The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (848 page)

 
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Ghetto
.

A compulsory urban residential area for Jews. The term ‘ghetto’ was probably first used for the Jewish quarter of Venice which was enclosed in 1516.
The phrase ‘ghetto mentality’ refers to the (alleged) internalization of the attitudes of the outsider—humiliation, rejection, and contempt, and the acceptance of isolation. The uprising of the Warsaw ghetto against the Nazis on 19 Apr. 1943, exhibits the reverse. It was put down by the destruction of the whole area.

 
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Ghi
or ghee
(clarified butter, important in Hindu ritual)
:

see
GH
TA
.

 
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Ghose, Aurobindo
(Hindu philosopher and teacher)
:

see
AUROBINDO
.

 
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Ghost dance
.

The most famous
millennial
movement among the N. American Indians, amongst the destitute tribes of the Great Basin and the Plains in 1889–90. The founder was Wovoka (
c.
1856–1932), a Paiute, also called Jack Wilson. After a mystic experience of visiting
heaven
, he proclaimed the peaceful coming of a paradisal age in which the depleted buffalo and the ancestors (i.e. ‘ghosts’, hence the name) would return and the whites would depart. Its coming would be hastened by moral reform and the newly revealed round dance which, after several days of dancing, led to meeting the ancestors in a visionary trance. The movement among the Sioux was regarded by many whites as more militant; this culminated in the massacre of some 300 at Wounded Knee in Dec. 1890. With hopes thus crushed, the movement passed its peak by 1892; it lingers on among some tribes and provided the inspiration for the confrontation between Indians and government forces at ‘Wounded Knee II’ in S. Dakota in 1973.

 
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(Skt.). Clarified butter, in modern Hindi
ghi
, often transliterated ‘ghee’. It is a summary of the illumination which comes from
Indra
, the light of divine knowledge become form.