lover of the high dance-kick, lover of poetry and of the unmixed wine; of merriment, of madness, of frenzy and of ecstasy; of the festival, of the flute, of the thyrsus, of the ivy and of the carefree mind, of the freely soaring immortal spirit  and of the front row!

Sunday, March 25, 2018

1835–1908 AD- The life of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, the founder of the messianic Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam

Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (c. 1897).jpgMirzā Ghulām Ahmad (13 February 1835 – 26 May 1908) was an Indian religious leader and the founder of the Ahmadiyya Movement in Islam. He claimed to have been divinely appointed as the promised Messiah and Mahdi, in the likeness of Jesus (mathīl-iʿIsā),[1][2] in fulfillment of Islam's eschatological prophecies, as well as the Mujaddid (centennial reviver) of the 14th Islamic century.[3][4][5]
Born in 1835 to a prominent family in Qadian, Ghulam Ahmad emerged as a writer and debater for Islam. When he was just over forty years of age, his father died and around that time he believed that God began to communicate with him.[6][7][8] In 1889, he took a pledge of allegiance from forty of his supporters at Ludhiana and formed a community of followers upon what he claimed was divine instruction, stipulating ten conditions of initiation, an event that marks the establishment of the Ahmadiyya movement.[9][10][11] The mission of the movement, according to him, was the reinstatement of the absolute oneness of God, the revival of Islam through the moral reformation of society along Islamic ideals, and the global propagation of Islam in its pristine form.[12][13] As opposed to the Christian and mainstream Islamic view of Jesus (or Isa), being alive in heaven to return towards the end of time, Ghulam Ahmad asserted that he had in fact survived crucifixion and died a natural death.[14] He traveled extensively across the Punjab preaching his religious ideas and rallied support by combining a reformist programme with his personal revelations which he claimed to receive from God, attracting thereby substantial following within his lifetime as well as considerable hostility particularly from the Muslim Ulema. He is known to have engaged in numerous public debates and dialogues with Christian missionaries, Muslim scholars and Hindu revivalists.
Ghulam Ahmad was a prolific author and wrote more than ninety books on various religious, theological and moral subjects between the publication of the first volume of Barahin-i-Ahmadiyya (The Proofs of Islam, his first major work) in 1880 and his death in May 1908.[15][16] Many of his writings bear a polemical and apologetic tone in favour of Islam, seeking to establish its superiority as a religion through rational argumentation, often by articulating his own interpretations of Islamic teachings.[17][18] He advocated a peaceful propagation of Islam and emphatically argued against the permissibility of military Jihad under circumstances prevailing in the present age.[19][13] By the time of his death, he had gathered an estimated 400,000 followers, especially within the United Provinces, the Punjab and Sindh[20][21] and had built a dynamic religious organisation with an executive body and its own printing press. After his death he was succeeded by his close companion Hakīm Noor-ud-Dīn who assumed the title of Khalīfatul Masīh (successor of the Messiah).
Although Ghulam Ahmad is revered by Ahmadi Muslims as the promised Messiah and Imām Mahdi, Muhammad nevertheless remains the central figure in Ahmadiyya Islam.[22][23] Ghulam Ahmad's claim to be a subordinate (ummatiprophet within Islam has remained a central point of controversy between his followers and mainstream Muslims, who believe Muhammad to be the last prophet and await the physical return of Jesus.[24][25]


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Ahmadiyya (/ɑːməˈdiə/;[1] officially, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community[2] or the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama'atArabicالجماعة الإسلامية الأحمدية‎, transliteratedal-Jamā'ah al-Islāmiyyah al-AḥmadiyyahUrduاحمدیہ مسلم جماعت‎) is an Islamic religious movement founded in Punjab, British India, near the end of the 19th century.[3][4][5][6] It originated with the life and teachings of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (1835–1908),[7] who claimed to have appeared in fulfilment of the prophecies concerning the world's reformer during the end times; and who was to bring about, by peaceful means, the final triumph of Islam and herald the eschaton as predicted in Islamic scriptures as well as the traditions of various world religions.[8] He claimed to have been divinely appointed as both the promised Mahdi (Guided One) and Messiah awaited by Muslims.[9][10][11][12] Adherents of the Ahmadiyya—a term adopted expressly in reference to Muhammad's alternative name Aḥmad.[13][14][15][16]—are known as Ahmadi Muslims or simply Ahmadis
Ahmadi thought emphasizes the belief that Islam is the final dispensation for humanity as revealed to Muhammad and the necessity of restoring to it its true intent and pristine form, which had been lost through the centuries.[17] Ahmadiyya adherents consider Ahmad to have appeared as the Mahdi—bearing the qualities of Jesus in accordance with their reading of scriptural prophecies—to revitalize Islam and set in motion its moral system that would bring about lasting peace.[18][19][20] They believe that upon divine guidance he purged Islam of foreign accretions in belief and practice by championing what is, in their view, Islam’s original precepts as practised by Muhammad and the early Muslim community.[21][22] Ahmadis thus view themselves as leading the propagation and renaissance of Islam.[23][24]
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad established the movement on 23 March 1889 by formally accepting allegiance from his supporters. Since his death, the Community has been led by a number of Caliphs and has spread to 209 countries and territories of the world as of 2016 with concentrations in South AsiaWest AfricaEast Africa and Indonesia. The Ahmadis have a strong missionary tradition and formed the first Muslim missionary organization to arrive in Britain and other Western countries.[25][26][27][28][29] Currently, the Community is led by its Caliph, Mirza Masroor Ahmad, and is estimated to number between 10 and 20 million worldwide.[30][31][32][33]
The population is almost entirely contained in the single, highly organized and united movement. In this sense there is only one major branch. However, in the early history of the Community, a number of Ahmadis broke away over the nature of Ahmad's prophethood and succession and formed the Lahore Ahmadiyya Movement for the Propagation of Islam, which today represents a small fraction of all Ahmadis. Some Ahmadiyya-specific beliefs have been thought of as opposed to contemporary mainstream Islamic thought since the movement's birth, and some Ahmadis have subsequently faced persecution.[34][33][35][36] Many Muslims consider Ahmadi Muslims as either kafirs or heretics.[37][38][39][40]


Monday, March 19, 2018

1823 - 1830 AD-September 21, The Mormon Prophet Joseph Smith saw the Angel Moroni and prophesied of what is now the Book Of Mormon

Image result for Book of Mormon artThe Book of Mormon is a sacred text of the Latter Day Saint movement, which adherents believe contains writings of ancient prophets who lived on the American continent from approximately 2200 BC to AD 421.[1][2] It was first published in March 1830 by Joseph Smith as The Book of Mormon: An Account Written by the Hand of Mormon upon Plates Taken from the Plates of Nephi.[3]
According to Smith's account and the book's narrative, the Book of Mormon was originally written in otherwise unknown characters referred to as "reformed Egyptian"[4] engraved on golden plates. Smith said that the last prophet to contribute to the book, a man named Moroni, buried it in Cumorah Hill in present-day New York, then returned to Earth in 1827 as an angel,[5] revealing the location of the plates to Smith, and instructing him to translate it into English for use in the restoration of Christ's true church in the latter days. Critics claim that it was fabricated by Smith, drawing on material and ideas from contemporary 19th-century works rather than translating an ancient record.[6][7][8]
The Book of Mormon has a number of original and distinctive doctrinal discussions on subjects such as the fall of Adam and Eve,[9] the nature of the Atonement,[10] eschatology, redemption from physical and spiritual death,[11] and the organization of the latter-day church. The pivotal event of the book is an appearance of Jesus Christ in the Americas shortly after his resurrection.
The Book of Mormon is the earliest of the unique writings of the Latter Day Saint movement, the denominations of which typically regard the text primarily as scripture, and secondarily as a historical record of God's dealings with the ancient inhabitants of the Americas.[12] The Book of Mormon is divided into smaller books, titled after the individuals named as primary authors and, in most versions, divided into chapters and verses. It is written in English very similar to the Early Modern English linguistic style of the King James Version of the Bible, and has since been fully or partially translated into 108 languages.[13] As of 2011, more than 150 million copies of the Book of Mormon had been published.[14]


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Joseph Smith Jr. (December 23, 1805 – June 27, 1844) was an American religious leader and founder of Mormonism and the Latter Day Saint movement. When he was twenty-four, Smith published the Book of Mormon. By the time of his death fourteen years later, he had attracted tens of thousands of followers and founded a religious culture that continues to the present.
Smith was born in Sharon, Vermont. By 1817, he had moved with his family to what became known as the burned-over district of western New York, an area of intense religious revivalism during the Second Great Awakening. According to Smith, he experienced a series of visions, including one in which he saw "two personages" (presumably God the Father and Jesus Christ) and others in which an angel directed him to a buried book of golden plates inscribed with a Judeo-Christian history of an ancient American civilization. In 1830, Smith published what he said was an English translation of these plates, the Book of Mormon. The same year he organized the Church of Christ, calling it a restoration of the early Christian church. Members of the church were later called "Latter Day Saints", or "Mormons", and in 1838, Smith announced a revelation that renamed the church as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
In 1831, Smith and his followers moved west, planning to build a communalistic American Zion. They first gathered in Kirtland, Ohio, and established an outpost in Independence, Missouri, which was intended to be Zion's "center place". During the 1830s, Smith sent out missionaries, published revelations, and supervised construction of the expensive Kirtland Temple. The collapse of the church-sponsored Kirtland Safety Society Anti-Banking Company and violent skirmishes with non-Mormon Missourians caused Smith and his followers to establish a new settlement at Nauvoo, Illinois, where he became a spiritual and political leader. In 1844, Smith and the Nauvoo city council angered non-Mormons by destroying a newspaper that had criticized Smith's power and practice of polygamy.[12] After Smith was imprisoned in Carthage, Illinois, he was killed when a mob stormed the jailhouse.
Smith published many revelations and other texts that his followers regard as scriptureHis teachings include his views about the nature of God, cosmology, family structures, political organization, and religious collectivism. His followers regard him as a prophet comparable to Moses and Elijah, and several religious denominations consider themselves the continuation of the church he organized, including The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Community of Christ.


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The Latter Day Saint movement (also called the LDS movementLDS restorationist movement, or Smith–Rigdon movement)[1] is the collection of independent church groups that trace their origins to a Christian primitivist movement founded by Joseph Smith in the late 1820s. Collectively, these churches have over 16 million members.[2] The vast majority of adherents—about 98%—belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), with their predominant theology being Mormonism. The LDS Church self-identifies as Christian.[3][4] A minority of Latter Day Saint adherents, such as members of the Community of Christ, believe in traditional Protestant theology, and have distanced themselves from some of the distinctive doctrines of Mormonism. Other groups include the Remnant Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, which supports lineal succession of leadership from Smith's descendants, and the more controversial Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which defends the practice of polygamy.
The movement began in western New York during the Second Great Awakening when Smith said that he received visions revealing a new sacred text, the Book of Mormon, which he published in 1830 as a complement to the Bible. Based on the teachings of this book and other revelations, Smith founded a Christian primitivist church, called the "Church of Christ". The Book of Mormon attracted hundreds of early followers, who later became known as "Mormons", "Latter Day Saints", or just "Saints." In 1831, Smith moved the church headquarters to Kirtland, Ohio, and in 1838 changed its name to the "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints."
After the church in Ohio collapsed due to dissensions, in 1838, Smith and the body of the church moved to Missouri where they were persecuted and forced to Illinois. After Smith's death in 1844, a succession crisis led to the organization splitting into several groups. The largest of these, the LDS Church, migrated under the leadership of Brigham Young to the Great Basin (now Utah) and became most prominently known for its 19th-century practice of polygamy. The LDS Church officially renounced this practice in 1890, and gradually discontinued it, resulting in the Utah Territory becoming a U.S. state. This change resulted in the formation of a number of small sects who sought to maintain polygamy and other 19th-century Mormon doctrines and practices, now referred to as "Mormon fundamentalism".
Other groups originating within the Latter Day Saint movement followed different paths in MissouriIllinoisMichigan, and Pennsylvania. For the most part these groups rejected plural marriage and some of Smith's later teachings. The largest of these, the Community of Christ (originally known as the "Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints"), was formed in Illinois in 1860 by several groups uniting around Smith's son, Joseph Smith III. Most existing denominations that adhere to the teachings of Smith have some historical relationship with the movement.


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Moroni (/məˈrn/), according to the Book of Mormon, was the last Nephite prophet, historian, and military commander who lived in the Americas in the late fourth and early fifth centuries. He is later known as the Angel Moroni, who presented the golden plates to Joseph Smith, who said he translated the plates upon which the Book of Mormon was originally written.