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Indophobia
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Indophobia is essentially the opposite of Indomania: It often refers as antipathy towards of Indian concepts, in particular Hindu culture, especially in the Western world. It can also extend to include phobias and prejudices against other people from the Indian Subcontinent, such as Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Sri Lankans.
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Trautmann (1997) argues that British Indophobia was constructed by Evangelicalism and Utilitarianism[citation needed] and its chief architects were Charles Grant and James Mill.
The words of first Mughal emperor Babur which he wrote in the Bāburnāma mirror the despise with which India and its people were seen by others:
| “ | Hindustan is a place of little charm. There is no beauty in its people, no graceful social intercourse, no poetic talent or understanding, no etiquette, nobility or manliness. The arts and crafts have no harmony or symmetry. There are no good horses, meat, grapes, melons or other fruit. There is no ice, cold water, good food or bread in the markets. There are no baths and no madrasas. There are no candles, torches or candlesticks"[1]. | ” |
By the late 19th century, fear had already begun in North America over Chinese immigration supplying cheap labor to lay railroad tracks, mostly in California and elsewhere in the West Coast. In xenophobic jargon common in the day, ordinary workers, newspapers, and politicians uniformly opposed this "Yellow Peril". The common cause to eradicate Asians from the workforce gave rise to the Asiatic Exclusion League. When the fledging Indian community of mostly Punjabi Sikhs settled in California, the xenophobia expanded to combat not only the East Asian Yellow Peril, but now the immigrants from British India, the Turban Tide, equally referred to as the Hindoo Invasion (sic). Although "Hindu" is the correct spelling (and Sikhs do not identify themselves as Hindus), the spelling "Hindoo" was popular at the time[2][3][4].
Claims of Indophobic Bias in South Asian Studies have often been made. Such real or perceived bias can imply old-fashioned and prejudiced outsider interpretations of Eastern cultures and peoples:
- Biased interpretation of Indian history. For example James Mill's History of India downplays Indian history.[5]
- One-sided, unfair, exaggerated or exclusively negative presentation of some aspects of Hinduism or Indian culture. For example exaggerations or misrepresentations about Hindu theology, misrepresentations about the status of women in Hinduism, etc.
- Claims that the Indological scholarship of Indians themselves is not scientific or that it is motivated by political motives, i.e. by Marxist, nationalist, Hindu, Muslim, Dravidian separatist or other motives.
Historians have noted that during the British Empire "evangelical influence drove British policy down a path that tended to minimize and denigrate the accomplishments of Indian civilization and to position itself as the negation of the earlier British Indomania that was nourished by belief in Indian wisdom."[6]
In Charles Grant highly influential "Observations on the ...Asiatic subjects of Great Britain" (1796),[7] Grant criticized the Orientalists for being too respectful to Indian culture and religion. His work tried to determine the Hindu's "true place in the moral scale", and he alleged that the Hindus are "a people exceedingly depraved".
Lord Macaulay, who introduced English education into India, claimed: "I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia." [8] He wrote that Arabic and Sanskrit works on medecine contain "medical doctrines which would disgrace an English Farrier - Astronomy, which would move laughter in girls at an English boarding school - History, abounding with kings thirty feet high, and reigns thirty thousand years long - and Geography made up of seas of treacle and seas of butter".[9] He advocated to create a middle Anglicised class that was "Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect".[10] This class of anglicized Indians would then in turn anglicize the Indian people.
One of the most influential historians of India during the British Empire, James Mill was criticized for being prejudiced against Hindus. His work "History of British India" (1817) may be the "single most important source of British Indophobia and hostility to Orientalism".[11] The Indologist H.H. Wilson wrote that the tendency of Mill's work is "evil".[12] Mill claimed that both Indians and Chinese people are cowardly, unfeeling and mendacious. Both Mill and Grant attacked Orientalist scholarship that was too respectful of Indian culture: "It was unfortunate that a mind so pure, so warm in the pursuit of truth, and so devoted to oriental learning, as that of Sir William Jones, should have adopted the hypothesis of a high state of civilization in the principal countries of Asia."[13] Karl Marx's writings were also prejudiced against Indians. [1]
However, the Indologists were also often under pressure from missionary and colonial interest groups, and were frequently criticized by them.
Contemporary Indophobia has risen in the western world, particularly the United States, on account of the rise of the Indian American community and the increase in offshoring of white-collar jobs to India by American multinational corporations. Societal prejudices against South Asians in the west manifest through isolated instances of intimidation and harassment, such as the case of the Dotbusters street gang.
Other countries with persistent prejudice against Indian Nationals include Pakistan, on account of the Indo-Pakistan rivalry since the Partition of India. Prejudices against Pakistani nationals exist in Indian society as well.
With the rise of Islamic terrorism and, following the September 11, 2001 attacks, Indian nationals in the United States, frequently misidentified as middle-easterners, have become collateral victims of anti-Arabism.
In Malaysia, the Ketuanan Melayu Malay-supremacist movement also expresses hostility to Indian immigrants to Malaysia.
- Thomas R. Trautmann, Aryans and British India, University of California Press (1997), ISBN 0-520-20546-4, chapter 4: British Indophobia
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- Idi Amin & indophobia: [10]
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