My family and extended family are high caste Hindu and coincidentally terrible human beings (narrator: It’s not coincidental). As such I am atheistic and have kept my distance from Hindu stuff because from what I have seen so far no good comes out of it ever. The way I see it, in a post-colonial India, Hinduism is a religion of the oppressors. The little that I know it is full of red flags and there no emancipatory value to it which is a bit shocking considering India’s colonial past. For example, in the Hindu epic called Ramayana, Hanuman flies to Sri Lanka. He does this to check up on Sita, the wife of Lord Rama (the incarnation of Krishna who is one of the most important Hindu gods). Sita had been kidnapped by Ravana, the king of Sri Lanka. After Hanuman checks up on her, he commits arson basically setting civilian infrastructure on fire which I am sure is against the Geneva Convention or its equivalent mapped to this mythical universe. This is something that is celebrated which I never understood really.
Either way, I don’t fuck with Hinduism for mostly personal reasons. This got me thinking if there are people here who are interested in it. The only other Indian person I know here is trapped in the cycle of getting banned for going off the handle and creating alt accounts which is kinda ironic considering the Hindu belief in karma and rebirth.
I know that the Rev Left Radio guy is interested in Buddhism which also originated in India/Nepal but is extremely less problematic. So it got me wondering if there are non-Indian people here interested in Hinduism. That’s all.
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I’m Thai, so, thanks to the Buddhism-with-Hinduism-characteristic over here, I’m a bit familiar with a few of localized version of Hindu mythology, including Ramayana. I agree, it’s weird when you really think about it.
Can you give me some keywords that I can search for or some links so I look into these localised versions?
The conception of good-versus-evil in Ramayana is heavily racialised. I was wondering what it was like in other versions.
Ramakien (wikipedia link)
It’s the only one I remembered, thanks to secondary school. I remember that they are other mythology, mostly in the form of children stories, but I can’t remember the name or even the plot.
[warning : incoming rant]
Frankly, literatures is one of my least favorite subject in my entire school years, partly thanks to many local literatures that was so terribly written I have no idea why people still talk about them fondly. For heck sake, one of the first story we learn in primary school is a few step away from being a porn. Compare to these, at least Ramakien is somewhat enjoyable.
[end rant]
Thank you
I am white but grew up with a lot of south asian friends. However, I still feel like I know nothing about Hinduism. As an aside, it’s been interesting watching said south asian friends either abandon or fully recommit to their heritage as they grew older. I want to read Ramayana, but have not yet done so. I find it really interesting how these were originally Indo-European stories, and I think it would be neat to understand the similarities and differences. It seems like the southern Dravidian people weren’t originally Hindu, so I’m interested in learning more about the regional differences and how that plays into Hindu national identity. It’s my understanding that Assam basically celebrates chinese new year, for example. I’ve been focusing on east asia for now and it’s really a different world. I’m anticipating it would be similar learning more about south asia.
Are you American?
yes
If your Indian friends are ever conflicted about their place in the highly segregated racial hierarchy in the USA, there is an informative book about this topic.
It’s called “The Karma of Brown Folk” by Vijay Prashad. Link to epub and pdf
Thanks for the link! I’ll definitely share if the opportunity comes up. Big fan of Vijay Prashad
I generally think of Buddhism as the good parts of Hinduism without (most of) the bad parts. Random question: is it weird that when I meet an Indian (as a white USian), one of my first thoughts is how they probably have privileged POS relatives (because I’m under the impression that mostly high caste can and want to come to this hellscape)?
From what I saw on Wikipedia it’s true that Indians in the US have higher average incomes compared to other ethnic groups. It’s true that most Indians who emigrate are privileged. It’s also true that those who move to west are more often than not very reactionary. Whether it’s weird that that’s the first thing that pops in your mind is something you’ll have to decide for yourself.
I’m not Indian and I am indeed very interested in Hinduism. I’m interested in religions in general, but mostly ancient religions. So I’m not all familiar with modern Hinduism.
Hinduism is the oldest continuously practiced religion in the world. The first schools of Hinduism, like Nyāya, Yoga and Vedanta, were extremely advanced. They had epistemological and metaphysical concepts and developments that only showed up in the west in the Renaissance. Like realism, atomism etc. Vedanta and Yoga (both likely the oldest schools) even developed a monistic consciousness-first metaphysics and that’s something being studied seriously by science only now, like cutting edge metaphysics and studies of consciousness.
I see the early schools of Hinduism as way ahead of their times. And studying them and the developments that came from sages after them, up until the medieval age, really breaks your brain to see how freaking modern and scientific they were even 3000 years ago.
In any case, for those same reasons I’m fascinated by ancient Egyptian religion, Ancient Greek philosophy, Buddhism Jainism etc.
Those people figured shit out thousands of years ago using only their minds and meditation that took us hundreds of years of applied scientific method and crazy scientific tool developments to find out.
Reading about it made me realize how much we don’t know shit. We think we’re the epitome of scientific and philosophical development. But we’re just repeating what a bunch of old ass people were saying thousands of years ago, and they figured that shit out just by sitting quiet and thinking right lol
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This is kind of an off-topic comment and while I understand where you’re coming from, we shouldn’t lump in such a huge group of people into one umbrella, and calling them a phobia 😅
This is not really a warning, it’s more a comment you should think about in your own time.