Hinduphobia as a term has evolved over the years to encompass a wide range of negative emotions, attitudes and actions against Hindus based on their religious identity which has also led to religiously motivated hate crimes against Hindus.
A hate crime essentially has two important ingredients – an underlying offence which has been committed coupled with a bias. A hate crime is supposed to have taken place when the perpetrator intentionally targets an individual or a property owing to his/her bias against a certain characteristic of that individual or his/her hatred towards that characteristic.
While these characteristics could be many, for example, race, colour, regional identity, sexual orientation etc., for the purpose of the Hinduphobia Tracker, we would focus on religious identity being the central characteristic as an object of fear, hate, prejudice and/or animosity.
As such, following is the short working definition of Hinduphobia:
Hinduphobia is any action and/or speech, written or spoken (academic, institutional, political and/or random), violence and/or discriminatory action/attitude, which is born out of hatred, fear, prejudice, animosity, hostility and/or bias against Hindus (people following Sanatan Dharma and/or various sampradayas of Hindus and/or various Panths under the Dharmic fold), as individuals, groups of a class of people, the faith they profess (Hinduism), their cultures, traditions, forms and methods of worship, scriptures, tenets and civilizational values and beliefs. Hinduphobia can be directed towards individuals and/or their property, toward the Hindu community as a whole, Hindu institutions, Hindu religious facilities (including temples and temporary religious structures), symbols of the Hindu faith, the native and civilizational land of Hindus conceived as a Hindu collectivity owing to religious prejudice, animosity, hostility and hatred.
The more comprehensive working definition of Hinduphobia is as follows:
Hinduphobia is therefore, any action and/or speech, written or spoken (academic, institutional, political and/or random), violence and/or discriminatory action/attitude, which is born out of hatred, fear, prejudice, animosity, hostility and/or bias against Hindus (people following Sanatan Dharma and/or various sampradayas of Hindus and/or various Panths under the Dharmic fold), as individuals, groups of a class of people, the faith they profess (Hinduism), their cultures, traditions, forms and methods of worship, scriptures, tenets and civilizational values and beliefs. Hinduphobia can be directed towards individuals and/or their property, toward the Hindu community as a whole, Hindu institutions, Hindu religious facilities (including temples and temporary religious structures), symbols of the Hindu faith, the native and civilizational land of Hindus conceived as a Hindu collectivity owing to religious prejudice, animosity, hostility and hatred. Hinduphobia includes any kind of communication in speech, writing or behaviour that attacks or uses pejorative, discriminatory or violent language with reference to Hindus, Hinduism, elements of the religious identity of Hindus as individuals or as a religious, ethnic group, stemming from bias, prejudice and/or religious and/or cultural animosity leading to dehumanization, stigmatization, scapegoating, stereotyping, calls to violence and in many cases, violence. Hate speech against Hindus often includes the denial and/or mocking of historical and/or ongoing persecution, subversion of scriptures, promotion of and/or call for direct/indirect violence, support for targeted and directed violence, calls for the eradication of sections of Hindus using ideological euphemisms, glorification of perpetrators of religiously targeted hate crimes against Hindus, dog-whistling against Hindus – individuals or groups of Hindus, doxxing based on religious identity and/or opinions, caricaturing groups and/or sects of Hindus to legitimize their stigmatization/dehumanization/large scare violence, mocking and/or denigrating symbols and/or representatives of faith, fake news targeted against Hindus with the aim to stigmatise Hindus, misrepresentation/fake news to paint Hindus as the perpetrators/aggressors based on bias and/or prejudice and more.
For this project’s scope, Hinduphobia is being defined and documented under eight primary categories, listed below.
- Hate Crimes against women in relationships and sexual crimes
- Attack not resulting in death
- Attack on Hindu religious symbols
- Restriction/ban on Hindu practices
- Hate speech against Hindus
- Predatory Proselytisation
- Men attacked for being associated with non-Hindu women
- Attack resulting in death
Some contemporary examples of Hinduphobia
- Calling for, aiding and/or celebrating the targeting of Hindus by those who harbour animosity and hostility towards Hindus and Hinduism owing to their own religious tenets, doctrinal sanction and/or delegitimisation of the faith.
- Branding Hindus – the victims of religious violence, as the aggressors and the violent aggressors as the victims owing to the majority-minority paradigm.
- Perceiving the celebration of Hindu festivals as a ‘provocation’ in and of itself because of the inherent and doctrinal religious animosity that non-Hindu faiths harbour towards Hindus and Hinduism.
- Justifying the violence against Hindus during their festivals owing to external factors like their religious activity being conducted in an area with a non-Hindu population, religious songs being played by the Hindus, religious slogans being chanted during festivals etc.
- Attack on symbols and representations of the faith of the Hindus like attacking temples, desecrating places of worship, attacking temporary religious structures, cutting a Hindu’s Kalava, removing Tika etc.
- Hate speech mocking the faith of Hindus which leads to the dehumanisation and delegitimization of Hindus like calling them ‘cow piss drinkers’, ‘cow worshippers’ etc.
- Denying the historical persecution, genocide and large-scale violence against Hindus.
- Predatory proselytization of Hindus where their vulnerabilities are exploited to convert them to a non-Hindu faith – examples of these would be force-feeding beef, forcing women to convert after they are in a relationship with non-Hindu partners, forced circumcision of Hindu men, converting Hindus by issuing threats, converting Hindus by inducements such as money, the promise of healing, the promise of exorcising demons etc.
- Academic Hinduphobia perpetuating the delegitimization of Hindu history and intellectualising the calls for genocide and erasure of the Hindu faith by the usage of euphemisms like “Hindutva”, “Brahmanism” etc.
- Furtherance of conspiracy theories which demonise Hindus, leading to physical attacks.
This is only an indicative list of contemporary Hinduphobia with the actual instances of animosity covering a wide range of atrocities. Hindus have been facing prosecution – historical and ongoing – based on their religious identity. The persecution ranges from various forms of hate speech, dehumanisation, delegitimisation, discrimination, and microaggressions to large-scale violence and genocide.
Such negative sentiments and actions do not arise because one is fearful of Hindus and their ways, even though some groups could argue so – which itself is an example of Hinduphobia where Hindus are being stereotyped as aggressors and violent by default – but it is an outcome of various factors such as colonial narrative around Hindu identity, subversion of Hindu history, aversion to pre-modernist thoughts, hostility towards pre-Abrahamic beliefs, proselytising mindset, et al.
