{"id":6595,"date":"2010-08-04T00:35:24","date_gmt":"2010-08-04T06:35:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=6595"},"modified":"2010-08-03T23:39:36","modified_gmt":"2010-08-04T05:39:36","slug":"senior-indian-af-leaders-visit-us-bases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/08\/04\/senior-indian-af-leaders-visit-us-bases\/","title":{"rendered":"Senior Indian AF Leaders Visit US Bases"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Air Force <a href=\"http:\/\/www.af.mil\/news\/story.asp?id=123215544\">announced the visit of senior Indian Air Force leaders<\/a> to Kirtland AFB, New Mexico, in late July.\u00a0 The officers were reportedly in Kirtland to observe the USAF use of simulators for flight training.<\/p>\n<p>A picture of an officer accepting a gift from the visiting leaders was interesting for its demonstration of the integration of religion not only with the Indian culture, but also its military:<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.af.mil\/shared\/media\/photodb\/photos\/100726-F-1234G-001.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.christianfighterpilot.com\/images\/100726-F-1234G-001sm.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"468\" height=\"406\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Air Commodore J.S. Walia is evidently a Sikh, as he wears the religious articles of a member of that faith.\u00a0 Currently, the US military has granted <a href=\"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/03\/24\/sikh-officer-begins-service-in-us-army\/\">only a few exceptions<\/a> to uniform wear to allow Sikhs to serve.<\/p>\n<p>Also interesting is the gift chosen.\u00a0 The gift is a replica of the <!--more-->National Emblem of India, which is based on the Lion of Sarnath.\u00a0 The Indian emblem is based on a symbol that commemorates the third century proclamation of Buddhist doctrine.\u00a0 Within India, Buddhists represent only a fraction of the population.\u00a0\u00a0The motto that accompanies the emblem, <em>Satyameva Jayate<\/em> (&#8220;truth alone triumphs&#8221;) is a quote from Hindu religious texts; estimates place Hinduism as the most prominent religion in India, at 80% of the population.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a bit of irony in a foreign military leader giving a gift like that to a country that still sees lawsuits over its <em>own<\/em> national motto, and whose military is sometimes criticized over the slightest association with a specific religious doctrine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Air Force announced the visit of senior Indian Air Force leaders to Kirtland AFB, New Mexico, in late July.\u00a0 The officers were reportedly in Kirtland to observe the USAF use of simulators for flight training. A picture of an officer accepting a gift from the visiting leaders was interesting for its demonstration of the integration of religion not only [&#8230;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[836,134,4,73,838,837,839,2,10,59],"class_list":["post-6595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-air-commodore","tag-air-force","tag-churchandstate","tag-hindu","tag-india","tag-j-s-walia","tag-lion-of-sarnath","tag-military","tag-religion","tag-sikh"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6595\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}