Today in Hinduphobia October 15, 2019: The New York Times’s Record of Demonization of Hindus Continues With its New Attack on Tulsi Gabbard and her Supporters Vamsee Juluri Follow Oct 15, 2019 · 7 min read

“What, exactly, is Tulsi Gabbard up to?” asks the headline of a recent New York Times story by Lisa Lerer, who then begins to answer that question with the accusation that Tulsi “injects chaos” into the primary, much to the appreciation of “alt-right internet stars, white nationalists and Russians.”

The Hinduphobia-mania has not yet explicitly reached the point where brown-skinned Hindus like myself are charged with being Russian (although I will confess I am making progress on my Russian on Duolingo and am thrilled to learn that Russian for “this” sounds like the Sanskrit word “ethath”). Brown Hindus nonetheless are routinely charged these days, often by avowedly progressive anti-racist Whites, with being “nationalists,” Nazis, and so on. Of course, sometimes, if we happen to be one of Tulsi’s many small donors, we are also charged with having “Hindu-sounding names.” I have a Hindu-sounding name (except that one time the midwestern pizza guy on the phone thought I was “Juan C.” when I clearly said “Vamsee”) and I am actually in fact a Hindu, and a proud Hindu supporter of Tulsi Gabbard.

And I wish the New York Times might see it fit to perhaps run one story, at least one, on what the minority immigrant Hindu community in America thinks of the first Hindu Congresswoman and possible Presidential candidate (who is, incredibly enough, not even a Hindu from India), instead of valuing “white nationalists and Russians” as somehow more relevant to its commentary on American democracy than us Brown immigrants. We are here too, after all, and we are cheering for a candidate we see as one of us not only because of her inspiring, service and love-centered spirituality, but also because of her tough, honest, military-service-based anti-war progressive politics. We cheer because we are American, and Hindu, and more. And of course, we cheer because she is who she is.

Anyway. Since it is very unlikely that a war-machine-propaganda enterprise like the Times might render such a service to its avowed profession of journalism and to its occasonal-liberal ideas of being pro-immigrant and such, I will just leave my fervent hope for them out there and turn to some of my findings from my ongoing research on the question of how Hindus and Hinduism are depicted in American media.

All the Hinduphobic Headlines that Fit

I share below some findings from my analysis of New York Times headlines of stories that come up on a search for the word “Hindu” on their site. The figures below pertain to stories from mid-2011 till mid-2019. Out of a total of 250 headlines that I examined, about 103 headlines have words indicating crime, violence, aggression, or coercion in them (and almost all about Hindus doing the bad stuff— there are virtually no headlines indicating Hindus being victims except for a few reports on anti-Hindu violence in Bangladesh).

The next clearly negative category of Hindu depictions has to do with headlines with language indicating condescension or mockery towards Hindu practices (18 stories). There are several headlines that fall into neither of these categories, but these stories are not necessarily about a positive or respectful Hindu news item either (for example, a headline about Modi and an arms deal controversy may not have words demonizing or mocking Hinduism, but shows up here in a “Hindu” search nonetheless).

I also looked for headlines that explicitly report events that pertain to Hinduism being lived as a normal, non-demonized cultural pursuit by normal, non-demonized human beings. I found only three headlines with explicitly positive words indicating Hindus celebrating being Hindu in some way (out of the sample of 250). The other major absence in these headlines of course is also that of Hindus as victims of terrorism or other crimes by members of other faiths. Either Hindus are never victims, or the New York Times does not see victims of terrorism and crime as Hindus even when they happen to be Hindus.

TABLE 1. NYT HEADLINES FOR STORIES ABOUT HINDUS 2011–2019

Total number of results: 250 stories Headlines with words indicating Crime/Coercion/Violence: 103 (“clash,” “death,” “killings”, “angry mobs”, “brutal rape and murder” etc.) Headlines suggesting mockery or exoticization: 18 (“The cows between us”, “Don’t patent cow urine”, “For some babies… a 30 foot plunge promises good luck”) Headlines about Disasters and Deaths: 6 (“Speeding Train Plows into Elephants”; “Kashmir Bus Crash Kills At Least 17 Pilgrims”; “Stampede at a Temple Kills At Least 10 Victims”) Obituaries: 6 (Sri Sathya Sai Baba, Pramukh Swami) Headlines with explicitly positive words: 3 (“A Vibrant City Celebrates Ganesha’s Blessings”)

I share below some examples of the 100-odd headlines that have to do with crime, death, coercion and violence around Hindus (I have emphasized key words to show how the propagandistic association of “Hindu” and violence plays out through repetition):

TABLE 2. CRIME & VIOLENCE HEADLINES ABOUT HINDUS

Caste Is Still Enforced in a Changing India, With Fists and Blades Violent Clash of Faith and Women’s Rights at a Hindu Shrine Two Murders in India Are Traced to Same Gun Over 2,000 Arrests as Mob Hinders Women at Temple Indian Actress Apologizes After Her ABC Drama Features a Terrorism Plotline Killer Dogs Take 14 Lives in India Fire in Menstruation Hut Kills a Woman in Nepal Far-Right Politics in India’s Year of the Lynch Mob Where Gandhi’s Halo Is No Longer So Bright (implies non-violence is rejected) Two Women Enter a Temple. A Country Erupts. Nepal’s Grim Superstition, Known to Lead to a Death by Shame Angry Mobs at an Indian Temple Ignore Orders to Admit Women In India’s Election Season, a Kashmir Blast Interrupts Modi’s Slump (it was an“attack” on Indians, not “blast”) Christians in India Face a Backlash How Caste Underpins the Blasphemy Crisis in Pakistan (deflecting cause from Islamist fundamentalist blasphemy rules in Pakistan to Hindu society and caste!) Suspect Held in Indian Journalist’s Death Killing a Cow May Bring Life in Prison in an Indian State Hindu Cow Vigilantes in Rajasthan, India, Beat Muslim to Death Firebrand Hindu Cleric Will Lead Indian State Modi’s India Embodied in Child’s Killing A Child is Killed, and Empathy Goes Missing Slaughtered Cow Leads to More Accusations of Hindu Vigilantism Hindu Leader is Criticized for Views on Mother Teresa An Attack on Love

Here are some of the headlines that talk about Hindu practices or Hinduism broadly without violence in the headlines, but with a mocking tone, as if it were impossible or professionally unacceptable to talk about anything Hindu without a mandatory performance of in-group Hinduphobic whiteness in their newsroom:

TABLE 3. EXOTIFYING/CONDESCENDING HEADLINES ABOUT HINDUS

At World’s Largest Religious Gathering, Nirvana and Glamping (note: “Nirvana” is not quite a Hindu term; “glamping” devalues spiritual significance of Kumbh Mela especially for millions of poor Hindu pilgrims who go there not to “glamp”) Yoga Rises Above its Indian Origins (note: this headline could have been stated in a neutral way but the implication of “rising above” and “Indian origins” is that there is something negative about India that is being finally transcended now) A Mythical River Flows Through Indian Politics (note: the Saraswati river is part of a debate in archeological and historical circles, yet mocked here as “myth,” similar to the denial of Mughal temple-destruction in the Ayodhya issue in their reports as mere “belief”) That’s a Lot of Lamps: 300,000 Lit in India for Diwali, Breaking Record (condescending) The Cows Between Us In India, a Ghost Town and a Mythological Bridge A Hunt for an Herb of Indian Myths Tying the Knot, Kicking a Pot of Rice For Some Babies in India, a 30 Foot Plunge Promises Good Luck Uncertain Times in India, But Not for a Deity Saving the Cows, Starving the Children For Obama’s Visit, India Takes a Broom to Stray Monkeys and Cows Indians Feed the Monkeys, Who Bite the Hand

What is striking about the headlines in this category is also the colonial-era type preponderance of animal tropes, widely understood in academic circles today as racist codes for non-white people. Just last year, a major textbook publisher had to withdraw its proposed World History textbook in California after protests from the community over major errors in its depiction on Hindus, including a bizarre illustration that showed a monkey building a road alongside a group of Indian workers! The New York Times, of course, seems to see no problem tagging Hindus into its medieval-dominion-type ethnocentric narrative about the heathen Hindoos lacking agency over even animals (while also being guilty of some even older Biblical myth about worshipping cows instead of their own supreme civilizing Timesness).

Tulsiphobia is Hinduphobia

The New York Times, as I have written before, has played an especially harmful role in normalizing violence against Hindus in India (see my article on its coverage of the Valentine’s Day massacre in Kashmir earlier this year on my Medium page). But what is really interesting now is how much it seems willing to participate in the normalization of violence against so many other victims and future victims of the military-industrial-intervention machine that Tulsi Gabbard seems to have shaken up so deeply with her presence.

It seems that what I wrote about Hinduphobia in my 2015 book Rearming Hinduism, that it’s just the anti-Hindu face of a much deeper ideology of violence, is becoming clearer than ever now. When the war-mongering ends, so will Hinduphobia; and conversely, when Hinduphobia ends, so will the war-mongering which has dominated so much of this otherwise wonderful and hospitable nation’s last half a century of history.

No wonder that every lie they throw at Tulsi seems to be one that was first manufactured in the heated minds of imperialists and colonizers in India. Something profoundly colonial that never went away is coming out into the open now, more than ever, and so is something profoundly anti-colonial. Her name is Tulsi.