Opinion | How Yuval Noah Harari’s Book 'Nexus' Spreads Lies About Hinduism

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Last Updated:April 12, 2025, 18:42 IST

You don’t have to disagree with Harari’s pleasant moral and political ideals. But the story he pushes about our Rama and, by extension, about us is unfortunately an example of the same kind of 'weapons of social mass destruction' he purports to teach us about

Nexus is a fascinating book in the genre of Yuval Noah Harari’s limited genius as a storyteller for the fashionably liberal reader. Image/X

śrī-rāma rāma rāmeti rame rāme mano-rame

sahasra-nāma-tat-tulyam rāma-nāma varānane

Mantras are the source of our strength and, indeed, our strength itself. Even Rama, as a recent discourse on Sri Rama Navami noted, received from Vishwamitra Rishi timely mantras known as the Bala and Ati Bala Mantras to aid in his battle with the demons harassing the tranquil dwellers of the forest.

We rely on mantras like our life relies on breath. When in danger, we utter the names and glories of Hanuman. When in an academic setting, we chant the praises of Goddess Saraswati. When we witness the rising of the sun, we chant the Gayatri Mantra.

And this we do, despite changing fashions and contexts and technologies and trends, with reasonable respect for both the form and the substance of these sacred sounds which have been passed down from generation to generation long before media of preservation such as writing and recording were invented.

Mantras are the form of communication in which our culture lives, survives, thrives. As we write these words on Sri Rama Navami, all it takes is one thought to rejoice at what it all means. Rama! Rama! His name itself weighs as much as all the thousand names of Vishnu (as the saying above tells us)!

The simplicity, intensity, and the integrity of this tradition of the chant are important. But there is another cultural form which is a part of our traditions that we need to consider too, which has been a source of our strength, joy, and life despite challenges from the time of colonialism. This cultural form is the story.

Rama-nama, Rama-katha

We receive stories, retell stories, and even live in stories. For example, while we chant the mantras that will empower us in adoration with our Rama and Hanuman, we also take delight in listening to the stories of their lives, deeds, and adventures. This has been the case generation after generation, one new technology after another; from oral traditions and puppet-shows to cinema to TV to comics to animation. Our stories of the gods are as much a part of our lives as are the gods themselves.

But we should also be aware that there is a fundamental divide growing in our experience of, and understanding of, our sacred stories today.

Stories, in our cultural traditions, are about conveying aesthetic and ethical experiences and points (a “rasa-dharmic" framework, we might call it). Now, we may also have stories which do not always stick to these goals as priorities. As modernity seeps into Hindu life and imagination, it is inevitable that neither ethics nor aesthetics matter as much as, say, commerce or entertainment in storytelling. But this is still a mild problem compared to what is looming. Increasingly, we find new narratives being circulated about our traditional stories about our gods, which are designed to destroy our own sense of memory and cultural integrity. This is something we are not well equipped, or at least well-invested, in analysing, and countering. We need to understand the way stories have functioned as weapons in the colonisation of the world.

Nexus: Networks, Stories, Power

The use of stories to obtain control over populations is a key theme in Yuval Noah Harari’s new book, Nexus. This book is an ambitious project which tries to trace the history of information networks and social control from the dawn of humanity to the present frontier of AI and globalisation.

Harari’s thesis is that evolution gave Homo Sapiens the ability to believe fictional stories and this enabled different tribes to co-operate and build societies, civilisations, empires, and finally, the great global enterprise we have today. But stories are not necessarily benign. “History," he writes, “is often shaped not by deterministic power relations, but rather by tragic mistakes that result from believing in mesmerising but harmful stories" (p. 31).

Harari discusses examples of such harmful stories ranging from ancient religious tales to medieval witch-hunt manuals to modern mislabelling of people. The antidote to such harmful representations, he says, has been the presence of “self-correcting mechanisms". Western institutions self-corrected for the sin of slavery, for instance, but Silicon Valley tech giants like Facebook did not do enough for the algorithmic sin of spreading fake news against Rohingyas. And now, with the rise of AI and populist leaders who seemingly care little for institutions, rules, and self-correcting mechanisms, the future is rather concerning. And it all started with stories.

Nexus is a fascinating book in the genre of Yuval Noah Harari’s limited genius as a storyteller for the fashionably liberal reader. Whether it is authorial talent or the gift of the “institutions" though which have succeeded in placing his books in every airport, bookstore, library and home these days is a different question. And whether these institutions, or the celebrity author at the centre of this consumer sensation, will ever “self-correct" in response to some criticisms is, of course, a moot question.

Facts, We Fear, are Not His Forte

Even before getting to his distorted takes on Hindu texts, we should note that Harari makes huge demands of the reader’s credulousness. Right off the bat, Harari writes in the Prologue that “populism posits that there is no objective truth at all and that everyone ‘their own truth,’ which they wield to vanquish rivals" (xxiv).

To anyone familiar with the world of the so-called “populist" commentators, whether it is Vivek Ramaswamy (with a book called “Truths"), or numerous scientists and writers famous on social media (presumably because the “institutions" which once hosted their work have banished them) lamenting the decline of objectivity in academia and public life, Harari’s claim would seem misplaced. Apparently, it wasn’t the PoMo Lefties but actually the Right-Wingers who, like Dude in The Big Lebowski, were going around saying, “It’s just your opinion, man!" all along.

Of course, Harari doesn’t see populists or their alleged multi-truth-ness as benign. After all, he is on the side of people who perhaps flaunt “Trust the Science" placards in their yards. He proceeds to tell us more about the harmful nature of the truth-denying, power-obsessed “populists" from America to India using the most convenient story-character possible, and that is “religion".

Amrutasyaputra, or ‘power-hungry creatures’? Both Are Not Same!

“Traditional religions like Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism," he writes, “have typically characterised humans as untrustworthy power-hungry creatures who can access the truth only thanks to the intervention of a divine intelligence" (emphasis added, p. xxvii). After this profundity, Harari takes his All Religions are Same and Equally Hegemonically Oppressive thesis out for a planetary shikar. Populist parties from “Brazil to Turkey and from the United States to India have aligned themselves with such traditional religions", and have rejected modern institutions with “radical doubt" while proclaiming “complete faith in ancient scriptures". And to make the comparison absolutely precise, he adds, “populists claim that the articles you read in The New York Times or in Science are just an elitist ploy to gain power, but what you read in the Bible, the Quran, or the Vedas, is absolute truth". I guess he hasn’t heard about activists of India’s “populist party" burning the Manu Smriti.

Harari hasn’t heard, or at least listened, to what we say about Rama either. The Ramayana, he writes, is a “biological drama" with themes of sibling rivalry and “romantic triangles". He notes parallels between the Biblical tale of Cain and Abel and the relationship between Rama and Bharata. The “love triangle" he posits involves “Prince Rama, his lover Sita, and the demon-king Ravana, who kidnaps Sita" (p. 60). Sita inspires Harari to make an even bigger leap. He posits “purity" as the third important theme in the Ramayana, and compares Sita’s situation to: the church’s demonisation of “impure intruders," bigotry against LGBTQ people, the Rwanda genocide where Hutus compared Tutsis to cockroaches, how the Nazis compared Jews to rats, and finally, to the case of the “greatest extremes" to which the “purity-impurity" biological drama has ever been carried – “traditional Hinduism" and its “caste-system" (p. 60-61). He drives the point home by declaring that two Dalit children were lynched by “upper castes" because Prime Minister Modi’s toilet schemes (which he mentions not uncharitably elsewhere) excluded lower-castes from receiving government toilet-aid and the children had to go open-air bathroom near an upper-caste house provoking the murder.

Readers who have grown up in a real world where Harari’s mischaracterisations are so obvious we should just ignore him should, however, consider the following points. At the end of the day, everything is boiling down to a power-play between different stories and story-telling institutions. Hindus may get their stories from their grandparents, temples, TV pravachanakaras, Chandamama and Amar Chitra Katha, or even the entire multi-volume Ramayana in Sanskrit or Awadhi in their homes. But in the life-path of every Hindu child today, especially if they wish to enter the modern world of school, college, job and career, a story about them (not from them or by them), has been laid out in cold steel. The asymmetry is not only about power and resources (that Harari is published by an MNC publisher who will push his book into every country including India whereas a Gita Press or a local Indian publisher will not be able to do the same to markets outside). It is about gaslighting, yes, but it is also about the scope of the story.

Harari’s narrative purports to “include" our story, our gods, and, indeed, us in it (albeit in highly dishonest and destructive terms). Our stories, on the other hand, deal mostly with our own experiences and people, and embody a “live and let live" attitude in their scope. If people from other lands or cultures can feel the joy and wisdom of dharma in Rama’s story, so be it; if not, just leave us to our own. That has been our approach. But the problem today is that the intent to colonise our stories and the ability to do so through technology are as bad or even worse than colonial times. The challenge, in particular, is that the “moral" packaging that has been built around authors like Harari is so persuasive that many readers will not know how to take the web of lies cloaked in good intentions apart. After all, once a reader’s attention has been hooked to Sita and dragged to genocides in Africa and Europe and toilet-apartheid in India, any debate about it will sound to the morally-stimulated reader as a condoning of the latter crimes, not a factual critique of Harari’s misrepresentation of Ramayana. This is the core propaganda-survival dilemma of our time and is worth unpacking in some practical steps.

Four Steps for Detoxifying the Nexus Narrative

One, understand that in an exchange of communication (such as your act of reading Harari’s book or talking about it with a friend), there may be an asymmetry of information (and, of course, attention). There is a good chance that your friends are either so unaware of the traditional (and popular) Ramayana experience millions of us have grown up with that they believe Harari’s skewed account, or they have failed to apply their attention critically to separate their own memories from the new gaslighting meta-story he has laid on it. To help with this, you may point out some obvious things. Rama and Bharata did not have a “sibling rivalry", let alone a murderous one like Cain and Abel. Bharata tries desperately to get Rama to come back, and then takes his padukas to place on the throne. It is selfless sibling love, not rivalry. Rama, Sita, and Ravana are not by any measure a “triangle". Sita is not equivocating at all, nor does she have a hint of what today is called Stockholm Syndrome. Just because enough propaganda has been put out now by Bollywood and other vested interests in movies like Raavan to suggest that a woman would perhaps be better off with her violent kidnapper or stalker rather than her traditional husband does not mean this is how we remember our Ramayana (and thinking of Ravana as a villain doesn’t mean we think he’s always evil, either; we know the curse which caused his particular birth and life-path will end with his present lifetime).

Two, point out the problem with false equivalences. Low-info, high-performative, good-intent Hindus will react touchily when you make them self-examine their All Religions are Same and Equally Hegemonically Oppressive belief. They don’t know enough about their religions, or those of others, but do believe they are on the right side of history, which they demonstrated through the usual conditioned responses (“Do you want to bring back Sati?" and such). Unpack Harari’s own “traditional religions" thesis by referring to SN Balagangadhara’s essay on the difference between “tradition" and “religion" in early Christian/late Roman-Pagan history. Tell them about Vine de Loria and his masterpiece God is Red. What we commonly call Hinduism or a “religion" named Hinduism is a matter of convenience at best, but this practice has a history rooted in the colonial encounter. What we actually have, as the Roman-Pagans did, is just traditions. Memory, and traditions. “Religion" is something that came later, specifically by and for the people of their book(s), which we all now uncritically use as a universal label. Speaking of “religions of the book", take the trouble to also point out Harari’s own inconsistencies and projections. It’s not just Christians and Muslims who had the Bible and Quran, according to Harari, but also “the Hindus who had the Vedas, and the Buddhists who had the Tipitaka" (p. 103) until the “discovery of ignorance" during the scientific revolution. Next time someone says they have “read the Vedas" and know it’s full of mad and violent stuff, just ask them if they have read Stairway to Heaven (point being: Veda is not a book, but a primarily sonic phenomenon, as is rock music). See the whole picture. First, they made a “religion" of our sanatana dharma. Now, they are making it a “religion of the book".

Three, develop for yourself the seeds of the thesis spelled out in this essay about the difference between the “mantra" traditions and the “story" (or propaganda) religions. Sure, we take our stories with great delight and gratitude, too, when we see them on the walls of the Hazara Rama temple in Hampi or hear them in the voices of our elders. But our stories have had a different track record, and purpose. Our stories have been about experience of bhaava, rasa and dharma, ultimately. The “characters" in our stories exist not only in experimental modern novels but also in our temples and in our lives in moments of extreme desperation (Shiva and Harry Potter may both be in your airport bestseller shelf, but Shiva is also in a thousand ancient temples and Harry, well, isn’t). The border between the names of characters in stories and the names of gods in daily life and the power of the “mantra" is a porous one. On the other hand, the stories that the West, whether West Asia or its mental colonies in Euro-America, have produced about the world, whether through their “religious books" or their currently fashionable “popular science" marketing miracles like Harari, are charged with the mandate of slotting everyone and everything into them (see SN Balagangadhara’s essay What Do Indians Need: History or the Past? for insight into the history of “history" as it were). Naturally, whenever stories with delusions of global grandeur actually encounter the complexities and realities of the globe beyond their small desiccated puddles in the mud or sand, they will project the only thing they know onto others. We discovered we were ignorant! So now you must repent too!