Another political rift is stirring U.S. universities, this one rooted in India, and it has resulted in a federal complaint being filed against the University of Pennsylvania.
The Hindu American Foundation, led by Philadelphia-based cofounder and executive director Suhag A. Shukla, has asked the U.S. Department of Educations Office of Civil Rights to investigate Penns treatment of students and faculty of Indian and Hindu descent.
The foundation asserts that Penn faculty, its South Asia Center, and its department of South Asia studies were involved in planning, sponsoring, hosting, and/or participating in a one-sided conference about India and Hindus that promoted negative stereotypes, slurs, and distorted facts. It also says they helped prepare a field manual that perpetuated negative stereotypes.
The three-day online conference, Dismantling Global Hindutva, which was held last month with at least 30,000 attendees, failed to adequately distinguish between Hindutva, generally defined as Hindu nationalism, with Hindu, the religion, Shukla said.
READ MORE: Haverford College students launched as strike last fall after a racial reckoning. The impact still lingers
When an entire country, an entire religious tradition, and its people are painted as dangerous, bigoted, an anathema to democratic ideals, you have no choice but to defend yourself, said Shukla, whose husband is a Penn medical professor.
Penn did not respond to a request for comment. The Department of Education said it does not acknowledge complaints it receives until they have been accepted for investigation.
Several faculty members who participated disputed that characterization: A few speakers did argue the two were the same, but it was far from the overarching view, they said.
They were being hotly contested by other panelists, and thats the point of a conference, said Suvir Kaul, an English professor and president of the American Association of University Professors chapter at Penn, who attended the conference.
He dismissed the foundations concerns as unfounded.
Hindu nationalists want to conflate criticism of a political ideology, namely Hindu nationalism, which is also know as Hindutva, with criticism and discrimination against an entire broad-based religion of Hinduism, said Audrey Truschke, an associate professor in the department of history at Rutgers-Newark, who attended the conference. That is incorrect.
Hindutva, she said, advocates for the supremacy of Hindus over other religious minorities, similar to Christian nationalism and white supremacy.
READ MORE: A new wave of activism on campus: Students aggressively seek their demands
Truschke said the conference included a mix of speakers from India, the United States, and elsewhere and offered a variety of viewpoints.
And she added that another national Hindu group, Hindus for Human Rights, wrote a letter supporting the conference and condemning Hindu nationalism.
The conference involved professors or departments from dozens of universities, including Harvard and Princeton, and garnered a letter of support from more than 1,000 faculty members, including 17 at Penn. Other locals include Rutgers, Widener, Villanova, Lehigh, Lafayette, Drexel, Swarthmore, Stockton, Princeton, and Pennsylvania State University. The foundation has filed a complaint only against Penn, alleging that faculty there initiated it, though some professors involved said thats not the case.
While less than 1% of the U.S. population is Hindu, India accounts for the second-largest number of international students at U.S. colleges, nearly 200,000.
The conference has drawn international media attention with some supporting scholars saying they have been subjected to death and rape threats over their involvement. The Hindu American Foundation mounted an intense writing campaign to universities whose scholars were involved.
Its not the first such international conflict to reach university campuses. The Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel on college campuses also brought intense debate and accusations of anti-Semitism.
Regarding the Hindutva conference, several professors and students contacted, both supporters and critics, asked not to be identified because they feared professional repercussions or threats.
Truschke said she and her children have been threatened multiple times over the years, most recently in August when a threat was called in to Rutgers and she was contacted by police. It was traced back to India, she said.
She has come under fire from some Rutgers students. Last March, a group of Hindu students in a petition asked the university to prevent Truschke from teaching courses on India or Hinduism. Rutgers in a statement to The Inquirer defended Truschkes freedom to pursue her scholarship and said it emphatically affirms its support for all members of the Hindu community to study and live in an environment in which they not only feel safe, but also fully supported in their religious identity.
Truschkes area of study is 16th- and 17th-century South Asia when a Muslim dynasty ruled over Hindus. Because of the rising Hindu-Muslim tensions in India today and the rising death toll of Muslims who are being lynched by Hindu nationalist groups in India, my work is considered to be politically explosive, she said.
She said the Hindu American Foundation, which is suing her for defamation, has supported the current Indian government, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a right-wing Hindu nationalist who campaigned in the United States for Donald Trump.
Shukla, of the Hindu American Foundation, called threats against academics horrible and not acceptable. She disputed Truschkes account that the foundation supports Modi. Shukla believes that a conference should explore multiple views.
Anyone who disagrees with the predominant ideology that was being promoted at this conference is labeled a fascist, is labeled a supremacist, she said.
One speaker listed Hindu surnames of people alleged to have had a long history of participating in violence, she said. She found about 60 people at Penn with those names, she said.
A medical professor at Penn who asked not to be identified said Penn should have spoken out against the conference or at least disassociated itself from views shared.
We would never say anti-Semitism is OK or Islamophobia is OK, he said. We want to hear from our university that what happened is not OK.
The Department of Educations Office of Civil Rights has investigated more than 1,000 complaints about discriminatory conduct at colleges and universities over the last decade. Many have ended with resolutions in which a school agrees to change its practices or take steps to work with the complainants.
Projit Bihari Mukharji, an associate professor in Penns department of history and sociology of science, who was born and raised Hindu, said he was not offended by the conference and in fact signed the letter in support, though he was not able to attend.
Im not necessarily supporting this or that view, he said. What I do support is the right of university spaces to have civilized conversations in a serious, orderly fashion, where people have the right to push back and disagree.
He said he was appalled that professors who supported the conference were threatened.
That was not the Hinduism my parents taught me, he said.
Kaul, the Penn English professor, said whats happening in India under the current government is a real problem. He noted a New York Times story from last week, which says Modi has used an antiterror law to silence critics, jailing thousands, including poets, political organizers, and a Catholic priest.
A Penn freshman who is Hindu and whose parents are involved in the foundation said that although he has always found Penn welcoming and diverse, the conference was offensive.
I have no problem with professors expressing their opinions on political issues in India, but the problem right now is they are conflating that with Hinduism, he said. That conflation contributes to negative stereotypes about India.
See the rest here:
- Opinion: Why we don't need to meet in the middle but we can't allow political polarization to fester unchecked - Times Record News [Last Updated On: June 10th, 2021] [Originally Added On: June 10th, 2021]
- Two Books on the Bizarreness of Texas - The New York Times [Last Updated On: June 10th, 2021] [Originally Added On: June 10th, 2021]
- Rev. William Barber Calls For Restructuring U.S. Policies To Root Out Racism, Poverty - Here And Now [Last Updated On: June 10th, 2021] [Originally Added On: June 10th, 2021]
- The Impact of an All NOVA Democratic Ticket This Fall - WVTF [Last Updated On: June 10th, 2021] [Originally Added On: June 10th, 2021]
- Why Hungary is infected by ultras who are almost impossible to control - The Guardian [Last Updated On: October 20th, 2021] [Originally Added On: October 20th, 2021]
- Explainer: White Nationalism | Facing History and Ourselves [Last Updated On: October 20th, 2021] [Originally Added On: October 20th, 2021]
- No one seems to like the Lincoln Project anymore - Politico [Last Updated On: November 29th, 2021] [Originally Added On: November 29th, 2021]
- White Nationalism Has Taken Many Forms [Last Updated On: December 4th, 2021] [Originally Added On: December 4th, 2021]
- Pan-Africanism is the panacea to the Wests systemic racism - Al Jazeera English [Last Updated On: April 28th, 2022] [Originally Added On: April 28th, 2022]
- Elites From Russia, Europe, and the United States Are Still Getting Nationalism Wrong - Foreign Policy [Last Updated On: April 28th, 2022] [Originally Added On: April 28th, 2022]
- How the most Powerful Israel Lobby started Preferring anti ... [Last Updated On: April 28th, 2022] [Originally Added On: April 28th, 2022]
- Ndabaningi Sithole: Zimbabwe's forgotten intellectual and leader - The Conversation Indonesia [Last Updated On: July 8th, 2022] [Originally Added On: July 8th, 2022]
- Baseball, barbecue and losing freedom this Fourth of July - ESPN [Last Updated On: July 8th, 2022] [Originally Added On: July 8th, 2022]
- In May, a Month of Mass Shootings, One After Another - The New York Times [Last Updated On: July 8th, 2022] [Originally Added On: July 8th, 2022]
- The Soviet Union never really solved Russian nationalism - Aeon [Last Updated On: July 8th, 2022] [Originally Added On: July 8th, 2022]
- Guerrero: Im officially reclaiming the U.S. flag from the fascists - Los Angeles Times [Last Updated On: July 8th, 2022] [Originally Added On: July 8th, 2022]
- White supremacy poses increasing threats in the U.S.: We are dealing with a massive movement. - WBUR News [Last Updated On: July 8th, 2022] [Originally Added On: July 8th, 2022]
- Buffalo gunman's racism appears linked to mainstreaming of white ... [Last Updated On: July 8th, 2022] [Originally Added On: July 8th, 2022]
- In the Fight Against White Nationalism, White People Are Key - American ... [Last Updated On: July 8th, 2022] [Originally Added On: July 8th, 2022]
- Jemar Tisby: White Christian nationalism fueled Jan. 6 attack [Last Updated On: July 8th, 2022] [Originally Added On: July 8th, 2022]
- The Facts on White Nationalism - FactCheck.org [Last Updated On: July 8th, 2022] [Originally Added On: July 8th, 2022]
- Fueled by virtually unrestricted social media access, white nationalism is on the rise and attracting violent young white men - The Conversation... [Last Updated On: August 5th, 2022] [Originally Added On: August 5th, 2022]
- Race Reductionism Threatens to Doom the Left - CounterPunch [Last Updated On: September 8th, 2022] [Originally Added On: September 8th, 2022]
- Transcript: Jared Holt and Karen Kornbluh on "Face the Nation," Sept. 4, 2022 - CBS News [Last Updated On: September 8th, 2022] [Originally Added On: September 8th, 2022]
- Guest Commentary: MAGA Abortion Banners and Election Deniers - The Peoples Vanguard of Davis [Last Updated On: September 8th, 2022] [Originally Added On: September 8th, 2022]
- Socialism, Nationalism, and Tolkien - by Alec Dent - The Dispatch [Last Updated On: September 8th, 2022] [Originally Added On: September 8th, 2022]
- Celebrated Author And Anthropologist Rich Benjamin To Speak At Raue Center - Broadway World [Last Updated On: September 8th, 2022] [Originally Added On: September 8th, 2022]
- We're not as divided as we think - Oneonta Daily Star [Last Updated On: September 8th, 2022] [Originally Added On: September 8th, 2022]
- Tucker Carlson's job ads claim he values diversity, but that's not what he tells his viewers - Daily Kos [Last Updated On: September 8th, 2022] [Originally Added On: September 8th, 2022]
- Former Trump adviser Michael Flynn at the center of new movement based on conspiracies and Christian nationalism - PBS NewsHour [Last Updated On: September 8th, 2022] [Originally Added On: September 8th, 2022]
- Finding Our Place in the Inland Northwest documentary and discussion begins Sept. 8 - spokanefavs.com [Last Updated On: September 8th, 2022] [Originally Added On: September 8th, 2022]
- The Rings of Power is suffering a racist backlash for casting actors of colour but Tolkien's work has always attracted white supremacists - The... [Last Updated On: September 8th, 2022] [Originally Added On: September 8th, 2022]
- Soldier Who Said He Wanted Combat Experience to Kill Black People Booted After FBI Probe - Yahoo News [Last Updated On: September 8th, 2022] [Originally Added On: September 8th, 2022]
- An associate of white nationalist Nick Fuentes claims he interviewed to work on Tucker Carlson's team - Media Matters for America [Last Updated On: September 8th, 2022] [Originally Added On: September 8th, 2022]
- White Nationalism Is Mainstreaming Conspiracy Theories [Last Updated On: October 19th, 2022] [Originally Added On: October 19th, 2022]
- Real Viking History and the Imagined White Supremacist Past - Time [Last Updated On: October 19th, 2022] [Originally Added On: October 19th, 2022]
- Christian Nationalism Is Biblical And America-First, But Not White [Last Updated On: October 27th, 2022] [Originally Added On: October 27th, 2022]
- White Christian Nationalism and the Mid-Term Elections, Hosted by the ... [Last Updated On: October 27th, 2022] [Originally Added On: October 27th, 2022]
- What Does White Christian Nationalism Even Mean, Anyway? [Last Updated On: October 27th, 2022] [Originally Added On: October 27th, 2022]
- Jews, White Supremacism, and White Nationalism | National Vanguard [Last Updated On: October 27th, 2022] [Originally Added On: October 27th, 2022]
- AOC: Vast Majority of Domestic Terror Comes From White Nationalism ... [Last Updated On: November 28th, 2022] [Originally Added On: November 28th, 2022]
- Black nationalism - Wikipedia [Last Updated On: November 28th, 2022] [Originally Added On: November 28th, 2022]
- White Nationalist | Southern Poverty Law Center [Last Updated On: November 28th, 2022] [Originally Added On: November 28th, 2022]
- Christian nationalism - Wikipedia [Last Updated On: November 28th, 2022] [Originally Added On: November 28th, 2022]
- White Christian Nationalists: Who Are They? What Do They Want? Why ... [Last Updated On: November 28th, 2022] [Originally Added On: November 28th, 2022]
- White Christian Nationalism: The Deep Story Behind the Capitol Insurrection [Last Updated On: December 30th, 2022] [Originally Added On: December 30th, 2022]
- What is white nationalism? Take a look at Trumps agenda. - Vox [Last Updated On: December 30th, 2022] [Originally Added On: December 30th, 2022]
- Charlottesville: 'Unite the Right' Rally, State of Emergency - TIME.com [Last Updated On: December 30th, 2022] [Originally Added On: December 30th, 2022]
- White nationalism a threat the Canadian Armed Forces arent equipped ... [Last Updated On: December 30th, 2022] [Originally Added On: December 30th, 2022]
- Tree of Life trial starts as Pittsburgh synagogue congregations find ... - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette [Last Updated On: April 28th, 2023] [Originally Added On: April 28th, 2023]
- Government-sponsored review finds religion a force for good in the UK - Church Times [Last Updated On: April 28th, 2023] [Originally Added On: April 28th, 2023]
- The World According to Tucker Carlson - The New Yorker [Last Updated On: April 28th, 2023] [Originally Added On: April 28th, 2023]
- Fox finally boots Tucker Carlson - IrishCentral [Last Updated On: April 28th, 2023] [Originally Added On: April 28th, 2023]
- President Biden Announces Key Appointments to Boards and ... - The White House [Last Updated On: April 28th, 2023] [Originally Added On: April 28th, 2023]
- Severe immigration policies intensify as Title 42 nears its end - Source New Mexico [Last Updated On: April 28th, 2023] [Originally Added On: April 28th, 2023]
- Soldier with white nationalist ties pleads guilty to gun charges - ArmyTimes.com [Last Updated On: April 28th, 2023] [Originally Added On: April 28th, 2023]
- Fox News Could Be Just as Racist Without Tucker Carlson - New York Magazine [Last Updated On: April 28th, 2023] [Originally Added On: April 28th, 2023]
- Tucker Carlson Should've Been Fired Years Ago - New York Magazine [Last Updated On: April 28th, 2023] [Originally Added On: April 28th, 2023]
- Idaho White Nationalism: Inside a New Class of Republican Power - The Daily Dot [Last Updated On: January 16th, 2024] [Originally Added On: January 16th, 2024]