Some Hindu apologists often accuse Muslims of being “incestuous” based on Islamic law permitting marriage between cousins. Yet, this critique of theirs tends to conveniently overlook the fact that, within many Hindu communities, particularly in South India, not only are marriages between cousins permitted, but marriages between uncles and nieces are also even accepted socially. This, of course, is something that Islam explicitly deems an unlawful and illegitimate abomination.

(For further reading in this regard, I would encourage readers to refer to an earlier Muslim Skeptic article, titled “Cousin Marriage and the Hypocrisy of Christians and Hindus.”)

It raises a vital question: is rhetoric of this nature merely a simple case of psychological projection? Historically, accusations of “incestuousness” have been a common weapon in the arena of polemics. In this context, however, they seem extraordinarily impotent, since Hindu scriptural traditions themselves contain passages that normalize and promote relationships that carry significant incestuous undertones.

Hindu Texts: Don’t Be Alone With Your Mother, Sister, or Daughter

The Srimad Bhagavatam (also known as the Bhagavat Puraṇa) is one of the most important and authoritative texts of classical Hinduism. It belongs to the Puraṇic corpus (a vast genre of Sanskrit literature that combines mythology, theology, cosmology, and moral instruction) and has played a significant and decisive role in shaping Hindu devotional traditions (bhakti), as well as classical Hindu cosmology, concepts of time and creation, and the narratives surrounding “deities” like Vishnu and Krishna.

The Srimad Bhagavatam contains the following puzzling passage (09.19.17):

One should not allow oneself to sit on the same seat even with one’s own mother, the senses are so strong that even though one is very advanced in knowledge, he may be attracted by sex.

The above passage leaves no room for ambiguity. It warns that a man—presumably a Hindu man—should not sit near his own mother, on the basis that he may experience sexual attraction toward her. What makes it even more striking is that this point has been explicitly reinforced by Swami Prabhupada, one of the most influential modern Hindu leaders and the founder of ISKCON (the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, which is the most prominent Hindu missionary organization worldwide). According to him, the caution applies not only to the ordinary Hindu laity but even to the most learned and devout of Hindus, underscoring his belief in the universality of such temptation. He stated in a 1975 “morning walk conversation” held in Chicago:

A man is butter, and woman is fire. So this is restricted even the man happens to be father, brother or son. Mātrā svasrā duhitrā vā. People cannot think of sex impulse in the presence of daughter, mother or sister. But śāstra says “No. There is possibility.” Mātrā svasrā duhitrā vā na vivaktāsane vaset: “They should not be kept, should not sit together.” Then people may say, “This is impossible. Maybe some tenth-class rascal may be attracted.” So the next line says, “No,” vidvāṁśāpi karṣati, “it is not the question of tenth-class rascal; even first-class learned, he may be attracted.” Not to speak of tenth-class rascal, but first-class learned may be. Not may be. It is a… Balavān indriya-grāmo vidvāṁśāpi karṣati: “The senses are so strong that it can mislead even the most learned scholar.”

RELATED: The Most Popular Hindu Movement in West Is… Anti-Hindu?

Earlier, in 1972, he had also argued that this incestuous situation was quite common among the Indian-Hindu elite:

Prabhupāda: This Jawaharlal [Nehru] was implicated with his sister, and some say with his daughter also, and he was the prime minister. This is their position. In our Indian system, education is mātṛvat para-dāreṣu: every woman except your own wife, all mothers. That is education. Mātrā svasrā duhitrā vā (SB 9.19.17). Either your mother or sister or daughter, you don’t live together alone. These are education. And they’re freely advocating sex life. What is the (indistinct) difference? In India they’re doing, so many leaders. (indistinct), it can be done. The leaders are speaking while doing that. No discrimination, just like hog. No discrimination. (break)

The Manu Smriti (a foundational text that had long shaped Hindu law, social norms, and caste regulations before being made redundant by the social engineering of British colonialists) extends the list further by including explicit mention of the “sister” and “daughter” (2.215) alongside the mother:

One should not sit alone with his mother, sister or daughter. The powerful host of sense-organs overpowers even the learned.

Returning back now to the Srimad Bhagavatam, we learn in another passage (3.12.28) about the famous example of Brahma:

O Vidura, we have heard that Brahmā had a daughter named Vāk who was born from his body and who attracted his mind toward sex, although she was not sexually inclined towards him.

RELATED: When the Gods Won’t Take No for an Answer: Rapist Gods in Hinduism

Swami Prabhupada then comments:

It is said that the senses are so mad and strong that they can bewilder even the most sensible and learned man. Therefore it is advised that one should not indulge in living alone even with one’s mother, sister or daughter. Vidvāṁsam api karṣati means that even the most learned also become victims of the sensuous urge. Maitreya hesitated to state this anomaly on the part of Brahmā, who was sexually inclined to his own daughter, but still he mentioned it because sometimes it so happens, and the living example is Brahmā himself, although he is the primeval living being and the most learned within the whole universe. If Brahmā could be a victim of the sexual urge, then what of others, who are prone to so many mundane frailties?

Hindu apologists, understandably embarrassed by all this, often attempt to distance themselves from their own mythology by disowning the “deity” Brahma, arguing, for instance, that he is no longer worshipped. Yet this line of reasoning collapses under the slightest amount of scrutiny. After all, Indra too is no longer the object of regular worship, but he continues to be regarded as a “respectable deity” within the pantheon. Moreover, even if one were to grant this apologetic defense, the problem raised by Swami Prabhupada remains wholly unresolved. For if, as he himself describes, the “primeval living being and the most learned within the whole universe” can succumb to sexual temptation toward his own daughter, then what hope does the average Hindu have of evading such supposedly “natural impulses”?

What emerges from these passages is the impression that traditional Hindu texts operate on an assumption akin to a “Freudian” model of sexuality, presuming that the Hindu man harbors what are supposedly “natural” sexual impulses toward close female relatives such as his mother, sister, or daughter.

Rather than treating such taboos as grossly unthinkable, the texts repeatedly validate them as not only major and enduring possibilities but almost as an inevitability that requires perpetual vigilance, regulation, and restraint.

RELATED: When the Sword Cuts Both Ways: How Hindu Feminism Is Now Killing Hindu Men

Modern Statistics in Contemporary India

Tragically, what might merely have remained a theoretical construct within the canonical texts of Hinduism appears to find very disturbing and tangible echoes in social reality. Contemporary statistics on sexual violence and incest in India suggest that such ideas are not confined to scripture alone but that they reverberate in the lived experience of Hindus, revealing an unsettling continuity between text and practice. Studies, mostly by Indian organizations, found that:

The Mira Road expose of a father’s sexual abuse of his daughter for nine years has opened a Pandora’s box of similar cases of incest across the country. Increasingly, this is also shedding light on the legal system’s shortcomings in dealing with incest, as well as on social attitudes that hinder effective solutions.

The Indian legal statutes do not contain any specific provisions against incest.

 

[…]

 

A report from RAHI, (Recovering and Healing from Incest), a Delhi-based NGO working with child sexual abuse titled Voices from the Silent Zone suggests that nearly three-quarters of upper and middle class Indian girls are abused by a family member – often by an uncle, a cousin or an elder brother.

 

[…]

 

A 1985 study by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences revealed that one out of three girls and one out of 10 boys had been sexually abused as a child. Fifty per cent of child sexual abuse happens at home. In 1996, Samvada, a Bangalore-based NGO, conducted a study among 348 girls. 15 per cent were used for masturbation mostly by male relatives when they were less than 10 years old. Seventy- five per cent of the abusers were adult family members.

It is essential to note that the India Together news report in question, “Incest and the Conspiracy of Silence” by Shoma Chatterji dates back to 2009. Given the dramatic expansion of internet access and the exponential rise in pornography consumption, which has been facilitated in recent years by smartphones and social media platforms, it is more than reasonable to hypothesize that such figures would likely be much higher today, almost two decades later.

Furthermore, since the report explicitly highlights cases within “upper and middle class” families, it can be reasonably inferred that Muslim representation in the data is proportionally significantly lower than their share in the overall national population, especially given the socioeconomic distribution of India’s Muslim community.

Thus, as is far too often the case, it may be worth reminding the self-styled Hindu social justice warriors to first examine conditions within their own communities. The sobering stories and statistics concerning generational incest in India are far closer to home than they care to admit, even as they love to habitually project their own dirty laundry onto Muslims.

RELATED: Holy Incest in Zoroastrianism