Thread by @SangayMishra

The term Hinduphobia is being deployed rather frequently in the U.S. and other western countries with sizable Indian diasporic population. The use is mostly coming from formations that want to shield the current political regime in India led by BJP/RSS!! 1/1

I have been thinking about this term a lot lately and I engage with the term seriously: the term is loosely deployed to suggest that there is a widespread hatred of Hinduism and Hindus in the west ( something akin to Islamophobia or anti-semitism loosely speaking).1/2

There is, of course, a history of denigrating and ridiculing of non-Abrahamic religion such as Hinduism in the west but whether it has acquired the form of Hinduphobia in the contemporary moment is something that needs to be interrogated. I come to this from my scholarship on1/3

South Asians in U. S. with a specific focus on Indian Americans. I have conducted multiple interviews with Hindu Indian Americans( alongside Indians and South Asians of other religious affiliations) over the last many years resulting into published peer-reviewed scholarship.1/4

One of the questions that I focused on in my research was whether South Asians encountered discrimination in their day to day lives in United States. While thinking back to those conversations , I can say that there was a lot of conversation about discrimination and hostility.1/5

There were a large number of Indian descent Hindu participants in my study and they talked a fair bit about discrimination. When they spoke about discrimination they referred to their appearance, skin color, accent, culture, food, religion, and racial identity!! 1/6

Being Hindu as a basis for discrimination did not come up very frequently and strongly in those conversations. It is not that Hindu identity is not used for discriminating in certain settings but Hindu Americans did not use that frequently to understand discrimination.1/7

In fact, since these conversations happened in the post-9/11 period, a large number of them evoked being seen as Muslim and how prevailing anti-Muslim sentiments are leading to targeting of people who " appear to be Muslim."1/8

I am sure religious difference in a predominantly Christian society remains a ground for exclusion and hostility but attempt to understand Hindu Indian American experience of exclusion, discrimination, and hostility through the lens of Hinduphobia is not supported by research.1/9

The use of Hinduphobia to shield religious nationalist exclusionary government in India is an issue that requires a separate discussion but I wanted to share my thoughts about the terms itself and how that matches with the experience of Indian Americans !!
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