India and "Hindu" bashing

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India and "Hindu" bashing

Post by Sin Hombre »

Western liberal media being racist against Indians and Hindus as always

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... dApp_Other
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Re: Interesting thing I found....

Post by Rajiv »

And the racist fodder has been written and provided by a Indian & a Hindu .. Pankaj Misra.. This guy must be graduate of the Congress sponsored Lutyens Media school...which churns out these individuals who have a hidden and dangerous agenda to work against India.
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Re: Interesting thing I found....

Post by prasen9 »

Sin Hombre wrote: Sun Oct 30, 2022 3:01 pm Western liberal media being racist against Indians and Hindus as always

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... dApp_Other
What is racist here? I only largely disagree with one statement: Yet exultant noises from India as well as Britain would make us believe that some historic milestone has been reached. I do think this is a milestone achievement on paper. However, fundamentally, a large part of Britain and especially the Tories remain a cesspool of racism, tokenism in its leadership notwithstanding.

The central tenet of the article that Sunak is more a representative of the capitalist world, the neo-banya class, and not that much of Indians or Hindus per se is true. What loyalty to India has Sunak shown? Has he cheered for the Indian team? Does not have to be this exactly but he is a businessman and politician first who happens to be of Indian origin. That too, strictly speaking Pakistani origin. I do not know who all his ancestors were. But, a few were Pakistani.

The other tenet is that his policies are downright detrimental to the poorer immigrant class as the Tories traditionally look out for the rich. Nothing Sunak has said or done says that he actually cares for anything about the poorer masses of society.

So, this article is rather spot on. Of course, I expect the Bhakts here to disagree and that is fine. It is a open forum after all. Happy to discuss the points in the article. Ad homimen attacks speak of the intellectual hollowness of the attacker with respect to the article.
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Re: Interesting thing I found....

Post by prasen9 »

Rajiv wrote: Sun Oct 30, 2022 5:32 pm And the racist fodder has been written and provided by a Indian & a Hindu .. Pankaj Misra.. This guy must be graduate of the Congress sponsored Lutyens Media school...which churns out these individuals who have a hidden and dangerous agenda to work against India.
Nice ad hominem attack. Glad to see people who do not have arguments against the substance of the article resorting to this. Such attacks speak for themselves.
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Re: Interesting thing I found....

Post by jayakris »

Prasen, did you not see anything objectionable in the use of the word "Hindu" in the title? What was the need for that, except to bash Hindus?

I don't take issue with the rest of the angles on Rishi Sunak being at 180 degrees to your (and my) non-right-wing beliefs. No issue with the article pointing out the "anti-poor" attitude in him (or indifference to the poor, or the belief that helping the rich first ill automatically percolate to the poor, etc). That is politics. I am on the democrats' side in the US, just as you are (though nowhere near the almost-communist end of the spectrum like you may be). So I was dead against Trumpism in the US, just like you are. But that is all on the basis of politics and economic beliefs. Some of it in Trump supporters and right-wing politicians like Sunak may indeed be coming from racist and anti-immigrant beliefs as well. So, I don't think I would vote for Rishi Sunak if I were in the UK and he were running to be the PM.

If the article stuck to that theme, I don't think Sin Hombre, Rajiv, or I would object, because we all know that right-wing politicians in the US, UK, and elsewhere may have certain racist tendencies which, as a minimum, strengthens their politicial and economic beliefs.

But what has any of that got to do with the stress on "Hindu" in the title and at the start of the article. Really, all through the article. One doesn't need to be a "bhakt" (which is code for Modi-support) to see that this was a hit piece on Hindus, couched as a hit piece on right-wing Tories like Sunak and others.

Check this out from the article:
Hindu supremacists have pounced on the possibility that Rishi Sunak, a self-proclaimed devout Hindu, is a desi bro, even an undercover agent of the “Global Indian Takeover” – the title of a once regular feature in the Times of India. Evidently, he observes upper-caste taboos against beef and alcohol and always keeps his statuette of Ganesha, the guarantor of worldly success, close to him. “Indian son rises over the empire” was one typical headline in India this week.
See how the lowlife writer brought Hinduism into it? Only Hindus and Hindu-supremacists were celebrating in India? Everybody and his uncle was acting like they proved something because a guy of Indian roots married to an Indian bcame the UK PM. The scribe repeatedly throws the word "Hindu" in the article. The frenzy about Sunak's Indian connections in India had nothing much to do with Hinduism. If his parents were Christians from Goa and he were married to Narayanamurthy's daughter, the frenzy would be just about the same. Indians like to take reflected glory from the west, a colonial remnant in their behavior, that really bothered me too. Heck, Pakistanis' celebration should be the proof of that. But this attack-piece made it all some sort of a "Hindu" thing. WTF?

Then check this out:
While the Chinese diaspora, the world’s largest, remains less visible, many Indians in the west have steadily improved their prospects, becoming, as the 1980s arrived, poster people for the neoliberal ideology of meritocracy – the “model minority”
...
These proto-globalisers were helped at the same time by fresh personal and professional networks with a “New India” that swiftly discarded its pretensions to Gandhian values while rushing to embrace power and wealth. Sunak, now married to a Indian citizen richer than King Charles, shares his glossy biography with many men (and some women) of Indian ancestry who today own the world’s biggest industries and run major banks, hedge funds and Silicon Valley companies.
My jaw dropped at that last sentence. The attempt to write the kind of things about "Hindus" and Indians just like Nazis wrote about Jews, is unmistakable. The idea that "Hindus" are beginning to control capitalism, which must be resisted, is going way too far. This is about as racist an article as I have ever seen. The kind of crap Hitler would be proud of. The Guardian should be ashamed of themselves, and somebody should actually file a lawsuit against them for publishing patently racist hit pieces like this (if there is any legal issue that can be brought up).

I am quite sad that your radars didn't turn on at all to the Hindu-bashing that was the intent of the article. How come?
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Re: India and "Hindu" bashing

Post by jayakris »

I split this topic away into a new one... It is important enough to have a thread of its own. This is because India-bashing and Hindu-bashing have lately been taken to a higher level by some vested interests in India and globally, and it is beginning to take a path toward something ugly like anti-semitism in my opinion... Mod, Jay
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Re: Interesting thing I found....

Post by prasen9 »

jayakris wrote: Sun Oct 30, 2022 8:59 pm Prasen, did you not see anything objectionable in the use of the word "Hindu" in the title? What was the need for that, except to bash Hindus?
Great. Now we have a good old debate. Mission accomplished. :-)

Let's see the title: Britain’s first Hindu prime minister is destroying Tories’ pitiful vision of diversity

I see no problem. "Britain's first Hindu prime minister" is actually factually true and does not contain anything bashing anyone. It is pointing out that he is the first Hindu PM. It does nothing to say anything about Hindus.

In my reading, the need for that is what he says next. That the Tories' vision of diversity is tokenism and Orwellian. The reason you want to mention that he is Hindu is because you want to say that just because Britain has the first Hindu PM does not mean that the party is diverse. That is why mentioning Hindu is important. Nothing about bashing anyone except the Tories.

You can disagree but I would like to know why you think it is Hindu bashing. Because, honestly, I do not see it as that. All of us, of course, are biased and primed by our ideologies.

I will answer the rest of your points later when I get the time. Thank you for engaging.
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Re: Interesting thing I found....

Post by jayakris »

prasen9 wrote: Sun Oct 30, 2022 9:18 pm I see no problem. "Britain's first Hindu prime minister" is actually factually true and does not contain anything bashing anyone. It is pointing out that he is the first Hindu PM. It does nothing to say anything about Hindus.
Hello? Your radar really needs to be sent in for repair. Did you outsource maintenance to India? :)

If I wrote "Kerala's Ezhava CM Pinarayi is no capitalist in road construction" and wrote an article like this in Malayala Manorama, you would say that "it is true after all", but I suspect I won't stay alive for even a day on my next trip to Kerala! :)
prasen9 wrote: Sun Oct 30, 2022 9:18 pm In my reading, the need for that is what he says next. That the Tories' vision of diversity is tokenism and Orwellian. The reason you want to mention that he is Hindu is because you want to say that just because Britain has the first Hindu PM does not mean that the party is diverse. That is why mentioning Hindu is important. Nothing about bashing anyone except the Tories.
He could have just-written "Britian's first non-white prime minister" and taken out references to Hinduism in the article and it could have said all the things you liked in the article about Tory politics.

But he added "Hindu" into it. However much you may try to whitewash it and say that "it is true afterall" doesn't make it non-bashing. It is clear as day that bashing Tory politics was not at all the intention. Hindu and India-bashing were. He talks about Chinese diaspora and Indian diaspora around the world. Nothing to do with Tories, really.
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Re: India and "Hindu" bashing

Post by Sin Hombre »

Replace Hindu with Black or LGBTQ+ or Hispanic and then write the same article.

Jews and Hindus/Indians (and maybe Chinese as well) are now bucketed in the same category where it is ok to be openly racist because of their work ethic and success.
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Re: India and "Hindu" bashing

Post by jayakris »

In fact, I am rather surprised that I had not even thought about this kind of racism to be behind the easy acceptance of "Hinduphobia" in the west in recent times. Very much like anti-semitism earlier.

Actually I had kinda pooh-poohed this idea of there being any real global "hinduphobia" in my mind as somewhat a non-existent issue, even as the word had come up in recent years, pushed by BJP/RSS mouthpieces. That was because of my feeling that what there is against Hinduism is just a deep level of discomfort and even disdain about concepts of Gods who are monkeys or elephants or have multiple heads and hands and all that; not an actual fear or phobia about Hindus. That is unlike in the case of Islamophobia, where people actually think of Islam as a violent religion that will impose Sharia or Jihad on them if Muslims become politically powerful. No such fear about Hindus, I thought.... But I think that was shallow thinking on my part. There is some real racism and a real fear of "Hindus" as some sort of super-intelligent fellows with IIT and IIM degrees from India or Stanford/MIT/Harvard/Chicago background, who will control their technology, money and fortunes!

Unlike Islamophobia which is somewhat of a religious fear, this is really an economic fear like in the case of Jews a century ago.

Wow. I am kinda shaken out of my naivete-driven comfort zone right now, and a bit concerned about my own radar on these things - just as I was joking about Prasen's radar. The above article did hit me hard -- try as hard as Prasen may, to say that it was nothing. It is no less than an ultra-racist hit piece on Hindus. By a guy who has a Hindu name, to boot.
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Re: India and "Hindu" bashing

Post by Rajiv »

jayakris wrote: Sun Oct 30, 2022 9:15 pm This is because India-bashing and Hindu-bashing have lately been taken to a higher level by some vested interests in India and globally, and it is beginning to take a path toward something ugly like anti-semitism in my opinion... Mod, Jay
Rajiv Malhotra in his book "Snakes in the Ganga" (which I have ordered ) has elaborated and one which is marked with lucidity on how this system and organisation works and one of the labs is in Harvard which invites individuals and Communists who are with a single minded Anti India agenda and a narrative is set to be spread around the world and great care is taken that the opposing voices in Harvard to this activity are brutally shunned and silenced without giving them any opportunity to counter.
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Re: India and "Hindu" bashing

Post by arjun2761 »

Unlike Islamophobia which is somewhat of a religious fear, this is really an economic fear like in the case of Jews a century ago.

Wow. I am kinda shaken out of my naivete-driven comfort zone right now, and a bit concerned about my own radar on these things - just as I was joking about Prasen's radar. The above article did hit me hard
Haven't seen as much Hindu phobia in the mainstream US yet. Partly because our previous racist-in-chief (Trump) actually had a favorable view of Indians and Hindus (in contrast to his hatred for China). Most of the anti-Asian violence has been directed at East Asians and surprisingly a lot of it by blacks (who are perhaps jealous of being outworked by them often in their own neighborhoods).

However, Hindus are very close to Jews in family income, so perhaps increased hatred may be coming in the future.
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2 ... us-groups/

However, the Jews are far more entrenched in Finance and Law which perhaps give them more controlling power. Indians do well in tech and both jews and Indians do well in medicine and academia. It's possible that our role in tech might put us under the radar as it is made out to more political.
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Re: India and "Hindu" bashing

Post by jayakris »

^^^ True that nothing has happened yet, but the above article truly troubled me, because it is this kind of deliberate hit-pieces on communities that legitimizes racist thinking and starts off ugly racism.

It is because I had not actually sensed Hinduphobia in the US that I had discarded the idea, despite seeing it being pushed by sangh-parivar-leaning social media groups in the US. I had taken that to be just a copycat attempt to play the victim card like done by Muslim outfits using "Islamophobia" against them. But the Muslims indeed had reasons to claim to be victims, but Hindus didn't --- or so I thought. But I had not thought about there being entirely different kind of non-religious reasons for anti-Hindu feelings to possibly be simmering under the surface, and that it could erupt at some point even if we haven't seen it yet. The above article just spelled it out, and essentially invited such racism. Like "here is why you should hate Hindus and their professional networks (of which Rishi Sunak is just a product)". Indeed, "professional network" was a phrase the article had. Racist to the core!
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Re: India and "Hindu" bashing

Post by prasen9 »

I actually have a problem with the title of this thread. Hindu bashing and India bashing are different things. As is Modi bashing. Etc. They are not synonymous. That is Hindu bashing or Modi bashing are not India bashing. We do have an "and" in the title. But, why do we want to put these together and say not Muslim bashing in the same thread? I'd rather we have different threads and put whatever belongs wherever. If an article is indeed doing both, then perhaps we can put the main article in wherever it is more appropriate and a link to the other.
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Re: India and "Hindu" bashing

Post by jayakris »

^^^ 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.
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