Hindu

The museum will host a Bollywood dance party Saturday night with D.J. Rekha. By Susie Blair, Globe Correspondent Salem's Peabody Essex Museum will once again celebrate Indian art, music, and dance with its annual "Sensational India!" festival at the end of this month, this time with the theme of spritiual and artistic devotion. "'Sensational India' has been growing by leaps and bounds every year and we are bracing for a great turnout this time around," said Whitney Van Dyke, public relations associate for the museum, in an email.

In a display of mourning, unity, and protest over the recent fatal shooting of a Boston University graduate student, more than 75 people gathered for a candlelight vigil at the campus Sunday evening. The group solemnly chanted, sang, and prayed together outside Marsh Chapel. They huddled around a table lined with candles and incense. At the table's center, surrounded by flowers, was a framed photograph of the slain student, 24-year-old Kanagala Seshadri Rao. "We grieve.

In a display of mourning, unity, and protest over the recent fatal shooting of a Boston University graduate student, more than 75 people gathered for a candlelight vigil at the campus Sunday evening. The group solemnly chanted, sang, and prayed together outside Marsh Chapel. They huddled around a table lined with candles and incense. At the table's center, surrounded by flowers, was a framed photograph of the slain student, 24-year-old Kanagala Seshadri Rao. "We grieve.

The museum will host a Bollywood dance party Saturday night with D.J. Rekha. By Susie Blair, Globe Correspondent Salem's Peabody Essex Museum will once again celebrate Indian art, music, and dance with its annual "Sensational India!" festival at the end of this month, this time with the theme of spritiual and artistic devotion. "'Sensational India' has been growing by leaps and bounds every year and we are bracing for a great turnout this time around," said Whitney Van Dyke, public relations associate for the museum, in an email.

NEW DELHI — M.F. Husain, a former movie billboard artist who rose to become India’s most sought-after painter before going into self-imposed exile during an uproar over nude images of Hindu icons, died yesterday. He was 95. CNN-IBN TV channel quoted a friend, Arun Vadehra, as saying that Mr. Husain, often described as India’s Picasso, died at the Royal Brompton hospital in London. His lawyer, Akhil Sibal, confirmed the death to the Associated Press. Mr. Husain had lived in Dubai since 2006 after receiving death threats from Hindu hard-liners in India for a nude...

NEW DELHI — Transportation ground to a halt and businesses were closed in many parts of India yesterday as the main opposition parties led a strike to protest a government-imposed rise in fuel prices. “Because of the obstruction caused by protesters, train services have been stopped in West Bengal state,’’ said railroad spokesman Samir Goswami in Calcutta, the state’s capital. Flights were also halted at Calcutta’s airport, which serves domestic and international destinations.

KATHMANDU, Nepal - Hundreds of thousands of Hindus gathered at a temple in southern Nepal yesterday for a ceremony involving the slaughter of more than 200,000 animals, a festival that has drawn the ire of animal-welfare protesters. A Nepalese minister said it was the largest sacrificial slaughter of animals in the world. Protests have occurred in recent weeks in towns near the Gadhimai temple and in the capital, Katmandu, by animals-rights activists and other religious groups.

ALLAHABAD, India -- Among believers, the river has many names: The Pure. Destroyer of Sin. Light Amid the Darkness of Ignorance. But mostly they call it "Ganga Ma" -- Mother Ganges -- and they worship it with a blinding intensity. They worship it despite the islands of garbage that float down its path, and the tons of chemicals dumped in it. They worship it despite the quarter of a billion gallons of sewage poured into it every day that spread illness among the 350 million people -- about 5 percent of the world's population -- who live in its watershed.

JAKARTA, Indonesia - Indonesia has rejected a push by the resort island of Bali for rare turtles to be legally slain in Hindu ceremonies, siding with conservationists of the protected reptiles against religious advocates, an official said yesterday. Bali Governor I Made Mangku Pastika had enraged environmentalists by advocating that a quota of 1,000 green turtles be killed each year, strictly for ceremonial purposes. He said legally killed turtles should not end up in cooking pots, served to tourists in restaurants as soup or turtle skewers as they had in the...

OAK FOREST, Ill. - A blaze that killed a couple and their 3-year-old son in their suburban Chicago apartment may have had its point of origin on the other side of the world, in India's ancient Hindu caste system. Prosecutors say Subhash Chander, an immigrant from India, doused the place with gasoline and set the fire - killing his pregnant daughter, son-in-law, and their child - because he believed the young woman had married beneath her station. While some family members dispute such a connection, the weekend deaths served as a reminder that the caste system - a...

► Today is Monday, Jan. 30, the 30th day of 2012. There are 336 days left in the year. ► Today's birthdays: Actress Dorothy Malone is 87. Producer-director Harold Prince is 84. Actor Gene Hackman is 82. Actress Tammy Grimes is 78. Actress Vanessa Redgrave is 75. Chess grandmaster Boris Spassky is 75. Country singers Jeanne Pruett is 75, and Norma Jean is 74. Former Vice President Dick Cheney is 71. Rock singer Marty Balin is 70. R&B musician...

President Barack Obama will meet with senior advisers at the White House on Friday morning. In the afternoon, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton will join the president in the Oval Office. In the evening, Obama attends a reception celebrating the Hindu holiday of Diwali at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. Diwali, the festival of lights, is celebrated this week by Hindus all over the world. It's also important to some Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains. Diwali draws on the legends of each religion.

NEW DELHI — M.F. Husain, a former movie billboard artist who rose to become India’s most sought-after painter before going into self-imposed exile during an uproar over nude images of Hindu icons, died yesterday. He was 95. CNN-IBN TV channel quoted a friend, Arun Vadehra, as saying that Mr. Husain, often described as India’s Picasso, died at the Royal Brompton hospital in London. His lawyer, Akhil Sibal, confirmed the death to the Associated Press. Mr. Husain had lived in Dubai since 2006 after receiving death threats from Hindu hard-liners in India for a nude...

BOSTON MODERN ORCHESTRA PROJECT At: Jordan Hall, Friday ‘Sangita: The Spirit of India’’ was the title of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project’s season-ending concert Friday night at Jordan Hall. And the program was as dense as the hot, humid, subcontinent-like weather outside, with world premieres by three New England-based composers and a North American premiere by early-20th-century English composer John Foulds. BMOP’s program notes defined “sangita’’ as a Sanskrit word denoting the three branches of music — vocal, instrumental, and...

In 1897, Clarence Walworth published “The Walworths of America.’’ Eager to breathe life into his ancestors, the author offered readers “a Walworth standing in his own doorway, the children smiling through the window-panes, or chasing the dog in the orchard.’’ Clarence didn’t mention the act of parricide that haunted the Walworth family: On June 3, 1873, Clarence’s brother, Mansfield Walworth, a novelist, was murdered by Frank Walworth,...

NEW DELHI — Transportation ground to a halt and businesses were closed in many parts of India yesterday as the main opposition parties led a strike to protest a government-imposed rise in fuel prices. “Because of the obstruction caused by protesters, train services have been stopped in West Bengal state,’’ said railroad spokesman Samir Goswami in Calcutta, the state’s capital. Flights were also halted at Calcutta’s airport, which serves domestic and international destinations.

► Today is Monday, Jan. 30, the 30th day of 2012. There are 336 days left in the year. ► Today's birthdays: Actress Dorothy Malone is 87. Producer-director Harold Prince is 84. Actor Gene Hackman is 82. Actress Tammy Grimes is 78. Actress Vanessa Redgrave is 75. Chess grandmaster Boris Spassky is 75. Country singers Jeanne Pruett is 75, and Norma Jean is 74. Former Vice President Dick Cheney is 71. Rock singer Marty Balin is 70. R&B musician...

BOSTON MODERN ORCHESTRA PROJECT At: Jordan Hall, Friday ‘Sangita: The Spirit of India’’ was the title of the Boston Modern Orchestra Project’s season-ending concert Friday night at Jordan Hall. And the program was as dense as the hot, humid, subcontinent-like weather outside, with world premieres by three New England-based composers and a North American premiere by early-20th-century English composer John Foulds. BMOP’s program notes defined “sangita’’ as a Sanskrit word denoting the three branches of music — vocal, instrumental, and dance — but it didn’t mean...

JAKARTA, Indonesia - Indonesia has rejected a push by the resort island of Bali for rare turtles to be legally slain in Hindu ceremonies, siding with conservationists of the protected reptiles against religious advocates, an official said yesterday. Bali Governor I Made Mangku Pastika had enraged environmentalists by advocating that a quota of 1,000 green turtles be killed each year, strictly for ceremonial purposes. He said legally killed turtles should not end up in cooking pots, served to tourists in restaurants as soup or turtle skewers as they had in the past.

NEW DELHI - A government investigation released yesterday reportedly implicated dozens of Hindu nationalist politicians - including a former prime minister - in the 1992 demolition of a mosque that sparked deadly communal riots. The attack by Hindu mobs on the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya, 350 miles east of New Delhi, set off nationwide riots that killed 2,000 people in the largest explosion of Hindu-Muslim tension in the country in decades. Hindu nationalist leaders claim the mosque was built by Mogul rulers at the site of a Hindu temple marking the birthplace of the...