When I wrote an article pointing to the misogynist rules of Vinaya Pitaka, the discipline for Buddhist monks, many Buddhists got upset. They accused me of being Right Wing fascist and a Hindu fanatic. Some people love Buddha so much nowadays that we cannot take any criticism of him.
The very same people get upset when lovers of Modi hate it when someone criticises Modi.
When we adore an icon, we cannot bear to see them being criticised. We want them to be perfect.
When feminists spoke ill about Ram, Hindu supremacists got upset.
When I wrote an article questioning Krishna’s role as a father, some other Hindus got upset.
This reveals a discomfort with critical thinking.
We want to be objective when it comes to things on which we have no stake. We are overly protective of our icons – Buddha, Modi, Ram, Krishna, Ambedkar. It says how fragile our ego is. And we mask it as adoration and love and bhakti.
