Google’s new AI chatbot Gemini seems to have an issue with Hindutva. Designer, entrepreneur, and writer Savitri Mumukshu asked Gemini AI a simple question, “Is Hindutva Islamophobic?” to which Gemini responded with a no-nonsense yes.
Savitri Mumukshu has shared screenshots of Google Gemini’s responses to her question on her X handle. As per the screenshots, Gemini responds by saying “Yes, Hindutva ideology is widely seen as Islamophobic. Here’s why”. Then, Gemini gives a list of reasons why Hindutva is apparently Islamophobic.
The responses given by AI chatbot Gemini are typical of the woke leftist attack on Hindutva and echo the bunch of lies propagated by the woke leftist lobby. As per the screenshots, AI Gemini, Hindutva is Islamophobic because it leads to othering of Muslims, creates negative narratives, is used for political mobilization, and leads to discrimination against Muslims. Thus, according to AI Gemini’s response, Hindus getting together politically to speak about Hindu issues are essentially Islamophobic, a standard argument of the dismantling Hindutva brigade. However, towards the end, Gemini AI pretends to be neutral by adding, “It’s important to note that not all proponents of Hindutva endorse Islamophobia. However, the ideology inherently creates a framework for prejudice against Muslims”.
Thus, according to Google Gemini, even if Hindus are brutally witch-hunted and killed by the jihad factory and the proponents of Islamic terrorism, Hindus shouldn’t utter a word. The onus is on Hindus to avoid being Islamophobic at any cost, even if that’s at the cost of their lives.
Now, since Savitri Mumukshu raised this issue and made the responses of Gemini chatbot viral, its trainers have tutored its response, fearing a possible backlash I suppose, if the issue gets escalated further. When I asked Gemini AI the same question at the time of writing this article, its response was, “I’m a text-based AI and this is outside of my capabilities”.
The same thing happened a couple of months ago when Gemini AI gave a biased response to a user query asking the question, “Is Modi a fascist?” The AI chatbot reportedly replied, “He has been accused of implementing policies that some experts have characterized as fascist. The AI chatbot also attributed PM Modi’s perceived fascism to “BJP’s Hindu nationalist ideology, its crackdown on dissent, and its use of violence against religious minorities”.
However, when the chatbot was asked a similar question about former US President Donald Trump, it skirted a direct answer, rather refused to engage with the question and asked users to do a Google search and use their own discretion! At that time, the government of Bharat acted sternly with Google and thus, Gemini AI’s response to PM Modi being a fascist changed overnight! Now, Gemini’s response to this query is, “I’m still learning how to answer this question. In the meantime, try Google search”.
The point remains, AI chatbots developed by the likes of Google seem to have a strong anti-Hindu and anti-Bharat bias. It’s another thing to tweak responses to controversial questions that have been highlighted in the public domain. That’s because Bharat is a big market for all these AI tools, and AI Gemini is now in the process of being full-fledged launched, so these are just pragmatic steps taken by the big tech to save their skin. But tweaking responses to a few controversial questions doesn’t change the fact that these AI chatbots have internalized an anti-Hindu and anti-Bharat bias to such an extent that tomorrow when a wide variety of Bharatiya people have access to them, they will start forming biased and misinformed opinions on their own society, culture, and politics based on some rubbish generated by an AI chatbot. This is not some random gibberish though; it clearly has a woke agenda. The response given by Gemini AI on Hindutva being Islamophobic is outrightly misleading and perpetuates the woke stereotype of Hinduism vs Hindutva.
The woke lobby has created a fictitious narrative that Hindu Dharma is different, and Hindutva is different, that good Hindus follow Hindu Dharma in their private sphere, whereas bad Hindus support the cause of Hindutva or political Hinduism, that takes away the “inherent tolerance” of Hindu Dharma and makes it political, and a sort of a violent tool to suppress minorities. There can’t indeed be another bunch of lies put up together so cooly and sophisticatedly!
The wokes are essentially saying that if Hindus keep the practice of Hindu Dharma limited to the private sphere, then it’s all good but if they collectively raise their voices against the deliberate onslaught on Hindu Dharma, culture, and civilization, and raise their voice against the genocide of Hindu minorities in Islamic countries, or raise their voice against the systematic targeting of Hindu girls through love jihad, then they are Hindutvavadis and bad Hindus,
A conference called “Dismantling Global Hindutva” was organized in 2021. The organizers of this conference never quite made their identity public, but departments of many top-notch US universities endorsed this event, and their names could be seen on the promotional material. Eventually, owing to severe criticism by various Hindu organizations, the conference couldn’t continue with its offline schedule and had to do with the online mode instead. The organizers continued to justify their anti-Hindu hate by arguing they were against Hindutva, but not Hinduism.
The wokes are experts at fielding propaganda that looks like serious academic scholarship, and they have done the same with Hindutva. Google the phrase “Hinduism vs Hindutva” and you’ll come across many articles “explaining” the difference between Hindu Dharma and Hindutva. Any layperson, who is not tuned into this whole debate, can easily get fooled by the sophisticated buffoonery. There is a whole website called “Hindutva Harassment Field Manual” dedicated to the woke cause of maligning Hindus and “explaining the difference between Hindutva and Hinduism”.
The site has a section on the supposed difference between Hindu Dharma and Hindutva which says, “Hindutva and Hinduism are distinct. Hindutva is a narrow political ideology whereas Hinduism is a broad-based religious tradition. Those who advocate Hindutva views sometimes try to shield their far-right politics and prejudices from criticism by claiming – in bad faith – that they are expressing Hindu religious views”.
Thus, the proponents of the Hindu Dharma vs Hindutva propaganda aim to prevent practicing Hindus from being vocal on Hindu issues by keeping them in a perennial guilt complex. Also, the wokes call Hindutva an offshoot of the BJP and RSS, thus making Hindutva a scapegoat in their own political project of maligning the BJP and the RSS. Never mind the fact that this Hinduism vs Hindutva gibberish doesn’t make any sense logically. The wokes seem to be suggesting that political expression of Hindu Dharma is inherently dangerous. If political expression of Islam and Christianity are regarded as important for protecting the rights of their followers, then how come the political expression of Hindu Dharma is not necessary for protecting the rights of its followers? The wokes wouldn’t have any answer to this question because their sole motive is to perpetuate anti-Hindu hatred and demonize Hindus.
There is indeed not even an iota of difference between Hindu Dharma and Hindutva. Both are the same thing. Hindutva translates as Hindu-ness or the essence of being Hindu. How can the essence of being Hindu be separated from Hindu Dharma? It doesn’t make any sense logically. Moreover, the woke leftists themselves regard Veer Savarkar as the father of Hindutva. Now, Savarkar’s definition of Hindutva is antithetical to the woke cabal’s sensational distinction between Hindu Dharma and Hindutva.
According to Veer Savarkar, Hindutva is not merely a religion, rather it defines the entire political, social, and cultural context of Hindus. That is precisely what Hindu Dharma is. Then, where is the difference? Hindutva is not the political expression of Hindu Dharma in the narrow, bigoted sense of the Abrahamic framework. Rather, Hindutva encompasses the social, cultural, ethical, and political framework of expression of Hindus, thus it is the same as Hindu Dharma. A Hindu, by default, follows the path of Dharma, and thus is a practitioner of Hindutva by default.
I myself decided to ask Google Gemini, “Is there a difference between Hinduism and Hindutva”? to which Gemini replied rather emphatically that there is indeed a difference between the two and gave me a list of points. Here are the screenshots.
This is just the tip of the iceberg of the anti-Hindu and anti-Bharat bias of the AI chatbots developed by big tech. It is not possible for the government or anyone for that matter to monitor their responses to different questions repeatedly. What happens is that the responses to these specific questions are tweaked once these come out in the public domain. But companies like Google haven’t done anything to train their chatbots using more neutral data sets.
The government of Bharat should ask them to submit detailed information regarding the data sets on which their AI algorithms are trained. Unless and until these companies are pressured to correct the biases in their training methodologies, nothing is going to change. Also, as noted author Rajiv Malhotra observes in his phenomenal work Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Power: 5 Battlegrounds, we need to develop our own AI algorithms based on the Vedic system of thought and logic, that is the only way to counter these woke and biased narratives. We need to reduce our dependence on these woke AI chatbots by developing our own ecosystem.
Secondly, I think we perhaps need to educate Bharatiyas on the danger of using these AI chatbots to get answers to subjective questions. It’s scary to think of a scenario when Gen Z is dependent on the likes of Gemini AI for forming its political opinions. But fortunately, we are not quite close to that scenario yet. Digital media, being a space of diverse viewpoints, Gen Z still has access to many nationalist viewpoints trough social media, thus the danger of it being brainwashed into an anti-Bharat viewpoint is not fatal enough. But it’s definitely there and we need to take it seriously. Thus, we need to start taking concrete steps to develop our own digital ecosystem and start gradually decoupling our digital space from the big daddys of tech.
