What is that delicate and feeble Hindu Sentiment that often gets hurt?

We hadn’t heard about it till in the last few years as we hear more about the hurt sentiments of a community across India who are the victims of bruised feelings.

The latest injury gets inflicted through culinary indigestion by watching the just-released Tamil movie Annapoorani.

It is the story of an aspiring chef, Annapoorani, who wants to pursue her career in the culinary art of cooking, which involves preparing meat dishes, including beef preparations. But her father, a strict vegetarian who prepares daily ‘prasad’ at the local temple, is dead against her wishes.

However, Annapoorani remains steadfast in her decision to be a chef and secretly joins a hotel management course at a university where her parents believe she is doing an MBA. She is then caught one day by her father eating chicken leg pieces.

The father in the film gets angry, and his feelings are hurt. But off the screen, the Hindu Sentiment also gets aching and agony.

The same fragile Sentiment that got vulnerable when Pathan, staring Shahrukh Khan, was released last year. The reason for the disturbed “Hindu” Sentiment was that the star Deepika Padukone wore a revealing swimming costume. But more than that, the costume was in the Hindu theistic colour of yellow. And the feelings got hurt.

Hindu Sentiment gets hit on the bare suspicion that a Muslim family keeps beef in their fridge, or somebody trading cows or a non-Hindu teen drinking water from a Hindu temple tap. When Hindu women, who traditionally face no entry but dare to get into such temples, when the worn clothing does not meet the dress codes while coming into Hindu shrines or when low-caste Hindus arrive at the temples, when comedians entertain audiences about Hindu beliefs and rituals, or there are Hindu gods and goddesses shown in commercials.

With its firm foundation for eons, Hinduism is a democracy of diverse thoughts, philosophies, rituals, customs and traditions. It does not feel hurt, but some diehard blind followers do, quite often.   

Is it Hinduphobia that creates a delicate Hindu Sentiment? Or is it a Hindutva cover for political gains?

-Promod Puri