Anti-Hindu fanaticism will not be stopped by fighting Islamophobia alone

The tragedy in Kansas City has brought out a sense of deep pain, fear and confusion among Hindus in America. Not unlike the aftermath of 9/11, when anyone who “looked” broadly South or West Asian feared for their lives, many Hindus are expressing their anxiety that Hindus need to express their Hindu identity more plainly so that they are, hopefully, left alone. The antipathy in America, goes their reading, is largely fueled by terror attacks by Muslims such as the events in San Bernardino, Orlando, Boston, Paris and elsewhere (and stoked, more recently, by the ugly campaign rhetoric of the presidential election).

There is another view, widespread among more secularised Hindus and people who usually prefer to identify as "South Asian" rather than Hindu, that such an assertion of Hindu identity is appallingly Islamophobic and destroys a sense of multicultural and multireligious solidarity and resistance to bigotry. A rather sharp expression of such a view came recently on Twitter from one of its Indian office staff members.

In response to a suggestion from a concerned Twitter user in India that Hindus in America should wear tilaks or bindis to signal their Hindu identity and escape Islamophobic violence, the Twitter India official mockingly suggested that Hindus might as well wear Swastikas on armbands; dress up like Nazis, that is.

This is an example of the peculiar nature of the violence that Hindus face. It may be mostly symbolic, but it is existential; even common and harmless symbols of Hindu identity like the tilak can be seamlessly equated with Nazism these days. And this spiteful hatred is not only tolerated, but actually a source of pride among the chosen people who fancy themselves to be fighting bigotry. They fail to see that this is insulting to not just extremists as they seem to think, but every Hindu women, man, and child in the world. They would never mock the hijab, cross, or Star of David this way, would they?

And then, there is also the real danger Hindus in America live with of being targeted physically for a range of reasons which are usually described as racism, xenophobia, or Islamophobia. Since there are not too many known cases of Hindus being targeted physically for being Hindu (though the temple vandalisms and incidents like the New York subway pushing suggests this is a sad reality too), many activists and journalists seem to shrink from recognising anti-Hindu fanaticism as a problem at all (worse, many of them go out of their way to brand those Hindus talking about anti-Hindu violence as Hindu nationalists, fundamentalists and extremists).

In my media research class recently, I asked my students how many of them had heard the term “Islamophobia” and most of them raised their hands. I then asked them how many had heard the term “Hinduphobia” and no one ever had. Like many people outside the Hindu community, they had no idea such a thing or debate even existed. The perception is widespread that Hindus face no problems as Hindus; in America they are seen as a successful immigrant community, and in India they are of course seen as that much quoted mammoth 80 per cent majority.

There is also a perception among Indian and Indian American elites that America loves Hinduism because of the way yoga culture and American ‘scholarship’ on Hinduism is spreading (another matter that the nature of these trends is to appropriate and deny rather than represent or celebrate). So, if, as one of my students noted,  it does turn out that that Hindus indeed are being targeted in America for being Hindus, then it would call for a whole new narrative that does not even exist now (in the mainstream media and academia at least). As always, I find hope for the world when the younger generation sees things for what they are.

That leads to the core issue here. If it is the case that two young Indian engineers in Kansas were attacked not for being Hindu but for being “Middle Eastern” (as the suspect reportedly said later), does it imply that Hindus have no problems with enshrined negative attitudes towards their culture and identity in America?

And, does it mean that the only thing Hindus have to do in order to fight bigotry is to identify as “Brown” or “South Asian” and condemn (as many South Asian activists often do) fellow Hindus who just might prefer to call themselves Hindus first? Will fighting Islamophobia automatically solve the problem of Hinduphobia, or anti-Hindu fanaticism, to be precise?

Again, some Hindus who don’t usually like the word “Hindu” seem to think so, while others have seen enough to disagree vehemently with such a perception.

The way in which media and activist groups are addressing concerns about racism and violence in America today reveals much about the peculiar way in which the American identity landscape has normalised and institutionalised anti-Hindu prejudices. We conducted a quick survey of news coverage of the Kansas City attack in my class yesterday. Out of about 30 news stories drawn from over one dosen sources such as the BBC, New York Times, NPR, Breitbart, LA Times, and others, the fact that the victims were Hindu was not mentioned in more than two or three reports (and in one of them, it was noted dryly that Hindus are a majority in India).

Initial reports from Kansas news sources extensively quoted not any Indian, Hindu or Telugu organization, but the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), and several reports talked about hate crimes against Muslims. As I noticed later, the only articles that addressed the question of what Hindus were facing in America seemed to be opinion pieces in India making a didactic point against NRI Hindus who supported Trump in the election, a sort of “we told you so" position.

An objective view would not deny that Muslims do face hostility about their religion and culture, and all the more so since 9/11. It is my position that it is morally wrong to participate in a narrative of generalised blame or even demand condemnations of every act of violence done by Muslims from other Muslims. But when Hindus are essentially targeted on the assumption that they are Muslims, is it really fair to condemn them for asserting that they are not?

One of the biggest problems today in American identity politics today is that there is neither honesty nor reciprocity in the struggle against racism. Even if Hindus get killed for being misperceived as Muslims (and it may be noted that when Sikhs were killed for the same reason in America no one sought to erase or insult their Sikh identity in the conversation), the fact that they are Hindus, and come from a history of their own as Hindus surviving a thousand years of struggle and accommodation with intolerant and crusading monetheisms, must be honoured.

Just a quick comparison of some activist websites reveals so much of what ails the moral and intellectual imagination today. The CAIR website, for example, reported the Kansas City attack with the following headline:

“CAIR-Kansas Seeks State, Federal Hate Crime Charges for Shooting of ‘Middle-Eastern’ Men”

Neither the headline, nor report, mention that the victims were Hindu, or even Indian. The only thing CAIR cared about it seems is that they were perceived as “middle eastern.” I have to wonder if they would have bothered engaging this issue if it was any other way. Where is the solidarity these organizations profess? It was not in evidence during the California textbook debates when Hindus were unilaterally demonised and lied about, and it is not there now, when Hindus are routinely erased, misrepresented, or insulted as Nazis.

It is useful to compare the erasure of Hinduphobia by non-Hindu organizations with what some self-titled “progressive Hindus,” are saying. It is worth noting that for a long time South Asian activist groups avoided the word "Hindu" in their eclectic platforms altogether. The websites of such groups used to list concerns about "Arab, Muslim, Sikh and other South Asians" as their mandate.

When the Obama White House hosted an anti-bullying conference, these were the same identities noted on the event banner too (notwithstanding the fact that a major report on anti-Hindu bullying in schools had just been published as well). Furthermore, some of the same individuals who sealously (if finally unsuccessfully) supported the erasure of the word "Hinduism" from the history curriculum in California now call themselves progressive Hindus.

No harm done, if anti-racist activists have indeed learned that there is no shame in considering Hindus too as human beings, and perhaps outgrowing that old colonial racist Aryan invasion/migration theory they had swallowed that anyone calling themselves Hindu is a "Hindu nationalist/fundamentalist/extremist."

Unfortunately, how far does this newly found "progressive Hindu" voice go? Is it "progressive" and "Hindu"?

The website one "progressive Hindu" group in American lists articles on “Hindu solidarity with Muslims,” alongside another item about a Muslim victim of violence on its homepage. I commend this very Hindu genuflection towards the pain of others. But who will speak for the pain of Hindus neither "progressive Hindus" nor self-identifying South Asians/Browns etc will not?

What then, are Hindus to do?

Is it a moral crime to wear a marker of Hindu identity, or to simply be Hindu? After all, no polite or sensible person demands that Muslims marching alongside others in solidarity erase their Muslim-ness and adopt some notional “Brown” identity. Yet, in intervention after intervention, activists have proclaimed their South Asianness, Brown-ness, and other forms of identity, and turned relentlessly and sometimes viciously against Hindus who were not even speaking against anyone else, but simply for themselves, as human beings.

It is high time that those who claim to be against bigotry and violence become principled enough to name it and fight it everywhere and not simply in some convenient identity-locations. Do not wait for some criminal to justify a hate crime against Hindus with what he "learned" about Hinduism in his history textbooks to accept that anti-Hindu fanaticism is real, normative, and pervasive. It is, and so long as you don't admit it, it remains a corrupt blot on your own soul too that the whole world is seeing plainly through your words and deeds.

See the pain that people are feeling. Try to see it without reactively mocking it just because you think you have a superior identity.

Fight the good fight truly, at least now.

Also read - Former NYT reporter explains why Donald Trump has everything to do with Kansas shooting