simp-for-gol-gappes:
lord-kitschener:
chomotkar:
hyp0clitical:
As a desi Hindu can white hipsters please stop fucking acting like Hindus and Buddhists are all nonviolent and peaceful people as if Hindus didn’t facilitate the pogroms of Sikhs throughout India and Buddhists in Myanmar aren’t mass-murdering and stripping Rohingya Muslims of their basic human rights to the point where they’re listed as the most oppressed minority in the world
Some people don’t understand this post. This post isn’t painting Hinduism and Buddhism as violent religions. This post is talking about the romanticizing of Hindus and Buddhists by the West in particular, in a very ‘can-do-no-wrong-ever,’ ‘Om,’ and ‘so-peaceful-what-is-violence-even’ manner. When in actuality, extremism and violence within Hindus and Buddhists is as rampant as the extremism and violence that exists in any other group of people who adhere to a certain religion. Be it Islam or Christianity or whatever else. A lot of people don’t address the extremism and violence within the Hindu and Buddhist communities because everyone somehow thinks Hindus and Buddhists are all peaceful people with no history of violence towards others. When in fact, there is a history of violence.
The violence faced by the Rohingya people by the Buddhist-majority Myanmar is nothing new, though it is in the news more (not enough, though). Rohingya people have been persecuted by the Buddhist-majority of Myanmar since literally, the beginning of time. Because they are Rohingya, because they aren’t citizens of Myanmar, because they are Muslims. Hindus have committed great atrocities against Sikhs, Muslims, and Christians as well. Things like this shouldn’t go unnoticed.
This post isn’t saying the religions are awful and violent at all. It’s saying that the people following these religions can be and in unfortunately great numbers, ARE.
I’ve also seen this “Hindus and Buddhists are cutesy, peaceful hippies” stereotypes be used by islamophobic right wingers to justify the murder and repression of the rohingya and all other Muslims, because “well if they’re bad enough that the cutesy peaceful Buddhists/Hindus are risking their peacefulness and karma to say they breed like rats and start killing them before they take over, OBVIOUSLY they’re REALLY bad”
As a desi Hindu who is shaking with anger right now at the bigotry being displayed by Hindus in power; I can attest to the fact that they are no peace-loving hippies. They are violent islamophobes building concentration camps for Muslims while being homophobic and referring wrongfully to a culture that has always supported same-sex relationships in their own hateful agenda. Every religion has villains who twist the ‘our culture’ argument into something twisted and hateful; don’t minimize that.
This this thiiiiiiis.
My great grandmother hid my mom under a stairwell, ready to defend her with her bare hands from Hindu rioters looking for Sikhs to kill.
My uncle didn’t meet his father till he was 16 because his father was kept without charge, without telling any of his family, in a prison 100 km away by Hindus.
I don’t even know who of my relatives I’ve lost, because it’s too painful to even talk about. And no one’s been held accountable.
People are capable of violence no matter what their scripture says. Religion can breed a fanaticism that not much else does, where identity is placed above humanity.
By painting followers of a religion unable to resort to bigotry and violence you silence their victims.
