The tragedy that occurs when a tradition dies is the loss of a universe. An entire worldview vanishes and cannot be replaced. Viva LERP!

“They were suppressed or destroyed either by secular moderns or by people acting in the name of a monotheistic religion.”
Those secular moderns keep running roughshot over everybody, don’t they? Next on the menu: monotheism. One shouldn’t be able to vote, legislate, or carry out civic duty factoring in their religious beliefs. If they’re unfortunate enough to have beliefs in the supernatural, then they must live a life divorced and void of a moral compass, not living in accordance with these principles insofar as they contradict the majority of adherents to the modern secular camp.
Though certain religions and/or philosophies may be endangered species and eventually vanish, the principles of these belief systems never truly vanquish. Instead, they mutate, reassemble into other belief systems, and stay embodied in mankind throughout the ages.

Hopefully with tolerance being promoted more openly, the shadow of certain religions will slowly cease to overpower the others.

“Those secular moderns keep running roughshot [sic] over everybody, don’t they? Next on the menu: monotheism. One shouldn’t be able to vote, legislate, or carry out civic duty factoring in their religious beliefs. If they’re unfortunate enough to have beliefs in the supernatural, then they must live a life divorced and void of a moral compass, not living in accordance with these principles insofar as they contradict the majority of adherents to the modern secular camp.”
To legislate is to set public rules, backed in the last result by the threat of violence and social ostracism. No one has a right to set common rules with reference to values that they cannot justify to others- and spiritual values apprehended through inner experience are always in this category. Separating religion from politics does not mean separating ethics from politics unless one believes that ethics cannot be comprehended by public reason. I utterly agree with Gus on these issues.
I’m partly secularly and part Pagan, but all of me wants politics kept clearly awat from the divine, apart perhaps from pro forma gestures of civic inclusion. In our time, 52% of Americans espouse hard creationism, and a War on Drugs fueled largely by religious moralism has resulted in a gulag-scale prison system in which torture and rape are normalised. The last thing we need is to encourage more ‘faith-based’ civic discourse. If you bring a value into politics which you cannot justify to others in terms of what everyone can understand and value, then the result can only be bloody disaster- especially for those without power or numbers. Secular modernity has done us all an immense service by offering us a way to organise society which is not rooted in cultic particularities. America is very much in danger of losing all of this- and if it does so, then gods help the world.
Please protect your right to spiritually practice as you wish. Please bring your best judgment- and rational arguments- to public affairs. Please expect basic respect and decency regardless of your spirituality. But if you try to make binding law over me by reference to spiritual experience which I do not share, then you are imposing tyranny. Secular modernity makes no unreasonable demands here and does not deserve ressentiment or hostility.
Have but contempt for reason and for science
Though they are mankind’s best and wise reliance
And let the Devil’s snares compound confusion
By luring you with magic and illusion
And you are on the road to Hell.
(from Faust)
It’s very nice to see attention to the devidasi tradition. You might find this interesting:
http://www.princesskama.com/

This is my smile for today! I had no idea that this work was being done but it gives me a happy peaceful feeling right to the bottom of my gut to know that this group is there. Good on ya!

“…and a War on Drugs fueled largely by religious moralism has resulted in a gulag-scale prison system in which torture and rape are normalised.”
I believe there were many secularists involved in the war on drugs as well (speaking as a former chronic substance abuser). I never heard about this ‘gulag-scale’ prison system in which torture and rape are normalized, though I knew a few ex-cons in my day and have heard a handfull of prison horror stories.
“But if you try to make binding law over me by reference to spiritual experience which I do not share, then you are imposing tyranny.”
Truer words have never been spoken. However, I’ve never heard of any legislators doing this (and I’ve watched a lot of CSPAN, though not so much lately). I use scientific, sociological, and anecdotal evidence to support my claims, yet the poor saps who debate with me can’t seem to refrain from pulling out the ole religion trump card. Sometimes more practical outlooks and viewpoints corroborate values commonly held by theists, when opponents to the argument go scapegoat by yelling, “don’t force your religion on me!” when we never dreamed of such an absurdity.
Anyhow, I’ve off-tracked from the original intent of the article, and can see how some feel the need to preserve a unique spiritual and cultural tradition. Not sure I agree with it, but my outlook might change drastically were my own spiritual tradition endangered.

The question is: Who owns a religious or cultural tradition?
If an indigenous population has a set of practices, writings, oral traditions, et cetera; do they control or should they control its dissemination or lack thereof? To use a modern term, is a copyright held on this knowledge and do the rights to it belong to the cultural or tradition from which it emerged?
I strongly hold that scholars and anthropologists have a role to play in preserving the tradition, and in that regard, I don’t believe that a tradition or culture has unrestricted copyright. (Let us say that scholars and anthropologists have a right of fair use.) But, and here is where I will side with copyright protection: The culture has a right to preserve original artifacts and primary source documents, within the limits of their ability to preserve these. Experts in museum preservation can and should advice and educate those charged with holding and keeping these artifacts on the best ways to protect their artifacts for the benefit of future generations. No group has a right to attempt to erase their religion by destroying their artifacts, writings, et cetera. These are in a very real sense the property of the entire human community, and not merely a subset.
The other thing which needs to be clearly understood is that nothing occurs in a vacuum. Cultural and religious traditions permute and they combine in interesting ways with different cultures and traditions to produce new forms and expressions. This is an unstoppable process, even if the will exists to stop it. It simply has to be recognized for what it is: Nothing is immutable, nothing is permanent. Even forms that are preserved will lose their full context and meaning over time. However, being preserved accurately may lead to a future resurgence and a ‘neo-’ version that allows recognition of the root and essential worth of what expresses through those forms.

Albert, LERP isn’t saying (if I understand correctly) that scholars have no right to indigenous scriptures. They’re saying they will take no part in disclosing same, and this seems to give them an inside track with the survivers of nearly-lost and endangered religions. It lets them do good work; let them continue to do so.
I’ve always considered the War on Drugs to be secular moralism run amok. Though some of the drug warriors were religiously educated, they always present secular reasons for what they do. The problem is that the government gets its thumb on the scales of justice and science, and prevents a full-throated debate about WoD claims. I think the basic, original motive for the WoD was to suppress the altered states of consciousness that became available in the ’60s that let us look at *all* institutions, secular and religious, with new eyes. It was an attempt to stuff us all back into suits and ties or corsets and sensible shoes, mentally speaking. Now it’s got a momentum of its own because forfeitures are a main source of income to law enforcement.

Baruch Dreamstalker is on target regarding LERP. Because it is quite expensive doing some of this rescue work, they have asked for the right to make things public if they have not been used for 50 years or more,which could help defray costs, but beyond that the recipients of LERP’s assistance have the final say. Given that those involved are often scholars, they would probably prefer to have the right to examine and analyze historical documents, but that would be only by permission.
Th motives of the WoD are complex. There is a racist element- marijuana was initially suppressed when it was primarily a drug of the Black and music communities. Many Republicans like it because by targeting Black Americas mostly, they can reduce he voting ranks of the Democratic Party. (Never underestimate the venality of Republican leaders. They are generally worse than you think.)
But as a national crusade I think Baruch has it right. It is secular modernity’s attempt to crush the 60s, with “Christian” right back up.

“It is secular modernity’s attempt to crush the 60s”.
Why should secular modernity as such have any antipathy towards the counterculture of the 1960s? Surely the extension of individualism to youth, to women, to sexual minorites are fulfillments of Enlightenment principles. And I’ve seldom seen self-conscious secularists respond with the visceral hostility to drug use common among both Catholic and Protestant traditionalists. What I do see is a structure of state and corporate managerialism deeply hostile to individual freedom- including the freedom to alter one’s consciousness. But I see this as far less a natural result of secular reason than the Religious Right is a natural result of the social normalisation of Christianity.
I see the 1960s as a further development of bohemianism, in a democratic form made possible by the period’s hitherto unprecedented mass prosperity and mobility. Bohemianism has been a consistent phenomenon in the high periods of relatively liberal civilisations, and while there has been a (to my mind wholly unnecessary and destructive) division between the romantic and rational approaches to life, both derive from a common principle of human liberation decisively at odds with the closed societies which have unfortunately dominated most of human history.
I think we would do very well to seek a mutually just alliance between reason and romanticism. I do not think that attempted alliances between counterculture and conservative religion will work to the advantage of counterculture, any more than the collaboration of Dworkinite feminists with the Christian Right has worked to empower women.

Aster, a sometimes unstated premise of modernity is that there is one right answer that will come to us if we are logical enough and follow the evidence. That is why the modern sense that there sometimes is no single best answer is called “post-modernism.”
The altered states of the ’60s were another way to seek alternative answers, sometimes presented as alternative universes! Scary to the modernists, secular or religious.
Gus is right in that all sorts of drugs were originally banned because of their connection with racial minorities. LSD is the exception — it was banned because of association with hippies.

I seem to recall that the Prose Edda was recovered from the last person who knew it as an oral tradition.
Regarding the War on Some Drugs, Industry has often been the force behind the move for prohibition, with racism and Puritianism being merely the tools used to attain that end. The war on marijuana was more a war on industrial hemp when it began financed by Hearst and DuPont. As for LSD and MDMA, Any single dose drug that can wipe out a liftime of societal conditioning terrifies the government.