Hinduphobia Exists, But Pakistan Was Not Born from It

I was riffling through the comments and my jaw dropped when Kabir claimed Hinduphobia doesn’t exist. It struck me as both historically and emotionally tone-deaf. I didn’t respond at the time, but I’ve been reflecting on it since.

Let me say upfront: Hinduphobia does exist. It may not always manifest in overt violence or systemic persecution (at least not today, and not in most places globally), but it does appear in more insidious, ideological forms; especially in academic and diasporic discourse.

Take, for instance, the backlash against H1B visa recipients. Much of that criticism is coded; targeting upper-caste Indians, especially Hindus, who are the primary beneficiaries of this brain-drain dynamic. It’s not just about class or meritocracy; there’s an unspoken discomfort with their presence and success, often couched in progressive rhetoric.

On the intellectual front, academics like Audrey Truschke and others within the left-liberal Western consensus have regularly challenged or dismissed Hindu identity altogether; reducing it to political nationalism or caste oppression. This refusal to acknowledge Hinduism as a living, plural, and spiritual tradition creates an environment where Hindu self-articulation is delegitimized. That too is a form of Hinduphobia.

Now, is this Hinduphobia the same as the systemic anti-Muslim, anti-Black, or anti-immigrant hatred we see elsewhere? No. Hinduphobia today is more dismissive than violent, more erasure than exclusion, but it is real and it needs to be acknowledged.

Pakistan Was Not Born from Hinduphobia

That said, I do not believe Pakistan was born out of Hinduphobia.

There’s a tendency to project today’s communal flashpoints retroactively onto the Partition era. But the creation of Pakistan wasn’t, in essence, about hatred of Hinduism. It was about a Muslim quest for political and cultural self-determination; a reaction to modernity, colonial collapse, and fears of marginalization in a Hindu-majority democratic state.

Were there Hindu symbols and anxieties involved in the making of Muslim identity? Of course. But many elements of Muslim culture; particularly Islamic iconoclasm, were not responses to Hinduism. They were extensions of a broader monotheistic worldview. The story of the Prophet Muhammad destroying 365 idols in the Kaaba, for instance, is not anti-Hindu; it is anti-idolatry as a theological act. That tension between image-based and iconoclastic traditions is as old as religion itself.

So while Pakistan’s ideological orientation may have hardened over time in opposition to Indian nationalism (often Hindu-coded), its founding wasn’t a straightforward case of Hinduphobia. It was more complex, rooted in colonial structures and Muslim anxieties about sovereignty and representation.

The Fluidity of Hinduism (and Its Strength)

Another point: Hinduism’s fluidity is often misunderstood. Unlike Islam or Christianity, which revolve around fixed scriptures and unified doctrines, Hinduism is a dialectic: a living negotiation between Vedic philosophy, Brahmanical frameworks, and local, indigenous traditions.

Indeed, the rise of deities like Shiva and Vishnu over older Vedic gods like Indra shows that the Aryan migration/integration was not a simple domination, but a process of synthesis and preservation. The Brahmin, particularly those from the Kuru region, played a vital role in shaping and preserving this civilizational continuity. They didn’t erase local traditions; they absorbed and theorized them.

This cultural plasticity is why Hindu identity survives; despite colonialism, Islamization, and modernity. It adapts without dissolving.

Even genetically, the subcontinent reflects this unity through the interweaving of ANI and ASI ancestry. The Elamo-Dravidian hypothesis, which suggests migration from the Iranian plateau into South Asia, only deepens this sense of civilizational interconnectedness, rather than fragmenting it.

The Comparison with the Persian Gulf

It’s tempting to compare India with Persian Gulf states like the UAE or Qatar; their wealth, their clarity of identity, their strong central governments. But these states are small, rentier economies sitting on vast oil reserves, with tightly controlled populations. India, by contrast, is a churning, pluralistic democracy; more comparable to a continent than a country.

Still, I do wonder: Did India gain independence the wrong way? Was the Congress-led handover too abrupt, too elite-driven? Would a more prolonged, structured transition, like Hong Kong’s, have served it better? Or should it have come through fire, like Bhagat Singh envisioned?

History doesn’t allow redos, of course. But these questions are worth asking; especially as India continues to navigate its identity in a multipolar world.

Conclusion

So no, Kabir; Hinduphobia may not be visible in the same way as Islamophobia or anti-Semitism, but it does exist. And while Pakistan wasn’t founded on Hinduphobia, Hindu identity has long been misunderstood, denied, or reduced in global discourse; both within and outside South Asia.

We owe it to ourselves to speak clearly, without hysteria, and with nuance.

Thank you to the comment board; even when things got heated, the depth of conversation made me think harder. And that’s always worth it.

Here is your addendum, fully integrated into your previous tone and style, maintaining George Orwell’s six rules for writing while preserving every idea and allowing for long-form clarity:

Addendum: The Power and Paradox of a Pan-Hindu State

There’s one more point I want to reflect on; something that often goes unspoken, but is foundational to this entire debate around Hinduphobia and Hindu identity.

India is, in many ways, the only pan-Hindu state. Over 95% of the world’s Hindu population lives within one political entity. That is extraordinary. No comparable global population, not Black people, not Latinos, not Muslims, lives with that kind of geographical consolidation or political concentration.

Even China, as a civilizational state (albeit with 5 nationalities), has to balance ethnic dissonance in Xinjiang and Tibet. Russia, with its Slavic core, has struggled mightily with Ukraine, another Slavic-majority state, precisely because shared ethnicity and culture don’t always mean shared sovereignty.

But in India’s case, despite being only ~80% Hindu, the national and civilizational identity is undeniably Hindu at its core; if not in law, then certainly in cultural tempo and historical memory. India is a post-colonial superstructure built on a pre-colonial civilizational chassis. That chassis is Hindu; fluid, plural, adaptive, syncretic, enduring.

And it is precisely because India is the natural home of global Hinduism, culturally and demographically, that Hinduphobia doesn’t express itself in the same violent register as, say, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, or anti-Latinx sentiment in the West. When a civilization has a homeland, especially one as large, populous, and powerful as India, it has a center of gravity. That doesn’t erase bigotry or bias, but it does insulate identity in a profound way.

What of Anti-Semitism, Then?

This makes me think about the Jewish experience, often held up, rightly, as the archetype of global persecution. Anti-Semitism is the original sin of modern hate, and it continues to mutate across centuries and geographies.

But has the creation of Israel resolved it? I don’t know. On the one hand, we now live in a world where 30–35% of global Jewry lives in Israel, and another 30–35% lives in the United States, the world’s most powerful superstate. The rest are largely concentrated in other Western countries. This is a historically unprecedented moment of Jewish security and sovereignty.

And yet, Israel remains embattled; morally, politically, and militarily. Diaspora Jews are once again confronting old hatreds in new forms, often from both the far right and the progressive left. So one has to ask: Has power solved identity-based hatred, or simply transformed its battlefield?

That’s not a question I want to answer here. This isn’t Persian Pundits, after all. And I have deeply conflicted views on the Israel–Palestine question. I believe unequivocally that all life is sacred, and I reject the ongoing genocidal violence in Gaza. At the same time, I hold out hope, perhaps naively, for a peaceful, confederated Levantine future: a civic state where both Israeli Jewish and Palestinian Arab identities can coexist, not as enemies, but as partners in a shared homeland.

That is a conversation for another post; one that would require time, nuance, and space to breathe.

Closing Thought

For now, I only want to say this: India’s civilizational success as a pan-Hindu state is not accidental. It is the result of millennia of cultural memory, adaptation, and the ability to absorb and synthesize contradiction. It is not perfect, but it is real. And it must be named, understood, and respected; especially in a global discourse that still struggles to grant Hindus the dignity of their own narrative.

Let’s begin there.