Up to a million Hindu devotees have gathered in a village in Nepal to witness the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of animals in a mass sacrifice that has drawn widespread criticism.

Worshippers travelled long distances, many coming from India, to attend the two-day Gadhimai festival, which honours the Hindu goddess of power and takes place once every five years in southern Nepal.

Yoga practitioners are criticizing a Missouri sales tax that applies to yoga classes, claiming they should be exempt because the lessons include spiritual elements.

Some practitioners think such a tax is unconstitutional. They argue that yoga, with roots in ancient Indian meditation, is as much a spiritual practice as an exercise routine and should be exempt from taxation.

After the recent arrests of numerous Hindu terrorists for exploding bombs, authorities increasingly view Hindu rightwing extremists as a threat not only to Muslim and Christian minorities but also to national security.

Historically Hindu terrorist groups have traded blows with India’s Muslim extremists, but because of a perceived threat from Christianity many analysts believe Hindu terrorists increasingly pose dangers to Christians as well.

Citizens in the Dutch town of Amstelveen have condemned plans by local authorities to support a controversial Hindu festival that would involve praying to a Hindu goddess from India, in the heart of the town.

Local officials said the ‘India Diwali Festival’, or ‘Festival of Lights’, is part of a policy to accommodate the Indian community in Amstelveen, a European gateway for international companies due to its location near Schiphol Airport and key highways.

A dancing elephant statue at the Calgary Zoo has kicked up controversy after a Christian group condemned the figure as an inappropriate religious icon.

Zoo officials say they have no plans to replace the Ganesh statue — which has stood near the elephant enclosure for at least two years — despite calls for its removal from Concerned Christians Canada.

Grahame Newton, the zoo’s director of corporate services, says the Ganesh statue isn’t a religious icon, rather a cultural symbol that shows the tie between the elephants and Asian culture.

The biggest challenge, speakers at a panel discussion on Hinduism said, is transmitting faith from immigrants, most of whom grew up in predominantly Hindu India, to their children, who are growing up in a predominantly Christian society.

Temples are launching religious education programs, modeled after those in churches and synagogues, but Anantanand Rambachan said there are other issues – for example, Hindus will have to decide what language to use for worship, and, he asked, “can we visualize English being a liturgical language for Hindus?’’

He called Hinduism “the least understood among American religious traditions,’’ noting that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam “are all suspicious about imaging the divine’’ and emphasize the oneness of God, whereas Hinduism offers a plethora of iconography and “celebrates a multiplicity of divine names and forms.’’

Karnataka (India) police accompanied by 10 Hindu extremists on Friday arrested a Christian operator of a boys’ hostel after the extremists accused him and another Christian of offering food, shelter, education and future job prospects as an “allurement” to convert to Christianity.

After falsely accusing the two Christians of fraudulently converting students to Christianity by luring them with food, shelter and education, the extremists slapped evangelist Rama Naik repeatedly.

They are now being targeted by militant Hindu organizations that blame the church for the abolition of Hinduism as the state religion and the end of monarchy.

A little-known, shadowy organization that claimed to be building an army of suicide bombers has achieved notoriety with two brutal attacks on Catholics in two years.

Vikash Patrick’s 19-year-old bride died while praying at the Assumption Church in Kathmandu valley’s Lalitpur district, the largest Catholic church in Nepal, in an anti-Christian bombing on May 23, the day they were to return home.

Claiming responsibility for the violence was the Nepal Defense Army (NDA), a group wishing to restore Hinduism as the official religion of Nepal.

Evangelical Christians in India’s eastern state of Andhra Pradesh faced the difficult task Sunday, May 10, of rebuilding their church after suspected anti-Christian militants torched the building, the latest in a series of attacks against churches in the area, investigators said.

The latest incident has underscored an anti-Christian climate in several parts of India.

Fed up with moral policing by radical Hindu groups who had attacked women in pubs and targeted unmarried couples celebrating Valentine’s Day, a group of women decided to fight back – with pink knickers.

The result was a remarkably successful dirty dissent. Not only did 40,000 items of rose-tinted underwear, much of it apparently unwashed, end up flooding the offices of the Sri Ram Sena (Lord Ram’s Army), the non-violent act defused much of the tension surrounding the acts of vigilantism by self-appointed guardians of “Indian culture”. [video]

In this editon of RNB Roundup: Scientology: death by devotion • Ted Haggard: Can a fallen pastor ever redeem himself? • Are Christians stingy? • Haunted hospital calls in exorcist • The National Religious Campaign Against Torture says its work is not over • Preacher Sues Bill Maher.

Plus: God may not care who wins, but players in Super Bowl care a lot about God • More…

Mrs Panda and thousands of others like her are victims of the worst communal violence between Hindus and Christians that India has seen for decades.

For a country that boasts of its mutual religious tolerance, the long-simmering tension that has erupted in the Kandhamal district of the state of Orissa – a nun being raped, churches being burned, at least 35 people killed and thousands forced from their villages – is both a belated wake-up call and a mounting embarrassment.