Hindus for Donald Trump

“This is the religion of Aryabhatt, Varahamihir, Kalidas, and Vyasa. Wisdom runs in every vein of Hinduism, beta, every vein. It’s in your blood.” One of my Maths teachers used to tell me this, in an effort to inspire me to get at least one sum right in the tests she would set me. Yesterday, I remembered her effervescent pride at what she used to call the “genetic legacy” of intelligence that Hindus enjoy, by virtue of being descendants of great sages and thinkers. From Kautilya and Chanakya, to a hawan for Donald Trump — go team saffron!

On May 10, 2016, in the middle of a burning, summery day in Delhi, 10 members of a group that calls itself Hindu Sena decided to conduct a puja for American presidential candidate Donald Trump, praying for his success. Uncaring of the fact that they would probably be turfed out of an actual Trump rally or the minor detail that Trump has something of a prickly spot for brown-toned people in general, the Hindu Sena has picked Trump as their champion. Back in February, there was a Photoshopped image circulating on Whatsapp, that showed Trump sitting on a lotus that had red, white and blue petals, his fingers doing a yoga mudra.

In India, however, satire doesn’t stand a chance against what actually happens here. We’ll see your Photoshop and raise you an actual photograph in which a beaming, moustachioed brown gent is smearing vermillion on a photo of Trump.

The silver lining here is, whatever the results of the American presidential elections, Hindus can take credit for it. If Trump loses, America can thank the Hindu pantheon — imagine that puja. Maybe @USAHindus4Trump can book Madison Square Garden — and if he wins, Trump can thank the Hindu Sena.

Hindu Sena’s Vishnu Gupta told Newslaundry that he believed Trump was mankind’s only hope against Islamic terrorism (another comment that made me remember my old Maths teacher fondly). Even though he wasn’t entirely unfuzzy on how Trump was going to do this, he was confident that Trump had the answers. What this indicates — aside from Gupta’s colossal stupidity — is how little news the leader of Hindu Sena encounters and how the internet is a growing influence in India despite the fact that the bulk of the country doesn’t have access to it.

While Trump has starred in mainstream media’s news reports all over the world, the real publicity for both his campaign and his person was online. Memes, blogs, gifs, video clips, YouTube channels — these have been the foot soldiers of Trump’s promotional army. It helps that we haven’t had a more glorious ambassador for the foot-in-mouth disease than Donald Trump in decades. He makes Prince Philip seem like a smooth operator and because Trump is largely incoherent, it’s easy to pick a snippet out of a Trump rally or interview. Whatever the duration of the clip, it will make no sense because Trump is basically like Shin Chan, only with a combover and xenophobia.

The beauty of these circulating nuggets is that unlike television news, they come without commentary. What you see in a news report comes with a reporter or anchor providing a context that should help you understand, for instance, why Trump wanting to do away with H-1B visas is a bad idea. In contrast, the little clip or image that’s forwarded to you on Whatsapp or pops up on Facebook usually stands on its own. It falls upon the viewer to interpret what they’re seeing. If they don’t have a sense of the socio-political context (or basic intelligence, for that matter), then one hipster’s ironic Trump meme could be a Right-winger’s puja material. To misquote Beyoncé, he liked it, so he put a tika on it.

The good news for Hindus is that with more media in attendance than Hindu Sena members, Gupta’s outfit is as fringe as actress Sadhana’s legendary hairstyle. While Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric may actually have charmed him, chances are that Gupta picked Trump as a puja candidate because he figured it would get the Hindu Sena a little publicity, which it did. However, if there’s one lesson that Trump’s journey in American politics offers, then it is to not discount the fringe element, no matter how crazy it sounds. Trump, with all his lunacy, has tapped into a paranoia that evidently has a vast cross-section of America in its grip. It’s an anxiety about losing white privilege that’s been subtly nurtured by both news media and pop culture that has shown other races as non-American.

On their own, the Hindu Sena may well be a small group of jokers, but the number of fringe elements within the Hindu majority that make absurd statements seem to be steadily growing. From online sites like hindujagruti.org to offline entities like the once-banned Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the killers of rationalist scholar MM Kalburgi, their footprints are becoming noticeably larger. Considering how suspicious we are of radicalised Muslims today, it’s curious that the radicalisation within Hinduism and its mushrooming fringe elements — some of whom are openly pro-violence — are not taken more seriously. Hindu Sena organising a hawan for Donald Trump is definitely a joke, but is Gupta’s conviction that all Muslims are terrorists equally laughable? While he may have picked Trump for his puja as a publicity ploy, but does Gupta’s choice also hint at a certain frustration with leaders at home? Is Gupta looking to America because he feels India’s politicians are failing him? Under the chants, smoke and tinsel sparkle of the puja for Trump, there lurks a darker frustration that isn’t exclusive to Hindu Sena. It may not even be exclusive to the Hindu Right, though this motley crew has a rather special way of expressing it.

Whether it’s because they have platforms thanks to the profusion of news channels and online publications or because they’re actually more in number or because we have ministers like Dr Mahesh Sharma, we hear opinions from the Hindu Right that range from ridiculous to rabid. There’s almost a frenzy to establish the image of an aggressive, triumphant Hinduism that decimated other religions, seeing them as opposition. This is in stark opposition to the more syncretic reputation that Hinduism has enjoyed for a long time. Most of us know of a Hinduism that sneaks in elements from tribal cultures and other religions like Jainism, and appropriates them subtly; a Hinduism that’s colonised cultures with its stories, rather than armies. A Hinduism that has survived millennia because of its shape-shifting myths rather than its rituals.

But that isn’t the Hinduism that the fringes relate to, it seems. With religion being a social construct, perhaps Hinduism will mutate and transform into the faith that’s preached by the Hindu Right. Perhaps it already has?