My Reputation Precedes Me

I was visiting with a friend and his family last week. One of their friends was asking me a little about the blog. This friend of a friend who I had not met before told me that she asked her Indian coworker about the blog and whether he’d heard of it. He hadn’t but apparently his response to hearing there was a blog called The White Hindu was “Are you serious?”

:-/ Well, in retrospect the people who told me not to name my blog The White Hindu may have been right. That name has certainly caused a lot of misunderstanding over the years.

I started calling my blog that because my story isn’t only about being a Hindu. It’s about what it’s like to become a Hindu and to live as a Hindu when it’s not your heritage. That’s my story.

And The White Hindu has more of a ring to it than The Non-Indian Hindu, right?

In the end my name is my name and this is the name I’ve built. But I am sad to know that people make assumptions and judgments about me ahead of time based on the title that I gave my blog.

I set myself up to constantly have to explain why I called myself The White Hindu and why I never intend for it to be a name to divide people. It’s not a judgement call, it’s not a division, it’s just an accurate descriptor of one of the things I am.