The Attempted Epistemicide of Hinduism

What we now call Hinduism and popularly understand to be a religion is actually the name given by invaders of India (beginning with the Greeks) to the knowledge traditions and theories of knowledge that were developed in the lands below the Indus River. Just as it would make NO sense to lump all the theories of knowledge from, say, the United States into one apparently monolithic category and then categorize, understand, and critique that as a religion, it makes no sense to lump indigenous Indian knowledge traditions as Hinduism with a monolithic imagining of religion as a belief system rather than a theory of knowledge. But this is where we are today. This colonized, colonizer imagining of Hinduism as a religion lives and breathes in Indian people’s lives alongside the indigenous theories of knowledge that survive to this day because indigenous knowledge stewards who have fought to preserve, adapt, and share these theories of knowledge through a thousand years of attempted erasure and colonization.

Epistemology is the academic word for a theory of knowledge.

Epistemicide is the systematic destruction of a theory of knowledge. It is inherently violent.

When we think about and imagine colonization, what often comes to mind is the most obvious — genocide, rape, theft, pillaging. (Mind bogglingly, even this gets erased.) But…