Thread by @mairal

Clarifying Thread: Why I speak up for #HinduAmericans and #Hinduism.

My friends and colleagues are often surprised by how vocal I am in speaking up on #HinduAmerican and #IndianAmerican issues on @Twitter (only).

They are surprised for a number of reasons.

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a. Focus of my professional work is #GlobalHealth, #Innovation, and #HealthTech adoption. Focus of my community work is underserved communities in the Bay Area, which tend to be non-Indian and non-Hindu for the most part.

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b. My friends know that I’m fairly understated in my faith, which is more philosophical, less rituals. I am informed by a decision my widowed great-grandma made when she chose an egalitarian, spiritual group that eschewed caste labels. My family still follows that path.

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c. Speaking up for a “parochial” topic, specially related to a religion, especially when there are contentious issues at play, is risky. It can impact one’s image and come in the way of one’s professional and community work.

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d. I have close friends across the world who are from various faiths and nationalities. These discussions can impact my relationship with those friends.

e. Spending my precious free time and timeline SM on one issue can crowd out other imp topics such as #healthequity.

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Why then do I take the time and effort to tweet about something that, on the surface, looks so out-of-scope for me.

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I do it for several reasons. For a long time, I was far more focused on my professional and broader community work. Even though I was a member of #HinduAmerican community by default, the issues facing the community were not on my radar. But as my older two kids grew up,

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I started to notice a troubling pattern of news stories, school curricula, social media posts, television programming that seem to incorrectly and harmfully portray Hinduism and Hindu-Americans. Despite the remarkable contributions of Hindu Americans,

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the peace-loving #HinduAmerican community was starting to get vilified by mainstream media; ultra left; ultra right; islamists, anti-India activists (duplicitously called “anti-caste” & “human rights” activists); & Khalistanis. The coordinated campaign was as troubling in its

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ferocity as in its broad sweep. My kids started to hear about it in school. One S. Asian American non-Hindu student used some abusive words for one of my kids when he started a Hinduism Club (it was a surprise, because we had done a poor job of giving him any training…

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…in Hindu faith). When he decided to withdraw from that club and stopped taking any interest in his heritage, it hit me like a brick. He started to see the same pattern of negative stories about Hinduism in the media now. It justified, for him, his decision to pull back.

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A young man had been beaten in to rejecting his heritage. Fault was ours, his parents. But American society did its part. Sadly, my son was not alone. As I became sensitized to this phenomenon, I started to hear of other Hindu-American families going through same experience.

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This shook me to my core. America, to me, was a land of many cultures where every individual had a freedom to be what they wanted to be. I had worn my own identity that had half-a-dozen hyphens with ease. But something had started to change in this amazing country.

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I realized that most first-gen Hindu-Americans were like me, being quite subdued in their faith while being very “out there” in the celebration of culture. That’s what they had grown up with. They had continued that practice in U.S. They were not equipped to respond to

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the attacks on their faith. Either they ignored it or were too timid to respond, afraid that they would be considered religious zealots. In fact, that’s exactly what they saw happening to few (such as volunteers at @HinduAmerican & @CoHNAOfficial) who decided to push back.

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And then my 3rd boy came along. It was an imp event for me on many levels. I asked myself what kind of American society I wanted to see for my kids’ generation. Did I want an America that allows victimization of an ancient faith that is an asset to our fractious world?

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Did I want my kids to be made to feel ashamed of their heritage or afraid to be called a #Hindu? Would America be a better off in such a hateful environment? Answer to each of these questions was a resounding NO for me. That’s when I decided to speak up, investing…

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…my energy and time in speaking up against anti-Hindu bigotry, complicity of our political and community leaders and media, and fearful silence of the Hindu-American community.

It’s been quite a journey as a vocal #HinduAmerican. And a surprising one. I still find…

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myself conflicted sometimes. I could have used the last hour that I spent composing this thread to write about the very productive #globalhealth conference I just hosted at my institution. Or about the U.S.-wide design thinking program that I started…

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where high school students from different parts of the U.S. dive deep into unmet needs in their local communities (homelessness, food insecurity, educational inequity in inner cities, teen mental health crisis, etc.) and develop innovative solutions. These are teenagers…

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…learning to solve problems adults have created & are making worse.

But here I am, writing about the bigotry #HinduAmericans are subjected to & why I am speaking up against it.

My hope is that you’ll join me in pushing back against all bigotry, INCLUDING #Hinduphobia.

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I, on my part, promise to tweet about more interesting topics such as #globalhealth, #innovation, #healthtechnology, education, etc.

But until #Hinduphobia beats a retreat, I will continue to speak on Hindu-American issues. 🙏 नमस्ते।