Hinduphobia, Decoloniality, and The Trap(pings) of Identity (Part II)

It is *critical* to shift the Hinduphobia conversation from identity to onto-epistemological tradition. Last year, I had an eye opening conversation with an African American colleague. (1/n)

She is incredibly well-versed in and a powerful thinker and educator vis-à-vis critical race theory and anti-racist pedagogy. We were having talking about decolonizing schools and I brought up this idea of holding indigenous knowledge traditions as equally valid and robust. (2/n)

She looked at me with a real desire to understand but absolutely no idea how. “You mean, like, do voodoo in our classrooms?” She seemed baffled and couldn’t wrap her head around any other example. (3/n)

She didn’t know anything about indigeneity other than understanding it as an identity and the history of genocide on indigenous people.

This is the illusion of Western civilization. That it is the truth. It's also why people immersed in it don’t truly understand how...(4/n)

Sanatana Dharma could be a complete knowledge tradition outside of Westernism. There is not yet sufficient acknowledgement of the onto-epistemological influence of religion on critical theories from the academy (or from grassroots spaces). (5/n)

This is because nearly everyone in the world has been successfully converted to one of the two major Abrahamic OETs. This is why the conversation is limited to identity. Identity is what is used to divide us. Identity keeps us at the level of ego. (6/n)

It is the fear of being with the Self (beneath the ego) that compels some Christian Americans to advocate against meditation and yoga in schools. They believe that turning inwards to the Self is devil worship. (7/n)

This isn’t about a clash of religions at an identity level. It is about ontology - how we construct our concepts of existence.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t valid and material inequities and important conversations to have on the level of identity. There are. (8/n)

But because the dominant discourse and paradigm is stuck at the level of ego (identity), inevitably, it ends up reinscribing the masters' concept of existence (to paraphrase Lorde.)

This is what the Hinduphobic South Asian scholars do. (9/n)

This is where they have quarantined the discourse around Hindus. And why they insist on these existential attacks on Hindu identity, rather than authentic conversations about the right to address the ills of Hindu society using Hindu onto-epistemological solutions. (10/n)

Instead they want to cure the ills of Hindu society using an Abrahamic OE framework, which has been beaten down for hundreds of years into the global consciousness as "normal". (11/n)

This is one major reason why folks steeped in Westernism can’t seem to understand the stance of indigenous activists in India. The dominance and normativity of their onto-epistemology cannot comprehend the co-existence of a different one.

Dharmic voices matter.

(12/12)