Today in Hinduphobia July 19, 2019: Nine Saints Under Tulsi Leaves on a Distant River Island, and the Cruel Crowbars that Came to Shatter the World
My writings on Hinduphobia in this series have been about media bias, and for the most part about bias in American media against Hindus that many progressive Americans have started to notice because of the distorted coverage and frequent smear campaigns on Tulsi Gabbard. But this article, sadly, is even worse. It is about a shocking real-life assault, an act of violence so enormous it’s like a thousand Notre Dame fires or great sequioa tree fallings concentrated into one tiny space all at once; and worse, this is no accident but a cold, cruel, deliberate act.
But the strange and utterly bizarre coincidence first, for readers who might appreciate noticing such things.
In the past few months, even as many non-Hindu, non-Indian-origin Americans began to notice the long-overlooked (in Western academic circles at least) aspect of colonial racism known as Hinduphobia in relation to a possible American President named Tulsi (and whose sister is named Vrindavan), a five hundred year old sacred structure bearing a holy Tulsi plant on its top and known to its worshippers as a Vrindavan (or Brindavan) was desecrated and smashed this week in a remote, serene, river island near the UN World Heritage site of Hampi in southern India.
Tulsi and Vrindavan.
Names for sisters and a promise of peace and truth on one side of the earth.
Targets for malice and destruction on the other.
The Navabrindavan, or Nine Brindavans, is a small, serene island sanctuary in the river Tungabhadra a short distance down the river from the more famous tourist attractions at Hampi (Hampi was the capital of the Vijayanagar empire, which despite its destruction in 1565 by neighboring medieval Muslim rulers, still remains a cultural treasure of great sculptures and some living temples too). The nine brindavans are essentially sacred stone structures, carefully sculpted and arranged “dolmens” (for lack of a better word), underneath which sit in meditative poses the bodies of the saints of the Madhva or Dvaita tradition who lived centuries ago.
A crude term would be a “tomb,” but since Hindu traditions typically consider tombs and cemeteries as inappropriate for happy practices of worship, these special structures for specially revered saints of this tradition are not considered “tombs” in our epistemic universe and are instead treated on par with the deities inside any Hindu temple, anointed with flowers and markings, and offered ceremonial worship every day.
Nine very sacred presences on a river island between boulder-strewn canyons. Enchanting, peaceful, and holy beyond measure.
On Wednesday night, someone, maybe more than one person, entered the small, lonely island (no one lives there and all priests and worshippers usually leave at sunset), and smashed a brindavan that is revered and worshipped every day and has been so for five hundred years now.
And the reason that this particular brindavan was targeted seems even more devastating — it is the site of a beloved scholar-saint who is considered by many to be a towering figure in our history: Vyasa Tirtha.
Vyasa Tirtha (who is not to be confused with the Vyasa who wrote the Mahabharatha) lived from 1460 to 1539, was the author of nine books on philosophy, the chancellor of a university, and the spiritual adviser to the great emperor Krishna Deva Raya. His influence in Hindu life was huge, if not widely known perhaps outside Madhva and Vaishnava circles. (interestingly, there is a picture of Vyasa Tirtha in the Berkeley ISKCON temple too, honored as part of their own lineage of distinguished philosophers and saints).
So the attack on his memory and tradition raises the worrying question of how deliberately political this whole atrocity real was. Was it just a case of “treasure hunters” as the Indian press is describing it? Or was it a more calculated choice by organized Hindu-haters to make a statement of supremacist power over Hindus around the world?
The Silencing of Indian Hinduphobia
One of the most disturbing trends in India in recent years that American corporate news media with their legendary ethnocentrism, xenophobia and war-machine bias have kept out of sight of American readers is the repeated attacks under a supposedly “Hindu Nationalist” government on Hindus and Hindu places of worship. If you look at the New York Times for example, never see reports of violence against Hindus and Hindu places of worship in India though it happens frequently. Even enormous acts of violence committed under an explicitly anti-Hindu ideology such as the Valentine’s Day suicide bombing in Kashmir by a JeM terrorist who called Hindus “cow urine drinkers” and “impure polytheists” earlier this year was obfuscated in their stories (see my study here). The murder of Hindu priests by cattle-thieves was not reported in the West, and a spurious study purporting to document rising hate crimes by “cow vigilantes” widely quoted instead. Since Prime Minister Modi’s reelection in May 2019, there have been several incidents of violent mobs attacks on Hindus across India that the U.S. media have completely ignored (see Indian journalist Swati Goel’s careful first-person reports on this frightening phenomenon, here).
The truth though, is that the attack on the serene and sacred little shrine on a river island is not the only attack on Hindu sacred land in recent times.
Last January, the Indian supreme court ordered a remote mountain shrine in southern India traditionally visited only by women of a certain age opened up for a strange sort of spectacle-tourism (strange because it was being done in the name of women, though women devotees were mostly opposed to it!) consistent with the pattern of war followed by modern commerce-driven settler states against indigenous lands and peoples everywhere, from Australia to Standing Rock to Hawaii. Tens of thousands (maybe more) of Hindu women from all over Kerala stood in endless lines on the side of the road holding lamps to protest this desecration. This protest was obscured by the world media, and instead another subsequent protest staged by the state government pushing for the wresting of the temple from local traditional control was brandished as some sort of a million-woman protest in the same war-media. (see this video response to AJE’s one-sided report here).
Shortly after this massive legal attack on indigenous sacred land, another sacred hill in the same state was torn by the courts from the sovereignty of the local indigenous tribal community and thrown up to tourists and recreational climbers. The first person who “trekked” there was apparently a government official, proving perhaps that the modern state reeks of colonial racist arrogance towards the natives just as the British Raj did decades ago! Once again, the wishes of local, indigenous women were trampled under the banner of women’s empowerment (in this case, the “empowered” women were of course urban, privileged “trekkers” who cared little for the indigenous women of the region).
And just a few days ago, soon after the supposed “Hindu strongman” Narendra Modi got re-elected in India, a Hindu temple in the heart of Delhi, the same city that this “Hindu strongman” Prime Minister stays, was invaded by an angry mob shouting religious slogans and the deities broken. The official cause, at least as far as the media reports went, was that this was a parking dispute.
Hinduphobia Needs Global Resistance
Hinduphobia is reaching violently physical proportions in India that opponents of racism and bigotry in the West need to be more aware of, even as U.S. based progressive activists and journalists lend their support to the fight against American Hinduphobia that lurks over a promising political leader like Tulsi Gabbard.
As Tulsi continues to win supporters with her honest, smart, and on-point progressive politics, let us not forget that the racism she and her supporters are confronting because of her Hindu identity is a global problem, and nowhere is it as bad perhaps as it is (strangely enough) than in the birthplace of Hinduism, India.
Despite a supposedly “Hindu” party ruling the country (or perhaps because of it — the party is so caught up in defending its image to its base as a party that cares for Hindus more than the now defeated Congress party that it is in systematic denial of the growing crimes on Hindu places of worship under its rule, throwing its voters under the bus as it were), Hindus in India are more vulnerable than they have been in a very long time as the enormity of the destruction of a 16thcentury saint’s shrine has shown us.
I am not sure if Tulsi has heard amidst all the pressing issues here of this attack on a saint revered in her own spiritual tradition too, but as you say her name, do try and think of what else has happened here too; a plant, a mere harmless (and medicinally helpful) plant, revered as a goddess by Hindus, tossed aside from a remote sacred space and fallen in the dirt.
It may be just one plant. But it seems like a microcosmic version of the devastation brought to this whole planet by the same ideology of racist, religious-supremacist, speciesist domination afflicting all of us today. And that is why the battle against Hinduphobia has to be fought not just by Hindus alone.
Hampi-Bengal-California-Hawaii-Krishna
In a spirit of global solidarity, and to honor the quick efforts made by hundreds of volunteers, students, and monks to restore the broken Brindavana of Vyasa Teertha, I would like to chart out for your attention how the names and deeds of a good man travel beyond space and time; a man who lived in southern India five hundred years ago has his writings reach way North and East in Bengal, influencing another popular religious revival there. Then, that movement grows and grows, resisting monotheistic religious imperialism, and one day, just when all seems adrift and lost in war-torn 60s America, finds its way into the hearts and lives of a whole new people altogether! And from there, one family in a remote island on the other side of the planet from Navabrindavana, raises a child who will be the hope for all who believe Truth and Non-Violence can and will replace the system of lies and war that runs the world today.
I honor Vyasa Teertha, scholar, saint, university-builder, water-giver, bearer of a Tulsi plant above his head, and symbol unheard of till now of global resistance and restoration with my words.
