Hindus

Hindu nun Pravrajika Saradeshaprana, dressed in a saffron robe, blew into a conch shell three times, calling to worship Hindu and Episcopal religious leaders who joined Saturday to celebrate an Indian Rite Mass at St. John's Cathedral near downtown. The rare joint service included chants from the Temple Bhajan Band of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness and a moving rendition of "Bless the Lord, O My Soul" sung by the St. John's choir.

Police in eastern India killed at least three people when they opened fire on a group of hard-line Hindus who set fire to a police station during clashes between Hindus and Christians, officials said. The killings in a remote corner of Orissa state brought the death toll to four since violence broke out on Christmas Eve when long-standing tensions between the Hindu majority and the small Christian community erupted over conversions to Christianity.

Hindu nationalists in India won a resounding victory in a Gujarat state election. The vote was a personal victory for Narendra Modi, who was reelected to the state's top job. Throughout the often bitter campaign, Modi cast the election as a referendum on his rule -- a tenure best known for 2002 riots that began after a mysterious train fire killed about 60 Hindu pilgrims. Many in India say Modi stood idly by as Hindu mobs killed Muslims, who were blamed for the fire.

Cremation fires crackle all day long on the chipped concrete steps of this riverside holy city, the blazes spewing ash and flakes over the mourners who crowd its famous piers. Sweating, bare-chested men stoke the funeral pyres, squinting against the sting of smoke as they lug and stack the bundles of logs needed to burn the procession of Hindu dead. And when the bodies are incinerated and the families have taken away the ashes of their loved ones, the men sweep the residue into the Ganges River.

In a historic action, top leaders of five great religions met this month in Indonesia -- home to 200 million Muslims -- to condemn violence inflicted in the name of religion. The leaders representing Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish and Muslim traditions came from five countries and included former Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid and Los Angeles Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

Police in western India arrested two Christian missionaries, who allegedly forced conversions, and 11 Hindu hard-liners accused of attacking them this week, officials said. The two missionaries were charged with "unlawful religious conversions" after a complaint filed by two Hindu residents of Ichalkaranji, 140 miles south of Mumbai, police said. The missionaries told police they were attacked by Hindu extremists, and TV footage showed them being kicked and punched.

He is the first Hindu to preside over this Muslim nation's highest court. And he is now in the eye of a political hurricane engulfing Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf. Judge Rana Bhagwandas, 64, was sworn in Saturday as acting chief justice of Pakistan's Supreme Court. Upon taking the oath in this southern port city, Bhagwandas was thrust into the controversy surrounding the removal of the man who had held the top job.

Six-year-old Ishika Muchhal trembles with excitement as she hides near the park's picnic benches, her face smeared with powdered paints: green, pink and red, with a splotch of blue on her forehead and a hint of yellow on her nose. Earlier, she had been hit directly between the shoulders by a boy she calls "an enemy of mine." There's even a yellow and green drenched spot as proof. She tells her tale gleefully, reenacting the scene with a smile and a hint of the dramatic.

Shivani Shodhan is busy with her graduate studies in public health in Virginia, but she was back home in Southern California Sunday for an event she didn't want to miss with her family: the celebration of the Hindu New Year and Festival of Lights. Shodhan, a 21-year-old from Canoga Park, was one of the thousands of Hindus in Southern California who gathered at homes and in temples for the occasion.

Thousands of Hindus gathered Sunday at UC Irvine during a rare Kumbha Mela religious festival to help bring spiritual peace to devotees and to the world on the eve of Sept. 11. "We hope today's celebration, held on the day before 9/11, can bring positive energy and peace to the Earth," said Rama Kumar of Orange, one of the organizers. In India, the festival is held at irregular intervals four times within each 12-year period and draws millions of devotees.