Discover and read the best of Twitter Threads about #hindoohistory

Most recents (24)

The Washington Times, 1929

"Sacred Bull or Sacred Monkey"

"You Take Your Choice, in India, and Worship Accordingly"

Caption: "HINDU FANATIC PROSTRATES HIMSELF BEFORE A SACRED WHITE BULL"

#HindooHistory Image
"The British discuss giving 'dominion status' to India. This, nominally, would put India in the position of Canada or Australia as a self-governing part of the British Empire"
"These two pictures show you some of the gentlemen that feel ready for self-government. To be sacred, the bull must be pure white. If he has a calf only partly white, whatever isn't white is painted white and then he is a perfectly good sacred bull" Image
Read 19 tweets
The progressive farmer and southern farm gazette., 1911

"HINDUISM: THE SUPREME FACT OF INDIA"

"If it were any other country but India, I might write last of the religion the people profess, but since it is India, it is the first thing to be considered"

#HindooHistory Image
"Religions is the Supreme Fact of Indian life-- if we may call religion what has been more properly defined as 'a sacred disease'"
"Certainly nowhere else on earth is there a country where the entire life of the people is so molded by the spiritual belief."
Read 64 tweets
The Delta Independent, 1908

"IDOLS OF THE HINDOOS"

"There Are Hundreds of Millions of Them in India"

"THE FAME OF JUGGERNAUT"

"This Idol Has Been Worshiped About Two Thousand Years, and His National Temple is on the Sands of Puri-- The Three Monster Cars"

#HindooHistory
"If I were asked to describe India the first remark that would spring from my lips would be, 'It is a land of idols.' It would be impossible to compute the number of idols that there must be at the present time in India."
"The Hindoos pretend to have 333,000,000 gods, and these are represented by innumerable idols, so that we are quite bewildered with the thought of taking the census of the idols of India"
Read 22 tweets
The St. Mary Banner, 1906

"The Carl Hagenbeck Trained Animal Shows"

"The Most Gigantic Enterprise Ever Organized"

"Educational and Ethnological"

#HindooHistory Image
"The Carl Hagenbeck East India Perahera Introducing for the first time in America over one-hundred people, men, women, and children from far away India." Image
"Hindoos, Singalese and other natives in a Grand exposition of life in that strange country bringing before us a veritable Hindoo Village with its artisans, necromancers, sorcerers, warriors, snake charmers, devil dancers, fire worshippers, pole climbers, rope dancers..."
Read 4 tweets
Western Kansasn World, 1888

"The Religion of the Hindoo"

"Some people, indeed most people, think of the population of India as barbarous and heathenish. It is a great mistake, and many missionaries wish they were, so hard is it to make impressions on them"

#HindooHistory Image
"They are skilled metaphysicians and accomplished logicians. Why, the theories of Huxley and Darwin were known and tried by Hindoo masters 2,000 years ago and rejected"
"The Hindoo Triad is Brahma, Vishnu, and Shiva. The Triad stands at the head of a vast pantheon of gods, numbering no less than 330,000,000, all of whom are monstrosities of vice"
Read 10 tweets
While I agree that historical events like the #BellinghamRiots should not be contorted to fit contemporary political narratives, we should also be wary of another error: the anachronistic imposition of labels that don't reflect the social and cultural climate at the time. 1/n
It is true that the majority of the victims in the riots were Punjabi Sikhs, and it is also true that they were identified as "hindoo" by the average American at the time. How do we reconcile this? Audrey's answer seems to be that despite the broad application of "hindoo" 2/n
the workers in Bellingham were victims of anti-Sikh or anti-Muslim religious prejudice.

This doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

"Hindoo" was not just an ethnic identifier; it was a contested cultural category that featured prominently in the American imagination for centuries 3/n
Read 12 tweets
Imperial Valley Press, 1936

"Hindu Fakirs Baffle Science"

"More than 5,000,000 Fakirs Roam Over India-- Is Their Mystic Power A Religion or A Racket?"

#HindooHistory
"India is the strangest, most colorful, and weirdly mysterious land under the sun. It at once fascinates and repulses; thrills and appalls; delights and saddens."
"Bound up in a bundle of complexes so legion that even the thought of understanding is futile, India the eternal, the immutable, remains a challenge to a modern world of realities-- the iconoclast of nations-- ruthlessly disproving the accepted beliefs of a scientific world..."
Read 9 tweets
Los Angeles Herald, 1907

"MOB DRIVES OUT HINDUS"

"HUNDREDS BEATEN AND FORCED FROM BELLINGHAM"

"Mob for Hours, Assault Mills and Lodgings -- Indians Tramp Toward Protection of Canada"

#HindooHistory #BellinghamRiots
"Six badly beaten Hindus are in the hospital. 400 frightened and half naked Sikhs are in the jail and corridors of the city hall under guard, and somewhere between Bellingham and British Columbia line are 750 natives of India, beaten, hungry, and half clothed..."
"making their way along the Great Northern railway, bound for Canadian territory and the protection of the British flag."
Read 17 tweets
Hawaiian Star, 1907

"THE GOVERNOR APPROVES RIOTS"

"SASYS BELLINGHAM PEOPLE TOOK BEST MEANS OF SETTLING HINDOO QUESTION"

#HindooHistory #BellinghamRiots
"'The state of Washington will not be a dumping ground of the Orient. The white laborers of Bellingham have long felt the necessity of taking some drastic action against the Hindoo competitor in the labor market and I am not surprised that the recent outbreak occurred.""
"'I am very glad no lives were lost and that no one was injured.' This is Governor Albert Meed's summing up of the recent race riots in his home town of Bellingham, Washington."
Read 10 tweets
Detroit Times, 1942

"5 RELAXERS"

"These Old Yoga Exercises Look Hard But They're Really Simple-- Try 'Em (If Your Doctor Doesn't Object) and Watch Your Cheeks Bloom with Color, Feel Your Spine and Muscles Limber Up and Those Jittery Nerves Just Fade Away"

#HindooHistory #Yoga
"Worried about the war? Tense from taxes? Got a double case of the jitters and screaming willies? Don't go nueces-- as one says South of the Rio Grande (It really means nuts to you.) Take a tip from Betty Atkinson who has a bag of tricks a thousand years old"
"Betty is the world's champion drum majorette. She's led so many parades that it's a wonder she doesn't have an everlasting hot foot. Although she's only 18 years old, Betty has crammed into her life 10 years of professional dancing, 5 years of baton twirling..."
Read 8 tweets
The Times-Dispatch, 1910

"AWAKENING OF THE HINDUS-- HOW MODERN CIVILIZATION AFFECTS THEIR CASTES AND RELIGION -- STRANGE GODS AND HEATHEN DEVILS"

#HindooHistory #FrankCarpenter
"In the holy city of Benares, on the banks of old Mother Ganges, where I can hear the splashing of the pilgrims as they wash off their sins, I write of the Hindu religion"
"The subject is too big for abstruse discussion, too varied for detailed narration and too complicated for the ordinary Christian mind, without study, to grasp it."
Read 20 tweets
Albuquerque Evening Citizen, 1907

"HINDUS SAID TO BE MENACE TO AMERICAN PEACE AND HEALTH"

"Recent Outbreaks Cause an Investigation Into Life and Habits of Orientals in Northwest States"

#HindooHistory #HindooPeril Image
"The outbreak against Hindu coolies at Bellingham, Wash. is only a forerunner of an agitation against another Asiatic peril which has been making itself felt more and more on the Pacific coast" Image
"At present there are probably less than 500 Hindus in California, but every ship from the orient brings more. They are of two classes: Mohammedans and the turbaned devotees of the native East Indian religions."
Read 13 tweets
An editorial from the San Francisco Call, 1910

"Hindu Immigration Must Stop"

"The present rate of importation of Hindu laborers runs about 300 a month and is increasing..."

#HindooHistory
"If not checked the influx will exceed 5,000 a year, and these figures are moderate if we consider the virtually unlimited cooly population from which the supples are drawn and the pernicious activity of the steamship companies engaged in this profitable trade"
"These Hindus are by far the most objectionable call of Asiatic immigrants arriving in this country. They are unfitted by constitution to withstand the rigors and variations of the American climate and as laborers they are distressingly inferior"
Read 10 tweets
Elmore County Republican, 1913

"CURSE OF INDIA GETS FOOTHOLD IN AMERICA"

"Reverend Trawin of Baptist Church Issues a Stern Warning to Women of Country"

#HindooHistory
"Rev. C. L. Trawin, pastor of the Baptist church, preached a strong sermon Sunday, warning the women of the United States against the religions brought to the country by Yogis and Swamis from India under the guise of philosophy, reincarnation, and the so-called higher life"
"He said, taking the text from II. Timothy 3:6, 7 'Of this sort are they which creep into houses, and lead captive silly women laden with sins, led away with diverse lusts, never learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth'"
Read 43 tweets
Excerpts from @KGinLum’s new book, “Heathen,” a critical addition to the #HindooHistory reading list, along with @MichaelJAltman’s “Heathen, Hindoo, Hindu.” Will add to this thread as I go through the book!
“The sustained rise in the term’s use reflects the deliberate fashioning of the heathen world as a cohesive category in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.” Image
“The idea of the heathen world was not unknown before then, but it flowered with the emergence of significant foreign missionary societies”
Read 23 tweets
A comic called "Lady Luck," published in the Evening Star in 1941, featuring a mysterious statute of "The Goddess of the Snaka Shala, from India"

#HindooHistory Image
The comic features a number of mysterious murders in the presence of the strange statue, much to the befuddlement of the police officers investigating the store Image
A visitor arrives from India, the purported owner of the store, to claim his possessions. He too is killed under strange circumstances. Image
Read 5 tweets
The Birmingham Age Herald, 1922

"The management of the Jefferson Theatre takes pleasure in informing theatre-goers of Birmingham and adjoining cities that Mr. Walker Whiteside will appear as Gordon Kean's modern mystery play of India, 'THE HINDU'"

#HindooHistory
"Mr. Whiteside will portray the fascinating character of Prince Tarmar in whose gorgeous palace in India the story of 'The Hindu' is told."
"Miss Amy Leslie, the celebrated dramatic critic of the CHicago Daily News, said: 'The Hindu is worth filling the theatre to see. You will have to go to have as good a time as we did.'"
Read 12 tweets
The Washington Times, 1928

"She's a Hindu, Now"

"With all the elaborate ceremonies of the Oriental race, Nancy Ann Miller, Seattle, Wash., girl today became a convert to Hinduism in Bombay, preparatory to her marriage Saturday to the former Maharajah of Indore"

#HindooHistory Image
"15,000 SEE U.S. GIRL SWEAR FEALTY TO HINDOOISM"

"With the crimson mark of her caste upon her forehead, miss Nancy Ann Miller of Seattle, Wash., American fiancé of Tukojirao Holkar, former Maharajah of Indore, stood upon the bank of the sacred river Godavri near Nashik Today..."
"and renounced Christianity so that she can marry the Hindu prince. The first half of the ceremonies during the morning were semi-private, but 15,000 persons witnessed the conclusion of the rites in the afternoon..." Image
Read 13 tweets
With respect to the diaspora, my somewhat naive (i.e. based on personal convos and twitter) view is as follows: All dharmic peoples in America operate against a backdrop of a preexisting negative view of non-Abrahamic spiritual systems (cf. #HindooHistory) 1/n
Add to this the underlying political incentive for newly arrived immigrant groups to create a strong identity for purposes of protecting and lobbying for their own interests-- however construed-- and latent antagonism (not all unjustified) towards the Indian state b/c of 1984 2/n
and you have the perfect storm. For a segment of the Sikh diaspora, this has generated a dynamic of what Jan Assmann-- renowned Egyptologist and Biblical scholar-- has called "antagonistic acculturation" (AA) with respect to hinduism. 3/n
Read 18 tweets
Los Angeles Herald, 1906

"'WHITE PERIL' IN WAY OF WEST"

"Bharati Reverses Accepted Theories"

"Says the East Has Long Had a Civilization of Which the Occident Knows Nothing and its Life is a Mystery"

#HindooHistory #BabaBharati
"Since the publication of the 'Letters of a Chinese Official' some time ago, people have begun to wonder whether the view taken by the author might not have some real foundation"
"The 'Replies' of Mr. Bryan served but little to enlighten the ever-growing question; and now comes Baba Bharati of this city, who is an article in the current issue of the 'Light of India,' not only corroborates the sentiments expressed by the first writer, but adds thereto"
Read 28 tweets
The Wahpeton Times, 1900

"THE SITUATION IN INDIA"

"In attributing India's famines to overpopulation, the Journal falls into a very common error."

#HindooHistory Image
"The theory that India's famines are due to overpopulation is further discredited by the fact that famines in China, of any great magnitude, are seldom heard of, though China's population is denser than that of India." Image
"The true cause of India's famines must be sought elsewhere than in overpopulation; and it is easy to find it in the creeds and customs of grotesque and diversified heathenism"
Read 22 tweets
Blue Grass Blade, 1906

"HINDOO DELIVERS HOT ROAST"

"For Christian Missionary Work In India-- Finds More Caste Exclusion in American Than In His Own Country"

"HITS BACK WITH BITTER AND STINGING WIT"

#HindooHistory
"It took the naked savages to literally dine off broiled missionary, but the following from Anaconda (Montana) Standard gives an account of a figurative roast reported from Butte. The report, which explains itself, is follows:"
"Pundit Dr. N. Krishna of Bombay gave a lecture at the court house last evening on the subject of political and social conditions in India. Rev. Lewis Duncan introduced the gentleman from India as a citizen from a country that was the opposite of our own"
Read 28 tweets
The Seattle Star, 1913

"200 HINDUS ARRIVE IN SEATTLE"

"AND THERE'S NO LAW TO BAR A HUNDRED MILLION MORE"

#HindooHistory #HindooPeril
"We bar the Japs the Chinese, and talk of the yellow peril, but there is no law to bar a hundred million of these Hindus, should they care to come to the Pacific coast. Over 200 came to Seattle yesterday on the Great Northern liner Minnesota"
"'There is no law barring Hindus,' said the commissioner of immigration, when asked what he would do with this nondescript crowd of Asiatics. 'Each one will be examined...'"
Read 12 tweets
The Ogden Standard, 1913

A synopsis of a short film, "The Yogi"

"Chinn Achma Chewat, real name Jim Morrisey, has been reaping a fat harvest from credulous women who have arrived at the dissatisfied age..."

#HindooHistory #HindooHollywood
"He learns of the death of William Curten, the steel magnate, who has left an enormous fortune to his widow, well known for her interest in spiritual matters."
"One of the fakir's cults knows the widow and she is thus brought under the fakir's influence, he using the wiles of his kind, and by the aid of a niece gets the rich widow completely under his control, she being especially affected by supposed messages from her dead husband"
Read 10 tweets

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