What Do You Do With Relatives Who Won't Stop?

A reader writes in, wondering how to handle a relative whose behavior keeps causing harm — when other family members insist that the "Hindu" thing to do is stay quiet and let karma sort it out.

Dear Kavita,

I have an Aunty who keeps doing and saying things that create real friction in our family. When I've tried to bring it up, I'm told that questioning an elder is disrespectful, that Hinduism teaches patience and forgiveness, and that karma will handle her eventually so I should just let it go. But staying silent doesn't feel peaceful to me. It feels like I'm swallowing something. Is there actually a dharmic case for setting a boundary here, or am I just importing Western ideas about "boundaries" onto a tradition that asks for something else?

 — Wronged

Dear Wronged,

Let's start with the part of your letter that's doing more work than you might realize: you already sense something is off about being told that silence is the pious choice. Trust that instinct. It has company in Hindu sources of knowledge.

Consider the Kuru sabha, the moment in the Mahabharata that Hindu Americans reach for again and again because it refuses to let anyone off easy. Draupadi is publicly wronged, and the elders in the room, whose job it was to uphold dharma, say nothing. Their silence isn't remembered as neutrality. It's remembered as a failure of dharma in its own right. Elsewhere in the epic, Vidura counsels Dhritarashtra again and again against the king's own unjust choices,  not because Vidura outranks him, but because dharma obligated him to speak regardless of rank. The tradition you're being told demands silence in the name of respecting elders is the same tradition that records elder silence as its own kind of wrong, and elder-directed correction as righteous.

So: calling out adharmic behavior has always had a place in Hindu ethics, elders included. Anyone telling you otherwise, that hierarchy must be preserved, that silence keeps the peace… is very often, whether they realize it or not, someone who benefits from that hierarchy or that silence.

That said, I'd be doing you a disservice if I stopped there, because "what counts as adharmic" is exactly where this gets complicated for a lot of us. We're Hindu Americans living in 2026, in a culture that is individualistic in ways our parents' and grandparents' generation never had to negotiate. So there's a real gap opening up between what our elders told us to simply release for the sake of family harmony, and what a TikTok therapist will tell us is a violation of our autonomy requiring immediate "boundaries." Both of those are incomplete maps. Here's a better question to actually sit with: is this behavior causing concrete harm, or is it causing discomfort? And relatedly: is asking her to stop a request for accountability, or a request that she never voice a less than positive opinion about family members again?

Run your Aunty through that. If she's spreading half-true or flatly wrong information in ways that damages relationships or lead to real conflict, that's harm. Not discomfort. Asking her to stop is accountability, not fragility. You have the right, and honestly something close to an obligation if we’re discussing dharma, to sit her down (chai recommended) and tell her plainly what her words are costing the family, and what action informed by dharma would look like for her going forward.

If instead she's the Aunty who takes one look at your skin and launches into a lecture on turmeric paste … your irritation is valid. You can give yourself permission to tell her, genuinely, that this stings and you'd like her to stop making comments about your skin. But be honest with yourself about the size of the ask, and the impact of getting exactly what you asked. I find that so much of everything filed under "toxic" or "boundary violation" today is simply “uncomfortable”. It’s actually the cost of just being connected, of having a community who generally has our back. Aunty may want to tell you that she sees you (like… literally). That she’s dealt with acne herself and learned two things that are helpful. That she is there - through the problems she’s imagining you have, and the ones you actually do. And it’s possible she’s just looking for a chance to gloat about her skin, her daughter’s skin, or her overall success in life, and that she absolutely wants you to feel self conscious and less than in that moment.  It’s possible that the Aunty’s actions could come down on either side of that harm-versus-discomfort analysis, but it’s going to take a fair assessment of your whole relationship with her, and not this singular moment. 

The strength I see in a lot of us who've done this work isn't that we've gotten better at knowing who to pick a fight with and when. It's that we've gotten better at telling the difference between what deserves a real conversation and a real boundary, and what deserves a shrug and a second cup of chai. That discernment, more than the confrontation itself, is the dharmic muscle worth building. Collectivist cultures are focused on the harmony of the collective, sure, but there’s nothing for your individual self confidence like knowing how to tune into comments that you need to hear, and tune out nonsense that simply isn’t actually about you. 

So… go talk to your Aunty. Not because karma isn't real — but because dharma was never supposed to be something that happens to other people while you wait quietly in the next room.

Dr. Kavita Pallod Sekhsaria