COLUMBIA, NEW YOURK, USA, January 28, 2008: (HPI NOTE: This article was published on the internal newspaper of the University of Columbia, written by Vedant Misra, a young student of physics.) Hindus are a lot of things. There are Hindu monotheists, panentheists, and even atheists. There are Hindu monists, dualists, non-dualists, and qualified non-dualists. One thing Hindus aren’t, however, is conspicuous.
You won’t find Hindus sitting behind a table on College Walk and passing out flyers in an effort to convince you that whatever you believe in is wrong. The Hindu lecturers invited to campus speak to inform, not to preach. Unless you usually attend the annual Diwali celebration you might easily never notice the large Hindu presence on campus.
Keeping a low profile is a manifestation of the non-interventionist mindset that has enabled Hinduism to survive some 8,000 years in spite of assaults like the Muslim invasions, the Goa inquisition, and more recent encroachments like the Gospel Fellowship Trust India’s campaign to aggressively convert Dalits.
Being Hindu and living Santana Dharma at Columbia on a daily basis is not difficult–in general, the people here are accepting. There are challenges, however, associated with the fact that Hindu students are not an especially noticeable presence on campus. In October of last year, anti-Semitic graffiti, including a swastika, was found in Lewisohn Hall. Among Hindus, the swastika has long been an extremely holy and auspicious symbol. The administration, commendably, dealt with the graffiti expeditiously and contacted those student groups they felt were most likely to be affected. But the Hindu Students Organization (HSO) wasn’t among those groups. It hadn’t been promptly informed about the incident.
Another effect of the Hindu community’s inconspicuousness is the lack of academic discussion at Columbia about Hinduism, which is both a boon and a disadvantage. In both informal and organized arguments about religion, Hinduism is often overlooked.
The intellectual and personal growth of students at any university is contingent upon the presence of engaging and open-minded debate. It is imprudent to allow the third-largest and oldest extant religion to go unnoticed, especially at a university that is always at the forefront of global affairs.