Hindu nationalism is a political ideology that advocates for Hindu supremacy and the exclusion of members of other Indian religious groups from equal participation in Indian society. It is a fiercely anti-intellectual ideology, in both conception and practice. I want to speak with you today about the threat that this hateful political movement, also known as Hindutva, is posing, in real time, to academic freedom in the United States.
I am an associate professor of South Asian history at Rutgers University, the State University of New Jersey. For more than five years, I have received hate mail from Hindu nationalists or Hindu supremacists nearly every single day. I have been the target of so many death and rape threats that I have lost count. The most recent violent threat against me was made last week, via phone, to a general Rutgers phone number by a man spouting Hindu supremacist rhetoric. The police are investigating.
My family, too, have been threatened with all manner of violence, including my children who are currently ages seven, five, and three. I often require armed security when I speak publicly, whether about modern South Asia or ancient Indian history. The last time I gave a public lecture was less than two weeks ago in the western suburbs of Chicago. To ensure my safety and the safety of the audience, there were multiple armed security personnel present. I want to emphasize how extraordinary and worrisome it is that I require armed protection —on US soil—to speak about areas of my scholarly expertise.
I am the target of repeated smears and misinformation campaigns. Hindu nationalist groups have tried, unsuccessfully so far, to prompt my employer, Rutgers University, to take punitive action against me. Many Hindu supremacists openly discuss trying to influence the New Jersey state government, elected officials, and Rutgers administrators in order to silence me, a scholar. Some of this harassment has come from overseas, and a certain share comes from the United States. In fact, Hindu supremacists born and raised on US soil have taken over a leadership role in the relentless attacks against me in recent months.
What have I done to merit such treatment? My scholarship explores the truth about Indian history—that South Asia has always been a diverse place where many cultural and religious groups coexist, and this basic historical fact poses a huge challenge to the political project of Hindu nationalism. Hindu supremacists find much of South Asian history threatening, especially the many parts featuring Muslims. I am an expert on Hindu-Muslim interactions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The same folks who attack me for teaching about Muslims in India’s past also demonize Muslims today as their primary enemy, as the main groups to dehumanize as a foil for advocating for Hindu supremacy. In fact, Hindu nationalists largely sat out India’s independence struggle against British colonial rulers in the first half of the 20th century because they—the Hindu nationalists—identified Muslims, rather than the British, as their primary enemy. Muslims are still Hindu supremacists’ favorite group to hate. Those of us who research and teach Indo-Muslim history are further carnage in this brutal assault.
While I am a favorite target of US-based Hindu supremacists, I am not exceptional. Many other scholars of South Asia have been targeted as well—not only by nationalists overseas but also by US citizens who are part of this homegrown form of Hindu supremacist hate. In fact, Hindu supremacists based in the United States have taken on a leadership role in the campaign of fear and intimidation against the academic conference occurring in a few days titled “Dismantling Global Hindutva.”
The Hindu supremacist attacks against me and other scholars reached a crescendo in March and April of 2021 in a series of coordinated attacks. That experience, plus years of enduring vitriol, prompted me and about twenty colleagues to form the South Asia Scholar Activist Collective. We—SASAC for short—are a group of North America-based academics who believe in the twin pillars of humanities scholarship and inclusive, progressive politics. Our first act as a collective was to author the Hindutva Harassment Field Manual, a freely available online resource that explains how Hindu supremacist hate, also known as Hindutva, is organized. The field manual covers how Hindu supremacists make bad faith claims of bias, trying to hide their bigotry behind the smokescreen of Hinduism (a move that is offensive to many Hindus). The field manual also talks about the long list of people and groups that Hindu nationalism hurts, including Muslims, lower castes (especially Dalits), indigenous peoples, Christians, academics, students, and Hindus. The field manual offers guidance and resources for how to navigate Hindu nationalist assaults, for targets, allies, students, and university administrations. As a member of the South Asia Scholar Activist Collective, I hope that this field manual will help others weather these horrific attacks, but we need to do more. Hindu supremacists are infringing on academic freedom in the United States right now. We need to stop that.
One final point—earlier this year, my research on Hindu nationalism led me to focus on a group that promotes Hindu supremacist ideas in the United States: The Hindu American Foundation. In May, as my research was ongoing, that group sued me. The lawsuit is a blatant attempt to frustrate my research and to chill academic freedom for all who study South Asian-related topics; my attorneys have articulated these points in a motion to dismiss that is pending.
This lawsuit is the most recent line of attack in a concerted set of pressures that aim to stop scholarly work and to exert Hindu supremacist control over academics. Such goals are, simply put, unacceptable and anti-intellectual. I hope you will agree that the time is now to take Hindu supremacy seriously as a form of American and transnational hate that threatens the values we hold dearest.
Postscript
I wrote and delivered the above remarks in the midst of an unprecedented Hindu supremacist assault on academic freedom in the United States. A set of US-based and India-based Hindu supremacist groups led a multi-pronged effort to try to shut down and dissuade university support for a conference titled “Dismantling Global Hindutva: Multidisciplinary Perspectives” that was held on September 10–12, 2021.
This Hindu supremacist assault on academic freedom involved threats to the physical safety of participants, both in India and in the United States. US-based groups also attempted to pressure university administrations to distance themselves from the event, including by sending over 1 million emails to university sponsors and trying to encourage the Indian government to apply pressure on US universities.
Additionally, Hindu supremacists went after university donors, trying to encourage them to try to leverage their university connections to shut down scholarly discourse. This anti-intellectual assault crossed many lines of decency as well as international borders. Notably, much of the opposition stemmed from United States-based groups, especially the right-wing Hindu American Foundation and the Coalition of Hindus of North America. Both groups have a long history of attacks on academic freedom in the United States. They speak with coarseness and volume, although, critically, not for all Hindus. The Hindu American community includes progressive voices and groups that are at risk of being drowned out by frenzied Hindu supremacist screaming.
In the end, the Dismantling Global Hindutva conference was a wild success. Many groups released statements supporting the conference and highlighting the threat that Hindu supremacists pose to academic freedom, including PEN America, American Historical Association, American Academy of Religion, Association for Asian Studies, a coalition for genocide and human rights scholars and far more.
In total, more than 70 departments, centers, and institutes at more than 50 North American Universities sponsored the Dismantling Global Hindutva conference, including a number who became involved after seeing the horrific anti-intellectual pushback. Hindu supremacists found little uptake for their pressure campaigns on universities. Nonetheless, they hurt a lot of people. By becoming targets of these Hindu supremacist assaults, many academics paid a high price in terms of safety, security, mental health, and more.
While scholars who focus on South Asia have demonstrated that we will speak in spite of severe intimidation, we ought to be free to pursue our scholarly work without fear, retaliation, or threats. In pursuit of academic freedom and critical inquiry, we must continue to confront and dismantle the cruel, anti-intellectual ideology of Hindu supremacy that has found roots in US soil.
*The writer is an Associate Professor of South Asian history at Rutgers University-Newark, New Jersey, USA.
(Academe Blog)
September 22, 2021
The viewpoints expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints and editorial policies of Aequitas Review.
