Kabir suggested that I apologise but for what, exactly? Why should Saffroniate be considered offensive? Own it. I don’t see anything inherently wrong with the idea of Akhand Bharat; the concept of a broader Dharmic civilisation makes eminent sense to me.
Likewise, I don’t understand why questioning caste identities provokes such sensitivity. Again, own it because the more caste is repressed, the more likely it is to resurface.
At heart, I’m a reformist, not a revolutionary. I believe in improving and refining what exists, not erasing it. Cultural features should only be abolished when they are truly harmful or deleterious, not simply because they make us uncomfortable.
Disclaimer: As this post deals with an academic discussion on the Swastika symbol, I have included various images containing Swastika below. If you are repulsed by the symbol or do not like to look at it, please consider yourself warned. Also, for the same reason, this post is NSFW.
Growing up in India, I had developed this habit of drawing symbols of auspiciousness and good luck on my exam answer sheets. I have no recollection of who taught me to do that or when I started doing it but I can clearly remember even during my bachelor studies, I would collect the answer sheet from the invigilator and immediately proceed to draw an ‘ॐ’ (Om), a ‘श्री’ (Shree) and a ‘卐’ (Swastika, albeit with 4 dots in the middle as one would draw in India) at the top of the first sheet of the answer paper. This rather innocent practice wasn’t unique to me. Apparently many other students used to do this until the universities started cracking down on this ‘malpractice’ for ‘displaying symbols of faith on answer sheets’ and ’emotionally appealing to the evaluators’. In a religiously polarized India of the 2010’s, I don’t expect any less ham-handed response from our University VCs. But, personally, what prompted me to stop this practice was my move to Germany for my master’s.
In the first few weeks of the semester, all international students took part in an orientation program at the university. One of the most shocking things I learnt that day was that any public display of Swastika was BANNED in Germany. I was not ignorant of Germany’s sordid past. Watching ‘Schindler’s list’ beamed onto the wall of a dark classroom with my fellow drama club members in high school is one of the most vivid memories I have. I was just 15 then and the movie shocked me to my core. It was one of those instances of loss of innocence in my life when cruelty, inhumanity, Germany, Hitler, Jews and hate took on a whole other meaning in my psyche. In spite of that, discovering Swastika, an omnipresent sign in India that I had grown up seeing everywhere and that which is considered good and auspicious by everyone around me, could be a banned symbol of hate in the country I had just moved to, was another instance of loss of innocence.
Just like me, many Indians who have moved to the west have discovered this in their own way. The subreddit r/AITA (no connection with raitas 😛 ) has quite a few posts from hindus who have been mistaken for a white-supremacist (Oh! The irony!) for displaying Swastikas as a pendant gifted by grandmother, in the form of a rangoli/kolam in their frontyard, a tattoo on the arm they got while in India, having portraits of hindu gods at home, etc. All these instances happened in the US. From my personal experience, I have found the germans to have better awareness about Swastika; it’s use as the Nazi party symbol, a hate symbol of neo-Nazis and also as the auspicious symbol for many asian religions and cultures. This is because of two reasons:
1. The curriculum at schools explore all aspects of Germany’s sordid past with a level of frankness that I can only describe as ‘very German’. The curriculum makes the differentiation between the two symbols very clear as you can see from this children’s website that takes them on a german historical journey of the last 100 years.
2. The germans use two different words for this symbol. The symbol of hate used by Hitler and the neo-Nazis is called ‘Hakenkreuz’ while the auspicious symbol of the orient is called ‘Swastika’. Just the existence of two different words makes it easy to differentiate the meaning of the two symbols.
Funnily enough, even though I lived in Germany for 5+ years, I was not aware of the existence of ‘Hakenkreuz’. I only came to know about it in the past year or so through twitter! It was probably through a thread by True Indology (lost when his account was suspended) that I became aware of the german word ‘Hakenkreuz’ that when translated to english means hooked cross and not Swastika. The problem lies with the current mistranslation of Hakenkreuz in English.
Google translate translates Swastika as Hekenkreuz in German. Notice the possible translations of the word – das Hakenkreuz and die Swastika. Also notice the definition of Swastika in english. It only defines the Hakenkreuz, the symbol used by Hitler.
Instead of translating into hooked cross, it is translated as Swastika, which is clearly wrong. So, why IS it mistranslated to Swastika? Who first translated Hakenkreuz to English as Swastika and how did that translation stick? More importantly, did Hitler adopt the eastern symbol Swastika as the anti-semitic symbol of his political party or did the inspiration come from elsewhere? These were some of the questions that recently led me to write a thread on twitter (you could also read it on the thread reader app here). I will summarize my findings below.
Colonialism and imperialism in the 18th and 19th century CE brought about a great deal of interest in the eastern cultures by the west which gave rise to the field of oriental studies and orientalism. All things east were considered exotic and the ‘popular’ phenomenon of cultural appropriation led to the adoption of various eastern symbols in the west. One among those was the Swastika. It shot up in popularity among the western academicians in the 1880’s and pretty soon entered the pop culture scene as a symbol of good luck, akin to today’s good luck charms like Maneki-neko (Japanese beckoning cat), Chinese fortune cookies or the Irish shamrock.
A report by Thomas Wilson titled ‘THE SWASTIKA, The earliest known symbol, and its migrations; with observations on the migration of certain industries in prehistoric times” for the US National museums in 1894 wonderfully compiled the then existing knowledge of Swastika. It is meticulous and very clearly written with almost no bias from Mr. Wilson. This also happens to be the first recorded instance where an English speaker tried to compile all the crooked cross like symbols and used the umbrella term of Swastika in English. Until then, the word Swastika did not exist in any english dictionary or encyclopedia. He writes in the preface:
An English gentleman, versed in prehistoric archæology, visited me in the summer of 1894, and during our conversation asked if we had the Swastika in America. I answered, “Yes,” and showed him two or three specimens of it. He demanded if we had any literature on the subject. I cited him De Mortillet, De Morgan, and Zmigrodzki, and he said, “No, I mean English or American.” I began a search which proved almost futile, as even the word Swastika did not appear in such works as Worcester’s or Webster’s dictionaries, the Encyclopædic Dictionary, the Encyclopædia Britannica, Johnson’s Universal Cyclopædia, the People’s Cyclopædia, nor Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, his Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, or his Classical Dictionary. I also searched, with the same results, Mollett’s Dictionary of Art and Archæology, Fairholt’s Dictionary of Terms in Art, “L’Art Gothique,” by Gonza, Perrot and Chipiez’s extensive histories of Art in Egypt, in Chaldea and Assyria, and in Phenicia; also “The Cross, Ancient and Modern,” by W. W. Blake, “The History of the Cross,” by John Ashton; and a reprint of a Dutch work by Wildener. In the American Encyclopædia the description is erroneous, while all the Century Dictionary says is, “Same as fylfot,” and “Compare Crux Ansata and Gammadion.” I thereupon concluded that this would be a good subject for presentation to the Smithsonian Institution for “diffusion of knowledge among men.”
In this report, Wilson examined different forms of crosses that had been found all around the world and concluded that Swastika is the most ancient one of them all.
Different cross-like symbols examined by Thomas Wilson in THE SWASTIKA
He complied various definitions of Swastika as recorded by different researchers and it was commonly understood to mean ‘good being’ or ‘good fortune’ in Sanskrit. The symbology was interpreted by different academicians differently. Although mostly everyone agreed that it is an auspicious symbol for the hindus and buddhists, there was no consensus on how to interpret the symbology. He writes,
Many theories have been presented concerning the symbolism of the Swastika, its relation to ancient deities and its representation of certain qualities. In the estimation of certain writers it has been respectively the emblem of Zeus, of Baal, of the sun, of the sun-god, of the sun-chariot of Agni the fire-god, of Indra the rain-god, of the sky, the sky-god, and finally the deity of all deities, the great God, the Maker and Ruler of the Universe. It has also been held to symbolize light or the god of light, of the forked lightning, and of water. It is believed by some to have been the oldest Aryan symbol. In the estimation of others it represents Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, Creator, Preserver, Destroyer. It appears in the footprints of Buddha, engraved upon the solid rock on the mountains of India. It stood for the Jupiter Tonans and Pluvius of the Latins, and the Thor of the Scandinavians. In the latter case it has been considered—erroneously, however—a variety of the Thor hammer. In the opinion of at least one author it had an intimate relation to the Lotus sign of Egypt and Persia. Some authors have attributed a phallic meaning to it. Others have recognized it as representing the generative principle of mankind, making it the symbol of the female. Its appearance on the person of certain goddesses, Artemis, Hera, Demeter, Astarte, and the Chaldean Nana, the leaden goddess from Hissarlik, has caused it to be claimed as a sign of fecundity.
Until then, Swastika, as a symbol was known by different names in different languages because the symbol existed almost everywhere in the world, in Asia, Europe, northern Africa and the Americas. Also in Great Britain. So, what did the English call the symbol? Fylfot. Wilson writes,
In Great Britain the common name given to the Swastika, from Anglo-Saxon times by those who apparently had no knowledge whence it came, or that it came from any other than their own country, was Fylfot, said to have been derived from the Anglo-Saxon fower fot, meaning four-footed, or many-footed.
So, there existed a word for the 卐(crooked cross) symbol in english but only for the 卐 found in and around great britain. Instead of using this word for all crooked crosses in English, Mr. Wilson instead chose to use the word Swastika since he found it to be the most ancient of them all. This was a ham-fisted move because the Indic name swastika corresponded to the 卐 that symbolized auspiciousness which the other crooked crosses did not. Even Wilson admits that by quoting a letter by the famous Indologist Prof. Max Müller,
I do not like the use of the word svastika outside of India. It is a word of Indian origin and has its history and definite meaning in India. * * * The occurrence of such crosses in different parts of the world may or may not point to a common origin, but if they are once called Svastika the vulgus profanum will at once jump to the conclusion that they all come from India, and it will take some time to weed out such prejudice.
So, in 1894, the word Swastika was proposed by Mr. Wilson to denote all crooked crosses in english language and we see that the practice stuck since the use of the word in english language increased since then. So, is this when the German word ‘Hakenkreuz’ started being called as Swastika? Interestingly, no! In fact, the report mentions finding variants of swastika in Germany but mentions no name in German. ‘Hakenkreuz’ was barely used until then and was relegated to 19th century vocabulary books like the Bailey-Fahrenkrüger’s Wörterbuch der englischen Sprache and the Deutsches Wörterbuch von Jacob Grimm und Wilhelm Grimm (yes, they are the Brothers Grimm of Grimm’s fairy tales). So, to answer one of the questions posed above, ‘Hakenkreuz’ wasn’t actually translated into English. By the time germans started using Hakenkreuz as the word for the infamous anti-semitic symbol, the English speaking world had already picked up on the word Swastika and called any crooked cross symbol as such.
So, when and why did the Nazis adopt the Hakenkreuz as their anti-semitic symbol? The reason goes all the way back to Troy, the location of the fabled trojan war (it’s an interesting story, you can read a detailed article here). When a german businessman and amateur archeologist Heinrich Schliemann found the remains of the mythical city of Troy in modern day Turkey in 1871, along with the ruins, he found the 卐 symbol on everything – pieces of pottery, ruins of buildings, marble carvings, etc. Being an amateur archaeologist he did not understand the significance of his find. So, he consulted his orientalist friends – Max Mueller(yes, the same guy who didn’t want to call ‘Swastika’ found outside India as Swastika) and Émile-Louis Burnouf, a leading expert of Sanskrit. Fun fact: Bernouf was also an anti-semite and a propounder of Aryan master race.
Burnouf made a bunch of dubious claims (debunked by Wilson in his monumental report on Swastika) which was covered in Schliemann’s book ‘Troy and its remains‘ and concluded that Suastika (that was the spelling he went with) is an essential symbol of the Aryan race. The popularization of this flawed idea led to its appropriation as the symbol by the German ‘Völkisch‘ national movement gaining steam at the juncture of 19th and 20th century. It was a nationalistic movement which propounded that Germans belong to the Aryan ‘master race’ and hence need to dominate the world. Poetically, the year Burnouf breathed his last, 1907, was also the year when the Swastika was first used as a symbol of Aryan dominance by a secret society called ‘Order of the New Templars’ (Ordo Novi Templi, or ONT) in Austria by Lanz von Liebenfels, an Austrian racialist. So, in early 20th century, as most of the west started embracing Swastika as a ‘cool’ motif, it was also being appropriated secretly by an anti-semitic and racist underground movement becoming a symbol of racial supremacy for various organizations until it was mainstreamed by Hitler in the Nazi flag in 1920.
Flag of the ‘Order of the new Templars’. This was the first instance of Swastika used as a symbol of Aryan dominance in 1907.
What inspired Hitler to choose this symbol for his political party? Was it just the connection to Aryan race or did the inspiration come from elsewhere? The anti-semitism displayed by the Nazis did not arise from a vacuum. Anti-semitism or anti-Judaism has existed in Europe since pre-Christian times but morphed into ‘religious anti-semitism’ due to the early christian belief that jews were collectively responsible for the death of Jesus Christ. This sentiment and the associated conflict intensified after Christianity spread as a state religion in Europe. However, the pseudo-scientific racial theories that became widespread in 19th century Europe threw up an additional strain of ‘racial anti-semitism’ where the basis of discrimination and persecution was the ‘scientific evidence’ that jews belongs to a separate lower ‘non-Aryan’ race. The combination of these two strains of anti-semitism, one historic and one modern, manifested politically in the form of Hitler’s Nazi party.
Professor William Brustein’s book, Roots of hate delves deep into pre-Holocaust anti-semitism in Europe
Adolf Hitler was a complicated man to understand. Forests have been felled to publish books speculating his inspirations and motives. Most scholars however agree that although Hitler distanced himself away from Christianity in his later years, he leaned heavily towards christianity in his early years. His catholic upbringing, his admiration for
The fourth article in this series will focus on why so many in global academia, global establishment, global media, global entertainment, global culture and the global public are so scared of and opposed to eastern philosophy, Swami Vivekananda and Ramakrishna while simultaneously appropriating much of eastern philosophy encoded in new language without attribution.
Part of the attack against eastern philosphy and Hinduttva derives from a hatred of the West and the fact that Western philosophy draws heavily from the east in four periods. Ancient Arya history or more than 3,000 years ago. During exchange from Alexander the Great through the Roman period. During European Enlightenment Classical liberalism [in many ways a derivative of Arya Hindu Chaarvaaka Darshana], and what is now called Post Modernism [which derives from Karl Marx’s study of India]. Much of it derives from many other causes which I am trying to understand.
Note that a stand alone post is planned to discuss the above presentations by Professor Jeffery D. Long, Professor Makarand Paranjape, Professor Anantanand Rambachan, andPprofessor Sharada Sugirtharaja. Brown Cast plans to interview Professor Jeffrey D Long with respect to Sanathana Dharma and Indology. If you have any questions for him, please leave it in the comments.
The below discussion between the San Francisco academic Vamsee Juluri and Hinduism’s great atheist Kushal Mehra discusses the Hinduphobia in global academia:
[Add summary of above video]
In the above video discussion Anjali George discusses why the Indian supreme court has forced the shut down of the ancient Sabarimala temple. Sabaramila is a brain therapy facility where woman and girls send their dysfunctional boys and men to–in order to fix them. To join the program and visit Sabaramila temple boys and men had to practice a very rigorous difficult 40 day regiment. Because most males are stupid fools, their woman and girls would:
gently persuade them to join [who are we kidding, in some cases girls aren’t that gentle and intimidate their men and boys into joining]
help them complete the regiment [in eastern philosophy and Toaism intelligence (medha) is female and males aren’t that bright, which is why they needed the help of their girls and woman]
keep a much more luxurious temple for themselves, a woman’s Sabrimala if you will.
Eastern philosophy is a matriarchal system of the divine feminine. Woman and girls run things. Woman and girls set up a brahmacharya Ayyapa tantra (technology) facility to help improve males. Pre pubescent girls and post menopause females can conduct the 40 day regiment and visit the brain therapy facility too.
However the supreme court of India appears to have mandated that females of child bearing age, pre-pubescent girls and post menopause woman and males need to be able to visit any part of the temple they wish at will, without completing a difficult 40 day sadhana. Naturally India’s females are furious at the Indian supreme court. Many of India’s woman see this as a me too attempt to harass Ayyapa, a celibate young male. Many of India’s females also see this as an attempt to let males be lazy and not complete their 40 day Sadhana. India’s woman are also furious that the global press, global entertainment and global academia are using this incident to demonize eastern philosophy. Which is rich, considering that the east has been feminist for thousands of years before Christ. Indian females who oppose the global “woke” narrative are being demonized as proto Nazis or proto fascists or proto male misogynist supporters of the patriarchy. One eastern female being so demonized is Anjali George. Anjali George defends eastern woman from the post modernist and caucasian intelligentsia (baizuo) critique.
Here is another perspective on Hindutva:
This appears to attribute Hindutva to a backlash against “secularism” where secularism appears to be defined as cultural marxist post modernist woke SJW.
Recently, as is my wont, I was listening to some background chanting while doing work. I find it helps focus the mind and cut out the clutter and distraction of our modern era.
An anonymous, unnamed member of the household walked in to raid the snack cupboard and was rummaging around for a while. Selections made and assembled to satisfaction she turned to me and asked, “papa why do all these chants you listen to start with Om and end with Shanti?”
I thought about it for a moment.
Om, the cosmic sound of creation. When the big bang occurs, what sound is associated with it? That of Om.
Shanti – tranquility, when the universe reaches it’s highest state of entropy, when all molecules vibrate at the same energy, when no more reactions can take place, no work can be done. The end of days is a sea of tranquility.
I’ve found myself drifting further left than I expected this year. Much of that is circumstantial, being involved in local activism in the United States naturally places one within progressive coalitions. Yet even in this frame, my ideological compass is firmly rooted in some admiration for Brahminical continuity and Bharat Mata as civilizational anchor.
At times I speculate on where Bharat truly ends. Is it the Hindu Kush? The Iranian plateau? The Persian world has always seemed to me about 20–30% Indianise; its mythology, musicality, and memory bear the imprint of the Indo-Aryan stream more than the Indo-European one, no matter how insistently modern Iranians lean toward a Westward identification.
This brings me to a provocative thesis I’ve often floated: that Brahmins are the civilisational custodians of the Indian subcontinent, and that their displacement often signals a broader cultural erasure. The tragedy of the Kashmiri Panditsis not merely a community’s trauma, but a warning. Without Brahminical continuity, Vedic frameworks falter. Hinduism in Pakistan and Bangladesh remains vulnerable precisely because it lacks the embedded authority and supervisory function of Brahmin elites to anchor Vedic traditions and calibrate resistance to incessant Islamisation. Continue reading Caste in America
I was speaking with Dr. Lalchand about a number of things, from Anant Ambani’s wildlife project to the recent caste discourse on Brown Pundits. Both, strangely enough, converge around the theme of scrutiny; of who gets to build, who gets to critique, and who sets the rules of engagement.
Let’s start with Vantara. Anant Ambani’s wildlife refuge is coming under sustained criticism. But I ask: why shouldn’t Bharat, arguably the only major civilisation that views animals as divinely inspired, have a world-class zoo or rescue center? If done with sensitivity and vision, this could be a profound expression of India’s Hindu civilisational ethos.
Vantara houses over 200 elephants, 50 bears, 160 tigers, 200 lions, 250 leopards, and 900 crocodiles; albeit imported from across the world into the baking flatlands beside an oil refinery. The scale is staggering. Yes, there are questions: about captive animal welfare, about the case of Pratima the elephant, about transparency. But we should also be able to think of Indian megafauna conservation at global scale especially in a nation where sacred animals are part of dharmic memory.
America had its Gilded Age. The robber barons left behind libraries, parks, and museums. Can’t India do the same? Or do we reflexively dismiss anything built by wealth as vanity? Can there not be a deeper Dharma behind patronage?
I’ve come to realise that it’s often more productive to write full posts than to engage in fragmented comment threads. The richness of thought requires a form that can hold tension, contradiction, and nuance but comments, by design, resist that.
The Upper-Caste Template of South Asian Dharmic Discourse
Take, for example, sbarrkum, who shares personal reflections and images from his life on the common board. While one might raise questions about permissions or boundaries, it’s also important to respect dialectical differences in how people choose to engage. There’s no single valid mode of expression.
That brings me to a broader reflection: how the very structure of discourse in Dharmic South Asia has long been shaped by upper-caste templates; especially under Western influence. Over two centuries, upper castes have Brahmanised, Saffronised, Persianised, and then Westernised themselves, adopting and enforcing norms of discourse, authority, and ‘rationality.’
It has been on my mind that Brown Pundits, for all its liveliness, risks drifting into an echo chamber. The commentariat is our lifeblood: their activity sustains the blog far more than page views alone. And yet, the very strength of that community can also be its blind spot.
I do not want Kabir to end up being the Cassandra of BP, always warning of decline, and being proved right in the end. If we are not careful, we could slide into a right-wing echo chamber where challenging voices fade, and the capacity for deep interrogation, the core of what makes BP unique, is diminished.
Last night Dr. Lalchand & I watched Homebound, India’s submission to the Oscars, at Apple Cinemas in Cambridge, Mass. This sad film follows a Dalit (Chandan Kumar) and a Muslim (Mohammed Shoaib Ali) struggling against the odds during the pandemic, their solidarity fictionalized as a fragile bridge across India’s deepest divides.
On the surface, it is a familiar story: the disenfranchised facing systemic barriers. But what struck me was how privilege itself performed disenfranchisement. Ishaan Khatter, brother to Shahid Kapoor, plays the marginalized Muslim. Janhvi Kapoor, descended from Bollywood royalty, embodies a Dalit woman. Vishal Jethwa, a bright-eyed Gujarati, portrays the Bhojpuri Dalit lead. This is not unique to India; Hollywood, too, casts elites as workers. Yet it raises the question: when poverty is performed rather than lived, is it “Dalit-washing”?
Poverty, Emotion, and Representation
Watching the film, I reflected on poverty’s emotional landscape. For elites, emotions can be expansive, indulgent, aestheticized into art. For the working poor, emotions are often constrained by survival — narrowed into necessity. Homebound tried to humanize its characters, but I wondered whether it romanticized what in practice is a relentless narrowing of possibility.
The West rewards this narrative. Parasite in Korea, Iranian cinema, Slumdog Millionaire — poverty & Global South tribulations as spectacle becomes “poverty porn.” The Guardian gave Homeboundfour stars. Great art often tilts melancholic, yes, but here the melancholia is curated for Western consumption.
Identity, Vectors, and Islamicate Selfhood
More unexpectedly, the film stirred something personal. I realized how much I have vacated my own Islamic identity. It was not traumatic. As a Bahá’í with Persian cultural roots, I found overlap — even comfort — in Hindu traditions. Dalits, in their rapid Hinduization, represent one vector of assimilation; Muslims and scheduled-caste Muslims, often in tension, another. Homebound imagines solidarity, but in life these vectors pull unequally. Continue reading Homebound with Ishaan Khatter
🕌 Reflections on Kabir, Afridi, and the Compact of Coexistence
The recent incident involving Kabir / Bombay Badshah / Honey Singh, and the orchestrated drama around his entrapment has, quite unexpectedly, become a catalyst for deeper discussion on Brown Pundits. While none have chosen to focus on analytics (“2,000 daily visitors”—thank you very much:-), the real story lies in how this drama has exposed, yet again, the deep ideological fissures within South Asian identity; especially in the India-Pakistan-Muslim triad.
Let’s begin by being honest: Brown Pundits, for all its digressions into Sri Lanka, Nepal, or Bangladesh, is still primarily a blog about India and Pakistan, and more crucially, about Indian and Pakistani Muslims. This is a feature, not a bug. The origins of the blog lie in the Sepia Mutiny, a scattered band of intellectually independent thinkers questioning dogma from every direction (which started in 2004 and if we are a “daughter blog” that we means have 20+yrs of intellectual antecedents on the Brownet), and it has now matured into one of the few platforms willing to wrestle with the ideological ambiguities at the heart of the subcontinent.
🧕 Kabir’s Point: Brotherhood, Boundaries, and the Big Choice
Kabir made an astute, if difficult, observation: that he views Indian Muslims as “brothers”, but does not feel the same about Pakistani non-Muslims.
This sounds contradictory until one understands the emotional exhaustion of watching Muslims oscillate between claiming ummah-hood when convenient, and weaponizing liberal values when needed. It’s a cognitive dissonance that creates what I can only call the moral coexistence trap: the idea that Muslims, especially in India, demand maximum accommodation, of their food (their nauseating right to murder Gau Mata on Bharat’s sacred soil itself), Faith, festivals, and foreign affiliations, while rarely extending the same pluralistic courtesy in return.
And then there’s that infamous Shahid Afridi clip, the one where he smashed his television after watching an Aarti, being performed. To many of us, that wasn’t just a cringe-inducing moment of bigotry; it begged a real question: Why do Indian cricketers continue to shake hands with Hinduphobes Hindu-hating men like Afridi and his ilk (the Pakistan cricket team)? At what point does tolerance become indulgence?
🚩 The Compact of Indian Minorities: Understand It or Leave It
