A Zion ideal? Utahans allegedly abandon vision of equitable society of their forefathers

After watching the Pioneer Day parade, a week later, I walked into a top University of Utah institute in the Salt Lake City, and on the very entrance I found copies of the Salt Lake City Weekly freely available. I picked up one of them. Containing mostly ads, scanning through, I found an article titled Pioneer Day, which interested me.
It is authored by Wes Long, who happens to be from the Mormon community, a Christian sect which owes its allegiance to what they call "Latter Day Saints". A close knit community, Mormons dominate Utah's population, and are said to love to have up to 4-5 children in their family.
The article (available online here) surprisingly says, the Mormon Church originally was a "laboratory to create a Zion society, wherein there was to be neither rich nor poor but rather the pure in heart", underlining, "Such was the vision for which the Mormon pioneers lived, however haltingly, within the larger 19th century American context of racism, class distinctions, violence and everything else."
The word Zion puzzled me, but it's pretty common in Utah. Even a bank is named after Zion. An online search suggested that the word is derived from Jerusalem, where Christianity was born, and has nothing to do with Zionism, the ideology that rules the roost in Israel in its anti-Palestine campaign. In fact Jews make up just 0.2% of Utah's population, or around 6,000 people.
The article continues, "Within this project, every individual contributed their gifts and talents for the good of the whole, where the idling rich no longer lived off the laboring poor, and where humanity's relationship to nature was no longer one of exploitation, but of concord."
Regretting that this type of society sought to be built by the Mormon pioneers does not exist any more, the article states, today, "greed" is rampant -- "we are all susceptible howl for complete and total reign", it says, adding, "The pioneers had a term for that kind of society, too: Babylon."

"That was a world in which 'every man prospered according to his genius, and ... every man conquered according to his strength; and whatsoever a man did was no crime'... Its methods of establishing order and values were by force and violence, its lifeblood principally wealth and possessions—or as the pioneers would have called them, Mammon and idols", it says
The article, which appeared in the paper's Private Eye column, laments, "It is a constant embarrassment to me that many American Mormons, for all their good qualities, have nevertheless fallen prey to the persuasions of what their ancestors likely would have called Babylon: the idea that their god sanctifies oppression or views life as callously and cheaply as we do."
It underscores, "Christian Nationalism and fascism are on the rise today, and as disturbing and offensive as these phenomena are to me, I am not convinced that the true force behind them is religion, government, or hopeless human depravity. It is rather simple greed — one which motivates rich donors to engage in generations-long warfare against anything that threatens their possessions and power."

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When Pakistanis whispered: ‘end military rule’ — A Moscow memoir

During the recent anti-terror operation inside Pakistan by the Government of India, called Operation Sindoor — a name some feminists consider patently patriarchal, even though it’s officially described as a tribute to the wives of the 26 husbands killed in the terrorist strike — I was reminded of my Moscow stint, which lasted for seven long years, from 1986 to 1993.

Ahmedabad's civic chaos: Drainage woes, waterlogging, and the illusion of Olympic dreams

In response to my blog on overflowing gutter lines at several spots in Ahmedabad's Vejalpur, a heavily populated area, a close acquaintance informed me that it's not just the middle-class housing societies that are affected by the nuisance. Preeti Das, who lives in a posh locality in what is fashionably called the SoBo area, tells me, "Things are worse in our society, Applewood."

Tracking a lost link: Soviet-era legacy of Gujarati translator Atul Sawani

The other day, I received a message from a well-known activist, Raju Dipti, who runs an NGO called Jeevan Teerth in Koba village, near Gujarat’s capital, Gandhinagar. He was seeking the contact information of Atul Sawani, a translator of Russian books—mainly political and economic—into Gujarati for Progress Publishers during the Soviet era. He wanted to collect and hand over scanned soft copies, or if possible, hard copies, of Soviet books translated into Gujarati to Arvind Gupta, who currently lives in Pune and is undertaking the herculean task of collecting and making public soft copies of Soviet books that are no longer available in the market, both in English and Indian languages.

RP Gupta a scapegoat to help Govt of India manage fallout of Adani case in US court?

RP Gupta, a retired 1987-batch IAS officer from the Gujarat cadre, has found himself at the center of a growing controversy. During my tenure as the Times of India correspondent in Gandhinagar (1997–2012), I often interacted with him. He struck me as a straightforward officer, though I never quite understood why he was never appointed to what are supposed to be top-tier departments like industries, energy and petrochemicals, finance, or revenue.

Environmental report raises alarm: Sabarmati one of four rivers with nonylphenol contamination

A new report by Toxics Link , an Indian environmental research and advocacy organisation based in New Delhi, in collaboration with the Environmental Defense Fund , a global non-profit headquartered in New York, has raised the alarm that Sabarmati is one of five rivers across India found to contain unacceptable levels of nonylphenol (NP), a chemical linked to "exposure to carcinogenic outcomes, including prostate cancer in men and breast cancer in women."

PharmEasy: The only online medical store which revises prices upwards after confirming the order

For senior citizens — especially those without a family support system — ordering medicines online can be a great relief. Shruti and I have been doing this for the last couple of years, and with considerable success. We upload a prescription, receive a verification call from a doctor, and within two or three days, the medicines are delivered to our doorstep.

A conman, a demolition man: How 'prominent' scribes are defending Pritish Nandy

How to defend Pritish Nandy? That’s the big question some of his so-called fans seem to ponder, especially amidst sharp criticism of his alleged insensitivity during his journalistic career. One such incident involved the theft and publication of the birth certificate of Masaba Gupta, daughter of actor Neena Gupta, in the Illustrated Weekly of India, which Nandy was editing at the time. He reportedly did this to uncover the identity of Masaba’s father.

Revisiting Gijubhai: Pioneer of child-centric education and the caste debate

It was Krishna Kumar, the well-known educationist, who I believe first introduced me to the name — Gijubhai Badheka (1885–1939). Hailing from Bhavnagar, known as the cultural capital of the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, Gijubhai, Kumar told me during my student days, made significant contributions to the field of pedagogy — something that hasn't received much attention from India's education mandarins. At that time, Kumar was my tutorial teacher at Kirorimal College, Delhi University.

A sector under siege? War and real estate: Navigating uncertainty in India's expanding market

I was a little surprised when I received an email alert from a top real estate consultant, Anarock Group , titled "Exploring War’s Effects on Indian Real Estate—When Conflict Meets Concrete," authored by its regional director and head of research, Dr. Prashant Thakur. I had thought that the business would wholeheartedly support what is considered a strong response to the dastardly terrorist attack in Pahalgam, Operation Sindoor.

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