Week 131: Hinduism in Africa, Dharmic Narrative and Apologetics
06/18/2022 - Modern Hindu Content
This week we feature highlights on: Hinduism in Africa, Dharmic narrative building, and an aesthetic!
People Highlight: Hinduism in Africa
The Hindu American Foundation recently dropped an article highlighting Hindu communities across four African countries (link here): South Africa, Mauritius, Uganda, and Ghana.
The article contains a lot of interesting highlights, chief among them being that Mauritius is the only Hindu-majority country in Africa, and that in Ghana, native African Hindus outnumber those of Indian origin!
Other countries with large Hindu communities include Kenya, Tanzania, and Zambia and hoping to see HAF and others shed more light on Hinduism in Africa!
Action Highlight: Communicating Hindu Thought
We all know people in the Hindu community that spend an inordinate amount of time on WhatsApp getting into political arguments, forwarding emails about the “greatness of ancient India”, and waxing eloquent in real life about the need for someone else to do something about reviving and taking Hinduism forward. Its great that people do value Hinduism, but much of this effort is wasted on likeminded boomers, and these folks prove largely ineffective in communicating Hinduism to younger generations.
This newsletter itself was created to goad some of these people into action, and yes, this may include many of you readers. Samyak outlines below (thread link), at a societal level, two main needs of the Hindu community. We encourage readers, especially those in temple leadership to think about how their local communities can improve on these fronts.
A “Dharmic” historical narrative
“Dharmic apologetics”
Either you teach Hinduism and Hindu worldviews properly to them or some combination of: Audrey Truschke, Equality Labs, and the Indian American Muslim Council will teach them instead. Good luck with the WhatsApp forwards then!
Aesthetic: Madhya Pradesh Temple
