Please Contribute Here to help us Grow!
Last week was quite eventful for the Kiwi-Hindu demographic, with the announced launch of yet another Hindu organisation in Aotearoa New Zealand. Before asking where things get better on the ground for Kiwi-Hindus, my expectation would be what has worked and has not worked for the current existing frameworks for the community.
Advertisement
Advertisement
I would have to concur with observations about Kiwi-Hindus being extra-vulnerable in the contemporary geopolitical climate, with reports of Hindus globally having a slew of unprovoked targeted hate experiences. We urgently need a publicly focused commentary about *Swayambodha* and *Shatrubodha* , at least from a Kiwi-Hindu perspective.
Advertisement
As a practising Hindu, my priority is Vedic Hinduism, and Vedic Hinduism alone. I am proud of its antiquity, my Gotram/whakapapa/genealogy, and the accumulated wisdom identified with our Pravara/Tūpuna/ancestry, which we ought to preserve and pass down for our current and future generations. Our connections to land, family-bonding, dietary choices etc, are unapologetically anthropologic, and define how we interact with Hindus and non-Hindus alike, and how these interactions arise into conversations and experiences which get crystallised into social policy and legislation. For a civilisation which gave humankind Pañcatantra, Arthashastra, Tirukkuṟaḷ, getting reduced to sycophantic captive vote-banks for unscrupulous political parties is a sign of decay. I would encourage Kiwi-Hindu organisations to have a hard rethink on our long-term non-partisan objectives as a community. With past Kiwi-Hindu politicians heading a Hindu Board, and public figures with Hindu-sounding names set to enter Parliament later this year, this triggered a dogwhistle for renewed attacks on Kiwi-Hindus communities, with individuals being targeted for exclusively attending Hindu events, but not targeted for attending other religious/cultural/ethnic events. The asymmetry is with our expectations on how we build an effective soft advocacy as a community, representative of everyday Kiwi-Hindus, not just the influential ones, including leveraging Hindu congregational spaces to be consciously polemic.
Advertisement
Hindus need to understand that targeted hate from non-Hindus is not just colourism. It’s coming from malicious sources, played into by well-intentioned people, whose entire premise of Hinduphobia comes from *exactly* what Hindus are (justifiably) proud of : the longest unbroken strain of human civilisational consciousness and millennia-old, accumulated wisdom. I wish for the Kiwi-Hindu community to comprehend this Hinduphobic behaviour might make them think that they will be rewarded in their afterlife when they are assaulting/attacking members perceived as members of the Kiwi-Hindu community, partly because their warped ideologies claim that idol worshipping polytheists are possessed by demons, and hence their mindset and actions are deemed justified in their heads. These actions clearly go against expectations of social cohesion in a modern, contemporary Kiwi society, of which Hindus are proud members serving in various productive capacities. Quite remarkably, we are proud New Zealanders, and I am grateful for our Te-Tiriti based frameworks in guaranteeing us equal rights as individuals and a community, where our cultural and social practices and choices are cherished and valued by the vast majority of our fellow New Zealanders.
Advertisement
More than the relentless attacks, I am appalled by the elitist delusive silence of Kiwi-Hindu voices, which assume that good careers will fix Hinduphobia. If Chandrayaan gets slandered as a upper-caste Hindu mission, I can’t fathom where does it stop. For those “Hindu” women justifying Hinduphobia as “attacking patriarchy” , they ought to know that they are playing into a vicous narrative which justified targeted violent extremism against cisgendered Hindu men in Kashmir, India in April 2025.
Advertisement
Part of the narrative of Shatrubodha is to remind Hindus on what we are NOT, and that’s a clarion call to unite Kiwi-Hindus, while cherishing our valued nuances, as part of the bigger picture of a shared objective. I am not asking them to treat our fellow Kiwis differently.
Advertisement
I am imploring my fellow Kiwi-Hindus to value our exceptionalism as part of the wider collective well-being of Kiwi-Hindus in mainstream Aotearoa. And none of us have the luxury of Caksulajja-inspired silence. -by CVR Shastri, C V R Shastry is a Kiwi-Hindu residing in Pokapū Tāone o Tāmaki Makaurau / Auckland Central.
Advertisement