“No. The binary logic which goes behind that conclusion doesn’t address the real issue: it’s not ‘either it applies to every Hindu or it’s a stereotype.’”

That’s not the logic I’m employing. If you’d like to know more what I mean by stereotype, I have a handy-dandy post right here on the topic.

Regarding your other points, I don’t think we disagree much, if any. As I said previously, R’s problem was not that he was discussing systematic ways Hinduism does or does not support racism, classism, caste-ism, or what have you – it is that he chose to discuss the issue in terms of complete absolutes: “All Hindus….”, “Hindus do…”, etc, etc. Whether you have intended to promote stereotypes or not, I have seen some of the same sort of absolute statements in some of your writings (not on this thread), and stereotypes are not acceptable here. As I’ve said from the start in my About page:

“A Note About Cultural Stereotypes

I hate ‘em. This blog was partially created because of a site where a few negative anecdotes of interactions with Indians were being used to stereotype the entire country. India is a large place, with a number of different religions, ethnicities, and languages.”

No. The binary logic which goes behind that conclusion doesn’t address the real issue: it’s not “either it applies to every Hindu or it’s a stereotype.”

The question is not “Are all Hindus racist or cruel? (something I never said)” but “Does the traditional caste system systematically mobilizes people to act in cruel ways?”

The caste system was constructed by Indo-Aryan priests to abuse the lower castes. This is how northern India has been since the Mauryan Empire, and the south since the rise of the Cholas.

Whether you like it or not, the traditional caste-based Hindu culture does motivate “people of the higher three castes” to ominously suppress Shudras and Dalits who make up more than 50% of the population. (Keyword “traditional” — not liberal)

It is much more complex than mere “stereotyping.” Traditional Hindus from India are culturally and religiously predisposed to act in less civilized ways towards people of lower castes. Again, this is religiously motivated — very different from discrimination in other parts of the world (a straw man you just made up).

If you exclude Mumbai, Chennai, Pune, Calcutta, New Delhi, and other urbanized and westernized cities (still less than 5% of the entire population), you will find caste discrimination virtually every where else. Just because you have had positive experiences with highly educated, liberal Indians (except me I guess), doesn’t mean it is the same for the entire native population.

And this is only for the theistic — allegedly God given — caste system.

Hinduism has atheistic beliefs (Amartya Sen), and pantheistic beliefs too, which are very enlightening positions. Sadly, these aren’t prevalent in India.

R’s messages were spot on. I don’t think he used any slur words or even the word “idiot.” The only people offended were politically correct people who actually haven’t even lived in urban India, let alone the majority rural areas, where this caste conflagration mainly happens.

No one doubts that there is racism in India – just like there has been racism (or some form of physical appearance-based prejudice) in basically every culture that has been exposed to different types of peoples throughout history. It’s not exactly a revolutionary thought. Also, it’s not surprising that you can find people who lack compassion or “humanity” in traditional Hindu circles – there are jerks in every society and social strata. Again, R’s problem – similar to yours – was that because he believed that something was a trend in certain circles or that people often acted in a certain way, it must be true that all people – millions of people he has no knowledge of – must act that way.

It’s not a platitude to point out that one individual cannot make definitive claims about the beliefs of millions of others.

R’s painfully true statements about the Hindu Caste system–which is just the manifestation of the racism in India since antiquity–and the witty account of the lack of compassion or humanity in traditional Hindu circles would naturally attract knee-jerk, politically correct responses. Of course, none of them who disagreed with him made attempts to put firm arguments. It was all platitudes, which, I suspect, were fostered by incessant exposure to Bollywood movies.

I just stumbled upon this site, but never have laughed this hard with the topic having been hijacked by “R”. I’m a village bumpkin and the extrapolation that “R” and “Aditya2″ have conjured up has me in splits.

“R” & “Aditya2″, just because you folks want to run from your villages, doesn’t mean folks like me are going to abandon our ancestral land (and by that I don’t mean all of India, I mean my private patch of land) over which we (i.e. my ancestors) have fought over the last 1768 years and counting.

Proud village bumpkin

The last 1400 years of Islamic occupation and European colonialism has been quite traumatic for India in general, and Hindu society in particular.

Historically, fanatical non-Hindus (Muslim invaders and European Christian missionaries) have entered temples only to desecrate them by smashing the altar, destroying the murtis and pouring cow’s blood on the murtis . Even recently, some attackers even urinated and defecated on the murtis in Tamil Nadu and East Bengal (Bangladesh).

Hence the reluctance in some Hindu temples to permit non-Hindus to enter and possibly desecrate the murtis again. I feel its due to such similar reasoning that child predators are not allowed near schools or parks where children play. Its not a question of whether people can genuinely reform themselves but a fear over “Who knows if history can repeat itself?”.

However, ISKCON devotees and other western converts are allowed to enter the afore-mentioned temples, if they produce proof that they are Hindus. Generally, a “Certificate of Conversion” from the local Arya Samaj is considered bonafide proof of being a Hindu.

I just realized that I could actually respond to an actual comment thread instead of writing a whole new comment altogether.

The same goes for successful reform mass-movements like those of the Arya Samaj (Northern India) and Narayana Guru (Kerala).

To me, the nice thing is Hindus are not stuck in the 7th century and they are constantly and daily performing their “house-cleaning” as dust/cobwebs accumulate over time in Hindu society.

Gotra may not only be biological lineage from a Rishi, but could have also meant spiritual lineage.

For example, it is possible that all the students who studied in the school (Ashram) of the sage Vishwamitra may have taken the Vishwamitra gotra as their own.

I think of Gotra as being a sort of “Spiritual Alumni Network” (as those who received spiritual tutelage from a certain Rishi) and their descendants.

People whose ancestors lived for long periods in the regions of the globe near the equator generally have larger quantities of eumelanin in their skins. This makes their skins brown or black and protects them against high levels of exposure to the sun, which more frequently results in melanomas in lighter skinned people.

The color differences in India are similar to Europe and to Africa – the closer to the equator, the more pigmentation the population has and the darker one’s skin color.

Similarly, the higher you live up in the mountains, the shorter the summers and lesser the sunlight, hence lesser pigmentation.

A few cases:

- Take the case of Italians, who over centuries show the effects of sun-light variation and look different as you travel from the south to the north of Italy. Those from Southern Italy are closer to the equator are swarthy, with dark complexions and dark hair. Those from Northern Italy (especially the Alps) are farther away from the equator (and live on the mountainside) and hence are generally lighter-skinned with many of them growing blonde hair.

- Africans from equatorial Africa are relatively darker complexioned than Africans who live farther away from the equator (say the Berbers in Algeria).

- Closer home, take the case of Bhojpuri-speaking Indians (from present day Bihar and Uttar Pradesh) who went abroad to work as indentured labourers (between 1834 – 1917) in the sugarcane plantations in the Tropical countries of Trinidad, Guyana and Jamaica.

Today, these descendants of these emigrant Bhojpuri Indians in Trinidad, Guyana (like cricketer Shivnarine Chanderpaul) , look deeply tanned and are more darker complexioned than their wheatish-complexioned cousins who still live in Bihar.

The reason for their dark tan is decades and generations of cumulative darkening caused by working bare-torso in sugarcane plantations since the 1830s in the aforementioned Tropical countries (which are closer to the equator than Bihar and Uttar Pradesh).

Interestingly, I have met a couple of rare, wheatish-complexioned Trinidad/Guyanese Indians who told me that their grandfathers moved to Trinidad/Guyana quite late (in the 1900s) and chose other occupations that did NOT require any work under the hot sun or in plantations to make a living. Hence their peculiar tan (or lack of one), they confessed.

In a nutshell, the Aryan Invasion Theory (AIT) is complete rubbish.

AIT was a nefarious British Concoction, a Machiavellian Colonial Tool to justify their occupation of the Indian subcontinent and facilitate the division of Indians to subjugate and convert them. AIT enabled the British to legitimise their rule over India by saying, “Hey, we weren’t the first. Before us, the Muslims occupied India. And before them, the Aryans occupied India. So, you see … India was never ruled by Indians. So we, the British, are quite justified in occupying India.”

This theory worked quite well for the British and their missionary agents, who exploited the theory and used it as propaganda to convert many of the natives in India. Post-independence, this theory also worked quite well politically for Indian politicians and academically for British-trained “twistorians” (historians) like Romila Thapar.

My first link above (“Aryan Invasion in California”) shows the British concocting a similar Euro-centric and Afro-centric race theories, most notably Hutu-Tutsi divisive theory in Rwanda & Burundi that led to the genocide of nearly a million Tutsis during the past decade.

Until the British came up with this ludicrous theory based on fiction, no one in India (or the whole wide world) had ever heard of any preposterous theory like AIT.

But this Aryan theory was taken up by White Racists with alacrity, since they wanted to believe that they belonged to a superior Aryan White Race that colonized and civilized the world across different continents, (including Egypt, India etc).

This White Aryan Race theory electrified the imagination of Western Supremacists who made it part of the cultural lore, depicting mighty Egyptian Pharaohs as being light-skinned Whites with Blue eyes, not the darker-skinned North Africans that they actually were.

Hollywood continued to depict Egyptians as being light-skinned Whites with Blue eyes in the popular movies viz. Cleopatra, The Ten Commandments, The Mummy etc.

It is only recently that Western Egyptologists are reluctantly willing to admit that the Egyptian Pharaohs were actually darker-skinned North Africans.

As we all know, people who continued to steadfastly believe in the Aryan theory included Hitler and the Nazis; and look at what destruction they wrought on the world and on themselves.

People are free to believe in whatever it is they wish to believe in, but I say to them. “Tell me something – Would you like to be in the same boat as the Nazis?”