Dismantling Global Hindutva leads to racial attacks against Hindus in the US and Canada

A recent chain of racial attacks has come to light where Hindus living in Canada and the US have been targeted. The recent attacks, just after the anti-Hindu propaganda event called Dismantle Global Hindutva, shows deep-rooted Hinduphobia prevalent in the west.

Hate Crime against Hindus

In a clear case of a hate crime, a Hindu family was attacked by two teenage boys when they were performing a small private religious ceremony in a park in Mississauga, Canada. The teen boys assaulted the 44-year-old man and also aggressively threw rocks at him. They were also shouting derogatory and hateful slurs at his family.

Similarly, In America’s Atlanta, hateful signs saying “no dotheads (Hindus)” appeared on a signboard. Dothead is basically a slur used to refer to a Hindu person. This term was derived from Hindu women wearing ‘Bindi’ on their foreheads. It is being presumed that the current resurgence of the feeling of hate and loath towards Hindus has found its basis in a Hinduphobic group called ‘Dotbursters’, which was established in New Jersey that particularly threatened Indians.

But this is just not it, the most hateful incident against Hindus and their religious beliefs has come from a Minnesota Church which has decided to mobilise locals against the construction of Hindu temples. In its letter, the church argued “Hindu Gods are false Gods, God does not want any kind of false religion anywhere”. Absolving themselves of any cultural or religious prejudice, the Church wrote in its letter that – “Opposing a false religion is not cultural or social prejudice, let us head off this trouble before it gets here and keep the BAPS(Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan) temple out”.

Role of academics in Hinduphobic narratives

All these Hinduphobic attacks were witnessed within 3 days of the Dismantling Global Hindutva conference. The conference was organized by departments of over 50 US universities, including Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, New York, Cornell, and Northwestern Universities. This Hinduphobic conference had speakers like self-proclaimed historian Audrey Truschke, Naxal sympathizer Anand Patwardhan, Ayesha Kidwai who writes for the left-wing portal The Wire, Banu Subramaniam, Bhanwar Meghwanshi, and Nandini Sundar. Most of these speakers are well known for their anti-Hindu, anti-Modi and pro-Naxal biases.

In its attempt to spread Hinduphobia in western societies, the conference made some ridiculous arguments. At one point, they went on to conclude that Zionist women and upper-caste Hindu women are in collusion. In the very same conference, they concluded that Brahmanism (a term used for the superiority of upper-caste Hindus) is responsible for Nazism. One should know that Nazism and Zionism are two main dominant themes dividing the western population for the last 75 years. The speakers of the conference made sure that Hindus are pitted against both camps and are targets of hate from both sides.

It seems that the westerners are unaware of the peaceful and tolerant heritage of Hindu culture. For them, these distorted facts stated by these academics are authenticated sources of knowledge about the Hindus and their culture. When they listen to such idiotic prophecies from their intellectuals, they tend to develop a negative bias towards Hindus, which then manifests in the form of hate crime.

Universities are the sense-making apparatus of society, and if they go haywire and start targeting a specific religion, they should not be blaming anyone for their decreasing irrelevancy.