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This video was circulating on social media with the following caption:

At the entrance of St. Mary's H. S., Manapparai, Tiruchy, Tamilnadu, a brahmin is depicted as begging in front of Virgin Mary. Should Co-existance and secularism mean denigrating Hindu belief system?

It shows two statues outside a school named "St. Mary's HR.SEC. School", one of them is the Virgin Mary and another one shows a shirtless man with long hair.

Does the statue really depict a man belonging to the Brahmin class of Hinduism?

alwaysthinking
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  • Is Swami Geetika notable? (Honestly asking. I really don't know.) – Ben Barden Oct 05 '18 at 20:30
  • @BenBarden Never heard of her till I found this tweet when browsing through a completely unrelated hashtag. – alwaysthinking Oct 05 '18 at 20:33
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    I think that this question as-is is not notable. It needs to be a claim by someone significant and/or a claim believed by a *large* number of people. "random video circulating on the internet" isn't really good enough. – Ben Barden Oct 05 '18 at 20:36
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    @BenBarden Then [this question](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/42039/46715) isn't notable too because it shows a random meme without even a source for it. – alwaysthinking Oct 05 '18 at 20:41
  • Looks like you're correct. At Skeptics, notability is on a challenge system. The rule kicks in if someone challenges (which I have now done). Looks like no one challenged that one. – Ben Barden Oct 05 '18 at 20:43
  • I don't think there's anything unusual in art depicting one god bowing to another. For a close and popular example, Santa kneeling at a manger. So if this is notable, why are you skeptical? –  Oct 05 '18 at 22:23
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    Looking into the comments, I find the whole thing disturbing... people are trying to whip up confrontation and xenophobia, with comments like "[Christian] diseases need to be eradicated from India". But on the whole, this is entirely opinion-based. The people making the video and tweet claim "This is how **we** see it". We have no idea of the intentions of the ones that made the display what it is supposed to be. –  Oct 06 '18 at 11:39
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    This is a perfectly reasonable question and it can be objectively answered at least in theory. – Avery Oct 06 '18 at 12:43
  • @Avery We do not do theoretical — or more accurately put — speculative questions here. –  Oct 07 '18 at 22:56

1 Answers1

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The statue does not depict a Brahmin begging in front of Mary. It depicts the story of Our Lady of Good Health, a 16th century apparition of Mary to a shepherd boy, who would have been of a lower caste.

You may see a similar diorama on the official website of Our Lady of Good Health (scroll down).

Avery
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