Excellent article ACADEMIC HINDUPHOBIA IN AMERICA - by YVETTE ROSSER Hindu Studies in the USA is one of the last tasty morsels of officially-condoned institutional discrimination remaining in the American melting pot—caught in the throat of academia. The study of Hinduism in the West is currently undergoing a metamorphosis. Second and third generation Hindu-Americans, who since the 1960’s were educated in American high schools, have been personally impacted by a well-entrenched paradox. Even though Hinduism is the world’s third most practiced religion… one of the world’s oldest continuous traditions… it is perhaps the least understood, especially in the Western world.[1] This quote, from the webpage of the Harvard’s Hindu Students Association, reveals a persistent problem in the presentation of Hinduism in the West. Yoga, for example, is based on Indic traditions, and Hatha Yoga is offered in most neighbourhood gyms and YWCAs – popular with modern Americans who reap great benefit from a system that is grounded in a scientific understanding of anatomy and physiology. However, even though Yoga is scientifically oriented and is an inherent part of Hinduism — based on Hindu texts, treatises, and traditions, ironically in textbooks used in American classrooms, Hinduism is generally portrayed as superstitious and unscientific- apparently polytheistic and comparatively primitive. Hinduism’s profound scientific, psychological, and philosophical premises are sidelined in the academic presentation, which stresses a paganistic hedonistic Hinduism. There is a disconnect between on one hand, the experience of a personal belief in Hindu Dharma – practiced through various forms of Yoga, in complete contrast, on the other hand, to the disempowering theoretical constructs that have been erected by Indologists through the centuries. This tendency towards denigration is based on ingrained academic traditions. For centuries there has been a tendency in Western theoretical constructs of Hinduism to trivialize or ignore the psychological, philosophical, and scientific relevance inherent in Indic traditions. The study of Hinduism in American classrooms is based on centuries of Occi-centric[2] approaches characterized by an attitude of cultural superiority that negates or ignores the deeper meanings of Hindu philosophy, symbolism, and meditative practices. This construct has a long, complex trajectory from Greek and Roman writings about ancient India that stressed the strange and exotic, through centuries of European lust for Indian material goods that led to world conquest in order to find passageways to India’s treasures. Wild depictions of India can be found from the toga-wearing Mediterranean world on through exoticized, flamboyant images popularized during the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and pre-modern/colonial era. These essentialized images retain their virulence in the present time, where Indian culture is portrayed through a P/C lens: P = pollution, population, and poverty + C = caste, cows, curry[3]. These historical academic assumptions are paradoxically in contradiction to stereotypes in the mainstream media about the expertise of contemporary computer geeks from India and fears of outsourcing and economic competition. Strangely enough, Hinduism is simultaneously seen as both the cause of India’s poverty and superstition and also seen to be an ancient source of scientific speculation and discovery, such as the decimal system. Hinduism is generally portrayed as superstitious and unscientific- apparently polytheistic and comparatively primitive. In early European accounts, Western scholarship often depicted India– its religious and cultural traditions– as primitive and inferior. These negative narratives about Hinduism were amped-up and codified through mandated colonial interpretations designed to disempower the subject nation. It is an unfortunate and problematic repercussion that a significant portion of today’s scholarly community continues to adhere to and promote myopic and outdated “flat-earth” views of Indic traditions. Hindu Studies in the USA is one of the last tasty morsels of officially-condoned institutional discrimination remaining in the American melting pot—caught in the throat of academia. For generations, essentialized, exoticized views of Indic traditions and customs went unchallenged. Recently however, numerous Indian-Americans, along with a growing number of non-Indian American Hindus, have sought to stimulate a rethinking of this standardized derogatory approach. Many Hindu-Americans feel an imperative to engage the U.S. educational system and point out the inappropriate and often incorrect information regarding Hindu heritage and religion. Through this emergent work, Hindu-American citizens aspire to shine the light of humanity and realism on the topic, in hopes of dispelling the pervasive clichéd stereotypes casting derision at their ancestral traditions. Many of these 21st century Hindu-Americans are second-generation citizens of Indian heritage who, in their youth, experienced the bias first hand in textbooks and on television. They feel entitled to raise their third and fourth generation Hindu-American children in an environment free from this institutional bias directed specifically and exclusively at their religious traditions. During the past decade, many Indian-American parents networked and approached their children’s school districts to raise awareness of this unfortunate perpetuation of exoticized misinformation. It is important to highlight one important contrast between academia in India and the USA. Unlike in India, the academic study of religion in the USA is a major discipline involving over 10,000 university professors, most of whom are members of the American Academy of Religion (AAR). Within this organized hierarchy, non-Hindus largely control the study of Hinduism. While this in itself should not affect their ability to be competent scholars, yet as an unfortunate consequence, the discipline of Hindu Studies has been shaped by the use of preconceived non-Indian categories that are assumed to be universal by Western syndicated research agendas. Most internal criticism or “peer review” comes from among scholars who are colleagues. Therefore the knowledge producers and distributors form a sort of cartel. In contrast, the discipline of Religious Studies does not exist in India, due to political ideologies, which consider that inter-community harmony can be built only when citizens abandon religious beliefs. In India, the inappropriate term “dharma nirpeksha” has been used as a translation of secularism, whereas “pantha nirpesksha” is a more culturally correct translation.[4] While American universities offer any number of courses for studying and teaching religions and cultures of non-Western societies, as well as their own, Indian universities, in the other hand, do not engage in a similar set of cultural studies. In India, there is a deep prejudice against Religious Studies among a certain group of Indian academicians, sometimes referred to as “the intellectually colonized secular intelligentsia”. Many of them think such religious or cultural education or academic research would lead to strengthening obscurantism and communal prejudices, unable to recognize the supposition that knowledge will break the bonds of ignorance. It is sad that in order to pursue a serious scholarly study of Hinduism, Indian Students end up going to American, or to British or Australian universities, because there are hardly any opportunities available for such study within India. This makes it all the more imperative that the Hinduism which is taught in the West is not contorted by colonial era interpretations or the hegemony of occidental tropes. As Hindu-Americans, we have been challenged by this dreadfully stale state of academic affairs, and have responded …though sometimes we are unprepared for the counter-attacks from the Religious Studies establishment in America. There is a growing group of Hindu-Americans who have started to criticize the stereotyped negative misrepresentations of Hinduism and Indic traditions, with the hope of widening the range of ideas presented in the academy. This activism has generated a growing groundswell of support within the Indian Diaspora but has also triggered anger from among the entrenched old guard scholars of “Hindu Studies”. It is well known that many Indian-Americans have been very successful in the West. But while Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, Korean, Arab, and even various European cultures –such as Irish, Italian and French, for instance – have actively funded and managed the academic representation of their cultural identities, to a comparable extent, Indian-Americans have not done much of this type of funding. Their charitable donations have been in the context of building temples, and unfortunately, their cultural portrayals in school and college textbooks and in the media have remained in others’ hands. Even the recent Ambani and Tata donations to Harvard did not address the horrid anti-Hindu diatribes that have been published by Michael Witzel through the decades and his mean-spirited activism against Hindu-Americans. for more indiafacts.co.in/academic-hinduphobia-america/#.VLnK0EfF8bg
Posted on: Sat, 17 Jan 2015 03:03:08 +0000