Foreign Policy Blogs

Where is the Government When You Need It Most?

The Telegraph reported two days ago an absolutely absurd story about the movie actress Julia Roberts and the shooting of the new film, “Eat, Pray, Love.” Apparently, Roberts managed to prevent villagers from celebrating the religious rites of Navratri by closing a local temple to the public and placing 350 guards in front and inside. The temple, Ashram Hari Mandir, is close to Delhi.

Other than a reference to a senior police officer, demanding that orders be followed, and that “no outsider is allowed to enter the ashram,” it is not clear how such an oversight could have happened. There is no apparent political permission for such a violation of the rights of local people, while there is also no mention in the article that the local government had tried to prevent such a violation.

 

Author

Karin Esposito

Karin Esposito is blogging on religion and politics from her base in Central Asia. Currently, she is the Project Manager for the Tajikistan Dialogue Project in Dushanbe. The Project is run through the Geneva Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies with the support of PDIV of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs. The aim of the project is to establish practical mechanisms for co-existence and peaceful conflict resolution between Islamic and secular representatives in Tajikistan. After receiving a Juris Doctorate from Boston University School of Law in 2007, she worked in Tajikistan for the Bureau of Human Rights and later as a Visting Professor of Politics and Law at the Kazakhstan Institute of Management, Economics, and Strategic Research (KIMEP). Ms. Esposito also holds a Master's in Contemporary Iranian Politics (2007) from the School of International Relations of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Iran and a Master's in International Relations (2003) from the Geneva Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (GIIDS) in Switzerland.

Areas of Focus:
Islam; Christianity; Secularism;

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