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By Todd DeWitt 

On Friday, November 22, the Hindu Forum of Belgium (HFB) celebrated a milestone on the journey toward government recognition of Hinduism by holding an event at the Royal Library of Belgium. A hundred and fifty VIPs attended, including His Excellency Saurabh Kumar, the Indian Ambassador, and Herve Cornille from the Belgian Parliament.

Eleven years after HFB applied for recognition by the Belgian Government and eight years after it requested a subsidy to professionalize HFB’s activ

The Hindu Forum of Belgium (HFB) has issued a press release announcing that the Belgian Parliament has voted on January 11, 2024, to grant HFB a subsidy, which is a first step towards Hinduism being officially recognized as a religion in the European nation. This was the result of years of engagement with the Belgian government by HFB.

According to the press release, HFB “was created in 2007 to represent the Hindu communities and organisations in Belgium and to work towards Hinduism’s recognitio

The words “religion” and “Hindu” are problematic. Both are confusing, inaccurate, and not useful words.

Religion

Depending on the context, the use of the word religion can be ill-defined and even offensive—for example, when someone says that religions cause all wars or when someone says, “Science is logic; religion is belief.”

These two statements are ignorant because the person using the word religion has defined it in an arbitrary manner when in fact the word religion defies definition and th

In the US, gurus and yogis have attracted tens of thousands of followers. But there is a huge gulf between American devotees of Hinduism and immigrants from the subcontinent.

In March last year, more than 65,000 people attended Utah’s famous Festival of Colors. The event was held at an ISKCON temple, and only a small percentage of attendees were Indian or Hindu. It was just one sign of how firmly Hinduism has come to be established in the US. Today, tens of millions of non-Indian Americans engag