Ironically, this campaign of Hinduphobia is the handiwork of expatriate Indians and Hindus themselves; a band of self-loathing individuals with low self-esteem.
The volatile fluidity of British politics in the post Brexit period has resulted in unprecedented consequences: three Prime Ministers in one year, the shortest tenured Prime Minister in the history of Great Britain and finally an Indian-origin Prime Minister.
The elevation of Indian-origin Rishi Sunak to the position of Prime Minister of the United Kingdom is being heralded as a sentinel event; a first of many kinds. The first coloured person to occupy the post, the first Hindu Prime Minister of Great Britain and the youngest Prime Minister in over 200 years.
Indians have reacted to Rishi Sunak’s success with a mixture of pride, jubilation and a touch of Schadenfreude. The irony of an Indian-origin individual ruling over Great Britain a mere 75 years after we gained Independence from the British is too headily intoxicating not to celebrate.
A news report provocatively taunted: Indian son rises over the empire. History comes full circle in Britain.
Shorn of all the hoopla, one must realise that India’s ownership of Rishi Sunak in his moment of glory is merely symbolic, tribal and nothing more.
Rishi Sunak’s election to the post of PM is a secular event driven purely by his weighty economic credentials, which Britons feel will help pull UK out of its financial quagmire. His young age, his ethnic extraction and religious identity are incidental factors that had little bearing on his ascendency.
Nevertheless, amidst these conflicting narratives swirling in the air, there is a disconcerting, ugly sideshow being played out: a rabid exposition of Hinduphobia.
Hinduphobia is an ugly, malignant trope that is becoming increasingly common in the West. Reined by political correctness, this unsavory trait remained subliminal in its expression for a long time. Now it has exploded on to the centre stage with an audacity and directness that is frightening: a development fuelled by the rapid rise to prominence of Indians, mainly Hindus in countries like the United States and the United Kingdom. Today a host of important technological companies like Google and Microsoft boast of CEOs who are Hindus of Indian origin. The recent election of Rishi Sunak, a Hindu whose forefathers hailed from India, as Prime Minister of the UK has provided additional grist to this mill of Hinduphobia; his Hindu antecedents are being targeted.
Ironically, this campaign of Hinduphobia is the handiwork of expatriate Indians and Hindus themselves; a band of self-loathing individuals with low self-esteem.
Leading the charge in this case is none other than Pankaj Mishra, a well-known author and a regular contributor to the Guardian (UK) and the New York Times, who has built a successful career for himself by denigrating, mocking and deriding Hindutva, Hinduism and Hindus—in no particular order.
Pankaj Mishra is the brown Uncle Tom of the pseudo-liberal West that harbours stereotypes about India and needs to be continually titillated by its so-called exoticism and immorality (like casteism) to feel good about itself. Mishra’s writings feed expediently into this warped mind-set.
Pankaj Mishra uses tangential logic, far-fetched assumptions and self-serving fantasy to downplay Sunak’s success. Writing in the Guardian (28 October 2022) he claims: “Hindu supremacists have pounced on the possibility that Rishi Sunak, a self-proclaimed devout Hindu, is a desi bro, even an undercover agent of the ‘Global Indian Takeover’—the title of a once regular feature in the Times of India. Evidently, he observes upper-caste taboos against beef and alcohol and always keeps his statuette of Ganesha, the guarantor of worldly success, close to him.”
Does being a devout Hindu make Rishi Sunak any less eligible to don the mantle of a British Premier? Is being a teetotaler an exclusive upper caste Hindu trait and a disqualification? Is it a crime to carry a statue of Ganesha which many Hindus do? Don’t Christians hang a cross around their necks?
By using the adjective “self-proclaimed” and affixing the “upper caste” label to Sunak’s eating and drinking habits, Mishra wishes to brand him as some sort of a Hindu fanatic, who needs to be viewed with caution: a classic example of Hinduphobia
In another bigoted comment Pankaj Mishra remarks: “collaboration with white ruling classes or political passivity rather than struggles for social justice largely defines the history of the Indian diaspora, especially of its highly educated and upper-caste members.”
As the Indian diaspora grows and as more and more people of Indian origin climb higher and higher professionally, economically and politically, envy and hate will prove to be inevitable corollaries. Such bigoted writings will find a fertile soil to stoke enmity and discrimination; Hinduphobia will grow.
The developing scenario in the West—a small, highly educated and successful community becoming an eyesore for the wider public—has all the hallmarks of an incipient anti-Semitism.
There is a real danger of Hinduphobia snowballing into the new anti-Semitism. It must be countered and stopped in its tracks.