Equality Labs: Transporting Racist European Indology And Indian Anti-Hindu Movements To American Shores

Equality Labs promotes itself as a social justice organisation that fights for justice and the freedom of the oppressed south Asians. In reality, however, the organisation focuses on demeaning and defaming Hinduism and its adherents and promoting hatred for both.

This will be illustrated through a review of the organisation’s publications and social media posts and a review of its connection to historical figures, who were prominent in spreading hatred for Hinduism and its adherents.

Of all the adherents of Hinduism, Equality Labs is most obsessed with Brahmins, the subset of Hindus who were traditionally engaged in acquiring, preserving and transmitting knowledge in a variety of areas including philosophy, astronomy and Sanskrit.

The Brahmins, who represent no more than 5 per cent of India’s population today, have been the prime targets of the organisation’s hate. This hate is driven by a fallacious claim that the Brahmins represent a privileged class.

Historically, erudite Brahmins generally shunned material wealth and possessions and lived an austere life focused on their spiritual and academic pursuits.

Today, as noted by prominent historian Meenakshi Jain, due to consistent application of discriminatory policies against Brahmins, they constitute one of the most impoverished communities in India.

Equality Labs’ obsession with Brahmins can be easily gleaned from its “Smash Brahminical Patriarchy” poster and repeated pejorative references to Brahmins in its articles and social media posts.

It can also be indirectly discerned from the Brahmin hatred that pervades the social media posts of trolls who have been influenced by the hateful propaganda of Equality Labs.

Equality Labs uses terms such as Brahmins and Brahminical interchangeably with Hindus and Hinduism as the ultimate target of the organisation’s hateful rhetoric is all adherents of Hinduism.

This is demonstrated by the 2018 report titled “Caste in the United States” that Equality Labs produced to peddle its anti-Hindu message. Suhag Shukla, executive director and co-founder of the Hindu American Foundation, describes the organisation’s report as follows:

Shukla also notes that Equality Labs falsely argues that Hinduism’s fundamental sacred texts systemise discrimination.

This characterisation of Equality Labs’ report is too benign as the report can reasonably be described as hate propaganda dressed up with an unscientific survey to give it a veneer of credibility.

The report appears to be aimed at two population segments. One target audience is the uninformed readers, who are susceptible to falling for well-worded propaganda of radical social justice organisations like Equality Labs. Another target audience is politicians who lend support to organisations like Equality Labs.

Ironically, despite embracing an anti-racism rhetoric, Equality Labs promotes debunked racist theories about Hindus and Indians in general. These theories can be traced directly to British and German Indologists, who in their efforts to promote white European and Christian supremacy invented baseless and far-fetched narratives about Hinduism and its adherents under the guise of academic study.

Their characterisations of Hindus were largely driven by their theories on race and their disdain for ideas that did not coincide with their Christian worldview.

For example, the British Indologist James Mill has described Hindus as vile, backward, and subhuman in his monumental work, The History of British India.

In this book, Mill provides a deprecating description of the Hindu conception of the universe by stating the following:

His contempt for Brahmins, who he has characterised as conniving, power-hungry, and unethical is illustrated in this statement:

German Indologists have followed a similar approach in describing Hinduism and its adherents. Richard Karl Von Garbe articulated his view of Hindu deities in the following manner:

In fact, the German Indologists went beyond belittling Hinduism. Christian Lassen, the founder of German Mahabharata studies, was the first to formulate the tenuous Aryan Invasion Theory, which is the basis for racist movements against Hindus, particularly the minority Brahmins, in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

These racially motivated characterisations of Hindus promoted by James Mill, Richard Karl Von Garbe, Christian Lassen and many other Indologists of their ilk have fuelled virulent anti-Hindu movements across India.

These anti-Hindu movements, which are primarily directed at Brahmins, are most prevalent in the state of Tamil Nadu. There the two main political parties subscribe to a political ideology of Hindu hatred that can be traced to E V Ramasamy also known as ‘Periyar’.

Ramasamy, who is the godfather of the anti-Brahmin movement in Tamil Nadu and a source of inspiration for the founder and executive director of Equality Labs, was in favour of utilising intimidation and violence to drive all the Brahmins out of Tamil Nadu.

Ramasamy’s hatred for Brahmins and Hinduism was largely based on the Aryan Invasion Theory, which he cleverly adopted to paint Brahmin culture as foreign to Tamil Nadu. His speeches are a repository of anti-Brahmin hate and are not dissimilar from Nazis’ tirades against Jews.

This is not surprising since Ramasamy’s hate was based on the fanciful theories of the original German Indologists such as, Christian Lassen, “the father of German racial anti-semitism”, who had anti-Semitic tendencies.

One example is cited by P A Krishnan’s article in The Wire. In it, he mentions that Ramasamy kept making blood-curdling threats to Brahmins. He provides the following example:

He then goes on to provide an example of Ramasamy’s characterisation of Brahmin women as prostitutes:

Equality Labs has learned to combine the racist and hateful theories about Hinduism and its adherents formulated by British and German Indologists with a hate-filled political ideology of Ramasamy to appeal to a gullible fringe of the political left in America.

However, the organisation is using the cover of social justice to dupe some and gain the tacit support of others who support the organisation for moral posturing and other self-serving reasons.

The divisiveness and hate promoted by this organisation pose a specific danger to Hindu Americans. It is thus imperative for reasonably minded people to understand the history of the hate this organisation is promoting and rebuke politicians and media outlets that are providing it overt or tacit support.

Venkat Nagarajan is an economist and a student of the Hindu University of America. He has a keen interest in Hindu culture, history and philosophy, and has published articles on these topics in Swarajya Magazine and the Hindu University of America Blog.