[Hindu nationalism in India has
been resurgent under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who rose to power in 2014
and has pursued an agenda that critics say threatens the rights of its
minorities and compromises its democratic institutions. The result has been
deepening polarization not only in India but also in diaspora communities.]
By Niha Masih
Nearly a million emails were sent
out in protest to universities, the event website went offline for two days
after a false complaint, and an email account associated with the event was
attacked with thousands of spam messages. Hindu groups said the event was
Hinduphobic and fostered hate against the community.
By the time the event unfolded
Sept. 10, its organizers and speakers had received death and rape threats,
prompting some to withdraw. Pro-government news channels in India
aired commentaries that alleged the conference provided an “intellectual cover for the Taliban.”
“I was shocked and certainly
concerned about how to move forward safely,” said Dheepa Sundaram, a professor
of Hindu studies at the University of Denver and part of the team organizing
the conference. It is not normal, she said, for an academic gathering to face
bomb threats.
Hindu nationalism in India has been
resurgent under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who rose to power in 2014 and has
pursued an agenda that critics say threatens the rights of its minorities and
compromises its democratic institutions. The result has been deepening
polarization not only in India but also in diaspora communities.
Now those tensions are seeping into
American universities. In interviews, a dozen academics based in the United
States say pressure from Hindu nationalist groups and supporters of the Indian
government threatens to undermine academic freedom on American campuses,
creating a hostile environment for those specializing in India and South Asia.
Some of those interviewed did not want to be named for fear of being targeted
or because of employment concerns at their universities.
While academics say that American
universities have largely withstood the pushback from the Hindu right,
professors without tenure say they worry the pressure could hurt their future
employment prospects. The threats have also prompted some schools to require
security at public events about South Asia.
“We are at a tipping point,” said
Rohit Chopra, one of the conference organizers and a professor of communication
at Santa Clara University. He said the issue went beyond the conference. “It’s
about the principles of freedom of expression, academic freedom and of a
university being a space where people can speak for the most vulnerable.”
The online conference, Dismantling
Global Hindutva, included panels on the hierarchical
caste system, Islamophobia and differences between Hinduism the religion and
Hindutva the majoritarian ideology. The event was co-sponsored by departments
of more than 40 American universities, including Harvard and Columbia.
The protests against the conference
in the United States were led by advocacy groups such as the Hindu American
Foundation and the Coalition of Hindus of North America, which both organized
mass emails to universities.
“It’s an academic exercise to
critique, maybe even to deconstruct, but dismantling is very squarely a
political activity,” said Suhag Shukla, co-founder of the Hindu American
Foundation, referring to the conference title.
The letter sent out by the
foundation to the universities said the conference provided a platform for
activists who support “extremist movements” and who deny the “resulting
genocides of Hindus.” Both groups said they supported academic freedom and
denied responsibility for the threats.
But for some, the threats and
backlash were the tipping point. A professor who has taught at a Big Ten public
university for 16 years made the difficult decision to withdraw from the
conference. He spoke on the condition of anonymity over security concerns.
The professor is an academic and
expert on the subject of the conference. But his immediate worry was an
upcoming trip to India to visit an ailing parent.
He said he doesn’t want to end up
in a situation beyond his control. “As an intellectual, it’s utterly
demoralizing. I’ve been miserable and depressed,” he said.
Others, like Audrey
Truschke, a professor of South Asian history at Rutgers University, have lived
under the shadow of this fear for years.
She frequently receives hate mail
laced with death and rape threats from Hindu nationalists for her work on
Muslim rulers of India. This month, she said, she was notified by
the Rutgers police about a violent threat made against her on a university
phone number. The matter is under investigation.
She is battling a lawsuit from the Hindu American Foundation
for what it says are defamatory statements. A group of Hindu students from
Rutgers petitioned the administration that she not be allowed to teach courses on Hinduism and India. She
often requires armed security for public speaking events.
Frustrated by repeated smear and
misinformation campaigns against scholars, Truschke and other South Asian
scholars from North America recently created a guide
for academics facing harassment from Hindu nationalists on how to defend
themselves and educate others.
Scholars say that though
individuals had often faced the ire of Hindu nationalists in the past, the
concerted effort to shut down the conference is unprecedented.
Shutting down ideas
In January 2020, the South Asia
Institute at the University of Texas at Austin hosted an educational panel open
to the public and featuring faculty members. The topic was the citizenship
law passed by the Indian government that had provoked widespread
protests in the country.
Critics said the law was
discriminatory against Muslims because it fast-tracked citizenship for
immigrants of six faiths but excluded Islam. The government said the law was
necessary to offer refuge to persecuted religious minorities.
Vrinda Marwah, a doctoral candidate
who was in the audience, said a group of Indian men in attendance fanned across
the room and repeatedly interrupted and heckled some of the speakers.
“It was shocking because of how I’d
experienced the university until then, even on prickly matters,” said Marwah,
now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Utah.
For the next event held at a local
community center, things got worse.
Marwah, who was
delivering a presentation on the citizenship law protests, said she was booed
and cut short her speech.
Laxminarayan Raja, a professor in
the aerospace engineering department at the University of Texas at Austin who
was present at the two events and knew some of the audience members
who raised questions, disagreed that there was an attempt to disrupt the
meetings.
He said there was no opposing
viewpoint on the panels and the events had an anti-Modi, anti-India and
anti-Hindu stance. “When people feel frustrated, they will raise their voice,”
he said.
At a time when American campuses
have been roiled by the issue of racial injustices, critics say Hindu
nationalists have used the diaspora community’s religious minority status to
shut down criticism.
“They use the language of American
multiculturalism to brand any critique as Hinduphobia,” said Gyan Prakash, a
historian at Princeton University who was a speaker at the Hindutva conference.
The India connection
Recent research published by
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace concluded that members of the Indian
diaspora in the United States overwhelmingly vote for Democrats and support
secularism, but in the Indian context, they lean toward the Hindu right.
Modi’s party and its progenitor,
the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, have cultivated a relationship with diaspora
communities for years, building on the notion of Hindu pride. When Modi ran for
reelection in 2019, hundreds of Indians who reside in the United States
and Britain traveled to India to campaign for him.
Months later, Modi was feted by
thousands of cheering Indian Americans at a massive
rally in Houston, accompanied by President Donald Trump. Rishi
Bhutada, on the board of the Hindu American Foundation, was a spokesperson for
the event. The foundation has routinely advocated before the U.S. Congress for
causes aligned
with the Indian government’s policies, on contentious issues like Kashmir,
the restive Muslim-majority region in the north claimed by India and Pakistan.
The foundation has also attempted
to shape how Indian history is taught in the United States. In 2016, the
foundation campaigned for California’s textbooks to use the word India instead
of South Asia and to describe the caste system as a cultural phenomenon instead
of a discriminatory Hindu practice.
Several scholars, including Thomas
Blom Hansen, an anthropologist at Stanford University, disagreed with these
positions. He said Hindu groups took advantage of California’s accommodating
policy of incorporating minority viewpoints to “shut down a critical account of
the history of India to serve their own political purposes.”
For some scholars, the political
pressures have come from home.
In October 2019, Angana Chatterji,
an anthropologist at the University of California at Berkeley, was preparing to
testify before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on the status of human
rights in Kashmir. On Aug. 5, India had revoked the state’s autonomy and
statehood, instituted a communications blackout and detained thousands of
people.
Three days before the hearing,
Chatterji received a warning call.
On the other side was someone she
recognized from India. The caller, whom Chatterji does not want to name for
fear of reprisal that could be directed at them by the Indian government, asked
her to reconsider her participation at the congressional hearing, she recalled.
The caller, Chatterji said, told
her that someone close to the Indian government had sought them out to make the
call. The caller reminded Chatterji that she held Indian citizenship.
(Chatterji has permanent residency in the United States.) To confirm her
account of the call, The Washington Post reviewed a text message from the
caller and spoke to two people whom Chatterji confided in at the time.
“If the call was made at the behest
of Indian authorities, it felt like a warning, trespassing on my rights as a
scholar,” said Chatterji, who went ahead
with her testimony. “Were Indian officials ostensibly trying to influence
an event being held by the U.S. Congress?”
A spokesperson for the Indian
Foreign Ministry declined to comment on the matter.
For Chatterji, the consequences of
her human rights work in India — from Kashmir’s mass graves to
Assam’s citizenship
tests — have been exacting. In 2010, under India’s Congress
government, her spouse, Richard Shapiro, an anthropologist, was deported from
the Delhi airport over what the government described as “political activism” in Kashmir.
On the advice of her lawyer, she
has not visited India since the fall of 2014. There are times when she said she
despairs, realizing that she cannot visit home when she wants, which has also
made it difficult for her to pursue her academic research.
“This is my life and the only work
I know how to do,” Chatterji said. “For those of us who have spent so long
doing this, there is an obligation to speak out.”
Read more:
In India, a debate over population control turns explosive
He is a prominent anti-Modi intellectual. The Indian government
wants him behind bars.
In the battle over India’s history, Hindu nationalists square
off against a respected historian.
