📍A thread. @RishabhPant17

Rishabh Pant's father was ill for a long time. He passed away in Roorkee on April 7, 2017. He went home to attend his father's funeral.

8 March 1679 - The date on which 300 saffron clad warriors gave their life to protect temples from mugal army. Thread➡️
Aurangzeb's huge army, which was adorned with artillery, elephant and horses, under the leadership of Commander Darab Khan had marched to punish the ruler of/1

Khandela Raja Bahadur Singh, who became a rebel due to the anti-Hindu policies of Aurangzeb, and to destroy the temples of Shekhawati. Bahadur Singh to compete with such a large army, vacated Khandela for the purpose of conducting guerilla warfare and went Kot Sakrai /2

located in the inaccessible hills of Sakrai. People of Khandela also vacated Khandela and hid in nearby villages.

But some Shekhawat warriors did not like this as they knew that the royal army would not leave a single temple located in Shekhawati unbroken./3

so soon the teams of self-sacrificing Dharma-protectors Shekhawat heroes started reaching Khandela to protect the Dev temples.

Sujan Singh Shekhawat, the young thakur of Chhapoli, was coming back from his wedding when he heard about the imperial army from Shepherds./4

झिरमीर झिरमिर मेहा बरसे,मोरां छतरी छाई |
कुल में है तो आव सुजाण, फोज देवरे आई ||

if you are born in your glorious clan, then come, the army have come to destroy temple. /5

Ok, I'll hop on this Elizabeth Warren/Native American testing bandwagon (gently and non-politically).

I've been a @23andMe customer for a while, and have followed their ancestry updates closely.

All is more or less as expected....except for this bit about Native American.

The family is almost completely composed of Spanish peasants (from various regions) who emigrated, along with a massive wave in the late 19th-cent./early 20th-cent., to Cuba back when it was a booming economy (richer than Spain's) and worth emigrating to (Communism killed that).

Also, the native population of Cuba was annihilated early on---was the first place the Spanish colonized after all. Having a native background in Cuba would be like having the same in, say, Massachusetts, particularly if you're (say) mostly Irish. Just really, really unlikely.

(Note: the North African/Arab background is less mysterious. The Iberian peninsula was part of the Muslim world for centuries. It would be odd *not* to have some Arab/Middle Eastern background coming from Spain. Given the family is mostly from Northern Spain, it's small though.)

I have a Spanish passport, have been back to the ancestral villages in Spain, seen the church where my grandmother was baptized, my grandfather told me stories about growing up as the child of Spanish colonists in rural Cuba. The native bit just clashes with all the family lore.

'Tera mera rishta kya, hindu, hindu,hindutva' is a clear take on 'tera mera rishta kya,la ilaha illallah'. As much as Hindutva hates the monotheistic religions especially Islam, there's a strange wistfulness and subliminal need at display now, to BE that they hate. 1

Charlie Hebdo doesn’t come up as a cautionary tale now but rather 'why cant we be like that'?
Growing up, Hanuman was an adorable deity for us, who swallowed the sun, or who couldn’t figure out what was Sanjeevani booti so he picked up a whole mountain and came back with it. 2

Or he was loyal, admirable and when he cleaved his chest, you saw both Ram and Sita. Now we have a lot of “Angry Hanuman” stickers. Why is a cute childlike God angry? We don’t know. It's a convenient blank space where to paint all the angst of Hindu Khatre mein hain narrative. 3

The other strange thing that has started happening is pictures of Ram appearing sans Sita. “Jai Siya Ram” has become “Jai Shri Ram”. Some people disingenuously explain it as being the same thing - because Shri is a name of Lakshmi. Not really. Siya is an apbhransh of Sita. 4

Shri is a prefix of respect in this case. Hinduism is being militarised. A woman/Sita has no place in it. Even the militaristic Goddess that is Durga has no place in this conception of neo-Hindu divinity, as evidenced by Dilip Mandal wondering where Durga came from. 5

SRI KALAHASTI KSHETRAM, CHITTOOR (AP)
#bharatmandir

Panchbhootasthalam representing vayu element, also called Dakshin Kailasha.
As per Shiva’s boon, Vayu is incarnated here as Shiva and worshipped as Kalahasteeswara.
The kshetram is also associated with Rahu and Ketu.

The Kshetram is named after 3 devotees of Shiva- a snake, spider and elephant who worshipped a lingam in the forest. Elephant did jal abhishek with water from its trunk, spider protected it from dust by weaving a web on it and snake adorned it with his jewel.
@GunduHuDuGa

Once, the web and jewel got washed away when elephant sprayed water on the lingam. Angered snake entered elephant’s trunk and bit him but died in the process. The agitated elephant trampled the spider accidentally. Shiva gave moksha to all three.

Hence the name-Sri for Spider, kaal for snake n hasti for elephant.

Shiv bhakt Kanappa is said to have plucked his own eye to put it on the lingam here when he saw blood oozing from the eye on the lingam
This place is the ultimate location for Rahu Kethu Sarpa Dosha Nivarana.

A thread on how absurd the UK is on transgender issues and how the UK got so transphobic

In 2015 Parliament held an inquiry looking into the state of Transgender equality. Trans people of all stripes outlined many different problems across many, many different areas.

As a result Parliament created a list of recommendations including legal recognition for non binary people, gender recognition act reform, allowing 16 year olds to change their legal gender and reform of NHS gender identity services.

The government under Theresa May ignored everything that was recommended except for Gender recognition act reform. This act came into law in 2003 and gave trans men and women (but not non-binary people) the ability to legally change their gender on their birth certificates.

The process at that time to change your birth certificate under the GRA was to make an application to a panel of cisgender people who would decide if you were sufficiently trans based on your payslips, photo ID and bank statements. You would not get the option to speak to them.

(Also this process cost £140 which is just a tax on being trans)