Brahmin-Bashing: A Western Neurosis Disguised as Social Justice

In today’s public discourse, Brahmin-bashing has evolved from critique into a cultural performance, a fashionable display of virtue signaling that pervades campuses, cinema, political rallies, and digital activism.

The term “Brahminical” is used to shame and dehumanize, turning complex traditions into flat caricatures of oppression.

This hostility is not an outgrowth of Indian social evolution. It is a projected pathology, born from European religious trauma.

European Indologists, steeped in centuries of anti-clericalism, projected their fears of the Catholic Church onto Brahmins, as Eastern versions of corrupt, power-hoarding Catholic priests.

What we witness today as Brahmin-bashing is the product of ideological engineering, a narrative arc that begins in Reformation Europe, passes through colonial anthropology and missionary polemic, and finds expression in Marxist historiography and modern identity politics.