Happy New Year?

I enjoyed this article and I think it applies to a lot of minorities, and other pejorative terms like "foreigner". I think also, that it reflects the unaddressed and unconsidered bias that is now and--at least in the new future--will stay prevalent in the US: http://www.jewcy.com/cabal/muslim_now_available_insult_form

I took some time off after finals ended. Here is a Synopsis of the time between my last post and today.
Friday: Dick around
Saturday-Sunday: dick around, shopping, watched Indiana Jones and the last Crusade for the heck of it
Monday: Dick around the night before Christmas
Tuesday: Christmas
Wednesday: went to work for half a day, worked on my paper
Thursday: went to work, and got mad good deals on after Christmas items at the mall
Friday: went to work, worked on my paper all night
Saturday: went to CVS, went to the gym, finished my paper END OF THE FALL 2007 SEMESTER WOOOOOOOO
Sunday: went to the gym, went out to eat with old friends (spent way too much on dinner), partied like a rock star (minus the mad biddies...sigh), and got home at 7am.
Monday: went to work after only 1 hour of sleep (ouch), stayed home for New Years
Tuesday: went to the gym, hung out with my old roommate in the city (I hadn't seen the man in a year and a half)
As you all can see, you didn't miss much.

I got forwarded an email a while back. The purpose of the message was to remind Indian-Americans that we should not observe 1/1 as "New Years" because Indians have their own calendar and our new years is on Diwali. Western society has become more aware of the unfairness of creating a system where the world measures time based on the death of one religion's messiah. The "common era" designation is much more PC and a positive step in the west becoming more considerate of its religious minorities.

Western society and standards have permeated through the world. I agree that it is unfair that the way I measure time is determined by the death of Christ. I have nothing against Christ as a person or god as a thing or time as a constant, but I prefer to measure time as the Indian calendar does. Unfortunately, the Indian calendar is complicated. The fact is that I, like my Indian brethren, am acclimated to the western conventions of measuring time. I have a western calendar where someone who knows what they are doing wrote down which western day Hindu holidays fall on. This is totally fine as long as Hindus keep observing their holidays in accordance with the Hindu Calendar.

I think that you can separate Hinduism from its calendar. For example, the Hindu Calendar is used in Pakistan, a Muslim country comprised of Hindus that converted to Islam several hundred years ago. I use the Hindu way of measuring time as my religious calendar and the western method as my practical calendar. I think this is illustrative of the balance an observer of a foreign religion must strike in a country comprised of practitioners and descendants of a different faith.

The main problem I had with the gentleman's email: India has already acquiesced to western conventions, otherwise it would not be as successful as it is today. One does need not go father the Ethiopia to see how a recalcitrant state refusing to accept the global conventions can be left behind economically. India had to adopt the western calendar, just as she had to adopt the western notion of a "nation state".

We send our taxes in according to when Uncle Sam says that they are due. We have a western birthday on our driver's licenses. Hinduism is about a lot more than the calendar, and Hindu philosophy and ideals are what we need to pass on to the next generation. We can have pujaris who know how to read a calendar and still observe our holidays at the proper time. Us lay Hindus, however, are charged with the task of raising a generation of Hindus that appreciates the significance of the calendar and the holidays.

When we make comments imploring followers of our faith to do something like reject New Years, we are asking them to commit to the impractical and by doing that, you make your religion impractical. Hinduism needs to find its own niche in this country, and we won't do that by rejecting something as innocuous as the western new year.