Women inferior in Hinduism?

One thing must be understood about Hindu religious culture - it is not scripture centered unlike, say, the Abrahamic religious culture. The highest of Hinduism's teaching is to discover the divinity within through the guide of a self-realised guru, not to prostrate to a God without through a road-map laid out in a scripture. If Hindu scriptures contain expressions where women would seem to be denigrated, it would be equally true that the same scriptures would also contain expressions equating women with divinity. The conclusion invariably drawn by Hindus is not that the scriptures are self-contradictory, but they have to be read in their contexts. The reader of the scriptures is expected to be a person with discriminatory capacities (discriminate as in the capacity to know the relative value of things and not as in "being unfair"). Therefore trying to establish that women have an inferior position in Hindu culture by quoting a few verses out of context flies in the face of the most obvious fact of Hinduism - that it expresses God not just as a male symbol as do the Abrahamic religions but also as a female.

Stray thoughts on the hanging of Kasab.

It is said that punishment of a criminal, particularly if the punishment is death penalty, is not as much to deter the criminal as to deter potential criminals. The hanging of Kasab would not bring back the lives he killed. It would only avenge the loved ones of the victims. It could be argued that vengeance is not a noble trait and assuaging it would only create a society of vengeance. If the aim of punishment is to deter potential criminals, then punishment for crimes should be so gory that a would-be criminal would shudder at the very thought of getting caught for his crime and would give up his criminal tendencies. Ironically, the goriest punishments are those spelt out in the Shariat. Whether over a millennium of Shariat implementation has created a crime-free society anywhere is a moot question. If it has not, then should the punishments need to be even more gory for the desired effect? Maybe the solution could be to seek transformation of the criminal. But surely, for the transformation of criminals we would need a patient, perseverant and enlightened society. Do we have such a society? The goal of the best of religious masters has been to build such a society. Noble goal but with no widespread success so far. So as things stand, it is better to go in for quick-fix fire-fighting solutions. Kill the murderer and hope to stem the tide of evil clones.

Census on caste?

I think there should be no census on the caste configuration of Indian society. Instead of strengthening caste identities, caste should be sought to be made a thing of the past. Reservations on the basis of caste should be replaced by reservations on economic basis.

Is God incapable of unconditional love?

Love, to be truly love, must be unconditional. God loves you is what most religions say. But such religions also seem to be saying God loves you but you have to do such and such a thing or behave in such and such a way if you want God to continue loving you. Can God be capable of conditional love? God would not be God if His love was conditional. In the Bible it is said, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life." JOHN 3:16. "So loved" yet conditional. I shall love provided you believe, God seems to be saying. In the Quran it is said, “Say (O Muhammad): ‘If you do love Allah, follow me: Allah will love you and forgive you your sins: For Allah is Oft-Forgiving Most Merciful.’” (Qur’an 3:31). Very clearly, it says that if you love Allah you have to follow his messenger Mohammad and only then will Allah continue to love you. Conditional love again. I think it is a suspect God who needs something in return for His love. It would seem that such Gods suffer from a sense of lack as ordinary men do, who were probably, in the first place, the creators of such scheming Gods. Maybe this is inevitable (the conditioning of love) in religions which separate God from His creation.