Dialogue

 
 

The Dialogue

News / Blog

The case for Dwarapalaka’s

Post On:December 29, 2020

By Avinash Kumar

It is not lost on the Hindu community that we are severely under-represented. Be it governance, media, human rights, academics, business, or entertainment. Not only are we under-represented, we are misrepresented, caricatured, and disrespected. Hinduphobia is rampant and ubiquitous. That this, is not causing alarm bells to ring in societal structures is shocking, to say the least. More appalling is the apathy demonstrated by sections of the Hindu community itself.

Those few, who are concerned and motivated to change this unfortunate situation, have mobilized into organizations to fight various aspects of this problem, independent of each other. Over the last decade, many such organization have been formed, and more than half of them have disappeared. Those that survive are holding on and fighting small battles. Battles they can take on. There is a small but growing support base for these organizations. But considering the state of modern Hindu perseverance, this support is fluctuating and fickle, at best. Nevertheless, these organizations are still in the fight, for the moment.

For the organizations that did not make it, the reasons for failure are several. Like any business or product that is launched – funding and public support are the resultant of certain traits that need to be inherent – professionalism, vision, clarity of thought, long term strategic planning, leadership, and teamwork. These very qualities are visibly missing right from the word go, in many Hindu mobilizations.

One other major factor however, at least for organizations involved in religious activism, is guidance and support from its religious institutions and leaders. This factor singularly has the potential of transforming the landscape of Hindu mobilization, as was the case with multiple Hindu revivals in history.
Sadly, the people who head Hindu temples come from within our community. Hence the issues that plague the ordinary Hindu, also afflict our temples, and afflict them in force. Not only are Hindu temples incapable of guiding a new Hindu revival, they are under attack by other theologies.

Some attack overtly and others very subtly. The overt is obvious, visible, and easy to counter against. The subtle attack is invisible, imperceptible and does not feel like an attack. It is a slow dilution of Hindu theology, intended to cajole Hindus into rejecting our inherent value system in exchange for the value system of the attacker. The attacker then begins the process of cultural appropriation, slowly digesting our values and theological knowledge into its own.

It is evident which group is infamous in such tactics. Such tactics resulted in conversion of a multitude, in the most staunchly Hindu state of southern India and is now spreading its tentacles slowly into the rest of India.

Similar tactics are being employed against American and Canadian temples. The organizational structure being employed to effect this change is a complex network. It involves churches, universities, and theologically flexible Hindu temples. In collaboration with one another, these three entities are now slowly but surely infiltrating temples and re-directing temple energies and resources to activities that will result in the total collapse of Dharma in next few decades. If this trend is not reversed, a general Hindu mobilization cannot commence, and the remaining few Hindu groups will also wither away.

The responsibilities of Dwarapalakas then, are five-fold:
-To act as a firewall between the evangelistic network and Hindu temples.
-To sensitize Hindu temples to take a leading role in fighting Hinduphobia publicly.
-To empower Hindu temples to become beacons for the Hindu revival movement.
-To act as a unifier and a messenger between Hindu organizations, increasing collaboration.
-To fight Hinduphobia in all aspects of public life.