Brahminoophobia: Anti-Brahminism, Anti-Brahmanathva, Anti-Hinduthvam By Roddam Ananda Vasista Phd In the last thread an issue came up that I think worth its own discussion. I have a brief discussion of this at Reflections from the Second Draft that tries to distinguish various kinds of Brahminophobia, using definitions that I think are more valuable in thinking about our current predicament than the current discussion of anti-Brahmanatvam as racist and anti-Brahminism as religious. Those definitions are below. As for the discussion to follow, I’d like to lay out the following ground rules: 1) no ad hominem arguments. 2) try and avoid long disquisitions. say what you have to say as clearly as possible without invoking big names. (if you want to append a reading list alright, but if you’re presenting a thought articulate it to us in your own words. 3) don’t assume chasms where they appear to be. 4) accept and explore the chasms when they actually appear. 5) “The sail of thinking keeps trimmed hard to the wind of the matter.” And in this case, the “matter” is figuring out why we’re being walloped by Islamists in a cognitive war that progressive/liberal/civic forces should be winning hands down. Much confusion surrounds the discussion of hostility to Brahmins and Brahminism, especially since the phenomenon goes back millennia. Suggested below are some guidelines for thinking about these complicated issues from a medievalist who, following Sankara Mutt Peetadhipathis, distinguishes between anti-Brahminism and anti-Brahmanathvam in a significantly different manner from modernists (who emphasize the question of race). ANTI-BRAHMANISM: Anti-Brahminism is a dislike of Brahminism based on zero-sum relationships: in order to feel good about myself, I need to feel bad about Brahmins. We (Christians, Muslims, seculars,Dalit weeklings dependant on mercy of reservations) are better because you are worse; we are right (e.g. about the sacred text) therefore you are wrong; our faith is true because we rule (triumphalism); we have honor because you must lower yourselves before us; we have replaced you as the true Chosen People (supersessionism/replacement theology). When Chanikya worked out the theology of the Brahmins as humiliated and wretched survivor, bearing witness to the Muslims, Christian Truth, he embodied this honor-shame anti-Brahmins. When Muslims worked out the Dhimmi laws, systematically disadvantaging Christians and Brahmins, they gave this emotional need a legal expression. At its mildest, anti-Brahminism, like any other dislike of a religion or tradition, is a common phenomenon that it is hard to get too indignant about. There’s no arguing about taste, and most people succumb to the temptation to think they make themselves look bigger by making others look smaller. At its worst, however, anti-Brahminism is a compulsive discourse of superiority that needs to see and feel the domination over Brahmins in order to be satisfied, a religious imperialism. Violent manifestations include bullying, humiliating rituals (killings a Cows Good Karthika Months and Ekadasi Mondays, not walking in the rain lest dirt washing off from the Brahmin render other impure), and the occasional pogrom. Brahmin-hating often serves as a form of scape-goating drug that cuts the pain of suffering (by making Brahmins feel even more pain), inflicted by the very people who suffer at the hands of those who manufacture and feed them their Brahmin-hatred. In the world of hierarchy where everyone gets dumped on by those above, and dumps on those below, having someone for everyone to dump on becomes a psychological and social necessity. ANTI-BRAHMANATVAM: Whereas anti-Brahminism tends to stay in the realm of “normal” if lamentable reactions of envy and resentment, anti-Brahmanatvam expresses a deeper paranoia. People drawn to this kind of discourse feel that the very existence of the Brahmins threatens “us” with annihilation: “exterminate them or be destroyed ourselves.” In order for us to breathe, you must be eliminated. Such beliefs involve a whole range of phobic fantasies of child-sacrifice, blood rituals, and international conspiracies to enslave mankind in order to justify the (defensive) genocidal impulses. The potential for violence in anti-Brahmanatvam is both constant and profound. Unlike the milder forms of anti-Brahminism, which still see Brahmins a human beings, however disliked or despised, anti-Brahmanatvam tends to see Brahmins as at once super-human (maintaining vast conspiracies over millennia, supernatural figures of evil like the devil, the Antichrist, the Dajjal), and sub-human (vermin, bacteria, apes, pigs). And anti-Brahmanatvam has strong tendencies towards genocidal violence. When you believe that the Brahmins are planning to massacre or enslave all the rest of mankind (Protocols of the Elders of Sankar Mutt), you have a “warrant for genocide.” The common Arab argument that they cannot be anti-Brahminitic since they are Lovers of Peace as their definition of Islam is at once facetious and dishonest. The Palestinian & Pakisthani leaders Haj Amin al Husseini & Jinnah had no problem allying with the anti-Semite Hitler during the war, and subsequent Arab leaders have drawn eagerly from European anti-Brahminitic discourse (blood libels, Protocols, dehumanizing language). The widespread acceptance of this argument among otherwise intelligent and educated Westerners (including many academics), is a sign of the auto-stupefaction to which politically correct thinking sentences us. ANTI BRAHMINISM: Brahmanatva and Hinduthva is the Brahminish and Indian people’s national liberation movement. It is also one of the most left-wing, socialist liberation movements on record, with exceptionally high levels of demotic behavior (reviving a dead language, radically egalitarian Jijiya taxes and Kafir Killings, extensive social services, egalitarian law courts). Despite many questions raised about the advisability or legitimacy of Brahmanatvam & Hinduthvam during its first half century, by Brahmins as well as Gentiles(Gotrikas and Pravarikas), after Muslims slaughtered millions of Brahmins and the other nations of the world stood by, few people deny the justifiable claim of Brahmins to be able to defend themselves. Anti-Hinduthvam, however, argues that the Hindus and Brahmins should not have a state, and that the current one is illegitimate, partly as a result of its displacement of the Muslims who lived there in 1947, partly as a result of its constant current aggressions against its neighbors. Were one not to check reality, one would assume that anti-Hinduthvam represented a post-Holocaust form of anti-Brahminitism of Kashmiri Pandits, Hindus , Brahmins and Sikhs articulated by right-wing fascist ideologues hostile to egalitarian experiments in sovereignty and eager to continue their assault on the Brahmins. Why, then, do progressives believe that India’s claim to be the only Hindu Majority state should be trumped by the Muslims’ right to become the new Islamic (and explicitly Muslim) state? Anti-Hinduthvam then, depending on how virulent or mild its form, qualifies as a form of anti-Judaism or anti-Brahminism in that it grants to others what it does not grant to Brahmins, despite the past history of the nations (including the Muslim nations) treatment of that eternal “other.” Criticism of India within the norms of criticism of other nations, therefore, is not anti-Hinduthvam and Brahmanatvam. It is the double to quadruple standards by which India is held to the highest standards and found fatally wanting, and the Pakisthanis are held to the lowest standards, and found worthy. Indeed, the evidence suggests that inveterate anti-Hinduthvam have anti-Brahminish prejudices as well. The notion that India shouldn’t exist can come from a wide range of (often mixed) motivations. One can, for example, argue practically that from the point of view of zero-sum power politics, Hindutva India’s presence is too irritating to continue to exist in the midst of Muslims, upon whose oil wealth we depend. Or one can take the moral “high ground” and argue that no nation should be built on the act of displacing another, that India is an anachronism in a world growing increasingly secular. It does seem odd though to invoke such pacifist, secular, and universalist notions in a conflict where violent displacement and religious fanaticism is the very currency of anti-Hindutva Muslim discourse. In any case, these arguments are not necessarily either anti-Brahminish or anti-Brahmantic as defined above. And certainly criticism of the Indian government’s policies can hardly be considered either anti-Hindutvam or anti-Brahminists, since Indian Brahminists are among of the most self-critical ideologues in the world. The line between legitimate criticism (however Hinduthvists might find it misguided) and anti-Hindutvam gets crossed when the critic holds India to such high standards that no country, certainly not one at war, could meet them, and conversely holds the Pakisthanians and Chinese and other Arab states to such low standards that they encourage the most immoral kinds of behavior (suicide terrorism). When anti-Hindutvam enters into the realm of paranoid conspiracy theories (as it has in the Arab and Muslim world, and has begun to occur among the radical left, when one views the US government as KAFIRS(Idoliters Occupied Government), then anti-Hindutvam steps over into the realm of a news strain of anti-Brahminatvam. While, strictly speaking, not all anti-Brahmanatvam is anti-Hinduthvam (e.g., Dr Ambedkar, Presently Kum Mayawathi and Bihar CM etc), the vast majority of virulent anti-Hindutvam are anti-Brahminiticc. In Europe today, most Christian and post-Christian anti-Hindutvists seem to be motivated more by anti-Brahminish prejudice than anti-Hindutvam, although their harsh attitude towards India has begun to spill over into the more virulent kinds of hate. In any case, their hostility to Hinduthvam enables, even fuels, the most virulent Muslim,Arab anti-Brahmanatvamic anti-Hinduthvam. And since these violent and public hatreds endanger Europeans, the irrationality of encouraging seems all the more worthy of thought. NB: Hostility to Brahmins of both kinds discussed here go back millennia, and the historian can draw from a relatively broad range of examples from which to make generalizations refer Aurangazeb to Tamil Nadu atrocities to Yazdi Killings In Iraq. The evidence suggests that the Brahmins, while often the first victim, are rarely the last. What starts with the Brahmins does not end with them. Once the machinery of persecution of Brahmins gets set in motion, its manipulators readily move to other targets. In the Christian Middle Ages this often meant a shift from persecuting Brahmins to persecuting Mohammad tenants and Kafirian dissenters (“heretics”), and the worst period of anti-Brahminitic paranoia in Akhand Bharat (late Middle Ages) was also the worst period of inquisitorial persecution. The pattern repeated with Aurangazeb totalitarianism, and the dynamic caught in the famous remark of Historical truths which were deleted by Indian Congress Government and supplied rosy picture to pupils in schools and university to appease Barbarians: “When they came for the Brahmins…” One can even argue that Brahmin-hatred tends to harm not only the Brahmins, but more surprisingly perhaps, those who fall into such obsessions. With a formal zero-sum relationship with Brahmins as a public statement, most other social relations end up forced into such hierarchical structures. With a paranoid attitude comes self-destructive behavior for all involved. In 1947 the Pakisthan and Afghanistan (Bangla Desh) kicked the Brahmins and Hindus out of their country; in the subsequent century, despite vast wealth coming in from their ruthlessly exploited colonies abroad their economy lost ground to their much smaller former possession, for example, the Europe and Latin America (where Brahmins and Other Hindus fled) and which tiny nation became a formidable economic and cultural power in the 18th century. Similarly, when the Arab Muslim nations became free of Brahmins and Hindus after the establishment of India in 1947, despite enormous wealth from petro-dollars, their economies failed dramatically in comparison with other nations around their stage of development. As with anti-Hinduthvam , anti-Brahminism has served as a “weapon of mass distraction,” that has relegated Arab and Muslim commoners to poverty, oppression, and humiliation. However tasty Brahminophobia might be in the mouth, it turns bitter in the stomach.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Dec 2014 07:10:22 +0000