Am uncomfortable with a movie about Steve Banon being called "American Dharma". Have nothing personal against him, but such cultural appropriation is far from harmless. It has been done before by 19th & early 20th century German nationalism 1/n
The appropriation of the Swastika symbol and the term "Arya" by rascists was not sudden. It was based on systematic research by Europeans scholars looking to create an ancient lineage for themselves & their ideas 2/n
A detailed account of systematic cultural appropriation is given in The Nay Science: A History of German Indology by Adluri & Baghchee. The Europeans, of course, had one obvious problem - the ideas they were taking over belonged to people who were distinctly brown 3/n
So they created an elaborate mythology about the "bardic tradition" of the ancient all-conquering Germanics by playing up supposed similarities between Mahabharata, Iliad etc (oddly this idea now survives among Indian Marxist historians). 4/n
They build up a narrative of how the original "warrior culture" of the Aryans had been degraded by "evil brahmins" (who were not Aryans but devious natives bent on taming the warriors). Battles between brahmin & kshatriya characters in Hindu epics were quoted to make the case 5/n
In another ironic twist, Dravidian nationalists today quote some of the same 19th century scholarship to make the case that brahmins are Aryans !! 6/n
Given this long history of cultural appropriation & misuse of Hindu ideas/symbolism, one needs to be wary of this appropriation of the word "dharma". The long-term consequences may be costly if not opposed right now. 7/n
My point is not about Bannon. The term is being applied to him by a movie director trying to deconstruct him. Am wary that, a few years from now, some Harvard prof will tell us about the true meaning of dharma based on impressions from this movie & we will internalise it 8/n
