Hindutva's cultural nationalism and Hindi colonization of diverse Hindu cultures: Vegetarianism and Diwali in Aotearoa New Zealand

I woke up this morning to a story that appeared in Stuff, concocting a crisis that is supposedly brought about by the serving of non-vegetarian food at some Diwali events in Aotearoa NZ.

Titled as "Non-vegetarian food served at some Diwali events sparks debate among Indian communities," it establishes as normative, through its assumptions, the notion of Diwali being a vegetarian religio-cultural event (this juxtaposition of religion and culture is critical, as I will unpack in the rest of this blog).

On other digital platforms, the title reads as:

'My festival is being hijacked': Food divides NZ's Indian community.

The headline is crafted to feed moral outrage around food, built around the practice of non-vegetarian food being served at some Diwali festivals in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Monolithic frames and Hinduism's pluralism

The article then leads in with, "Non-vegetarian food served during Diwali celebrations in Wellington has left some Hindu organisations outraged." Note here in the framing of the affront the depiction of non-vegetarian food consumed in Diwali as anti-thetical to the underlying values of Hindu celebrations. 

The sense of offense is discursively played out through the depiction of a father of three who walks out of a Diwali event in Lower Hutt "as soon as he saw a chef making chicken puff pastries."

This monolithic framing of Diwali as a vegetarian Hindu cultural celebration is anti-thetical to the everyday materialities of diverse Hindu cultural practices across diverse regions of India, where the occasion of Diwali is celebrated with the eating of meat. The pluralism of Hinduism materializes in diverse practices of prayers, praying to diverse deities, and expressing devotion in diverse forms, including some forms that involve animal sacrifice. 

For instance, when large parts of India pray to the deity Lakshmi or the arrival of Ram to Ayodhya on the occasion of Diwali, large parts of Bengal, the part of India I belong to, celebrate the Goddess mother Kali. The prayers to Kali are often accompanied by the sacrifice of animals (goat when I was growing up, buffalo as my mother would recount in her years of growing up, and pigeons these days). 

In Hindu legend, the Goddess appears in the form of Kali to defeat Raktabija, the demon who multiplied himself with each drop of his blood falling to the ground. The Goddess consumed every drop of his blood to stop the demon’s replication, and thus defeated the demon. 

The invocation to Kali was popularized by Shri Ramkrishna Paramahamsa in the 19th century.

The celebrations of Kali in contemporary East India is in many instances accompanied by animal sacrifice. Devotees rejoice by consuming meat.

While in large parts of the Hindi-speaking North India, Diwali is interpreted as a religious festival worshipping Lakshmi, along with Ganesha, seeking blessings for prosperity, success and well-being, in large parts of Eastern India, Diwali is celebrated with the eating of meat. Similarly, in large parts of South India, the celebration of Diwali is marked by the eating of meat. 

This diversity of food practices around Diwali is noted by Karuna Muthu, the president of Wellington Mutamizh Sangam, quoted in the article, noting that "South Indians from Tamil Nadu, Malaysia, Singapore and elsewhere celebrate Diwali with non-vegetarian feast."

These diverse food practices around Diwali reflect eloquently the diverse religio-cultural practices of Hinduism that play out across the diverse microcosms of India and the Indian diaspora. Moreover, the diversity of food practices around Diwali reflects the transformative, dynamic and shifting nature of culture, continually being co-created through the participation of diverse communities.

Within intimate familial spaces, these diverse practices exist in dialectical tension and in dialogue. For instance, in my own large joint family, located in Bengal, rooted in the familial history of my great grand uncle becoming a devotee of the Ramakrishna mission and familial migrations across North India, both Lakshmi and Kali are celebrated on the occasion of Diwali. While many family members eat goat meat that day, other family members fast and eat vegetarian food. 

The syncretic promise of Hinduism lies precisely in these plural cultural and religious practices, with religion intertwined with diverse cultural registers.

Hindi imperialism and Hindutva's Cultural Nationalism

Hindutva, as a far-right, fascist project seeks to erase these diverse registers of Hinduism, while simultaneously seeking to fix Hinduism into a cultural essence. 

Hindutva seeks to impose a monolithic and unchanging hierarchical reading of Hindu culture. It is this production of Hindu culture (sanskriti) as a monolith that shapes Hindutva's mobilization around the Hindu rashtra (nation), based on the construction of a monolithic Hindu jati (race). The cultural nationalism of Hindutva reduces Hinduism into a monochromatic cultural essence, deployed toward the mobilization of hate and violence.

The ideology of Hindutva naturalizes the Brahminical hierarchy of caste, rendering as normative casteist cultural codes and practices. Simultaneously, Hindutva marks India's Muslim and Christian minorities as the other, as the outside of the nation. This simultaneous production of an inside hierarchy organized around caste and the perennial outsider mobilizes the project of violence that materialized through Hindutva.

The Brahminical politics of caste purity therefore plays out through the surveillance and policing of food practices. The politics of establishing vegetarianism as the organizing feature of Hinduism works simultaneously to mark as the outside the religio-cultural practices of Dalits and diverse Hindu cultural communities. Hindutva's cultural imperialism thus targets diverse Hindu cultural practices, seeking to erase them and simultaneously incorporate them into the hegemonic construction of Hinduism that serves the Hindutva project.

The cultural imperialism of Hindutva takes the form of Hindi colonization, seeking to impose over the broad religio-cultural textures of India a Hindi-ized narrative of Hinduism. Hindi-ization in this sense is the active production as universal features of Hinduism specific casteist cultural practices that are associated with the Northern Hindi-speaking regions of India (Bihar, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh). In this Hindi-ized narrative, the diverse cultural practices of Hinduism and diverse faith traditions that exist outside these Northern regions of India are marked as the outside, are pathologized, and are continually targeted. This move simultaneously turns Hindi and Hindu religio-cultural practices into monoliths, mobilized to secure the project of cultural nationalism.

Practices of surveillance, codification, and othering form the instruments of Hindi-Hindutva. Note here the interplays between the othering of Hindus and the othering of India's minorities. In the diaspora, Hindutva's organizing takes the form of continually producing Hindi and a series of practices around Hindi as the normative codes of Hinduism, that work simultaneously to erase the diverse cultural registers of Hinduism. Casteist constructions of culture are reproduced as normative, establishing as normative racist cultural practices that exclude minorities (Adivasis, Dalits, and religious minorities). It is worth noting that these discriminatory practices of casteism have historically been deployed to exclude Dalits from community spaces, exclude Dalits from temples, and exclude Dalits from other cultural spaces of worship. In sum, Hindutva's politics of cultural imperialism works hand-in-hand with its politics of cultural nationalism.

Diwali in Aoteroa: Religion and Culture

In Aotearoa, Diwali is celebrated as a representation of the cultural diversity that forms the multicultural fabric here. 

The operationalization of Diwali as a register for cultural diversity forms the basis for the allocation of taxpayer funds to its celebration. In the multicultural reading by the local and national governments, Diwali is interpreted as a cultural festival.

This multicultural understanding of Diwali as a cultural representation, however, is fundamentally at odds with Hindutva's hegemonic interpretation of Diwali as a religious event. 

Consider here the framing response of the key Hindutva organization in Aotearoa, the Hindu Council. Elsewhere, our research team and our activist partners such as the Aotearoa Alliance of Progressive Indians (AAPI) have noted the Hindutva-linkages of the Hindu council, specifically with the far-right Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP). 

The Hindu Council is quoted as stating that no meat should be served at an event promoted as “Diwali.”

“We want to spread awareness that it is a cultural and religious festival. They [people who serve non-vegetarian food] are going against core Hindu values.”

Note here the use of the tropes of culture and religion by the Hindu Council. The Hindu Council assigns itself the authoritarian position of determining what is Diwali. Note further the framing of organizations serving non-vegetarian food as going against what the Council describes as "core Hindu values." At work here is the Hindu Council's cultural imperialist strategy of defining core Hindu values, positioning itself as the gatekeeper of what counts as Hinduism in Aotearoa. The Council's control over the definition of Diwali fundamentally reproduces a casteist ideology, turning Diwali into a site of caste-based discrimination based on its politics of purity rooted in food.

Moreover, the strict coding of Diwali around Hindu religious terms by the Hindu Council raises critical questions around its funding by local and state governments. The Auckland Council for instance funds the Auckland Diwali. The Palmerston North City Council funds the Diwali celebrations in the Manawatu. Given the casteist ideology of food purity that perpetuates discrimination, do these Councils actively support caste discrimination through their funding of strictly vegetarian Diwali celebrations (where non-vegetarian food is not allowed)?

    Hindutva, anxiety, and fear

The article goes on to quote Pushpa Wood, who is presented as the president of the Global Organisation of People of Indian Origin, opening with an affective register that depicts Wood as being “quite upset” about the consumption of meat at Diwali festivals. 

Wood is quoted in the article with the following excerpts:

“I’ve been in this country [New Zealand] for 44 years now and this is first time I felt that my festival is being kind of hijacked from me.

“We have traditionally never served meat on Diwali. Over the years what has happened is what started out as being celebrated as a religious festival has become more like a commercial festival.

“I find it ironic that I can explain those sentiments and get respect from Europeans and non-Hindus who respect my belief system than to some Hindus who cannot understand why I’m being so fussy.”  

Consider here the use of the term "my festival" by Wood, asserting hegemonic control over Hinduism, as if there is one version of Hinduism (where Diwali equates to eating vegetarian food). This attempt to impose a monolithic narrative contradicts the observation there is no one Hindu cultural register for celebrating Diwali. Critical here is the deployment of communicative inversion, where Wood performs victimhood under the rhetoric of the loss of her festival, while simultaneously through this frame, denying the right to the festival of many Hindu communities across Aotearoa who see Diwali celebrations as intertwined with eating meat.

Attend also to the language of the festival being "hijacked," a depiction that frames Hinduism in danger from so-called polluting practices such as eating meat. This rhetoric of Hinduism in danger is continually deployed by the far-right Hindutva forces in their production of hysteria and mobilization of fear.

Wood's narrative portrays a chronological order, positioning a grand subject position of "we" juxtaposed amidst tradition. Wood's statement around never being served meat on Diwali is reflective of her own subject position (of privilege), and the limited exposure of that subject position to the pluralisms of the Hindu faith (including faith practices of Dalits). In presenting her subject position as a ubiquitous Hindu response, Wood erases diverse Hindu interpretations of Diwali that sit outside of the Hindi-Hindutva nexus.

Moreover, the anxiety depicted around Diwali celebrations in Aotearoa turning into commercial festivities in contrast to her preferred form of religious festivities raises a critical question: Why should local council funds, paid for by the taxpayer, be spent on a Hindu cultural festival? Are these similar Muslim, Sikh, and Christian cultural festivals that are funded by taxpayer funds? If indeed, Diwali is a religious festival as Wood describes it to be, where is the separation of religious practice and the state?

Hindutva organisations such as the Hindu Council would like to have it both ways, frame Diwali as a cultural event to secure state funding under the multicultural portfolio, and then narrowly define Diwali as a religious festival to then mark the boundaries of the celebrations within narrow terms.

Finally, note here Wood's affective response to other Hindus, who she portrays as not understanding of her belief system. Indeed, it is much easier to convince religio-cultural outsiders that don't understand the plural traditions of Hinduism with the performance of victimhood around hurt to religious sensibilities. 

The cultural imperialism of the discursive register here fails to recognize that there are actually diverse religious cultural interpretations of Diwali across India and across the Indian diaspora. 

Hindutva is a threat to Hinduism

Hinduism thrives on its polymorphism, offering diverse interpretive frameworks that often exist in dialogue. The ideology of Hindutva, with its cultural imperialism derived from its interpretations of a Hindi-Hindu culture, systematically threatens the very pluralism of Hinduism. The Hindu Council's gatekeeping around Diwali celebrations elucidates the violence of erasure.

This is powerfully noted in the Stuff article by Raveen Annamalia of the Wellington Mutamizh Sangam. He states,

“It is Hindu Council that is getting sensitive over this matter.

“They are not a registration body in this country to control. We are a secular country. We respect everybody.”

“Today they are saying you don’t eat meat. Tomorrow they say non-vegetarians can’t enter temples."

This articulation of the pluralism of Hinduism under threat in the hands of Hindutva powerfully captures the struggle that is playing out within Hinduism and across the Hindu diaspora globally.  By placing itself as the gatekeeper for the Hindu community in Aotearoa, the Hindu Council reproduces its power, controlling the architecture of Hindu religio-cultural practices. 

The monolithic and monochromatic ideology of Hindutva poses an existential threat to the polymorphic character of Hinduism. Observe here the empirically anchored fear expressed around experiencing discrimination and not being able to practice one's faith (such as entering temples) for eating meat. 

As Hindutva organisations such as the Hindu Council position themselves in the diaspora as the voice of Hindus and as the gatekeepers of everything Hindu, it is critical that we actively build spaces that recognize the plural traditions of Hinduism. It is also vital that the discriminatory practices of the Hindu Council are called out, the human rights violations (right to religion) enunciated, and that appropriate legal processes are put into place for holding the Hindu Council to account.

The recognition of these plural traditions of Hinduism is one of the most powerful antidotes against the rise of the hate politics of Hindutva and the threat it poses to social cohesion in India and across the Indian diaspora globally.