Brahmin Genocide? A Review

It is difficult to predict when continuous demonization, negative caricaturing, and public abuse of a community will cross the line that separates mere prejudice from calls for genocidal action.

For the Jews, anti-Semitism took various forms over centuries. It started with small-scale, localized pogroms in various geographies and culminated in Hitler’s gas chambers during the Second World War.

One cannot, therefore, predict that there will be a Brahmin genocide in our lifetime or even sometime in the second half of the twenty-first century.

But you would be a fool to believe that the case for such terrible violence is not being built steadily in several parts of the country, or in academia and media institutions abroad.

When the son of a sitting chief minister can call for the eradication of Sanatana Dharma, a.k.a. Hinduism, and liken it to dengue or malaria, and a fellow party-man can raise the ante by equating Hinduism with HIV or leprosy, we must acknowledge that we are not far from creating the conditions for a genocidal attack on Brahmins in particular and Hindus in general.

Even “secular” Congressmen like the son of a former finance minister or the son of a Congress president, can continue to egg them on.

If you think that talk of any genocide of the Hindu priestly class is just hyperbole, you need only check what happened to the Pandits in Kashmir Valley in the late 1980s, or how St Francis Xavier heaped genocidal misery on Goa’s Hindus in the sixteenth-century, or how Brahmins were slaughtered in Maharashtra after the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948 by Nathuram Godse.

If you are still not convinced that we are close to this point where things get ugly, you can do no better than read Mahalingam Balaji’s book, Brahmin Genocide: The Precursor to Hindu Extinction.

Balaji, a Vedic scholar who has worked in leadership positions in the corporate world, and who writes under the pen name Asi, documents the origins, development, and current Brahmophobia in the political and academic spheres.

Brahmophobia can quickly be converted into Hinduphobia, as we saw in last year’s conference in the US on “Dismantling Global Hindutva”, which reportedly had the backing of 40 universities.

The simple and easy way to attack Hinduism is to attack Brahmins and Hindutva, without attempting to define either.

Asi makes a strong case about the probability of a Brahmin genocide, which will have consequences for the survival of Hinduism itself in the only country where it has demographic strength.

It is a wake-up call to Brahmins who are currently blissfully unaware of the dangers that await them, and some of whom think they are being “progressive” by validating the idea of a tyrannical “Brahminical” system of caste-based oppression.

The book starts with a fictional nightmare in which a Silicon Valley employee is led to his execution along with four others, the only connecting thread between them being a caste certificate that labels them as “Hindu, Brahmin”.

While the fiction is obviously an extreme imaginative extrapolation from current reality, the author is clear that regardless of whether the Silicon Valley person considers himself a Brahmin or an atheist, he has no option of fleeing this battlefield of hatred and violence.

Asi sees Brahmophobia as a civilizational battle and hopes that the book will help readers understand who the enemies of Hindus are, what their techniques of “othering” are, and how this could all play out if we do not try to understand what is at stake here.

Asi’s book is divided into five broad parts, apart from the fictional prologue and a 10-point battle plan for Hindus to defend themselves from being gradually eviscerated.

The first part deals with the phenomenon of Brahmophobia and Hinduphobia, and how Brahmin hate developed during the period of colonial rule, when Brahmins were thought of as an impediment to missionary conversion strategies.

From this, we have now moved on to hate speech and Brahmophobia in academia and parts of mainstream media.

The second part deals with the manifestations of Brahmophobia, and how Brahmin hatred is generated by misquoting or selectively quoting from the scriptures, often using Ambedkarite and Periyarist critiques of Hinduism to generate hatred against Brahmins.

These techniques include the invention of false historical narratives (Chola King Raja Raja Chola is accused by Brahmophobes of being generous to Brahmins at the cost of the poor), or attributing casteist motives to freedom-fighters who may have been Brahmin.

Apparently, the British were the only protection the Dalits had against Brahmin oppression.

Brahmin hate has now become so common that it is no longer considered hate speech.

Earlier this year, when a bench headed by justice K M Joseph (now retired) was hearing a case of hate speech, the solicitor general pointed out that some of the rabid speeches made by Periyarists even today could be termed hate speech.

The judge asked him whether he knew who Periyar was, implying that great men were exempted from judgements about their bigoted views.

Periyar, or EV Ramasamy Naicker, was a Brahmin hater par excellence, and had often called for the annihilation of Brahmins to end casteism.

In some parts of the country, especially Tamil Nadu, everyday Brahmophobia is not just ignored, but encouraged, as we saw recently with the statements of Udayanidhi Stalin and A Raja of the DMK, followed by direct or indirect expressions of support by Karti Chidambaram and Priyank Kharge, son of Congress president Mallikarjun Kharge.

The third part of the book deals with the ‘Genocide Toolkit’, which traces the sources of Brahmophobia, the development of fake narratives about Brahmin monopoly in education, and the repeated vending of the Aryan invasion theory, which is now widely seen as lacking in evidence.

The Aryan-Dravidian divide was a colonialist-missionary construct created to deepen the fault-lines in Hindu society.

It falsely suggests, with no archaeological or literary evidence, that the original inhabitants of India, the Dravidians, were defeated and pushed out of the north by the invading Aryans.

Asi quotes from Dharampal’s extensive research of colonial documents on the Indian education system in the early nineteenth century to prove that even in Tamil Nadu, Brahmins, though marginally over-represented in the education system, never accounted for more than 12 per cent of students in the 1822-25 period.

Even in Bengal and Bihar, though Brahmin percentages of the total student population were higher, the data did not indicate any exclusion of non-Brahmins from the field of education.

Part four gives us case studies and part five deals with the current state of Brahmin self-hate driven by guilt, and the gradual move away from actually living the life of a practising Brahmin.

In this scenario, Brahmin hatred and calls for their extinction acquire additional validation, since Brahmins have no one to defend them, including other Brahmins.

Asi calls for a law to protect Brahmins from such hate and abuse, especially in states like Tamil Nadu. His reason is simple: Brahmins are easily identifiable, and do not have the numbers to defend themselves.

The last chapter, “Moving Forward”, outlines a 10-step battle plan to reverse this state of Brahmin hatred which can ultimately result in the gradual decline and demise of Hinduism itself.

This is a must-read book not only for Brahmins, but all Hindus. It is not about restoring Brahmin dominance, but about protecting Hindu society itself from violent predators.

Organised into five broad sections, small chapters and sub-chapters, it is eminently accessible and readable. It does not beat about the bush about what it is trying to say.