Talk:Pancha Ganapati

Chronological origins

I was looking for a section that described when this started being celebrated (ie. what year was it first celebrated in late December?). It would be interesting to know if it has any correlation with Christmas, as presumably it has been influenced by (or influenced) Christmas traditions in some way. Natebailey (talk) 05:12, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

Questionable Origin and Validity

This is not a real Hindu festival. It was created probably in the 1970s or 1980s by Saiva Siddhanta Church (a new-age, mostly white, Hindu-inspired group with origins in California). The origin of the festival is because Saiva Siddhanta didn't want children of US-residing devotees to feel left out by not celebrating Christmas when all their classmates and friends were. They made up a Ganesha festival to fill this void. It is still practised today, but only by Saiva Siddhanta, which is now based in Hawaii. Extremely few Hindus from Asia will have heard of the festival. You will not find references to the festival in any traditional hindu texts as they don't exist. The only references will come from contemporary works from Saiva Siddhanta.

I would recommend deleting the article, as to me this doesn't qualify as noteworthy. It is practised only by a single religious unit and not known or recognized by Hindus at large. Unsigned contribution by User:Veggies-and-nuts

There is a difference between "Only practiced by Hindus in one region" and "not a real Hindu festival". Gets plenty of references in magazines like Hinduism Today. Seems real to me. DJ Clayworth (talk) 13:02, 29 May 2020 (UTC)

Origins sentence added

As the commenters above have pointed out, this festival appears to be less of a traditional Hindu festival (as opposed to, e.g., Diwali), and more of a modern American Christmas alternative, akin to the creation of Kwanzaa by Maulana Karenga in 1966. After first visiting this article this morning specifically to find out about the origins of this holiday and being sorely disappointed with the lack of information on that topic, I have added a sentence with the fruits of my subsequent research so other visitors to this article will get more value from it. Rinne na dTrosc (talk) 17:25, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Removal of Proposed Deletion tag

This page usefully advises curious readers of articles like this one that this holiday is not a traditional Hindu holiday. Far too many online sources uncritically represent this festival as a "Hindu" holiday without notifying readers of its recent Western provenance. This page remedies that, not least because Wikipedia articles show up at the top of Google search results. That's a useful encyclopedic function. Rinne na dTrosc (talk) 16:35, 26 December 2013 (UTC)

Possible copyright violation

On 22 September 2018‎, Abecedare removed the content of this page and converted it into a redirect based upon possible copyright violations. It is possible that Abecedare was unaware that Himalayan Academy had granted GFDL usage to Wikipedia for the use of certain portions of their published materials. Whether they had specifically granted use of this Pancha Ganapati material is unknown to me, the proper administrator would have to check Wikipedia's copyright files; however, see Talk:Sivaya Subramuniyaswami#A copy for that possibility.

I recently added a thrid-party source to the Sivaya Subramuniyaswami article regarding the creation of Pancha Ganapati. Rudolph, Ephraim (7 December 2015). "3 International December Holidays You May Not Know About". Indianapolis, Indiana: The International Center (INTLCTR). I haven't yet done the research, but there may now be other third-party reliable resources available in addition to the Himalayan Academy material so that an informative article could be written. I would like to know if the Himalayan Academy had granted a GFDL license for the material that administrator Abecedare removed. Apparently there is some interest in this topic as DJ Clayworth's comment at Talk:Sivaya Subramuniyaswami#Pancha Ganapati shows. --Bejnar (talk) 22:25, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bejnar: Thanks for the ping and sorry for the late response. In any case, I see three related but separate issues:

1. Copyright: we will need explicit confirmation from Himalayan Academy about what specific material they are releasing and under what license. WP:DONATETEXT has instructions on how this can be done. It is possible that the VRTS ticket # 2006051510002226 mentioned at Talk:Sivaya Subramuniyaswami has more information about what material was already donated (someone with OTRS access will need to be asked).
2. WP:NPOV and WP:RS issues: given that Sivaya Subramuniyaswami's Himalayan Academy is not a disinterested party, even if the copyright issue is resolved, the donated material cannot be copied in toto onto wikipedia, but will be need to be used with care (see WP:ABOUTSELF). I haven't checked, but if the Sivaya Subramuniyaswami article is largely based on such material, its content will need to be reviewed for potential sourcing and POV issues.
3. Notability issues: In particular, none of the Himalayan Academy material will contribute towards establishing the notability of Pancha Ganapati on wikipedia. As you say, for that will need independent reliable sources. FWIW, the write-up by an intern on the International Center website, which is close paraphrase of this Himalayan Academy page (and, various online mirrors), would probably not qualify.

Abecedare (talk) 18:52, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

• @Abecedare: There is also a Dallas newspaper story about "Pancha Ganapati", and I am not sure what else may turn up. I do know that some Hindus disparage the holiday, talk about "white" Hindism and cultural appropriation. I don't know enough at this point to yet decide how I will come out on the issue of notability. But we should get the copyright issues cleared up. How do we find an OTRS clerk? --Bejnar (talk) 03:20, 10 June 2020 (UTC)
• About the Sivaya Subramuniyaswami article, there is some preliminary indication that some of the cited Himalayan Academy material may have copied text from a couple of books by other authors. I haven't quite worked out exactly how much was copied, it may only be some sentence fragments, but I suspect more. --Bejnar (talk)