Hinduphobia in Canada

Hinduphobia or anti-Hindu hatred have a tragically long history which continues to this day across the globe. They are fueled by a range of factors, including religious intolerance, religious exclusivism, a lack of religious literacy, misrepresentation in the media, academic bias still rooted in oftentimes racist, colonial-era misportrayals and, in the diaspora, generalized anti-immigrant xenophobia and hatred.

Hinduphobic rhetoric reduces the entirety of Sanatana Dharma to a rigid, oppressive, and regressive tradition. Prosocial and reflexive aspects of Hindu traditions are ignored or attributed to outside, non-Hindu influences. This discourse actively erases and denies the persecution of Hindus while disproportionately painting Hindus as violent. These stereotypes are used to justify the dissolution, external reformation, and demonization of the range of indigenous Indic knowledge traditions known as Sanatana Dharma.

The complete range of Hinduphobic acts extends from microaggressions to attempts at genocide. Hinduphobic projects include the destruction and desecration of Hindu sacred spaces; aggressive and forced proselytization of Hindu populations; targeted violence towards Hindu people, community institutions, and organizations; and, ethnic cleansing and genocide.

Hindu Canadians are hardly exempt from such attacks on their religion and culture. Worse yet, the existence of Hinduphobia and anti-Hindu hatred is often denied, which itself is a form of the same.

In the past several years anti-Hindu hate crimes, ranging from temple desecration to acts of physical violence have been on the rise around the world including Canada.