Margib

By Denying Hinduphobia Western Media and Academia Enable It Vamsee Juluri Indian Express, September 5, 2022 In a rare concession to reality, U.S. news outlets recently reported on something that many Hindus here have been warning us about. The hateful displays of racism by Americans of various ethnic backgrounds in the past few days against Indians in California and elsewhere got reported as what they were about explicitly or otherwise: Hinduphobia. It is of course not surprising that even as anti-Hinduphobia activists felt heard at last, other academicians and lobbyists continued to prevaricate. Somehow, even the glaring video evidence that showed strangers assaulting Hindus for simply being Hindus with recognizable anti-Hindu slurs and slogans, was not sufficient to move them from their beliefs. “Look, this (anti-Hindu hate) is what you (“Hindu Nationalists”) have given rise to,” is what their blame-the-victim reaction sounded like, with not a word of contrition for their own role in normalizing severe anti-Hindu hate speech in social media all these years. American academia, or at least the part of it which has made outrageously false claims about the history of Hinduphobia in the past, needs to change at least now. First, the near-universal view in this group of academic experts (and their journalistic allies), that the term “Hinduphobia” is a recent coinage of the “Hindu Right” has been shown to be incorrect. Sarah Gates, a doctoral student in cultural studies and founder of Hindu Human Rights Australia, has documented the use of the term “Hinduphobia” starting with anti-colonial writing in British newspapers since as early as the 1860s – long before “Hindu Nationalism” was even a thing. “Hinduphobia” was always in use by writers (Western and Indian), to describe anti-Hindu prejudice as it existed, nothing more, either from British Christianity, or South Asian Islam. Yet, no South Asia studies scholar writing about Hindus or Hindutva has acknowledged this history of the term’s usage. Second, while falsely attributing the origins of the term to the wrong century and to the wrong ideologies (“Hindu Nationalism” instead of “anti-imperialism”), defenders of this dogma have also continued a deplorable practice in academia of whitewashing the history of anti-Hindu hatred and violence through propagandistic tactics (tactics documented meticulously by Sitaram Goel and Arun Shourie among others, and rendered into a powerful story about the neo-colonial Indian state’s war on memory and indeed reality, in S.L. Bhyrappa’s novel Aavarana). From the words of the hagiographers of early Islamic iconoclasm to the words of the random South Asian American in a cafe who spews spit and anti-Hindu terms like “cow-piss” on a stranger, the evidence is obvious. There are ideas, words, phrases, and most of all, actions, that attest to the existence of specifically anti-Hindu bigotry in this world, whether the Hindu was despised as “Pagan,” “Kafir,” or more recently, as a mostly dishonestly constructed “Hindu Nationalist” bogey. Simply put, the claim that apologists and enablers of anti-Hindu hate in the American academy hide behind, that Hinduphobia is used by Hindu Nationalist groups to deflect valid criticism of the Indian government, is grossly exaggerated. Could an academician, or even a school child in today’s liberal, anti-racist educational culture, truly believe that a phrase like “cow-piss-drinker” somehow makes a distinction between an average Hindu and a politician or political party? How about “idol-worshipper”? Or “shrik” or “jahil”? Terms like this have been used by mass murderers and suicide bombers - and by academicians and journalists. But I am not without hope for academia to mend its ways. I know many scholars who have ended up in this ignoble position out of a misplaced understanding about what it means to be in a “good fight” (against what they call Hindu Nationalism but inevitably sounds like they mean just Hinduism). I think it would not be too difficult for anyone, in academia, university administration, government, or the U.S. Hindu community, to cross-examine the lists and claims made about Hinduphobia and Hindu Nationalism in recent times and arrive at something like a broad consensus in good faith. There are now at least a few peer-reviewed publications (including one of my own) from scholars that have sought to engage with the idea of Hinduphobia, and to identify the tropes and conventions of anti-Hindu hate in media and social media. Surely, universities, schools, media houses, and even corporate H.R. divisions can use these works to operationalize anti-Hinduphobia policies along a three-fold division of terms and ideas: language that is clearly expressed as a criticism of Indian government policies and positions (not Hinduphobia), language that is clearly using weaponized hate speech against Hindus for being Hindus/Kafirs/Pagans (Hinduphobia), and language or positions that are perhaps more ambiguous and in the middle. This hasn’t been done until now because neither the gatekeepers of the ivory tower, nor, regrettably, some of the self-styled Hindu American organizations professing to fight Hinduphobia, have sought to build on scholarly work on Hinduphobia.  Instead, each has proclaimed its own glossaries about either Hinduphobia or Hindu Nationalism, without admitting the existence of the positions of the other. To conclude, Hinduphobia is a reality, and Hindus’ concerns about it need to be addressed, as much by political groups that ride on such Hindu concerns as by their opponents (who seem lost in the incredible delusion that by spreading anti-Hindu hatred they will somehow make the “Hindu Nationalist” party they hate lose its appeal among Hindu supporters!) I hope that both sides can broaden their minds, and their hearts, and see the bigger picture.  Hindu survival in a world where almost every one of its 200 countries has turned its back long ago on its ancestral and indigenous religions, almost always under duress, is not a mere fictional grievance of either a demographic majority (in India), or an allegedly privileged minority (in America). It is a question that every Hindu, or at least every Hindu who notices temples, trees, deities, languages, cultural and artistic lineages, nature, life, everything, being destroyed, very, very quickly, is thinking about today.