Writing Across a Cracked World: Hindu Representation and the Logic of Narrative

by Vamsee Juluri

“Some things a man must say to his wife. Some to his friends; some to his sons. All these are trusted people, but, He should never tell everything to everyone!”

We must, therefore, use our discrimination at all times in communicating information. Never put

your foot in your...

One, it’s about narrative, and the nature specifically of the emerging Hindu narrative, which is locked in a battle of words and ideas with a far more powerful, well-funded, and technologically superior anti-Hindu narrative. This dominant anti-Hindu narrative is enshrined in mainstream social and commercial narrative-making institutions such as schools, colleges, media and even non-narrative institutions like business corporations and NGOs.

It has become a part of a new “normal” in the world today. The seeds of this narrative are of course not new. They were planted over several centuries of mental and physical violence, when India was ravaged by two successive religious imperialisms.

This narrative was barely decolonized even after independence, and so what ought to have happened in 1947 is happening now, a little late, a little slow (but better late than never). The anti-Hindu, or Hinduphobic narrative, as we are calling it increasingl...

Like American social...

in the 1950s before the...

Feminists and Third Worldists hit it and hard at that, it is recoiling from the forces of reality and change confronting it from...

The second thing this book is about is words. A narrative is fundamentally made up of words, and that

is where we should focus.

Unfortunately, much of the discussion on “changing the narrative” among Hindus has ignored this fundamental element while focusing almost entirely on things like “ecosystems,” networking, financing, and the sort. Recognizing the role, and the power of words, is the first step to engaging with a narrative battle. I draw your attention in this book to the beauty, discipline, and...

you will be the Hindu Writer of the future,

Of course, we must not forget that a new narrative is something that unfolds not in words alone but at many dimensions of life and action; politics, economics, and governance being very important dimensions too.

We have an incredible diversity of voices and perspectives in the Hindu Movement. We may not agree with each other on every detail, but we do share a concern about the toxic state of misrepresentation that we face as a community today.

Understand the terrain of narratives and discourses. Hinduphobia is a discourse, and is produced in a professional Establishment. Hindu narratives, including the resistance to Hinduphobia, are located not in an Establishment but in a Movement.

Think of everything you believe, know, stand by, live with and live for. Think of the stories that have made you who you are; the stories about yourself, your family, your traditions, your civilization, and your nation.

Ask yourself where these narratives have come from. Some of them may be from your parents, who got them from their parents, adding, perhaps, their own nuances to them over time. Some may be from Gurus and ...

Wherever they came from, these sort of narratives, which we might call Hindu narratives, taught you about a way of looking at all human beings, and indeed, all living beings, as part of a divine force or unity. They taught you to love, or at least, not blindly hate anyone, least of ...

But these are not the only narratives you grew up with. And worse. These are not the narratives that many people on earth, and in your own country, and maybe, even your own workplace and family, are growing up with. The narrative they are growing up with simply denies all the goodne...

Their narrative is an arrogant, intolerant, supremacist, one. It is violent. Its intent is fundamentally to endanger you, your children, and your civilization. It was open about its intent once. Now it’s disguised. It’s disguised so nicely it would fool anyone and...

It’s a very modern cultural t...

mass control at its most ...

Chances are that the narratives that are honest about Hinduism have come from mostly family and informal social groups and communities, which also overlaps with social media networks you may be part of. The narratives that are hostile to Hindus, and even to reality more broadly, come mostly from media, schools and universities.

But here is the key question. Do you have the power to make narratives you know to be true have the same influence on the world (and on your own life) that the false narratives have? Unless you own a media or education business empire and are committed to your cause thoroughly and professionally understand the field of narrative games, you probably don’t. The truth is that not all narratives have the same degree of power to affect history and to alter the fate of billions of people on this earth.

Some narratives do. These, we can distinguish from our simple, informal, everyday narratives we get from family and friends by calling them discourses.

In the humanities and social sciences, we use...

refer to narratives that are backed by power, his...

A narrative is like a story written in sand. A discourse is like a story set in stone.

You can ignore or reject a narrative, but defying a discourse has consequences for you, usually harsh and coercive ones.

Discourses and the institutions that produce them, multiply them across space, and reproduce them over generations, are an integral part of a wider political and economic system of dominance, ine...

Discourses in India are for the most part legacies of British colonialism, taken forward by the deeply colonialist postcoloniali...

In the institution of Western academia, particularly in the social sciences and humanities, the discourse used to be about justifying colonial-era European, White and Christian supremacy, normativity and dom...

Then, sometime in the 1960s and 1970s, a wide set of resistance movements like our own confronted it , on university campuses, classrooms, conferences, and st...

their own coherent narratives about themselves, their pain, and their demands for justice and truth. The institution of Western academia now formally recognizes these resistance movements, and some of them have even become discourses. Women,...

their rights as human beings and ensured that homophobia, sexism, anti-semitism, racism, and Islamophobia are recognized as serious problems in le...

now. It is not just universities, schools and media that recognize these concerns. Even non-narrative-making institutions such as corporations, governments and employers in general follow these discour...

Hinduphobia is not illegal. Hinduphobia is not even seen as a valid concern in key institutions. It is delegitimized, discredited, and its victims demonized in university classes, media circles, and even in non-narrative institutions such as corporates where Hindus are forced to hide their pain and anger about the brazen injustice and falsehood they face.

Hindu resistance as of now is mostly only a narrative.

we have to figure out how to transform a narrative located in popular, everyday, informal experiences of reality into a discourse that embodies both truth and power.

a movement cannot “change a

narrative” unless it gains ground in the institutions that produce official, powerful, sanctioned narratives, discourses, that is.

Hinduphobia will continue to exist in these institutions, in their products, and by extension, in the broader culture at large. Outside of the Hindu movement, most people, even Hindus, would fail to see reality and sympathize with our cause.

The dominant view here is that either Hindus don’t exist, or if they do, they just want to uphold caste, gender, and Islamophobic violence, and have no right to protest or resist violence, injustice and falsehood against them.

Every year, every batch of graduates entering the workforce are growing up with this blind belief, and they even get rewarded for it. Our challenge has not shaken their conscience till now.

The Movement consists of a diverse group of people in India and abroad, young and old, in many different professions, with many different interests and opinions, but unified to the

extent that they believe there is a problem; that Hindus face a serious survival problem, ranging from the representational and political to even the sheer existential in some places.

Guess which one is winning. If you said “The Movement,” I have to respectfully disagree. The Movement may be growing in numbers because of the simple reason that more and more Hindus are getting appalled by what they are subjected to in the media, but their narratives continue to be marginalized, con...

Here’s one reason why. The Movement has very little human representation in the Establishment. Most people in the Movement are engineers, managers, I.T. professionals and the like. They do not work in the professional narrative Establishment. And in the Establishment, there are relatively very few professionals wh...

Very few Hindu voices I know are actually in media, education, and the arts.