Karma, the favourite word for the “white yogis”

In addition to yoga, samosa and butter chicken, karma is another wide spread word that white people love and use. Especially the ones that claim to “eastern mysticism” as they can do a head stand. I have always wondered what if English as a language picked up Sanskrit phrase like “sharatchandranibhinana” (one with a face like the glow of autumn moon), so that when I am flirting with a gay boy next time, instead of just calling him cute (really English? That’s the word I have?), I can just tell him “you are sharatchandranivanana” (the word is gendered). But certainly this language was not created, neither “took” words from other languages to suit the romantic pursuit of a brown gay man. So before I get distracted by the colonial plot of looting languages, let me come back to Karma, the word in question.

There is no one single way one can explain the concept of Karma as it is encountered in several traditions from the subcontinent. But in my humble opinion it means if you do shit, you get shit back. But the getting shit back is not tied to this life, it could be for eternity you are doomed.  This does not sound unreasonable, as long as you do not define what “shit” constitutes of. That is where the cunning of the person who coined the word and the concept (at least in Hinduism) comes in. So shit is defined as doing anything that will challenge the status quo of the caste system. You are getting kicked by the Brahmin, or anyone above you in social caste fabric, just take it and earn good karma as that is what you “deserve” at the first place by becoming born in a “lower caste”. But the moment you resist, say no, kick back or god forbid kill the kicker, you are gone. Your karma will drag you down the whirlpool of several lives of more rigorous oppressions. Of course all these are made up theories to up hold Brahmin supremacy, but it has been so nicely planted and forced and whipped into everyone who was born in that triangular piece of land, we take it very seriously.

Now knowing what karma means from one of billion other perspectives, I ask all the white hippies with or without dreadlocks, what is your fascination with a concept like this? Can you trace back when and by whom this word made an entry to our beloved English language? To my simplistic mind I see a direct correlation between white supremacy and the love of white “liberal” people for the word and concept of karma. When the white Evangelic came to a land that I call India now, declaring a never announced crusade to civilize us, to get the darkness out of our minds and hearts and purge the land of anything that stood for being brown , they had to have a conviction that they had the divine right to do so. In fact it is a reality that the message and emphasis on karma in one of the most famous books that the present government of India is trying to make the national book, appealed to the “orientalists”. It gave them not only the permission of the holy trinity to kill, rape, oppress and divide the  different shades of brown, but for a rare moment it seemed the uncivilized Hindu gods also looked kindly at them and said yes, it’s your karma now to be the rulers and them the ruled.  And they went on praising, translating and spreading this book to such an extent that other than Kamasutra, Bhagwat Gita became the only other modern Hindu identity in the world at large. They just saw how efficiently this concept has for several thousand years have maintained the status quo of Brahmin supremacy, and how just even their colonial arrogance can learn from this one simple and often considered benign word and concept. Hence as they shoved the cross of divinity in the wide open cleft of social inequality and injustice, they looked at us and said it is your karma to submit now. The magical word did its godly trick and since then the only sound that the white people have enjoyed from us is the sound of submission and sound of pain. The moment that tone changed or change to questioning or resistance, they have thumped karma on us.

To end my essay, I must emphasize that the story of thumping karma-submission and the story of rebelling against it are age old and intertwined. There has been no moment in history since caste and karma were created by Brahmins (funnily Word also knows to respect this word and auto corrects to capitalize the “b”, white and Brahmin supremacy hand in hand to maintain corporations) when people did not resist. The lack of evidence for such rebel is an act of conspiracy done by my caste, which efficiently knows what story to tell and which art to present and preserve. So as I resist to white supremacy, it is impossible to do so without resisting Brahmin supremacy, caste and karma.