It can be an anomaly to talk of Hinduphobia in the United States when Indian-origin engineers have led the Silicon Valley boom for two decades and are getting more politically active. But that is what Hindu American Foundation’s new mission is – to make people sit up and care about rising Hinduphobia.
In the last few months, the term has become more and more mainstream in online conversations.
“In the US, where Indians make up 2 per cent of the population, a lot of Hinduphobia is actually coming from people who are of Indian origin, who may be Hindu, or may not necessarily be Hindu,” said Suhag Shukla, co-founder and executive director of Hindu American Foundation (HAF) at the 85th Indian Foundation Dialogue organised at the India Habitat Center.
The reason for this internal hostility, she said, is because of a “sloppy and uncritical” Marxist force-fitting of the oppressor/oppressed framework onto the Hindu majority in India — which morphs the upper-caste Brahmin male into the white male or white Christian male.
“Even though we are a minority both ethnically and religiously in the United States, we become “white adjacent” — and therefore it is easy to deny that we might face discrimination and other struggles in the United States,” she continued.
Her talk, titled “Rising Hinduphobia” addressed the experiences of Hindu members of the Indian diaspora in the US who feel discriminated against because of their religion. In particular, she focused on how Hinduphobia is experienced on college campuses, in corporations, in local government, in the media, and globally. She also pinpointed the Dismantling Global Hindutva Conference, held in September 2021, as a moment that opened the eyes of the diaspora to the dangers of Hinduphobia.
The session was chaired by Come Carpentier, convenor of the editorial board of the World Affairs Journal. Several members of the India Foundation were in attendance, including Vice Admiral Shekhar Sinha (Retd), Prof. S.R. Bhatt from the Indian Council of Social Science Research, senior diplomat Amar Sinha, and BJP politician Ram Madhav.
“The HAF is engaged in fighting a perceptional battle against Hinduism in the US,” said Ram Madhav, adding that they are busting misconceptions held around Hinduism and its practice.
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Horizontal hostility
Horizontal or internal hostility is when members of the Hindu community perpetuate Hinduphobia, while vertical or external hostility comes from outside the community.
A major example of horizontal hostility, according to Shukla, was the Dismantling Global Hindutva conference. The three-day conference came under fire from right-wing Hindu groups for promoting Hinduphobia — especially because the flyers for the conference had the logos of top American educational institutions from which speakers were attending. The HAF launched a campaign to get the logos removed, accusing the institutions of fearmongering and raising concerns over the impact such an act would have on young Hindu students. And it worked — the university logos were taken down a day later.
But Shukla said, in a way she was grateful for the conference because of the “awakening” it led to, especially for parents of such students to become aware of the “dangers” of Hinduphobia. She also expressed concern over the fact that institutions like the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University, Harvard University, New York University, Rutgers University, Princeton University, the University of Chicago and the University of California in Berkeley were willing to put their names on the flyers for the conference — therefore “institutionalising Hinduphobia” and “endorsing hate” against Hindus.
“The problem with “scholar activism” is that it completely undermines the purpose of a liberal education — not to teach students what to think, but how to think,” said Shukla. “And this is definitely not that.”
Calling the conference an “all-you-can-eat buffet of Hinduphobia,” Shukla played a video clip with excerpts from some of the talks given at the conference in an attempt to convey its tone and tenor. Rousing dramatic music played in the background, as speakers debated whether Hindutva could be separated from Hinduism, and whether Hinduism could be a peaceful religion when the caste system exists.
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Caste recognition in the US
Shukla also highlighted the growing clamour within American institutions to include caste as a classifying category: this would be a fundamentally discriminatory practice, according to Shukla and the HAF.
“You don’t need to introduce a discriminatory category to fight discrimination,” said Shukla.
HAF, which sued the state of California in September 2022, maintains that introducing caste as a category on campuses, councils and cities is by definition a discriminatory practice that encourages horizontal hostility. The HAF calls it facially discriminatory, because it is based on one’s particular national origin and ancestry — that is, Indian and Hindu. This is just one group, Shukla said, that is also a micro-minority in the US.
The caste category, according to Shukla, is therefore an example of horizontal hostility that is being built on by vertical hostility, since American policymakers are the ones implementing it. People with the “colonised consciousness of these narratives” — like Buddhists, leftists, and “even some Khalistani sympathisers” — have banded together to advocate for the caste category in an attempt to prevent caste discrimination. Instead, they are only increasing focus on Indian Hindus.
“While their unspoken target is the Hindu community, what they don’t realise is that they’re scoring a self-goal against anyone who might look Indian,” said Shukla.
Shukla said that the advocates of this policy also think that Diwali, Holi, and aspects of vegetarianism are casteist. “They take broad swathes of our practices and demonise them as being casteist, and then also you have a largely uninformed group of Americans who are the administrators of these policies,” said Shukla. This has led to Hindu Indians being closeted and afraid to proudly display their culture.
“The key issue here is that these policies are being added in the absence of evidence,” said Shukla. “There is no reliable, scientific evidence that caste-based discrimination is widespread in the US.”
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Hinduphobia, Hindumisia, Hindudvesha
The provenance of the term ‘Hinduphobia’ can be traced back to a conference held at Rutgers University — ironically, said Shukla, because it is the institution where the historian of South Asia Audrey Truschke teaches.
The HAF prefers the term Hinduphobia to other alternatives like Hindumisia and Hindudvesha. They have a working definition: “Hinduphobia is a set of antagonistic, destructive, and derogatory attitudes and behaviour towards Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism) and Hindus that may manifest as prejudice, fear, or hatred.”
The aim of HAF, Shukla said, is for it to be recognised in the mainstream in the same way as the term ‘antisemitism.’
Shukla added that while the US is generally a safe space for Hindus, perspective is important—Hindu concepts are being weaponised in the US, and many members of the diaspora feel that Hindu culture is misrepresented.
Utkarsh Mishra, a second-year philosophy undergraduate student at Hindu College, University of Delhi, asked Shukla about the solution to the “mindset of the wokes outside India.” Shukla’s response was that it’s an ongoing challenge, but people are now beginning to speak up, even if in whispers.
“This is a tornado, not just strong gusts of wind. We’re in a windy space,” said Shukla, adding that the East and West coasts of America are where these ‘woke’ conversations happen, while the whole of middle America also exists, going about their day.
“As far as Hinduphobia is concerned, it’s something that’s not limited to the boundaries of Bharat but every place that’s Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam,” Mishra told ThePrint. He and two batchmates — second-year Hindi students — had left class early to attend Shukla’s lecture.
The closing note of the lecture pondered over whether those against Hinduism are simply suffering from an inferiority complex. “There are people who fear Hinduism because of its power,” said one member of the audience.
Shukla said that Hindu practices and concepts have a lot of global attention: according to her, in these troubled times, more and more people are turning to concepts like yoga, the belief that “here are multiple paths to one truth,” that “there’s some sort of unity between all of us,” and that “we must move in consonance with the earth and our natural resources.”
“All of those are ancient ideas that are part of us — we shouldn’t forget them either in the name of progress,” she said. “We have to learn our tradition more, and understand why people in the West are attracted to it.”
“I do believe that India and the fact that Hindu dharma is more alive than ever is a constant reminder of the failure of expansionist and exclusivist religious traditions — they tried for a thousand years and we’re still standing,” added Shukla.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)