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(CHAKRA) Hindus are upset at the offensive posters which appeared on the campus of Wesleyan University (Middletown, Connecticut, USA) suggesting that students who have been celebrating Hindu festival of Holi were not allowed in Usdan, “a focal point of activity” on the campus.
Hindu statesman Rajan Zed, in a statement in Nevada (USA) today, said that Wesleyan President Dr. Michael S. Roth and its Board of Trustees Chair Joshua S. Boger should immediately apologize for these posters which were very insensitive to the students and others who celebrated the popular Hindu “festival of color” and it was belittling of the entire community.
Moreover, these posters saying “NO COLORED PEOPLE ALLOWED IN USDAN” were highly offensive to all people of color and were thus clearly unacceptable in a civilized society, Rajan Zed, who is President of Universal Society of Hinduism, argued.
University’s first official celebration of Holi reportedly took place on Foss Hill on Friday, April 27, when these flyers appeared.
Joie de vivre festival of Holi welcomes the beginning of spring and starts about ten days before the full moon of Phalguna. The ceremonies include the lighting of the bonfires, during which all evils are symbolically burnt. Holi also commemorates the frolics of youthful Lord Krishna; celebrates the death of demoness Putana, burning of demoness Holika, and destruction of Kama by Lord Shiva. Actual Holi fell on March eight this year, Zed added.
Highly selective Wesleyan University, on a 316-acre campus overlooking the Connecticut River and with students from around the world, offers 47 major fields of study, including various doctoral programs. Annual expenses for a student now add to $58,371, while tuition was only $36 when it was founded in 1831 by Methodist leaders. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. reportedly visited this campus several times. Its Usdan University Center is a “central programming space for the campus community” and provides a “comfortable gathering place for students, staff, faculty, alumni and visitors”.
Isn’t it possible that the posters were pertaining to people who had been playing with coloured powders, as many Holi celebrations include coloured powders?
Considering the mess that hundreds of students covered in coloured powders might potentially cause, perhaps the University just chose to poorly word a very sensible poster? As Hindus, if we fly off the handle to react, how are we helping the masses become tolerant and understanding of our practices?
Shakti: As per the Wesleyan Uni blog, the sign was in fact a joke referring to students playing Holi, as you suggested, and the student who posted it has apologized for being insensitive. But, we both know that signs like this were all over India and the U.S. not so long ago, and they weren’t jokes. Do you seriously think we’ve sufficiently moved past this legacy, and we may now make light of it? More precisely, will it EVER be appropriate to put up a sign like this at a school? Are you aware that TODAY, in the U.S., religious studies scholars are making a living out of denigrating Hinduism using tactics like purposefully mistranslating ancient scriptures, and using wildly inappropriate, sexually-overtoned Freudian analysis to ‘study’ (or rather belittle) Hinduism? (Read ‘Invading the Sacred’ for details) I would argue that as Hindus, there is no pressing need to encourage tolerance of our beliefs. It’s also not incumbent upon us to forgive, forget, and move past institutional racism practiced by colonialists or others, especially given the fact that harmful, Hinduphobic propaganda masquerading as scholarship is being hailed by Western academy TODAY. If Hinduism was studied without agenda by Westerners, many misconceptions would disappear; as Hindus we need to find out why this isn’t happening, and more importantly what is this Western agenda! (Again, please read ‘Invading the Sacred’, ‘Breaking India’, and ‘Being Different’)