An instructional convention withinside the US addressing Hindu nationalism is being centered through right-wing Hindu organisations, that have despatched demise threats to contributors and compelled numerous students to withdraw.
The convention, titled Dismantling Global Hindutva, that’s co-backed through more than fifty-three universities inclusive of Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Columbia, Berkeley, the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, and Rutgers has come beneath assault after numerous organisations in India and America accused event of being “anti-Hindu”.
The conference’s goal is to bring together scholars to discuss Hindutva, also known as Hindu nationalism, a right-wing movement that believes India shouldn’t be an ethnic Hindu state rather than a secular one. It began online on Sep 10th. India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has promoted a Hindu nationalist agenda, which has resulted in discrimination and attacks against India’s 200 million Muslims.
The conference organisers said that “far-right fringe organisations have mobilized to target the speakers at the conference in the recent weeks, mischaracterizing” discussion of Hindutva’s political ideology as an attack.
The organisers said in a statement that “immense pressure has been placed on Institutions by fringe groups to back out of the meeting”, and this “huge disinformation efforts” had “sinister repercussions”. Several conference participants have withdrawn from the event, fearing that they may be barred from returning to their family in India or imprisoned upon entering the country.
Several speakers and organisers have had violent threats made against them and their families. Meena Kandasamy, a speaker, had photos of her children posted on the internet with phrases like “your son will die in a terrible death” and casteist slurs. After receiving death threats, several professors were forced to submit police reports.
More than 1 million emails were sent to Presidents, provosts, and executives at universities involved in the conference, urgina them to withdraw and dismiss participants, indicating a coordinated operation by groups in India and the United States. More than 30,000 emails were received in only a few minutes at Drew University in New Jersey, causing the university server to crash.
We are very concerned that all of these lies will be used to imprison individuals who speak at the conference, or worse, to inflict bodily harm, up to the murder, on those involved with the conference, the conference organisers said in a statement.
“Several speakers have had to withdraw from this conference over the last two to three days due to the range of nature of these threats”
One of the conference organisers, Rohit Chopra, an associate professor at Santa Clara University, remarked, “The level of hatred has been startling”
“Death threats, sexual violence threats, and threats against their families have been made against organisers and speakers. Members of religious minority linked with the conference have been attacked with casteist and sectarian slurs in the ugliest of language, and women participants have been exposed to the vilest form of misogynistic threats and abuse.”
Chopra claimed that he had received some emails accusing him of betraying Hindus. “There has also been a constant flood of comments condemning people involved in the conference of being terrorists, Hindu-haters, Hinduphobic, anti-Indian, and the like, whether by emails or social media” he stated.
“If this event has taken place, then I will become Osama bin Laden and will kill all the speakers, don’t blame me” one email to the organizers wrote.
Ben Baer, the head of Princeton University’s South Studies program which is a co-sponsor of the conference, said the University’s faculty and the legal department had been bombarded with hate mail and charges that the event was racist.
Those of us who have studied India and lived there for several years know that this claim is not just incorrect, but also purposefully deceptive, Baer remarked. It seems evident that the conference has been targeted by an organised effort by one or more fringe extremist groups, based among other things, on the cut-and-paste nature of a large number of the messages received.
The meeting has also sparked outrage on Indian’s right-wing television news stations, which have accused it of being funded by the CIA, foreign countries, and George Soros, who has said on the broadcast that it is aimed at supporting the Taliban.
The Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, an Indian organisation accused of being involved in the murders of intellectuals and journalists as well as the Hindu American Foundation and the coalition of Hindus of North America, are all pushing against the meeting.
The Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS), a sister organisation of the RSS and extremist nationalist organisation in India, issued a statement this week urging all universities involved to withdraw their support. They expressed their “great worry” over the planned, Dismantling Global Hindutva online event. Such events that increase Hinduphobia, foment Hindu hatred, and incite violence on the minority Hindu population in the west must be condemned.
Because of what is occurring in India, the Hindu right and Hindu supremacists in the United States feel particularly empowered and the severity of their attacks on intellectuals is dramatically increasing, said Truschke, who is required to speak in public with armed security.
More than 900 academics from around the world, as well as 50 organizations with ties to South Asia, published a declaration in favor of the meeting last week.
While the Hindu right-wing hopes to scare and bully intellectuals so that no one dares to investigate Hindutva, Chopra said the opposition underscored why the conference must go on.
He stated, “it’s a matter of intellectual freedoms.”
“Of not giving the devotees of a violent, majoritarian, fascist ideology the opportunity for intellectual discussion about Hindutva, or for that matter any topic”.
Very well discussed!
Amazingly written!!