Overcoming Anti-Hindu Stereotypes

Hinduism is a religion with many Gods and Goddesses, with strange images of many heads, many arms or animal features. It teems with magic and mysticism, with gurus and god men and their miraculous powers and enlightened insight. Much of this appears erotic or even violent to us, accustomed as we are to no images in religious worship or to only a few holy images like Christ on the cross or the Madonna with her child. 

Hinduism appears like a form of brainwashing or mind control, a cultish religion with little to offer a rational and humane western mind.This negative idea of Hinduism is shaped by missionary and colonial propaganda that we have been bombarding India with for centuries. Hindus continue to be among the main targets of world missionary efforts. 

The missionaries highlight the poor, sick and outcasts of India as needing salvation – the victims of a backward religion that we must help them escape from. We focus on the poverty of India today as the measure of the Hindu culture and religion, emphasizing, if not promoting social problems in India as a means of encouraging conversion.