The First Hindu Liberation Workshop
We had our first-ever Hindu liberation workshop! Azi Khalili, the International Liberation Reference Person for South, Central, and West Asian-Heritage People, led it as our ally. The workshop was held in Massachusetts, USA, this past July, and there were twelve of us.
Azi began with a big picture. Hinduism is a very old set of practices, traditions, and beliefs that grew out of people’s need for re-emergent thinking. And right now, in RC, we are at the beginning of our liberation work.
She said that RC is not a Judeo-Christian organization. Re-emergence and rationality belong to all of us, regardless of our religious heritage or culture. She said that those of us who are not Judeo-Christian often function on the periphery of the RC organization. Particularly within Christian-dominated societies, we have been forced to assimilate, and we do a lot of translating on our own to be able to use RC.
Working on our liberation allows us to contradict internalized oppression, connect more with each other, better understand the “wallpaper” of our early distress [how our early distress seems like the wallpaper on the wall], and more fully have our minds. It also provides a strong foundation for discharging on our oppressor roles as Hindus and for working toward the elimination of caste.
There are so many ways to be Hindu. Those of us at the workshop came from many different ethnicities, regions, and language backgrounds. Azi reminded us that we are all the right Hindu—regardless of how or if we practice, or where we grew up. Any message that says we are not enough of a Hindu, or the right kind of Hindu, is a message of oppression. (Even if we don’t believe in Hinduism, we’ve internalized that message, because it’s been in our family for thousands of years.) This was not a workshop on being a better Hindu!
We can put everything about Hinduism under the light of discharge—not simply accept it as rational or as part of benign reality. There are practices that speak to benign reality and practices that are oppressive, and we get to discharge on all of them.
Caste liberation is a key piece of Hindu liberation. The caste system is an oppressive, irrational structure within Hinduism in India as well as in other religions and areas of South Asia. All South Asian-heritage people need to discharge on it, because it runs so deep and wide and will require all of us to eliminate it!
Azi split us into two groups: those with Brahmin caste [highest caste] heritage and those without. All of us Hindus play an oppressor role toward those with Dalit [lowest-class] heritage. Hindus with Brahmin heritage play an oppressor role toward Hindus without Brahmin heritage.
I was surprised how at home I felt at the workshop. A few of us remarked that we could see pieces of our own distresses and experiences in every person’s sessions and comments. For a long time, I had rejected my Hindu heritage, because of the oppressor role Hindus play as part of the state of India. I had been scared and sad about how Hindu identity had been used to justify oppression. At the same time, because of the racism I faced growing up as a non-Christian with Indian heritage, my earliest memories of connection are intertwined with my Hindu heritage and community.
A friend told me that she doesn’t identify as Hindu because she equates it with the genocide of Sikhs in Delhi (India), where she grew up in the 1980s. Her father would give rides to neighbors, pretending to be their husband or father when they were interrogated at checkpoints, because they would have been killed if they had stayed at home. Their houses had been marked with a symbol by mobs who were targeting them—mobs who proudly proclaimed being Hindu.
For me, Hinduism meant Sunday poojas (services) with aunties and uncles, many of whom were atheist or agnostic. We would gather and question passages in the Gita, a sacred text within Hinduism. The adults would say that humans had written the text and that the stories were metaphors for how to live with integrity. I would be encouraged to question and critique the messages and think about how they could apply to my daily life.
In my small community, there were families of different religions—Muslim, Jain, Sikh, Christian, and Hindu. The biggest message I received was that Hinduism meant being in loving community. I know there were other messages that I received unawarely—some of them thoughtful and others oppressive. It’s important that I get to discharge on all of them.
Hinduism encompasses many different experiences. Getting to share all our experiences as Hindus is a step toward understanding our liberation work. One of my greatest hopes is to build a home that can hold the reality of my friend’s experience, my own experience, and the experience of all others with Hindu heritage—toward the liberation of us all. I have dedicated my life to eliminating oppression, and I will not settle for anything less!
Los Angeles, California, USA
Reprinted from the RC e-mail discussion lists for RC
Community members and for leaders of South,
Central, and West Asian-heritage people