Many of you have told me recently you feel your faith, or you personally are under attack. The attacks come from academia and of course social media.
Several things to remember:
Not all academics are created equal. There is a push in academia for career-saving TV shows and publicity. They thrive off baiting. It makes their otherwise anonymity seem career relevant. They’re attention seeking paranoia: where everyone is part of some Hindu Illuminati Taliban is best served by a psychiatrist not a lawyer.
There is genuine analysis of Hinduism, critical, that is done for instance at Oxford University - Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. I’ve hosted academics at our Gala Dinner and the Vice Chancellor who in their speeches spoke of the merits of genuine enquiry. This is of a wholly different calibre to publicity seeking social media tweets intended to provoke not debate but the worst in humanity.
Then there is the hatred of the faith because it is not another faith. I see on TikTok Hindus explaining their faith with immense eloquence and patience and receiving hatred from people claiming to be from another faith. A roll of the eyes and shrug of the shoulders is the best way to deal with such comments – they are intended to bring out the worst in you – to incite anger. Remember the Gita, equanimity and control of the mind is the mark of a Hindu.
Even Krishna directed Arjun to battles worthy of fighting. Is your adversary worthy? A token fringe academic in a non-serious subject spending more time on social media than the library, is not endorsed by a University just because their salary is paid by it.
Do not be fooled by the liberal use of the University’s name, any more than I saying to you that as a Former Visiting Fellow at Corpus Christi College Oxford, I write this letter with the authority of an Oxford academic and I say I find the best in humanity and it’s wisdom in my dharma time and again.
What then of social media trolls who are racist? Should we not have the same uproar for the hatred Hindus face on social media? First, all hatred is deplorable, whether based on race or religion. Second, it takes a fool three seconds to make a post on social media, and a response takes endless replies and back and forth. Is it worth your time?
If you feel a law is being broken on hate speech, then report it to the police.
What is worth your time and energy, is practicing your faith and instead of claiming to be the best (which would in itself not be very Hindu) but rather find the best in your faith. Provide support to other Hindus who trolls wish to prize away from their faith, who trolls, academic or otherwise, wish to have deny their faith.
Ours is a faith in which Einstein and Oppenheimer and Twain found immense awe and beauty – a solitary troll with two followers is not worth your time.
Would I put before an academic troll the Upanishads, the Gita, the Mahabharat, the Vedas, the Ramayan? This same question of what to do with ‘haters’ was asked of Christ and his view is telling, “do not put pearls before swine”.
Would I really explain to someone who thinks any defence of Hinduism is some extremist view, the words of renowned respected Cosmologist, Carl Sagan, “The Hindu religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long. Longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang.”
Yes there are criticisms to be made and improvements from the adherents to the dharma, but consider these yourself thoughtfully. As Christ said, and it should be said to trolls and what they represent – ‘before you try to take the splinter out of the eye of another, take out the plank from your own eye.’
People with whatever reason to hate Hinduism, not through detached analysis, will try to disproportionately proclaim its issues - splinter compared to the plank in the world around them that is Taliban, Islamic State, Communism, incarceration of Uighurs. To them Hindus are Taliban or superstitious. Would I waste my time explaining to them Radhakrishnan’s book on Indian Philosophy or why India has the respect she does because of the wisdom of her majority faith?
No, they would assume I am some caste-ist brahmin with secret cypher messages from the Indian ‘regime’. Walk away. For millennia others have tried to wipe out our Dharma, but Shiv has outlived them all. Krishna still dances, Radha remains adoring, Parvati continues to adore Ganesh who continues to scribe and remove obstacles. And the cycle of destruction and rebirth continues.
Fight evil that deserves fighting, do not be distracted from meaningful battles – our climate, sex slavery, people trafficking, hunger, poverty, sexism, racism, terrorism.
To paraphrase Kipling, do not fall into the trap made for fools by knaves.
Alpesh Patel, Chairman City Hindus Network and The India League
