New Delhi: Zoho founder Sridhar Vembu has accused both the American political left and right of being hostile towards Hindus, arguing that while racism against the community from the right is well documented, the left’s ideological intolerance is often overlooked.
Drawing on Karl Marx’s writings on India, Hindu philosophy and climate change, Vembu argued that the two political extremes shared an opposition to the values of Sanatana Dharma.
“The racist right and the Marxist left are both intolerant dogmas, and very willing to use violence,” Vembu wrote in a series of posts on X Thursday.
Vembu was responding to a post on X that questioned why Hindu Americans had expected the American left to be more sympathetic towards them. The user argued that Hindus had supported the right partly because of racism directed at them by the left, but said the community’s lack of political cohesion and investment in political influence was now catching up with it.
Vembu agreed with the broader argument, saying hostility towards Hinduism was rooted in a deeper ideological opposition to its beliefs and practices. He cited a passage by German philosopher Karl Marx that criticised the worship of nature and referred to Hindu reverence for Hanuman and the cow.
Vembu invokes Karl Marx and Hindu philosophy
The passage, from Marx’s 1853 article The British Rule in India, described this as a “brutalizing worship of nature”, in which “man, the sovereign of nature, fell down on his knees in adoration of Kanuman, the monkey, and Sabbala, the cow”.
Marx wrote the article on 10 June 1853, and it was published in the New-York Daily Tribune on 25 June that year.
Vembu said this criticism extended beyond the worship of animals, pointing out that Hindus also revere rivers, trees, snakes and birds.
“The shared hatred of the Hindu is not an accident,” he wrote, arguing that Sanatana Dharma stood opposed to dogma. Hindu philosophers, he said, had historically disagreed and debated with one another without advocating violence against those who held opposing views.
“Hinduism as practised today reflects that philosophical diversity which the intolerant cults deem ‘pagan’ or ‘primitive’ or ‘barbaric’,” he added.
Vembu also brought climate change into the discussion, arguing that Hinduism’s reverence for nature had particular relevance amid growing environmental concerns.
He criticised both political extremes for their positions on the issue, saying the hard right dismissed climate change while the hard left wanted to establish Marxism before addressing it.
“Only the reverence for nature, which is at the core of Sanatana Dharma, can save the earth today,” he wrote.
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Attacks on Hindus
The exchange followed a post by the account The Emissary, which highlighted an attempted shooting at a Hindu temple in Illinois by a suspected white supremacist.
The account said the incident was part of a broader pattern of attacks and discrimination faced by Indian and Hindu Americans from the far right. It also criticised left-wing voices for portraying Hindu nationalism as a threat to the US, arguing that this risked conflating Hindu Americans with political extremism.
(Edited by Maryam Hassan)
Quite right. There is deeper idealogy here. It is also prevailing in the Indian Darbari media basically which is leftist and left leaning media in India. Now, the leftist Karl Marx, in his hateful writings, against Hindus, was targeting all classes and castes of Hindus including what you calls as Daleeths. Wrap your head around it. Is Adsule listening? Yes, spite, disrespect, hate towards every Hindu by a man who never set foot in India… Even for 1 second.
Both the American Left and the American Right has been targeting Hindus under one pretext or the other. Both of them are ideologically opposed to Hinduism and it’s fundamental tenets.
Irrespective of whether American Hindus align with the Democrats or the Republicans, they will always be at the receiving end of hatred and intimidation.
The Hindu community of the USA has been an avowed supporter of the Democrats for the last several decades. Quite recently, some of them also tried out the Republicans. The experiences with both dalliances remained the same.
For the Left, Muslims will always be a greater vote bank and hence, they will adopt an anti-Hindu stance simply to curry favour with the Muslims. Also, the Left is ideologically committed to play the caste card and divide Hindus as well as denigrate them. The upper caste Hindus are their favourite targets and people like Thenmozhi Soundararajan make their job much easier.
For the Right, Hindus are just brown skinned people snatching white collar jobs from White Christian people.