When people in the United States were busy watching the most awaited game of the year, Super Bowl LI, Wrecking Ball singer, Miley Cyrus performed Lakshmi Puja. The singer completed with a ‘fruit bowl’. Miley Cyrus shared several photographs of the Indian ritual, Lakshmi puja — a way to worship the goddess of wealth, on her social media platform Instagram. The image shows a traditional Hindu prayer set-up.
If she had done this in India, she would be branded as ‘narrow-minded’, ‘Sanghi’ – a supporter of RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), ‘saffron extremist’, by our pseudo-intellectual left-liberals! Miley’s secularism would have been questioned and ‘some’ would even go to an extent of declaring India unsafe for minorities! It is unusual, but Miley Cyrus has apparently begun avidly studying Hinduism after her Yoga studies began several years ago. She shared photos of her attending Lakshmi Puja in lieu of Super Bowl festivities.
It’s surprising to see how western countries have started learning and following best practices of spirituality, the yoga of the Eastern countries, and here in India, everyone is blindly worshipping bad practices of the west, or maybe not. However we Indians would never learn to follow traffic rules, standing in the queue, respecting other people, real research and innovation, gender and caste equality. Amidst all these, we are also losing even good parts of our cultural norms, religion and value system.