Hinduphobia, Hindumisia, HinduDwesha, HinduHatred or Anti-Hinduism?
In the last couple of years, while there has been a significant debate about the hatred, bias, violence, prejudice, gaslighting, bullying against Hindus, all of this needs to lead to material impact on the ground. The impact needs to be in the form of recognition, understanding and resolution of all the above verbs against Hindus. For that to happen, we need to encapsulate all of that under one term which can then be communicated to law enforcement, school boards, lawmakers, corporates and other places. And there needs to be uniformity in the recognition and understanding of that term as well in order to replicate the successes.
Hindus are already late in the arena of advocacy for the community and we cannot afford to lose time.
However, when it comes to using a single term for the hatred, bias, violence, prejudice, gaslighting, bullying against Hindus, there are still some in the community, including prominent voices, who are just not able to wrap their heads around one term and speak in one voice along with the rest of the community which ends up hurting the community interests. While there is a larger concensus on the word, “Hinduphobia”, there are many who insist on using the term “Hindumisia”, or HinduDwesha, or HinduHatred, or AntiHinduism and so on.
While everyone has the freedom to use the word of their liking, one also should take into consideration the community interests since the fight against hatred is not an individual battle, it’s a community battle.
So, here, I will try to make a case of Hinduphobia and why everyone needs to rally around this in the larger community interest.
1. We already have a scholarly and elaborate definition that includes hate
In April 2021, the Hindu Students Council at Rutgers University hosted a conference called “Understanding Hinduphobia”. It was the first of its kind of conference that featured prominent academics who explored, recognized and defined Hinduphobia as a form of bigotry that the Hindu community faces all over the world. The conference was graced by academics such as Dr. Indu Vishwanathan of Columbia University, Dr. Arvind Sharma (McGill University), Dr. Meenakshi Jain (Indian political scientist and historian, a prominent author and Nehru Memorial Museum & Library), Dr. Yvette Rosser. Others also included Alex Galitsky who talked about Armenian Genocide, Vishal Ganesan ji (who has collected evidence of Hinduphobia in the US and other parts of the world from 19th and early 20th century — through his handle @HindooHistory. His personal handle is @vjgtweets).
The conference provided an elaborate definition of the term Hinduphobia which covers all kinds of behaviours including hate. Please take a moment to go through it.
As one can see, the definition not only encompasses the variety of behaviors (prejudice, fear and hatred) but also the scale of them (microaggressions to genocide). And while providing the definition, it doesn’t keep it theoretical only. The website also provides clear and exhaustive list of examples of what is considered as Hinduphobia. One may agree or disagree to that — that’s a different thing.
2. History of the word Hinduphobia
The word itself has origins in 19th century with it appearing first in an English newspaper in Yorkshire, England on March 20, 1883, where it talks about the rise in tensions between the Europeans and the natives (i.e. Indians) with respect to certain recent, at that time, local political events. In a paragraph, it writes, “The vernacular papers are happily free to express native opinion, and so we are able to gauge what effect Hinduphobia has upon the Hindus.” So, this is 19th century.
Also, one thing to note is, that even though no earlier documentation is available today about the usage of this term, the word Hinduphobia is used without quotation marks, suggesting it to be a commonly used term.
In May 1914, Sudhindranath Bose, the President of the Hindustan Association of America, wrote an article in The Cosmopolitan Student, titled “Hinduphobia”. In one of the opening paragraphs, he writes,
“The politicians of the Pacific coast seem to be suffering just now from an acute attack of Hinduphobia. They are seized with such a terrible “stage freight” about a handful of Hindus in their midst, that a California legislator has recently introduced a bill in Congress for the exclusion of the Hindus from America. To my notion, the proposed bill is one of the most stringent, most sweeping measures ever proposed by a country against a friendly nation.”
In the June 1915 edition of The Cosmopolitan Student, he, along with the term “Hinduphobia”, has been mentioned in the index section.
Coming to India, the term Hinduphobia was used in the speeches in the Constituent Assembly by the members, and other politicians such as the Governer of Bengal in reference to Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s and the Muslim League’s attitude and behaviour towards Hindus, particularly the Hindu leadership like that of Jawaharlal Nehru.
The term Hinduphobia wasn’t just used in the context of Muslim League’s behaviour.
On June 29, 1948, the then Deputy Prime Minister of India, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, in a rejoinder to Winston Churchill, said,
“Mr Churchill is an unashamed imperialist and at a time when Imperialism is on its last legs, he is the proverbial last- ditcher, for whom obstinacy and dogged consistency gain more than reason, imagination or wisdom. Many an attempt to build friendship between India and Britain has been wrecked by his refusal to face facts and attempts to mould them to suit his own predilections. It is well-known that when the Cripps’s Offer was made, it was he who prevented negotiations from achieving success. It was he who, every time, thwarted the attempts of Mr Roosevelt to see that justice was done to India’s legitimate aspirations and its free and willing co-operation enlisted in the war effort.At the time of Lord Wavell’s Simla Conference, it was he who was responsible for its break-up and failure. If any of these attempts had succeeded, the history of India and of the relationship between Britain and India, despite the bitterness and intensity of the freedom struggle, would have been different. We might have avoided the evil of partition and the disasters that attended it. Fortunately — for Biitain, the cup of disasters was by then full and the Britisn electorate decided to change the pilot. Through a realistic policy, followed by the Labour Government and the bold, imaginative step taken by one of Britain’s wisest statesmen, Lord Mountbatten, and the atmosphere of friendship and cordiality which he helped to create, the mischief done by the Churchill regime has been, to a large extent, undone. But it seems Mr Churchill is still seized by his favourite disease, Hinduphobia, and is determined to wreck all that good work by his most unwise disregard of the proverbial virtue of silence.”
Between the mid-20th century and now, a host of historians, authors, politicians and other intellectuals have used the word “Hinduphobia” in their speeches and writings. For more details, I would recommend you to watch this 10-minute video on the “History of Hinduphobia”.
3. It’s similar or borrowed from Islamophobia
So, what?
I don’t understand why Hindus seek innovation where it is not required, especially given how far behind we are, as a community, in this discourse. We struggle in getting our persecution recognized. We struggle with people who deny our persecution. Hell, we are struggling against people who gaslight, especially to our children, Hindus about our own genocides. But no, we want to spend time in “charcha-fying” what name should we give to the biases, hatred, prejudice, irrational fears against the Hindu community.
Should it be phobia, should it be dwesha, should it be misia, should it be hatred, should it be anti-Hinduism?
And while we waste our time in doing that, Hinduphobes are doing their job with military precision.
“Phobia” is a well recognized term in English. People, even the stupidest one, will easily understand what that means. People also know who a Hindu is and what Hindu faith means (not scholarly but common person definition). It doesn’t take much time to put two and two together when we say “Hinduphobia”. It is also easy because there are other well recognized terms like Islamophobia, Homophobia, and so on.
Plus, there has been a well recognized conference of scholars that have already happened on the word “Hinduphobia”.
4. We don’t have to be SCHOLAR at Defining the Term
But rather be one at recording, explaining and root-causing the behaviours. There is a big need of scholarly work on understanding and explaining it to the masses on why Hinduphobia exists?
We have not been very diligent in documenting our persecution, which is why it becomes easy for Hinduphobes to deny it with an appearance of credibility.
We seem to have more people who love to speak about Hinduphobia than the ones documenting it. There are efforts here and there but one problem is that these efforts focus more on statistics than narrative. Unfortunately, our penchant for number crunching doesn’t leave us. But what we need more is stories and narratives that cannot be refuted.
5. Why the “phobia” part also makes sense?
One of the critique against using the term Hinduphobia is the “phobia” part of it, citing that nobody is afraid of Hindus, so Hinduphobia doesn’t make sense.
The problem with the understanding of “phobia” and saying “They aren’t afraid of Hindus”, seems to be that the term “phobia” is interpreted by masses only in the context of physical harm. And they’re correct perhaps as well in that context, but the Hinduphobes are afraid of Hindu faith for sure — and by extension, Hindus too — especially the ones who are expressive of their faith — — and even more the ones who are propagating the faith, — — and even more the ones who are articulate in propagating the faith.
If you want to know the history of fearmongering against Hindus, just go to the Twitter profile of the handle “Hindoo History” who has cataloged the instances of the western media who spread fear about Hindus and Hindu faith.
The above example can’t get clearer where the Berkeley Daily Gazette clearly asks Americans to “fear” Hindus.
In the example above, once again, a clear fear of Hindus “about to invade America” is created.
Does it sound similar to the another fear that is created TODAY with respect to Hindus in India — — an “impending”, “on the verge”, “on the brink” of the G-word?
So, essentially we need the community leaders, at the least, to rally behind one word to ensure that it is easy for non-Hindus to retain the word in their minds and easily understand what we are talking about. Then, we can focus and invest our energies on solutions rather than explaining what we are talking about. It will save a lot of time.
As I wrote earlier, Hindus are already late in the arena of advocacy for the community and we cannot afford to lose time.
References:
https://understandinghinduphobia.org/working-definition/
https://understandinghinduphobia.org/resources/#:~:text=3.%20History%20of%20Hinduphobia
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=iau.31858035671167&view=1up&seq=302
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=h1viAAAAMAAJ&pg=GBS.PA362&hl=en_GB
https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.498772/2015.498772.Gandhi-and_djvu.txt
https://twitter.com/HindooHistory/status/1501784229037817856
https://twitter.com/HindooHistory/status/1513978234844553217
https://twitter.com/HindooHistory/status/1460682435176271875
https://twitter.com/HindooHistory/status/1554851051714490371
https://twitter.com/anirvan/status/1597422508575100928
https://twitter.com/HindooHistory/status/1594137872470155265
https://twitter.com/HindooHistory/status/1410251615026638848
