One thing that I hate particularly about benevolent racism is the orientalist treatment religions like Buddhism and Hinduism get, as if our philosophy and cultural practices mean that we can do no wrong and our free from criticism. Despite popular western narrative the religious institutions of Buddhism and Hinduism are not the peace-loving, enlightened faiths that we are often presented as.
Buddhism has been used to as an excuse to commit two genocides across South Asia (against the Rohingya people in Myanmar and against Tamil, Hindu, Muslim and Christian communities in Sri Lanka). I cannot give you a specific number on the number of religious minorities and caste oppressed people who have been murdered in the name of Hindu supremacy across India because it ranges in millions of billions throughout south Asian history.
And yet white people continue to travel to South Asia to ‘find themselves’ and go back home to their privileged lives having learned about karma and dharma and reincarnation cycles and speaking about the inherent superiority of south Asian philosophy knowledge while ignoring the ways that these ideologies have been used to harm the oppressed within south Asian communities, on the subcontinent or within the diaspora.
And I’m saying this because I am religious. I know I am Hindu and that I benefit from many of the systems that sustain Hinduism (like caste for example) while actively being harmed by Hindu ideology in other ways (such as my queer and trans identities) and we have got to acknowledge the harm religion does as we practice our faith to be better allies to those who most suffer from these systems. Like, religion is violent because it is formed and spread by humans and while I try to believe that most people will choose kindness because the other option is frankly fucking horrifying, I know that this is quite naive and that humans are violent. We will oppress to claw any bit of power we can gather. We cannot let faith blind us as we work together to free all oppressed peoples. We just can’t. Take my hand. Let’s do the work together.
