#world anti hinduism

[pecalang]

HINDU BANTEN TUMBUH SUBUR - PEMUGARAN PADMASANA PURA DHARMA SIDHI - BALINESE CULTURE

Mohon di SUBSCRIBE n LIKE, Terima Kasih SIMAK TABUH TERBAIK PADA LINK DIBAWAH INI !! Tabuh Bebarongan Sekaha Gong PEWA Banjar Serang Banten https://youtu.be/TtHx3WC1daw Tabuh Tari Rejang Sari Sekaa Gong Banjar PEWA Serang Banten https://youtu.be/BqAa-CNHcpY KEREN ! Baleganjur Muda Mudi Hindu Tangerang Selatan https://youtu.be/4NMH9oMGxUc Belajar Tabuh Tari Rebong Puspa Mekar…

[mahoutoons]

i'm feeling controversial today so here's another hot take. and before you type away at your keyboards, know that this is all coming from a south asian.

white leftists have got to stop acting like christianity is the only religion that deserves to be criticized and you cannot touch any other religion because that'd be racist and bigoted. because as an indian who's watching my country progress towards hindu nationalism, this attitude doesn't help at all.

white people see hinduism as this exotic brown religion that's so much more progressive but don't know the violence of the caste system, how it others a large portion of the population on the basis of caste, literally branding them as "untouchables". they teach us in school that this problem is a thing of the past but the caste system is still alive and shows itself in violent ways. and that's not even covering how non hindus are treated in the country. muslims especially are being killed, have their houses bulldozed, businesses destroyed, and are being denied housing, our fucking prime minister called them infiltrators and there's this fear among hindu extremists that they'll outnumber the hindus in the country. portraying hinduism as this exotic religion does a disservice to all those oppressed by the hindutva ideology

similarly, white people see buddhism as this hippie religion that's all about peace but have no idea how extremist buddhists in myanmar have been persecuting the rohingya muslims for years and drive them out of the country.

if anything portraying these religions as exotic hippie brown religions is a type of orientalism itself.

and also y'all have got to realize that just because christianity has institutional power in america doesn't mean there aren't parts of the world where they are persecuted on the basis of religion. yes karen from florida who cries christophobia because she sees rainbow sprinkles on a cake is stupid but christian oppression DOES exist in non western countries where they're a minority. pakistani christians get lynched almost on a daily basis over blasphemy accusations. just look up the case of asia bibi, a pakistani christian woman who was sentenced to death on blasphemy charges because of something she said when she was being denied water because it was "forbidden" for a christian and a muslim to drink from the same utensil and she'd made it unclean just by touching it (which is ALSO rooted in casteism and part of pakistani christians' oppression also comes from the fact that a lot of them are dalit but that's a whole other discussion). and that's just one christian group, this isn't even going into what copts, assyrians, armenians etc have faced and continue to face. saying that christians everywhere are privileged because of american christianity actually harms christian minorites in non western countries.

and one last thing because this post is getting too long: someone being anti america doesn't automatically mean they're the good guys. too many times i've been seeing westerners on twitter dot com praise the fucking taliban just because they hate america. yes, the same taliban who banned education for women, thinks women should be imprisomed at home, and consistently oppresses religious and ethnic minorities in afghanistan. yes, america's war on afghanistan was bad and they SHOULD be called out for their war crimes there. no, the taliban are still not the good guys. BOTH of them are bad. you cannot pretend to care about muslims and brown people if you praise the taliban. because guess what? most of their victims are BROWN MUSLIM WOMEN. but of course white libs who praise them don't rub their two braincells together to make that conclusion.

this post has gotten too long and i've just been rambling so the point of this post is: white "leftists" whose politics are primarily america centric should stop acting like criticism of ideologies like hindutva, buddhist extremism, and islamic extremism BY people affected by these ideologies is the same as racism or religious intolerance because that helps literally no one except the extremist bigots. also america is not the centre of the world, just because something isn't happening in america doesn't mean it isn't happening elsewhere

[metamatar]

im asking this out of pure ignorance but I've always wondered how does hinduism handle people who are not hindu? i know Christianity is essentially 'be the right kind of christian or go to hell' (so much as to beleive that Jewish people are literally devils, for example) but i was wondering how hinduism deals w people who are in proximity but not of the same religion. also if a dalit or lower caste person converts from hinduism to another religion, how does that affect thier life and how they're treated? appreciate your answer if u feel like explaining ^__^

it depends, in some parts of the country the non hindu has the same status as the lower caste dalit by default – so exclusion but in most places its a detente where religious and caste endogamy is strictly maintained. housing and employment discrimination is v common. its actually much harder to marry under the special mariage act and violence against interfaith and intercaste couples by their own families is common. in 2023, the muslim is the designated enemy of the state. the christian was fooled by the british and/or money to give up their culture or is literally a foreign agent. if you're looking for a textual answer, the equivalent of the "infidel," there isn’t really one because the streamlining of the canonical religious texts and construction of the hindu is recent. hinduism has aimed to appropriate instead of convert.

in modern india, legally anyone who is not a christian or a muslim is treated as a hindu. you are hindu by default in india to the state, governed by hindu codes for marriage and inheritance. for indigenous tribals it is a matter of coercing their children to feel shame at the (state sponsored but outsourced to private religious groups, love privatisation!!!) residential schools about their animist practices and making them worship the proper gods. for sikhs, jains and buddhists their is marginally more toleration. but they are basically seen as wayward hindu sects. this does change when they're in conflict with the majority in a way that resists "national cohesion" – see sikh pogroms in 1984 and the recent moves against sikhism due to the invocation of khalistan in the farmers protests. when dalits convert to buddhism many right wingers will invoke the spectre of predatory conversions.

since you are supposed to be hindu by default, christians and muslims are then seen as invasive outsiders and conversions are regulated very strictly by many states. it is historically true that christian missionaries brought christianity as part of a broader civilising mission, but imo it says something really depressing about hinduism that its epithets for christians is 'ricebag converts' bc people apparently converted for a bag of rice. islam's foothold in the continent is older, accompanying immigration from the west as well as the sultanate and the mughals. returning these christians and muslims to the fold, or "ghar wapsi" is a major project of the hindutva right. note that india is home to one of the world's largest populations of muslims (~200mil).

lower caste dalits have long converted to christianity and islam but caste violence follows them there anyway. caste may have textual origins in religion and focus on ritual purity but it is a socioeconomic form of subjugation. this means that while still subject to caste violence, dalit christians and muslims will be denied redressal through state protections like legislations against anti caste violence or reservations because those are restricted to hindu dalits.

[gwenllian-in-the-abbey]

What do you think of Grrm's portrayal of religion?

Hi anon, this is a really interesting question, and it took me awhile to put together what I hope is a coherent answer.

For context, I think GRRM's background is important to keep in mind. George is almost exactly my parents' age and belongs to the same demographic of American anti-war ex hippies who aged into broadly liberal baby-boomers. Their radicalism has largely mellowed over the years, they may not be the most up to date on the appropriate terminology, and they tend to prioritize nonviolent solutions to systemic problems (my mom often tells me the younger generation needs to do another March on Washington). One thing liberal boomers also tend have in common is that often they grew up religious but, as they entered their 20s and went to college, broke away from the churches of their childhood. My family is full of ex-Catholic liberal boomers like George. They might have dabbled in Buddhism or Hinduism in the 70s, New Age mysticism in the 80s or 90s, and ended up settling into statements like, "I'm spiritual, but not religious." Almost invariably, they have a sort of disdain for organized religion, which they associate with a kind of yokel mentality, a place for anti-Choice anti-LGBTQ traditionalists. Although they will profess "to each his own," to the average liberal boomer, the church represents regressive values and they cannot imagine why anyone would willingly return to it. Even those who did remain religious take great pains to make it known they are not like those Christians. And to be fair, liberal boomers have a good reason to feel this way. The churches of their childhoods were not fun places for people whose own ideas and values went against post-WW2 broadly white middle class values. Unsurprisingly, SFF authors tend to fit into this category.

And this sort of bleeds into a lot of 90s SFF. You see a lot of worlds that have religion, but rarely do you have characters that are religious, and even more rarely do you have sympathetic young protagonists who are religious. You might have the occasional kindly priest or nun type, but far more often these characters will be abusive, mean spirited, or narrow minded (think of Brienne's childhood septas). Religion is often treated with the same disdain by in-world characters as it is by the authors themselves. You might even have worlds that are almost entirely secular, with vague references to "The Gods," but without any real religious traditions constructed around them (Robin Hobb's Realm of the Elderlings series, which features two vague dieties, Eda and El, who seem to have no religious traditions surrounding them whatsoever). You might have cultish religions that are actively dangerous and must be stopped, or you might have Catholic church analogues, existing in opposition to everything cool and fun. Protagonists tend to be cynical non-believer types, or they might start off as true believers and lose their religion along the way. Rarely are they allowed to have sincere and abiding faith.

And you can see a lot of this in George's writing, in the way he portrays the Faith of the Seven and other religions, and the way the fandom receives them. The Faith of the Seven is Westeros' answer to the Catholic church, but there are also the Old Gods, the faith of R'hllor, and others, often presented in opposition to each other. George himself sees religion as a divisive force, and in ASOIAF, we see religions in conflict with each other, we see them weaponized to fuel vendettas, we see them used to drive prophesies and start wars. There's a clip somewhere, of George at a panel, where he's talking about religious conflict and his take is very reminiscent of George Carlin's-- you can tell he knows the bit. "Are you really going to kill all of these people because a giant invisible guy in the sky told you too? And your giant guy in the sky is different?" George asks, receiving a round of applause from the crowd. It's a very modern view on religion, which is fair, I think. He's writing for a modern audience who have modern conceptions of the church, and he is making a deliberate point about the harm religion can do. .

What I do think is missing, or at least downplayed, are the ways in which the medieval church was really a driving cultural and social force in medieval Europe. We live in a secular society, so we have the luxury of disregarding the church in a way that medieval people did not. This is one major way in which the worldbuilding of ASOIAF departs from the real world middle ages. To portray the medieval church as a primarily regressive institution that mostly drove conflict is too simplistic. The Catholic church is what culturally unified most of western Europe into what was known as "Christendom." The clergy served political functions, such as providing an important check upon the power of medieval kings, and when the power of the church declined, despotism grew. Socially, for most western Europeans, the church was also the center of day to day life. Insofar as medieval peasants had any opportunities for leisure time and celebrations, most of these revolved around the church. The church was for centuries a driving force behind art, music, literature, and architecture, and it also performed important social functions, such as operating poorhouses and leper-houses, and providing educations for children.

And all of this was just extremely normal. Most people prayed multiple times each day, and sincerely believed in heaven a hell. The state of one's soul after death was such a real concern that the sale of indulgences-- a way that you could pay to get your dead loved ones whose souls were in purgatory into heaven more quickly-- became a major racket for the Church. I've seen the HotD fandom react to Alicent Hightower's level of devotion calling her a religious "fanatic" and I cannot stress enough how absolutely normal Alicent would have been in medieval times. This is where I blame the framing of the show more than George, because it does set Alicent's faith in opposition to Rhaenyra's seemingly more modern values, but does it in a selective way. For instance, Alicent comes off as prudish, and modern audiences hate a prude, but we never see how her faith would have certainly inspired her, as queen, to take other more progressive actions such as giving alms to the poor or bestowing her patronage upon motherhouses. In another post about the fandom perception of Valyrian culture, I talked about how this modern view of devout belief, particularly Catholicism, tends to cast anything that is presented in opposition to it as an unequivocal good, and I see this sort of rhetoric slung around the fandom a lot, "why would you defend the pseudo-Catholics who hate women??" But the pseudo-Catholics are really just normal medieval people, and they didn't hate women, they simply lived in a patriarchal society and the material conditions did not yet exist which would allow them to challenge that in any meaningful way.

[phenakistoskope]

The first step towards the crystallisation of what we today call Hinduism was born in the consciousness of being the amorphous, subordinate, other. In a sense this was a reversal of roles. Earlier the term mleccha had been used by the upper caste Hindus to refer to the impure, amorphous rest. For the upper castes, Muslims and especially those not indigenous to India, were treated as mleccha since they did not observe the dharma and were debarred from entering the sanctum of the temple and the home. Indigenous converts to Islam also came under this category but their caste origins would have set them apart initially from the amorphous Muslim. Now the upper and lower castes were clubbed together under the label of ‘Hindu’, a new experience for the upper castes.

This in part accounts for the belief among many upper caste Hindus today that Hinduism in the last one thousand years has been through the most severe persecution that any religion in the world has ever undergone. The need to exaggerate the persecution at the hands of the Muslim is required to justify the inculcation of anti-Muslim sentiments among the Hindus of today. Such statements brush aside the fact that there were various expressions of religious persecution in India prior to the coming of the Muslims and particularly between the Śaiva and the Buddhist and Jaina sects and that at one level, the persistence of untouchability was also a form of religious intolerance. The authors of such statements conveniently forget that the last thousand years in the history of Hinduism have witnessed the establishment of the powerful Śankarācārya maṭhas, āśramas, and similar institutions attempting to provide an ecclesiastical structure to strengthen Brahmanism and conservatism; the powerful Daśanāmi and Bairāgi religious orders of Śaiva and Vaiṣṇava origin, vying for patronage and frequently in confrontation; the popular cults of the Nāthapanthis; the significant sects of the Bhakti traditions which are to be found in every corner of the subcontinent; and more recently a number of socio-religious reform movements which have been aimed at reforming and strengthening Hinduism. It was also the period which saw the expansion of the cults of Kṛṣṇa and Rāma with their own mythologies, literatures, rituals and circuits of pilgrimage. What defines many Hindus today has roots in the period of Muslim rule. Facets of belief and ritual regarded as essential to Hinduism belong to more recent times. The establishment of the sects which accompanied these developments often derived from wealthy patronage including that of both Hindu and Muslim rulers, which accounted for the prosperity of temples and institutions associated with these sects. The more innovative sects were in part the result of extensive dialogues between gurus, sādhus, pīrs and Sufis, a dialogue which was sometimes confrontational and sometimes conciliatory.  The last thousand years have seen the most assertive thrust of many Hindu sects. If by persecution is meant the conversion of Hindus to Islam and Christianity, then it should be kept in mind that the majority of conversions were from the lower castes and this is more a reflection on Hindu society than on persecution. Upper caste conversions were more frequently activated by factors such as political alliances and marriage circuits and here the conversion was hardly due to persecution. Tragically for those that converted on the assumption that there would be social equality in the new religion, this was never the case and the lower castes remained low in social ranking and carried their caste identities into the new religions.

When the destroying of temples and the breaking of images by Muslim iconoclasts is mentioned—and quite correctly so—it should however at the same time be stated that there were also many Muslim rulers, not excluding Aurangzeb, who gave substantial donations to Hindu sects and to individual brāhmaṇas. There was obviously more than just religious bigotry or religious tolerance involved in these actions. The relationship for example between the Mughal rulers and the Bundela rājās, which involved temple destruction among other things, and veered from close alliances to fierce hostility, was the product not merely of religious loyalties or differences, but the play of power and political negotiation. Nor should it be forgotten that the temple as a source of wealth was exploited even by Hindu rulers such as Harṣadeva of Kashmir who looted temples when he faced a fiscal crisis, or the Paramāra ruler who destroyed temples in the Caulukya kingdom, or the Rāṣṭrakūṭa king who tore up the temple courtyard of the Pratihāra ruler after a victorious campaign. Given the opulence of large temples, the wealth stored in them required protection, but the temple was also a statement of political authority when built by a ruler.

The European adoption of the term ‘Hindu’ gave it further currency as also the attempts of Catholic and Protestant Christian missionaries to convert the Gentoo/Hindu to Christianity. The pressure to convert, initially disassociated with European commercial activity, changed with the coming of British colonial power when, by the early nineteenth century, missionary activities were either surreptitiously or overtly, according to context, encouraged by the colonial authority. The impact both of missionary activity and Christian colonial power resulted in considerable soul searching on the part of those Indians who were close to this new historical experience. One result was the emergence of a number of groups such as the Brahmo Samaj, the Prathana Samaj, the Arya Samaj, the Ramakrishna Mission, the Theosophical Society, the Divine Life Society, the Swaminarayan movement, et al., which gave greater currency to the term Hinduism. There was much more dialogue of upper caste Hindus with Christians than there had been with Muslims, partly because for the coloniser power also lay in controlling knowledge about the colonised and partly because there were far fewer Hindus converting to Christianity than had converted to Islam. Some of the neo-Hindu sects as they have come to be called, were influenced by Christianity and some reacted against it; but even the latter were not immune from its imprint. This was inevitable given that it was the religion of the coloniser.

The challenge from Christian missionaries was not merely at the level of conversions and religious debates. The more subtle form was through educational institutions necessary to the emerging Indian middle class. Many who were attracted to these neo-Hindu groups had at some point of their lives experienced Christian education and were thereafter familiar with Christian ideas. The Christian missionary model played an important part, as for example in the institutions of the Arya Samaj. The Shaiva Siddhanta Samaj was inspired by Arumuga Navalar, who was roused to reinterpret Śaivism after translating the Bible into Tamil. The movement attracted middle-class Tamils seeking a cultural self-assertion. Added to this was the contribution of some Orientalist scholars who interpreted the religious texts to further their notions of how Hinduism should be constructed. The impact of Orientalism in creating the image of Indian, and particularly Hindu culture, as projected in the nineteenth century, was considerable.

Those among these groups influenced by Christianity, attempted to defend, redefine and create Hinduism on the model of Christianity. They sought for the equivalent of a monotheistic God, a Book, a Prophet or a Founder and congregational worship with an institutional organization supporting it. The implicit intention was again of defining ‘the Hindu’ as a reaction to being ‘the other’; the subconscious model was the Semitic religion. The monotheistic God was sought in the abstract notion of Brahman, the Absolute of the Upaniṣads with which the individual Ātman seeks unity in the process of mokṣa; or else with the interpretation of the term deva which was translated as God, suggesting a monotheistic God. The worship of a single deity among many others is not strictly speaking monotheism, although attempts have been made by modern commentators to argue this. Unlike many of the earlier sects which were associated with a particular deity, some of these groups claimed to transcend deity and reach out to the Absolute, Infinite, the Brahman. This was an attempt to transcend segmentary interests in an effort to attain a universalistic identity, but in social customs and ritual, caste identities and distinctions between high and low continued to be maintained.

— Romila Thapar, Syndicated Hinduism.

[ruminativerabbi]

Anti-Judaism Then and Now

On Sesame Street, they used to sing a song that challenged young viewers to decide “which of these things belong together.” The idea was that the youngsters would be presented with a group of things all but one of which belonged to the same group. But the trick, of course, was that the specific nature of the group wasn’t revealed—so the young viewer had to notice that there were three vegetables on the screen and one piece of fruit, or three garden tools and a frying pan. You get the idea. All of the things belonged together but one didn’t. It wasn’t that complicated. But the tune is still stuck in my head and I don’t think I’ve heard the song in at least thirty years.

In the grown-up world, there are also all sorts of groups made up of things that are presented as “belonging together.” Some are obvious and indisputable. But others are far more iffy.

Languages, for example, are in the first category. Danish, Japanese, Laotian, and Yiddish all belong in the same group; each is an artificial code devised by a specific national or ethnic group to label the things of the world. You really can compare the Japanese word for apple with the Danish word because both really are the same thing: a sound unrelated in any organic way to the thing it denotes that a specific group of people have decided to use nonetheless to denote that thing. Languages are all codes, all artificial, and all each other’s equals. The world’s languages, therefore, really are each other’s equivalents

Other groups, not so much. Religion comes right to mind in that regard: we regularly refer to the world’s religions as each other’s equivalents, but is that really so? In what sense, truly, is Judaism the Jewish version of Hinduism or Buddhism? Is Chanukah the Jewish Christmas? Is the New Testament the Christian version of the Koran in the same sense that the Danish word for cherry is the Danish version of the French word for that same thing? You see what I mean: the notion that the religions of the world are each other’s equivalents hardly makes any sense at all.

But what about prejudices of various sorts? Are racism and homophobia each other’s equivalents, distinguished only by the target of the bigot’s irrational dislike? Are sexism and ageism the same thing, only different with respect to the specific being discriminated against? And where does anti-Semitism, with its weird medial capital letter and its off-base etymology (because it denotes discrimination against Jews, not other Semites), where does anti-Semitism fit in? Is it the same as other forms of discrimination, differing only with respect to the target?

I suppose my readers know why this has been on my mind lately.

Last week I wrote about that grotesque congressional hearing in which the presidents of three of America’s most prestigious institutions of higher learning, including two of the so-called Ivies, could not bring themselves to label the most extreme form of anti-Semitism there is, the version that calls not for discrimination against Jews but for their actual murder—they could not bring themselves unequivocally and unambiguously to say that that calls for genocide directed against Jews have no place on their campuses. The president of the University of Pennsylvania paid with her position for her unwillingness to condemn genocide clearly and forcefully. But hundreds and hundreds of faculty members at Harvard, perhaps the nation’s most prestigious college, spoke out forcefully in support of their president despite her unwillingness to say clearly that calling for the murder of Jews is not the kind of speech that any normal person would imagine to be protected by the First Amendment.

At a time when anti-Semitism is surging, it strikes me that treating different versions of prejudice as each other’s equivalent is probably more harmful an approach than a realistic one. That is what led to the moral fog that apparently enveloped the leaders of three of our nation’s finest academies and made them unable simply and plainly to condemn calls for genocide directed against Jewish people.

I think we should probably begin to deal with this matter in our own backyard. And to that end, I would like to recommend three books and a fourth to my readers: the three are “about” anti-Semitism (and each is remarkable in its own way) and the fourth is a novel that I’ve mentioned many times in these letters, the one that led me to understand personally what anti-Semitism actually is and how it can thrive even in the ranks of the highly civilized, educated, and cultured.

The first book is by the late Rosemary Ruether, known as a feminist and as a Catholic theologian, but also the author of Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of Anti-Semitism, published by Seabury Press in 1974 and still in print. This was not the first serious study of anti-Semitism I read—that would have been Léon Poliakoff’s four-volume work, The History of Anti-Semitism, which also had a formative effect on my adolescent self. But Ruether’s book was different: less about anti-Semitism itself and more about the way that anti-Jewish prejudice was such a basic part of the theological worldview of so many of the most formative Christian authors that the task of eliminating it from Western culture would require a repudiation of some of the basic tenets set forth by some of the most famous early Christian authors. I was stunned by her book when I read it: stunned, but also truly challenged. In think, even, that my decision to specialize in the history of the early Church as one of my sub-specialties when I completed by doctorate in ancient Judaism was a function of reading that book and needing—and wanting—to know these texts (and, through them, their authors) personally and up close. Jewish readers—or any readers—concerned about anti-Semitism could do a lot worse than to start with Ruether’s book.

And from there I’d go on to David Nirenberg’s book, Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition, published by W.W. Norton in 2013. This too is something anyone even marginally concerned about anti-Semitism in the world should read. The book is not that long, but it is rich and exceptionally thought-provoking; its author describes his thesis clearly in one sentence, however: “Anti-Judaism should not be understood as some archaic or irrational closet in the vast edifices of Western thought,” but rather as one of the “basic tools with which that edifice was constructed.” Using detailed, thoughtful, and deliberate prose, Nirenberg lays out his argument that Western civilization rests on a foundation of anti-Judaism so deeply embedded in the Western psyche as to make it possible for people who have doctorates from Harvard to feel uncertain about condemning genocide—the ultimate anti-Semitic gesture—unequivocally and forcefully. This would be a good book too for every Jewish citizen—and for all who consider themselves allies of the Jewish people—to read and take to heart. Anti-Judaism is deeply engrained in Western culture. To eradicate it—even temporarily, let alone permanently—will require a serious realignment of Western values and beliefs. Can it be done? Other features of Western culture have fallen away over the centuries, so I suppose it can be. But how to accomplish such a feat—the best ideas will come from people who have read books like Nirenberg’s and taken them to heart.

And the final book I would like to recommend is James Carroll’s, Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews, published by Mariner Books in 2001. The author, a former Roman Catholic priest, makes a compelling argument that the roots of anti-Semitism are to be found in the basic Christian belief that the redemption of the world will follow the conversion of the world’s Jews to Christianity. I was surprised when I read the book by a lot of things, but not least how convincingly the author presses his argument that the belief that the redemption of the world is being impeded by the phenomenon of stubborn Jews refusing to abandon Judaism is the soil in which all Western anti-Semitism is rooted. It’s an easier book to read than either Ruether’s or Nirenberg’s—written more for a lay audience and clearly intended by its author to be a bestseller, which it indeed became—but no less an interesting and enlightening one.

So that is my counsel for American Jews feeling uncertain how to respond to this surge of anti-Semitic incidents on our nation’s streets and particularly on the campuses of even our most prestigious universities. Read these books. Learn the history that is, even today, legitimizing anti-Jewish sentiments even among people who themselves are not sufficiently educated to understand what is motivating their feelings about Jews and about Judaism. None of these reads will be especially pleasant. But all will be stirring and inspiring. And from understanding will come, perhaps, a path forward. Any physician will tell you that even the greatest doctor has to know what’s wrong with a patient before attempting to initiate the healing process. Perhaps that is what is needed now: not rallies or White House dinners (or not just those things), but a slow, painstaking analysis of where this all is coming from and an equally well-thought-out plan for combatting anti-Jewish prejudice rooted in the nature of the beast we would all like to see fenced in, tamed, and then ultimately slain.

And the novel? My go-to piece of Jewish literature, André Schwarz-Bart’s The Last of the Just, was published in Stephen Becker’s English translation by Athenaeum in 1960, just one year after the publication of the French original. A novel that spans a full millennium, the book traces the history of a single Jewish family, the Levys, and tells the specific story of the individual member of the family in each generation who serves as one of the thirty-six just people for whose sake the world exists. (The book begins in eleventh century England and ends at Auschwitz, where the last of the just perishes.) I read the book when I was a boy and have returned to it a dozen times over the years. No book that I can think of explains anti-Semitism from the inside—from within the bosom of a Jewish family that is defined by the prejudice directed against it—more intensely, more movingly, or more devastatingly. This is definitely not a book for children. I was probably too young to encounter such a book when I did, but it is also true that, more than anything else, it was that book that set me on the path that I followed into adulthood. (And that is probably just as true spiritually and emotionally, as it is professionally.) I was too young, perhaps, to process the story correctly. But when I was done reading even that first time as a sixteen-year-old, I knew what path I wished to follow. The Last of the Just is not a book I would exactly characterize as enjoyable reading. But it is riveting, challenging, and galvanizing. To face the future with courage and resolve, the American Jewish community needs to look far back into the past so as to understand the challenges it now faces. And then, armed with that knowledge, to find a path forward into a brighter and better world.

[incorrectmahabharatquotes]

hello, this is may be incoherent or long so apologies.

how do you reconcile with subscribing to hinduism in any way despite the horrific violence and atrocities it propagates? i was raised hindu (but I’m now a staunch atheist) and i was never religious but like you all i did enjoy the myths and the characters in it. but that was before i became politically conscious and came to know about the suffering wreaked by the caste system and the insanity of hindutva. hindutva ideology is so widespread now, casteism shows no signs of reducing and both are irretrievably linked to hindu gods and practices. i know none of the major world religions can claim to be unproblematic but as an indian, hinduism is the biggest problem, so to speak. reading works of Dr Ambedkar and Periyar only reaffirmed my beliefs that hinduism is extremely oppressive and dangerous. ik you all are aware of the oppression and are anti hindutva and anti caste but still have you faced dissonance by continuing to positively interact with hinduism despite this?

i don’t mean any offense, i am genuinely curious.

Hi, yes, I have 100% faced this dissonance. There was an extended point in time when I sort of backed away from engaging with mythology only because of the dissonance i was experiencing with regards to interacting with the myths. That really gave me some time to think through why I felt so uncomfortable with this.

But now I intend to engage whole heartedly because- in the end they're all stories. Stories which have gone through few hundreds of years of oral traditions, stories which contain the morals and values of yesterday. Whether or not they were 'itihasa' is no longer relevant because these stories have passed through the hands of many people.

I almost feel like its my duty now to imbibe a different kind of meaning to these stories. One which breaks down the 'holy' ness of them and gives a new lens through which to look at the characters. If you have noticed, Hindu gods are used as tools to justify some of the most heinous behaviours while practicing Hinduism. I'm just.....participating in a more creative process where we make our OWN meaning of the myths. Its one way I'm able to make peace with this.

-Mod G

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

Do you know why Indians in particular (and I suppose, new age spiritualists) believe in things like homeopathy or ayurveda(like ashwagandha)? I've always found it so odd, even growing up in india. It's clear that some of these beliefs are marketing schemes, like saying A2 (Indian cows) milk > A1(foreign cows) to the point that they sell A2 cow milk and butter at 10x-20x the price of A1 cow milk. All because of "Vedic" practices (prayers and conducting rituals) of cow rearing. We know that ayurveda especially has no clinical or empirical evidence. It's all anecdotal. But even I was taught to believe that turmeric is a good antioxidant and is great for colds. In reality, only about 2% of turmeric is absorbed by your body. Are indians just more gullible because of Hinduism or is it just willful ignorance because they want to feel some sort of superiority in their spirituality?

Lots of love, thank you for continuing to post!! 💛💛 Hope you're doing well.

A big chunk of it may well be the lack of penetration of criticism and mockery of these superstitions, both for cultural and language reasons.

There's a saying that "sunlight is the best disinfectant." This isn't literally true, it's a metaphor for the notion that exposing ideas to the light of scrutiny, examination and refutation helps to break down and destroy false or bad ideas.

To some extent, the persistence of these superstitions may be that they've not been well exposed to public view to the extent many others have been.

Islam has in its doctrine, the curative and medicinal properties of camel urine. To the extent it's packaged and sold as medicine in the present day solely because in multiple hadiths, Muhammad prescribed camel urine for ailments. People don't know about this, don't believe it or start making excuses about "natural remedies" and the limitations of "western medicine." Even while the World Health Organization calls for people to stop drinking it.

Outside India, there's a certain anti-western chauvinism, coupled with a fetishization of "exotic" cultures. Which is really just the Appeal to Nature and Appeal to Tradition fallacies. But are ripe to be exploited by con artists (e.g. Deepak Chopra) for sale to the credulous who mistake their trendy credulity for "open mindedness." Even though the same people would never be so gullible about superstitions based on Xian mythology.

What this means is that a protective bubble forms around these superstitions because attacking primitive, superstitious nonsense hogwash becomes a "racist" attack on a "culture." You're allowed to - and encouraged to - criticize and attack Xian faith-healing, but not Hindu faith-healing because that's just intolerant of a "culture." Note that this means they want Indian culture to be mired in primitive superstitions.

Internal to India, I think a big part is just that it's so dominant and there isn't the tradition of secularism - separation of church/religion and state - which means religious faith holds more sway. Coupled with more explicit moves in recent years to mirror Islam in offence and fragility regarding "blasphemy" - see the whole "Sexy Kali" thing, for example.

In contrast, in the US, there's been legal challenges mounted against homeopathy as fraud and false advertising under consumer protection laws. If there's no evidence of efficacy, government safety organizations in countries like the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand either don't allow a product to be sold as "medicinal," or don't allow it to be sold at all.

I don't know enough about Indian law to know how robust Indian safety or consumer laws are in terms of leveraging them to call out the same kinds of fraud, but what you're saying about the milk suggests they might not be. It's essentially a claim of "magic milk," given there could be no scientific test that such a claim could survive.

So, there's this absence of pressure from both internal and external. And as we know from evolution, it's pressure which drives change.

People need to be willing to treat Indian and Hindu superstitions the same as they treat Xian superstitions and other unscientific bunk, rejecting attacks on the basis of "racism" or "blasphemy" or "intolerance" or all the usual shit. But I think there also needs to be avenues culturally and legally within India to start challenging the assertions being made. I don't know enough about Indian society or culture to know how much of a superiority complex may be at play, but there is likely an element of ignorance, not necessarily wilful, just regular old ignorance, because of the pervasiveness and persistence of these ideas.

Of course, people are still free to believe stupid shit. But that doesn't mean it should get special, elevated status or be allowed to commit acts of rampant fraud.

[thrashkink-coven]

I’m going to say this once. This might piss some of my followers off but I see that as a positive. If this post makes you mad you are more than free to unfollow me.

I’m going to try to make this as clear as possible.

I do not hate Christianity, I do not hate Yahweh, and I do not hate Jesus. I do not love Christianity, I do not love Yahweh, and I do not love Jesus.

These things exist in a realm that is outside of my influence. To be entirely honest, I don’t care about Christianity, or the ideas of Christianity. Christianity has no place nor impact on me, my craft, or my life.

Don’t get me wrong, I love history, theology, and the symbolism in all religions. I find the way that humans rationalize big concepts to be fascinating. I have nothing against Christianity as an existing religion- it is one that I do not subscribe to or necessarily agree with- but I do respect it as a faith. I equally respect Hinduism as a faith, as I respect the Jewish religion etc. There is too much beauty in religion to discount it completely.

If you are one of those Luciferians that croaks on and on about how much you hate Jesus and God, please just unfollow me or block me I don’t care. I don’t enjoy seeing anti-religious slander as much as I don’t enjoy seeing anti-pagan or anti-science slander. I am not a fan of echo chambers in any regard.

It is extremely obvious to me every time I see a rant written by someone who has never actually read the bible. It is frustrating, not as a Christian, but as someone who just loves theology, to see uneducated people taking so boldly about a religion they are not a part of and book they have hardly read the first page of. There are thousands of legitimate things about Christianity that deserve criticism, but if you are not educated on the topic, don’t talk so boldly about it. This applies to all things. I’m not going to make a post about how evil Muslims are because I hardly know the first thing about the Muslim faith. I’m not Muslim and I have absolutely no context for the things I’d be talking about. It is not my place whatsoever to cast those judgements because my judgements would be born or ignorance.

Listen, I understand that Christianity has basically fucked the entire world. I get it. I understand that Christians have stollen and bastardized basically everyone. I know. I understand that many of us have vengeful rageful religious trauma and have absolutely no tolerance for Christianity, I understand. I know it’s triggering. I know that Christianity is not in need of a defender from pagans, the point of this post is not to defend Christianity.

My point is that endlessly putting energy into actively hating the concepts of a religion that you’re not apart of is a waste of time. In my opinion that’s not liberation, your mind is still trapped within the confines of Christianity even if you’re mad about it, even if you think you’re rebelling against it- if you’re trapped within it, you can never effectively be free from it.

If your mind is still playing with dualistic concepts of good and bad, hell and heaven, then you are still a slave to the dualistic mindset, and that is the mindset that establishes Christianity.

I say this as someone with an extremely redically Christian family that kicked me out of my home at 18. I have literally been black sheeped, and I have no contact with any of my family because of their extremism towards religion. I have sat and listened to my parents tell me that I’m going to hell for being queer. I have been physically and emotionally abused. I was made homeless before I knew how to take care of myself in the name of that God. That God and his people have inspired many tearful nights.

I have many many reasons to be an avid hater of Christianity, but that wouldn’t do anything to satisfy me. Hating God and Jesus isn’t retribution for the abuse I suffered. More hatred and anger being thrown into this miserable mix isn’t going to set me free. True freedom is being able to say “this doesn’t serve me,” and being able to actually just walk away and find something that does.

My devotion to Lucifer or any of my deities has absolutely nothing to do with the Abrahamic God. I don’t worship Lucifer to “get back at God” and I don’t care how he feels about it whatsoever. It has nothing to do with him or anyone beyond me and Lucifer.

I personally do not worship Lucifer as Satan or the Anti-God. Nor do I use him as a placeholder for that God, or worship him as one would worship the Christian God. In most contexts, Yahweh and Christian forms of worship are completely irrelevant to me. I don’t think that I’m being such a bad little sinner when I pray to Lucifer instead of Yahweh. That idea implies that I still subscribe to concepts of heaven and hell, purity and sinners. Yahweh is not my concept of good, and Lucifer is not my concept of evil.

Many occultists and Luciferians that I am friends with have told me that at some point in their devotion, Lucifer has told them to essentially “forgive God”, and it always absolutely baffles people. I have had a very similar experience with him.

I challenge you to forgive God, but not in the Christian way.

I’ll say something very controversial that many Luciferians probably won’t agree with, and that’s fine.

I don’t think that Lucifer hates Yahweh. I don’t think he has any real negative opinions of him in general. They are two different entities with vastly different roles and purposes. The actions of their followers are not a reflection of their true nature. I don’t think the Sun hates Neptune, and I don’t think the river hates the moon. I severely doubt that Venus hates Yahweh, I believe that at one point human politics created an idea about good and evil that exists only in the minds of men. I don’t think that Mars hates Jupiter, and I doubt that Pluto hates Saturn. I don’t think these concepts translate on a universal scale.

When Lucifer says to “forgive God” I don’t think he’s talking about the colonial empire of Christianity that has stollen and destroyed, and I want to make it clear that I’m not telling you to forgive Christians and their terrible acts- you have no obligation to forgive these humans.

I think he’s talking more about the concept of God as The All Father of Goodness.

You don’t have to like him or his people to forgive him, to say “you’re not for me” and free yourself of his grasp. To allow yourself to define what goodness is to you outside of Yahweh and his predetermined rules.

Forgive God, but not in the Christian way. Do not forgive to give way to further abuse. Do not forgive because the abuse was okay. Do not forgive him because you’ll go to hell if you don’t.

Forgive to free yourself of the emotional trauma bond you have with this God, and then go find something better. Walk away with your grace.

I don’t think about Yahweh or his people most days. I don’t reserve any energy- be that positive or negative- in my mind or heart for him. I forgave him a long time ago, and now I walk away from him comfortably and happily knowing that I am headed towards something greater.

I don’t hate him, I don’t love him. I don’t need to feel these things about a God that is irrelevant to me.

[melonteee]

Just finished the Ace video and I truly loved it. You are litteraly making amazing videos one after the other.

I also wanted to say that I never understood why the symbol on Ace's back/Whitebeard's flag had to be changed. Like it's completly different from a swastika. The manji is straight and has lines that go counter-clockwise the swastika is tilted and has lines that go clockwise. Litteraly takes a second to notice the difference if you actually look at how each symbol is drawn.

Do the people that confuse them also confuse road signs because they look kind of similar to each other at a glance?

It's truly just a western thing, the conversation about anything that even looks like a swastika still happens for the west. If you show a manji symbol that's clearly not a swastika to any English speaking or European country, most people will immediately think of the anti-Semitic symbol. They won't look twice or they won't think twice about it. That's due to the fact the manji was not something introduced to the west or largely known to the west until it was twisted into a hate symbol, even though this was a sacred symbol to Asian regions and Asian religions.

An example of this is Tokyo Revengers having the manji in the original title, but if you look at western localised versions or even the anime, they had to take it away so it wouldn't cause anger amongst the western world. I can still remember when it first came out and the western fandom was debating amongst themselves on whether it was okay to include the manji in cosplays and fanarts, even though it wasn't a hate symbol.

I cannot really blame the western world for how the symbol is seen, but it shows how insidious it was to take a sacred and peaceful symbol such as the manji, just to shift it and turn it into something so hateful. I truly feel a lot of pain for anyone who practices Hinduism or Buddhism and must put up with the western world pointing at them and saying things like "Well that just simply isn't right, I don't care what it means to you!"

If you want an example of such a thing happening, here's an article from 2022 I read before speaking of the manji on Ace's back. I truly hope it's able to be reclaimed as a symbol of peace in the near future.

[dismantlinghinduism]

Dismantling Yoga

The title might seem funny but yoga is a big part of Hindu "cultural identity" and nationalism which is the reason Hinduism can't be dismantled. Max Muller came across the same problem, despite his less than ideal motives, as Sanskrit tied the Indians steadfast to their religion. For this reason it is important to be able to associate yoga with stigma, so that Hindus themselves feel shame associated with it and gradually distance themselves from the dangerous practise. The following essay submitted by Anusha Khedar is an excellent contribution. It is important to use language such as "Hindu supremacy" to cast oppressive connotations, giving rise to the notion that something in relation to Hinduism must be "overthrown". Generally the link between fascism and yoga will begin slowly until the very practise of yoga is stigmatized. An excerpt has been given here. Please go to my main site for the full essay as it's very long! Thanks

This essay considers the significance of Narendra Modi’s yoga agenda against the backdrop of increasingly violent right-wing Hindu nationalist policies and interventions under his administration. One of Modi’s first official acts after being elected Prime Minister of India in 2014 was to urge the United Nations member states to declare June 21st International Yoga Day.

In his speech, he argued that yoga has the capacity to unite both the self and the world. Though Modi espouses unity through yoga, he has arguably been one of the most divisive Indian leaders in recent memory. How do we reconcile the contradiction between “Modi the yogi” who proposes to unify the country and “Modi the Hindu nationalist” who has been actively responsible for dividing it along sectarian lines? What is the function of International Yoga Day within the broader context of Modi’s anti-Muslim politics, both past and present? Why has yoga, in particular, become a central tenet of Modi’s Hindu nationalist agenda? Drawing on Wendy Brown’s (2006) theorization of “tolerance,” I consider how Modi’s yoga agenda has further entrenched the binary of the tolerant, “civilized” Hindu and the intolerant, “irrational” Muslim.

Other within the Indian national imaginary. In contrast to the notion of Muslims as militant, ideologically rigid, and intolerant (of difference), yoga performs the Hindu nation as flexible, yielding, open, and tolerant. With its benign, benevolent associations with health and well-being, mind-body harmony, and peace, Modi has mobilized yoga to obfuscate the increasing violence, inflexibility, and intolerance of difference under his administration. This essay concludes by thinking about the complicity of the liberal Hindu citizen in the rise of Hindu nationalism and the Hindu supremacist state.

Modi has been a leading proponent of Hindu nationalism, or Hindutva (Hindu-ness), which advocates for the cultural hegemony of (Brahmanical) Hinduism in Indian society, culture, and politics. Most notably, as I will discuss later, in 2002 he presided over the murder and rape of thousands of Muslims at the hands of Hindu mobs while he was Chief Minister of the state of Gujarat. Since being elected Prime Minister in 2014, Modi has continued to stoke widespread anti-Muslim violence and an overall culture of religious intolerance in India. How do we reconcile the contradiction between “Modi the yogi” who proposes to unify the country through yoga and “Modi the Hindu nationalist” who has been actively responsible for dividing it along sectarian lines? What is the function of International Yoga Day within the broader context of Modi’s anti-Muslim politics, both past and present? Why has yoga, in particular, become a central tenet of Modi’s Hindu nationalist agenda?

Yoga has largely benign, benevolent associations with health, harmony, spirituality, unity, and flexibility. This has prevented many from seeing how it, too, has become an instrument of violence and marginalization by the Hindu right. I suggest that Modi has capitalized on yoga’s associations with harmony and flexibility to distract from his administration’s divisiveness and authoritarianism. Yoga has allowed Modi to choreograph an image of himself, and by extension the Hindu state, as flexible (i.e. accommodating) yet strong, peaceful yet powerful. Meanwhile, he continues to sanction genocidal violence against Muslims in India with impunity.

This essay takes seriously the importance of the (yoga) body in the aestheticization of Hindu nationalist ideology. As Joseph Alter argues, “by starting with the body one is better able to make sense of … important features of the nationalist project” (2011, x-xi). Building on this as well as Bhuvi Gupta and Jacob Copeman’s argument that Hindu nationalism “is a condition of the body” that has emerged “from a particular prescription and practice of yoga,” (2019, 1). I consider how Modi’s International Yoga Day has further entrenched the binary of the tolerant, "civilized” Hindu and the intolerant, “irrational” Muslim Other within the Indian national imaginary. Despite what might ostensibly be perceived as a decolonial move to “take back” yoga from the West, I suggest that International Yoga Day should be viewed more skeptically as an attempt by Modi to bolster the Hinduization of India under the guise of yoga as a secular practice. In this regard, Modi’s politicization of yoga is a prime example of how the discourse of decolonization can actually be exploited to uphold violent right-wing nationalist agendas. In order to support these claims, I will first historicize Modi’s anti-Muslim Hindu nationalist agenda to show how yoga is not an aberration but a continuation of that violence. Next, I will situate Modi’s mobilization of yoga for nationalist ends as part of a longer history of yoga and somatic nationalism in India. I will then discuss the ensuing debates about International Yoga Day and the way in which the discourse of (Hindu) tolerance masks the underlying anti-Muslim violence of Modi’s administration. I will conclude by thinking about the complicity of the liberal Hindu citizen in the rise of Hindu nationalism and the Hindu supremacist state.

Please read the rest of this wonderful essay on my main site.

[otakween]

Digimon Tamers - Episode 15

Okay, so it seems we have a new formula to follow. The kids will have to fight 12 "Devas" (which is apparently a God-like being in Hinduism and Buddhism, but seem like apostles here) who are all devoted to one "God" and are anti-human. I'm getting kind of annoyed at this point because it seems the implication is that they're going to drag the mystery of who this "God" is out for many, many more episodes. Does Tamers even have arcs or is it kinda just one, continuous thing? I guess you could say the first arc was the kids learning to fight as a team and now we're in the 2nd arc, but I feel like I won't be clear on the divisions until I get deeper in...

Also, is HYPNOS still in the picture at this point? Or are the considered "defeated" since their big plan was a bust...? (Rhetorical questions lol, no need to answer).

Notes:

The enemy digimon in this one was pretty creepy conceptually: a giant snake the size of a subway tunnel that attacks trains. As a frequent subway rider, I could see that making a good horror movie (I guess it was kinda already done in one of the Men in Black films).

I thought Takato being the annoyingly over-eager friend in the group was pretty funny. I'm glad that the 3 kids are cooperating now, but I'm not sure they really have great friendship chemistry yet lol. It's more Jian and Ruki are tolerating Takato. I feel like their personality types are somewhat reflected in their digimon partners too, with Guilmon ready to be friends with everyone whether they reciprocate or not.

Takato's classmates seeing Guilmon as an exciting new toy felt a little weird, but I felt reassured when they took Takato's demands that they don't follow him into battle seriously. (Or maybe that's just Japanese kids being good at following orders lol. I kinda expected to be like "hey no fair! Why can't we watch!?")

It was good seeing Ruki and Jian doing non digimon related things on their days off. Ruki goes to a Noh play with her grandma and Jian intends on going to his martial arts class (before he's interrupted by a battle). These little insights are important so we're not left thinking "don't these kids have lives?" Notably, the Adventure kids were stuck in the digital world (and essentially frozen in time), so that show didn't really have that problem to solve.

Everyone looked pretty off model this episode, but honestly once you get several off model episodes in a row you start to forget what they're supposed to look like lol

Long flashbacks and repeated "card slash" sequences padded out a lot of this episode. It was especially bad when we got two "card slash" sequences for Takato back-to-back.

Impmon and Terriermon have consistently been making me laugh with their blunt reactions to things. Impmon calling out Renamon's condescension towards him was especially funny.

Ruki looked super cool riding Kyubimon through the subway tunnels. I couldn't help but think about the scene needing a "don't do this at home, kids!" warning though, according to the "don't show repeatable actions" standards (the walking on train tracks part, not riding a giant monster lol).

So...Impmon shows possible signs of softening to the kids and their digimon? I thought he was going to get more evil, but perhaps he'll actually go from ineffectual bully to good guy.

Really nice seeing the champion-level digimon side-by-side at the end there. Good to know the size comparison and just to see them as a team.

I guess Ruki and Jian are just okay with suddenly showing off their digimon to a bunch of kids from Takato's class? Seems a little out of character to me, but maybe there was some off-screen conversation that went down...

[metamatar]

I don't know the word vomit I did in your inbox earlier is savarna guilt. Holy shit that would be pathetic, wouldn't it? Fuck.

hey anon, i feel like you wouldn't want me to publish your previous ask. sorry i took a while to get to this! what i'd say about your sense of what replaces what religion did for you viz community is this –

not all ritual has to be rooted in caste and a commitment to destroying hinduism is not one to never celebrate a fall harvest festival, which most of the religious holidays this month are. many of these festivals are synthesizing and appropriating preexisting community traditions and the hindutva project is trying to standardise them into an upper caste form – local dalit communities will have different and meaningful practices and traditions. i recommend studying nastika, shaivite, bhakti, buddhist, sikh and all sorts of anti caste traditions from the subcontinent – resisting caste is hundreds of years old and you will find something worthwhile and joyful. you will find rituals to revive and reinvent and remix. this does not have to be a lonely path! guilt does not seem productive, your emotions do not your contribution to a movement make. read and watch movies w your friends and join up with your local amdekarites!

all that said. maybe im the wrong person to answer these questions. im godless and faithless. the clean honesty of it appeals to me. many many people lose their faith across the world, everyday. they thrive. when the old world dies and the new one is born, there is always hurt and longing and pain. it is a worthwhile struggle and you will wonder after how you lived any other way tbh.

[alephskoteinos]

I noticed something very interesting in Pan's Daughter: The Magical World of Rosaleen Norton last night, taken from her notes.

Since I had read about Anti-Cosmic Satanism fairly recently, feels like they and Norton almost approach an idea about the opposition of Self to ego in different ways. Both Norton and the Anti-Cosmic Satanists seem to pose a Self as something opposed to "the ego" ("minor" or "false self" identified with ordinary social consciousness), and both identify "the Self" with the unconscious. The difference between them is obviously the cosmos. Norton is not anti-cosmic. Her paganism is centered around a creative cosmos and "the Self" is linked to that. Anti-Cosmic Satanists, by contrast, reject the cosmos, and treat "the Self" as something like an essence, or "divine spark" situated outside the cosmos completely. Either way it seems like there's also different ways of treating a throughline familiar to Hindu metaphysics, which also forms a distinction between "the Self" and "the ego", though I doubt most schools of Hinduism regarded "the Self" as a wild or dark unconscious.

That Norton identifies the goat as a symbol of creative energy also brings us back to Crowley's representation of The Devil and the goat, as representing a wild, "blind", "unscrupulous" creativity, the kind of creative chaos of the sun and Yaldabaoth.

You can see me discuss that idea in more depth here:

No surprise that Norton was prepared to embrace a sort of quasi-Satanic stance in defense of her pagan worship of Pan. In her words:

If Pan is the Devil, then I am indeed a Devil worshipper.

Her religious worldview, with its pantheism at least, is definitely not the stuff of how most people interpret the Left Hand Path, whose modern definition seems to be dominated by the premises of Setian philosophy, but it also hints at a very different way to interpret it. Actually, given her emphasis on making the soul a part of the macrocosmic and unconscious creativity of nature, you might argue there is much about Georges Bataille's philosophy that is radically simplified in her worldview, and that makes things interesting.

Also the fact that both Norton and Ben Kadosh embrace Pan as their god of the ultimate reality of nature, and arguably accept a linkage between Pan and the Devil, might bring her witchcraft in proximity with some forms of Satanism.

[djuvlipen]

Hey sorry pretty random question.

You must have seen some Indians try to make efforts in forming solidarity with Roma in Europe. I remember reblogging one such post from you and being really happy about it. But I read more about it recently. And it seems to be meddled with nationalist politics-

https://thewire.in/diplomacy/the-modi-government-and-rss-are-keen-to-claim-the-roma-as-indians-and-hindus

I also feel that saying Romani people are actually just Indian diaspora (even though the economic gap is huge between NRIs and Roma in Europe and therefore will not prove useful to lump you in with them) on "foreign lands" gives Europeans more leverage to add xenophobic styled framework to their anti Roma racism. But obviously this is more of your concern than ours and you probably have read more. So what are your opinions?

Hi!

Yup, I partially agree with you. I don't know much about Indian politics but a lot of the times I've looked into it I've been left with a feeling that this might be a nationalistic move.

I am saying 'partially' because I do think that a lot of Indian-Romani relations are genuinely formed out of solidarity. For example, the Romani flag looks like this:

It was adopted at the first Romani World Congress, in 1971; the red wheel is explicitly based on the Ashoka Chakra.

There are Indian scholars that specialized in Romani studies during the 20th century: Weer Rajendra Rishi and Janardhan Singh Pathania, whose learning book on Romani language starts with this:

His book features letters he exchanged with Romani people for the making of his book. On the other hand, it is in my experience very common for Romani people to be interested in India, Indian history and Indian cultures, we are way more open to it than other Europeans. I've also seen a few of the most well-off Romani associations organizing trips to India. All of these are examples of true solidarity to me.

However when it comes to how it's handled in politics I am a bit on edge. I had come across a similar article to the one you sent me, also saying that Modi's External Affairs Minister wants to recognize Roma as part of the Indian diaspora. And because I am not so well-versed in Indian politics I didn't really know what conclusions to draw from this. I remember wondering if those Indian politicians wanted to keep Roma on the side just in case the way Roma are treated becomes relevant in discussions between Indian and European countries, but nothing like this has happened yet. The article you sent me goes into more details though and I can clearly see the nationalist edge in it.

What I've noticed is that some of the Roma who get deep into the Romani-Indian connection can get a little too much intense about it (because we don't have a flag emoji, a lot of Roma use the Indian flag emoji to talk about Romani issues; some Roma will wear Indian clothing or jewellery; some Roma will even call themselves Indian), granted it's not criminal to do any of this, but sometimes it seems like they are getting rid of their identity as Roma to present themselves as Indian and that's weird. Some Roma have also converted to Hinduism to reconnect with India (which is stupid because not all Indians are Hindu) and some also give their opinion on Indian politics, which feels weird. I also heard some Roma saying they hoped we could get Indian citizenship or something lol. I think Indian politicians could realistically get some Roma behind Indian nationalist politics.

As for how it plays into European anti-Roma racism, I have heard of far-right protests in Czech Republic and in Hungary saying we should be deported to India. Some Neo-Nazis support that idea, like this far-right Czech guy:

But I think it's still a fringe idea among the European far-right, most of them don't have one coherent goal on how to treat Roma, a lot will just say we should 'leave the country' (without specifying where should we go) or we should just be shot. I don't think saying Roma are part of the Indian diaspora will give more leverage to European xenophobia because European xenophobia against Roma is already very high; if anything it will transform the way it's expressed but it will not worsen it nor will it alleviate it.

I had talked a bit about some of these issues here!