Liberal Hindu American reconciliation

Across much India-focused social media, a major event I’m seeing sounds of is that of the beginning of the construction of a grand new temple in the Indian city of Ayodhya. It’s being celebrated as a victory by many Hindus, and watched by many others as a another Hindu-right-issued-blow to India’s constitutional secularism. It’s a complicated and lengthy issue for many.

I don’t know that I have super strong opinions on the Ram temple project yet. But India, Hinduism, the US, the West, and how these entities interplay with one another and the world are often on my mind.

At the heart of this is a desire for me to reconcile my own dissonance on a few things. This isn’t an exhaustive list, but covers some of the basics of what cause intellectual strife for me:

Non-native expertise

I find that there’s generally been a global lack of understanding of context or equitable, natively-sourced interest in Hinduism, India, its influence, culture and history. In mainstream academia, this understanding is rooted in an external, colonized lens. Western thought or West-adjacent academics and researchers, while their work is often laudable, are often prioritized as sources of knowledge. Think Wendy Doniger or Romila Thapar.

Mis-linking disparate issues across societal contexts

Many people who are supportive of decolonization and the dismantling of hegemonic power structures in the West are often those who rely on colonized renderings of the history of Indian society and history. I’ve observed that there’ve been attempts to wholesale copy-and-paste applications of Western societal struggles (issues like racial injustice or police brutality) onto the Indian social landscape (issues like Hindu-Muslim disharmony or colorism).

Right wing affiliation & decolonization

It’s been interesting to me that many of the people who are advancing the decolonization of education about Hinduism and Indian history are also affiliated with right wing movements in India. Unfortunately within these groups, I’ve observed that there are a lot of anti-Muslim (and anti-other-Indian-demographic-minority) thoughts and actions.

A number of Hindu Americans have shown Trump support because they think he’ll be great for US-India relations.

Hindu American support for Trump

By far the most fascinating observation to me, an American of Hindu Indian origin, is this: the affiliation of a startling number of Hindu Americans (especially those who have vested interests and families in the US, where they’re a minority) with Trump and the Republican Party. Observing the growth of this connection has massively eroded my trust-in-judgement of the people who are decolonizing and re-evaluating Hindu narratives. 

These topics are quite heavy and require a lot of exploration, dissection, and understanding — and these are raw, personal observations that need a lot of distilling. With COVID magnifying a variety of issues, it’s become all the more important for me to examine long-held views, dig deeper, and come out with a hopefully clearer understanding on topics we ought to care about.