{"id":71825,"date":"2025-05-15T13:00:17","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T04:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/artanddesign\/2025\/may\/15\/british-museums-ancient-indian-religions-mumbai"},"modified":"2025-05-15T13:00:17","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T04:00:17","slug":"your-chance-to-stare-down-a-god-inside-the-british-museums-mesmerising-look-at-indian-religions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=71825","title":{"rendered":"Your chance to stare down a god: inside the British Museum\u2019s mesmerising look at Indian religions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A show full of deities, snakes and shrines puts three ancient faiths in the spotlight. Our writer seeks out its inspiration in the bustling metropolis of Mumbai<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s the eyes that stay with you \u2013 piercing black discs that seem to vibrate against the intense orange of a goddess\u2019s skin. The rest is a blur of silver, yellow and saffron as temple attendants encourage you to move, clockwise, around the murti, or sacred statue. For a moment it\u2019s as if this shrine is the one fixed point in the whole city.<\/p>\n<p>The goddess in question is Mumba, the patron of Mumbai, her temple at the beating heart of one of the most densely populated areas on Earth. A few streets to the east is the green and white splendour of Minara mosque. To the north is the intricately carved Jain temple of Parshwanath. All around is the noise and commerce of a place that Indians regard as their version of New York and LA combined \u2013 \u201cthe city of dreams\u201d. Yet, far from being a godless metropolis, this is a place where religion is very much a going concern.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/artanddesign\/2025\/may\/15\/british-museums-ancient-indian-religions-mumbai\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A show full of deities, snakes and shrines puts three ancient faiths in the spotlight. Our writer seeks out its inspiration in the bustling metropolis of MumbaiIt\u2019s the eyes that stay with you \u2013 piercing black discs that seem to vibrate against the int&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4758,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546,91,210,211,71,90,516,62,371,61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-art-and-design","category-british-museum","category-buddhism","category-culture","category-exhibitions","category-hinduism","category-india","category-religion","category-south-and-central-asia"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4758"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=71825"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71826,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71825\/revisions\/71826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=71825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=71825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=71825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}