India and "Hindu" bashing

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jayakris
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Re: India and "Hindu" bashing

Post by jayakris »

Prasen, to add further, there is a reason why I had quotes around the word "Hindu" in the title. I know it is curious and ambiguous, but it is actually to draw attention to the fact that actual bashing of Hinduism is not what the issue is. It is more the use of the word "Hindu" for nefarious motives other than pure religion-bashing. This is all much more than that. The tendency in these India-bashers to throw in the word "Hindu" to create hatred towards Indians by using religious biases in people.
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Re: India and "Hindu" bashing

Post by Kumar »

I think Sunak’s elevation is probably not good for non whites and primarily Indians in UK. As Arjun pointed out, I would not be surprised to see Indians being target of racial violence as days go by.

We have hindu bashing at its worse in TN, we have a chief minister of TN, who extends greetings to people on occasion of Christmas, Eid, but refuses to do so for Diwali. How can this be considered a secular govt?
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Re: India and "Hindu" bashing

Post by kaustav »

jayakris wrote: Tue Nov 01, 2022 12:47 am ^^^ Well, I had the two together only because issues overlap between the two and so the news articles and posts here would typically include both (like the doubles team threads)...

If there is Muslim bashing that overlaps with India bashing, we can start a thread for that too. India-bashing lately have often included Hindu-bashing, and thus the overlap. I don't think I have seen a single article with India-bashing that included Muslim-bashing or Sikh-bashing or Christian-bashing. If there is a need to discuss those things together, we can open "Muslim bashing and India-bashing", "Christian bashing and India-bashing" etc. This is just like having "Paes and Bhupathi" and "Bopanna and Bhupathi" threads. Or we can change the title to "religion-bashing and race-bashing of Indians" if needed. Depends on where the discussions go.

But the above article and issues clearly dealt with only Hindu bashing and India-bashing. In fact, some of the people that the Guardian article mentioned were not Hindus, and were mentioned for the India-bashing angle of it, but only Hinduism as a religion was brought up to bash with the references of Hindu supremacists etc. Very interesting, isn't it?

By the way, nobody here is equating Hindu and India together. You noticed the "and" properly though and didn't accuse me of doing that. So I take it as just a fear in you that people may be taking it that way. But in the process, you got totally side-tracked from the actual issue that affects you too though. You may distance yourself, Prasen, but you are taken as of Indian origin and of Hindu background whatever you do, by others. Remember that Judaism being a religion to hate or fear was not the reason why Jews were hated once. There were socialist jews, communist jews, acaemicians, musicians - and they all faced the same ugliness only because they were born as jews. If racist anti-Hinduism takes wings for totally non-religious reasons like antisemitism did, then you will also be subject to such ugly racism for no fault of yours, even when you may not even believe in Hinduism. So please don't get side-tracked to simpler litmus test items like whether we here are equating Indians with Hindus. I am not, and nobody at this forum is. The world probably is doing that though. And that is a serious problem that you also would hopefully think about.

The point is the perception that there is a powerful "Hindu network" that is controlling hedge funds, silicon valley tech, multiple countries' governments etc. The ones peddling this nonsense (like the worm who wrote the Guardian article) are creating hatred against Indians and Hindus together, equating them to some extent. You should oppose THAT, and not us who object to them.
Perfect reply Jay :cool:
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Re: India and "Hindu" bashing

Post by prasen9 »

Kumar wrote: Tue Nov 01, 2022 2:53 pm We have hindu bashing at its worse in TN, we have a chief minister of TN, who extends greetings to people on occasion of Christmas, Eid, but refuses to do so for Diwali. How can this be considered a secular govt?
I don't think any government in India is truly secular. A lot of them are multi-religious and many are single-religious if not on paper in principle and behavior.

The guy possibly is a moron. But, is there an angle that Diwali is celebrated at a different time, maybe in the month of Aippasi, which should be from mid Sept to mid Oct in Tamil Nadu?

I have a close friend who comes from the North. There is this overwhelming desire by the majority to project their culture on the rest of the country. I do not think he realized but he told an Italian friend of mine that Diwali is the most important festival of Hindus all over India. I had to gently interject that in Bengal, Durga Puja is and all our states have different cultures, languages, and customs. I guess one could argue in a very narrow semantics that for some Hindus in Bengal too Diwali is the most important festival and in that way it is all over India but his intended message was not that nuanced, etc. In fact, when we were growing up, Kali Puja - a day before or after Diwali - was more important than Diwali in Bengal although for what we called the "non-Bangali" population, Diwali was important.

I expect anyone named after Stalin to be a moron but is there an angle where he wanted to greet people during the Tamil Diwali? I suspect that he is just petty and stupid. The smarter leaders on the face of it try to show that they are multi-religious but in principle when passing laws, etc. favor their favorite religion. Greeting a community is easy to do and it gives a little cover to these leaders to show that they do not have an agenda of harming or preferring differenc communities when they pass laws. This guy is stupid if he does not even play that game. It will make him more susceptible towards allegations of favoring a community or disfavoring a community and that may harm his political interests.

Secularism has been non-existant among Indian leaders for a long, long time.

Here is the dictionary definition of secular: not connected with religious or spiritual matters.

There is a tendency of people to claim the word and redefine it to what they want.
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