Civilized to Death
You think you're being noble when you choose restraint. When someone mocks your gods, you bite your tongue and respond with measured dialogue, careful not to offend, eager to prove you're civilized. You think this makes you better than others.
It doesn't. It makes you their perfect victim. You're performing exactly the script they wrote for you. They don't need to silence you with force anymore because you've convinced yourself to stay quiet, smiling and calling it civilized behavior.
In 1857, Indians rose up against a company that had spent a century looting their land, destroying their industries, and treating them like animals. The British response was surgical in its brutality: villages burned, bodies tied to cannons and blown apart, mass hangings.
But British newspapers and missionaries didn't focus on why Indians rebelled. They obsessed over how. The violence. For them, it wasn't resistance. It was just proof that Indians were barbaric, emotional, unfit for self-governance.
Out of this, a message crystallized: "If you want to be treated as equals, first prove you're civilized. Be patient and peaceful. Be the bigger man."
Translation: We can shoot you, but if you throw a rock, you're the violent one.
It's a genius ploy. Suddenly it's not about who stole whose land, destroyed whose economy, or humiliated whose culture. The conversation becomes: "Look how the natives are behaving."
The empire can commit slow, bureaucratic, systemic violence and call it governance. But one angry outburst from the Natives? Barbarism. Proof they need more civilizing.
The colonizer defined "civilized behavior," made those standards impossible to meet under oppression, then used your failure as justification for continued oppression. Suddenly, you were not fighting for freedom anymore. You were auditioning for approval and the judge had his boot on your neck.
Hindu society today faces a familiar pattern. Temples are looted, festivals ridiculed, and gods turned into cartoon villains. Scriptures are cherry-picked and mistranslated to make you look barbaric. Your civilizational memory is erased from your children's minds through colonial education systems. Missionaries harvest souls through force, coercion, or both. And the response from much of the Hindu intelligentsia?
"We must be the bigger people. We must show we're tolerant, pluralistic, sophisticated. We must prove we're not the nationalists they accuse us of being."
The same people who call Krishna "problematic" and reduce Kali to aesthetic exotica don't lose sleep over being "the bigger person." They're not worried about seeming aggressive or intolerant. They're comfortable in their power, so they can be as caustic as they want about your beliefs.
But you? You're terrified of being called fundamentalist. Saffron. Hindutva. So you police yourself. You rush to prove you're "one of the good ones," writing long explanations of how you totally understand why people find Hindu practices problematic and really, you're basically secular anyway. You think this earns respect but it only earns a pat on the head and continued contempt.
"Be the bigger man" only travels downward, from powerful to powerless. When British colonizers destroyed India's textile industry to protect Manchester's profits, throwing millions of weavers into destitution, was anyone asking Britain to be "the bigger nation"?
When Christian missionaries call Hindu gods demons and practices satanic, does anyone tell them to exercise tolerance or humility?
When Western academia spends millions to prove Indian civilization was primitive, does anyone suggest restraint?
No. Because power doesn't need to be humble. Power doesn't need to prove anything. Power simply is, and expects you to accommodate it. The demand for civility, for being "the bigger person," moves in one direction only.
Decoded, "be the bigger person" tells you: Accept your erasure quietly. Don't make us uncomfortable. If you react to our aggression, you become the aggressor. Your anger proves you deserved conquest. Your resistance justifies our violence. Keep proving you're civilized while we treat you otherwise. The burden of peace is yours; we'll keep the burden of power.
This trap comes dressed in liberalism, secularism, and pluralism. "India is a secular democracy. All religions are equal. You must respect everyone's beliefs. Don't be divisive. Don't be intolerant. Hindu nationalism is dangerous. We're all Indians first."
Sounds reasonable. Except watch what happens.
Ask for stolen temple land back? That's communal. Teach accurate history about barbaric invasions? Divisive. Object to festival bans while others celebrate freely? Majoritarian bullying. Simply want to exist as Hindus without apologizing? Hindutva.
Hindu civilization gets delegitimized through media, academia, courts, and politicians. Point this out and you become the problem. Because you're "not being the bigger person."
This trap succeeds because you actually do value restraint and accommodation. You have a genuine instinct toward synthesis and seeing truth in multiple perspectives. It's beautiful but it also makes you vulnerable.
The people using "be the bigger man" against you don't share these values. They have no intention of reciprocating. They're not interested in mutual respect. They want your surrender dressed up as virtue.
They've figured out they don't need to defeat you militarily. They just need to convince you that defending yourself is beneath you, that your survival instinct is morally suspect, that wanting your civilization to continue makes you a fundamentalist.
And because you're actually civilized, because you've internalized values of restraint and self-criticism, you believe them. What if "be the bigger person" just means "accept your annihilation politely"?
What if the people telling you to be tolerant while systematically erasing you have no intention of tolerating you back? What if your restraint isn't being interpreted as strength but as weakness, as confirmation that you can be pushed further?
The British didn't leave India because Indians were the bigger people. They left because Indians made staying impossible, through struggle that was not peaceful, not polite and not concerned with being the bigger person.
Being the bigger person from a position of strength is wise. Being the bigger person from a position of conquest is suicide. Actual survival requires both the capacity for peace and the capacity for protection.
You can be genuinely tolerant without being suicidal. You can respect other perspectives without surrendering your right to exist. You can choose peace from strength, not from fear of being called intolerant.
Stop auditioning for approval. Stop confusing surrender with spirituality. Being the bigger person is a luxury you can't afford when your civilization is being dismantled, and they're counting on you figuring it out one generation too late.
