McDonald’s Goes Vegetarian in India

Last month, McDonald’s announced that it will be opening its first purely vegetarian restaurants in India. If you’re headed to the Golden Temple in Amritsar or Vaishno Devi in Kashmir and decide you’d like to grab a burger at the local...

India Woos Sri Lanka with Buddha’s Bones

NEW DELHI (RNS) India plans to lend rare fragments of the Buddha’s bones to Sri Lanka for the 2600th anniversary of Buddha’s Enlightenment in May, and some see it as part of India’s strategy to gain a regional edge over neighboring China. Indranil Banerjie, head of...

Karmapa Lama Denies Charges of Spying for China

NEW DELHI (RNS) In an unprecedented probe of exiled Tibetan Buddhist monks, Indian officials want to know why top Buddhist leaders had $1.5 million in cash stashed away at their headquarters in Dharmsala. Police seized $1.5 million of cash in Indian and foreign...

Christian-Muslim Relations Turn Bitter in India

NEW DELHI (RNS) Tensions between Christians and Muslims in India’s Kerala state have reached the boiling point over allegations of widespread coerced conversions to Islam. Kerala’s communist Chief Minister, V.S. Achuthanandan, accused an Islamist...