Pavan Sannuti

Why do Western intellectuals so often despise Sanatana Dharma, and why do they seem to be so dismissive of (practicing) Hindus and Hindu faith? When it comes to Sanatana Dharma, there is certainly none of the romanticizing Western Orientalism that we find with regard to Islam (cf. "Lawrence of Arabia"), Shinto (despite WWII), Chinese religion (witness the highly respectful tone of most Sinology), or even Buddhism (which though originating in Sanatana Dharma is seen in the West as an elite religion). Even Western academics who study Sanskrit no longer seem to admire the religion it embodies, though things may have been different in centuries past. Elite Western antihinduism really does seem to be something "sui generis" -- of its own kind. I don't have a research-based answer, though I do have a guess. I suspect it is related to a residual iconoclasm in the post-Christian West, especially in Protestant countries. Jewish lore has it that Abraham founded his religion by smashing all the idols in his father's shop. Like most Muslims, Protestant Christians have embraced this inherent iconoclasm. Today it's not only Hindu idols that they smash; they also deface and pull down their own statues. Look at civic art in the West today: except when it explicitly defiles the Western inheritance, it is all abstract. Even Mohammed would approve. I have told Jewish audiences that elite Western antisemitism has its roots in a civilizational shame at having appropriated the Jewish God. I suspect something similar is at work with regard to antihinduism. Hindu worship is, after all, a reminder of the West's pre-Christian past. The towering classical figures of Western literature (Homer, Herodotus, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, Virgil, Horace, Cicero, etc.) would all have felt quite at home in a Hindu temple. They would have felt equally at home performing puja in a typical Hindu home. Ancient Greco-Roman worship was essentially the same as ancient Hindu worship -- and contemporary Hindu worship. It is Hindus who have kept the classical tradition alive. There is thus, perhaps, also a deep-seated civilizational shame in the West at having repudiated the religion of our forefathers. Might we instinctively recognize that we have embraced (indeed: appropriated) a Middle Eastern god who is not our own, and adopted Middle Eastern practices (monotheism, iconoclasm, zealotry) that are not native to our culture? At first reading that just sounds crazy, but consider the fact that Christianity has repeatedly sought to cleanse itself of recurring idolatry, just as Persia (another ancient Indo-European culture) has been the focus of repeated cleansings of Islam. Might it be that the West's folk culture has always been in tension with the iconoclasm of elite intellectualism? The desire to burn a candle in front of an idol (of Mary or a saint), or to burn incense in a home shrine (not just for air purification) seems to run deep in Western folk spirituality. All of this is of course highly tenuous. But I do find it plausible that there is an inertial cultural complex (not a psychological "race mind") that, having evolved over millennia, still has not after 2000 years fully assimilated the imposition of Christianity. The very fact that the ancient (Pagan) world is considered "classical" indicates that it is still a cultural touchstone for our civilization. Yet the West (and especially the intellectual vanguard of the West) is in perpetual conflict with that classical inheritance. Just look at Nolan's Odyssey to see that. We have inherited a classical literature but we recoil at a classical morality. Hindus (or at least: the core proponents of mainstream popular Hindu faith) do not recoil at their classical inheritance, or at ours. The morality of the Bhagavad Gita does not differ much from the morality of Plato or of the Iliad, but all of these are completely at odds with the morality taught by Jesus -- or in Western schools. Traditional Christian morality and modern secular morality are very different, but they both represent a repudiation of the Indo-European classical inheritance. In short, Hindus remind us of our purer selves, or at least of our original selves. They represent the faith of the old gods from which we have strayed. Today, Western intellectuals are clearly able to admire non-Western religions that do not remind them of their own classical inheritance. They seem, however, to display a visceral aversion to Sanatana Dharma, especially in its continuing contemporary practice. Those Western intellectuals of the 18th and 19th centuries who did embrace Sanskrit literature (British orientalism, American transcendentalism, German romanticism) seemed to have done so precisely because they yearned to repudiate their Christian cultural overlay. For today's Western intellectuals, Shinto and Buddhism can feel like refinements, whereas Hindu faith seems retrograde. The colonized mind, of course, perceives this, but misinterprets the Western intellectual's revulsion at Hindu worship for mere disdain. The post-Hindu anti-Hindu looks down on the Sanatani's faith. But the post-Christian anti-Hindu recoils from it. Whereas post-Hindu intellectuals feel embarrassed by their Hindu inheritance (and Hindu neighbors), post-Christian intellectuals feel humiliated. Hindus are an unwelcome reminder of the religion they have long since lost. There are of course other elements that feed into Western intellectual antihinduism: colonialism, racism, elitism, fear of the unfamiliar, etc. But its visceral nature seems to me to be much more consistent with shame. I feel personally certain that shame lies at the core of Western antisemitism. I think it likely that a parallel but opposite shame lies at the core of Western antihinduism. With regard to Jews and Judaism, the shame of having appropriated the Hebrew god results in a combination of adulation and hatred. With regard to Hindus and Sanatana Dharma, the shame of having repudiated our own gods results in a combination revulsion and resentment. There never was a Hindu Holocaust under Western colonialism, yet neither was there much concern over tens of millions of Hindu deaths, whether due to starvation, disease, or Muslim violence. Western intellectuals don't hate Hindus the way so many of them seem to hate Jews. But they do seem to resent the mere existence of Hindus, to the point that they might prefer to see Hindus erased from history. That may sound like an extreme overstatement of Western antihinduism. If you think so, read any Western academic journal of Hindu studies and compare it to those focused on Buddhist, Shinto, Confucian, or even Muslim studies, and you'll see my point.