Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS) Factsheet by Bridge Initiative

 https://bridge.georgetown.edu/research/factsheet-hindu-swayamsewak-sangh-hss/

USA: What Kailasa's Con Job Says About The Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh | Pieter Friedrich

 

What Kailasa's Con Job Says About The Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh

The international wing of India's fascist RSS dupes American elected officials

Pieter Friedrich Jun 6

The New Jersey city of Newark was caught in an embarrassing situation in March 2023. Just two months previously, the city signed a “sister cities” agreement with the United States of Kailasa, but when the truth finally emerged after the 12 January 2023 signing, the embarrassment was two-fold: not only is Kailasa a fake nation governing no territory, but its founder and self-appointed “prime minister,” Nithyananda, is a rape-accused swami absconding from India.

It’s unclear what first red-flagged the situation for Newark. Perhaps it was the late February 2023 appearance of a colorfully clad Kailasa representative at a United Nations meeting, where she somehow managed to slip in to protest the persecution of the “supreme pontiff of Hinduism.” When that incident made international headlines, maybe Newark officials recognized her as the same person who had accepted their “sister city” agreement: a turbaned woman wearing a saffron sari, one arm bared to reveal a garish tattoo of Nithyananda’s face.

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According to Nithyananda, Kailasa is the world’s only “sovereign Hindu nation.” Despite the overtly Hindu nationalist ethos of the fake nation, however, Kailasa has managed to secure at least 30 or more recognitions by American cities over the past few years, not to mention acknowledgements by a member of US Congress, the capital of Sierra Leone, and even the Prime Minister of Canada. Yet, within the US, where it has apparently been the most active, Kailasa’s pseudo-diplomatic rampage exposes a far deeper problem: other much wealthier, older, and far more genuinely powerful Hindu nationalist organizations throughout the country have similarly duped naive American politicians over many years.

The Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh’s American branch (HSS-USA) tops the list.

It’s easy to point and laugh at what happened in Newark. To date, however, most media outlets seem to overlook the underlying gravity of the situation. Around the US, politicians stand willing and ready to award recognition to practically any organization which approaches them requesting it, no vetting apparently ever required, and, upon gaining it, even the most illegitimate of organizations can begin to establish a veneer of legitimacy.

“The plan, in a basic sense, relies on the fact that most cities and government entities are pretty liberal in handing out proclamations, and Kailasa happily promotes its victories on social media,” reported New York Magazine. Such proclamations, whether to Kailasa or anyone else, are typically solicited by the celebrated organization. As the spokesperson for one duped American city noted, “More often than not, requests are accommodated.” Noting that they usually give up to two dozen such proclamations a month, the spokespersonexplained that, when Kailasa approached them with a stack of previous recognitions, it made them look legitimate.

In other words, until the point at which its con job faced widespread exposure, the pile of proclamations Kailasa had amassed was worth far more than the paper it was printed on. In a sense, these recognitions represented a small-scale version of a fledgling nation finally receiving diplomatic recognition from a major world power – or the UN itself.

Such, once again, is the case with the HSS-USA.

Unlike Kailasa, however, the HSS-USA is not “fake,” but rather a real — though deeply problematic — organization. It is the American wing of India’s nearly 100-year-old paramilitary, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which is the parent organization of the country’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The RSS-BJP combined are ideologically devoted to an ethnocentric, Hindu nationalist vision for India — one, however, which the RSS’s corollary in the US does not lead with when soliciting support from local governments.

The HSS-USA — like Kailasa — has benefited greatly from the ignorance and naïveté of American politicians who are all too willing to sign off on official proclamations. Recognition, though generally considered meaningless by the city which grants them, carry deep significance for the recipient organization. As these otherwise worthless proclamations stack up at an astonishing rate, HSS’s credibility in the eyes of American elected officials expands exponentially.

For years, HSS-USA has approached American city and county councils, in particular, to solicit proclamations recognizing a wide variety of things: an annual (in January) “yogathon” by the HSS (which is separate from the UN-recognized International Day of Yoga in June), Raksha Bandhan (an otherwise benign Hindu festival in which sisters tie a “protection bracelet” around their brothers’ wrists — but which, when celebrated by HSS-USA, typically involves doing the same with local police and fire departments), “Hindu Heritage Month” recognitions (which invariably include promotion, within the text, of HSS-USA specifically), and more.

This tactic, however, is now getting noticed.

“Although the HSS has received proclamations for various reasons, the vast majority are for its Yogathon events,” reported by The Nation in April 2023. “For the last four consecutive annual Yogathons, the HSS has received 439 proclamations.” Invariably, “the group itself drafted the text of the proclamation.’

As the outlet reported, it “reached out to more than 80 congresspersons, state representatives, and mayors, speaking with 15, and found that in most cases, proclamations are awarded to the HSS without a background check.”

Not a single one of the elected officials contacted by the outlet was aware of the HSS’s links to the RSS. In other words, cities and counties around the US are frequently passing proclamations platforming and praising the HSS with apparently total ignorance of the credentials of the group. Apparently, no one in any of these cases ever bothers even taking five seconds to Google the HSS!

Further exposing the system, some cities have even passed proclamations for both the HSS and Kailasa, even recognizing the latter after being informed about the former’s ties to the RSS.

On 17 November 2021, Roseville presented the HSS with a “Hindu Heritage Month” proclamation. On 15 December 2021, I attended the city council meeting to warn officials that the HSS is “serving as an international support base and propaganda mouthpiece for the RSS’s fascist agenda.” Exactly a week later, Nithyananda’s Facebook account published an official “City of Roseville Certificate of Recognition” acknowledging the “Sovereign of the Sovereign State of Kailasa.” The certificate highlighted Nithyananda’s “global humanitarian contributions to Hinduism.” Twice in two months, the same city was duped into platforming and praising dubious groups simply, it seems, due to a failure to do even basic research.

A few miles from Roseville, Folsom is a more recent example of a city falling for the HSS scam. On 28 February 2023, the city passed a proclamation recognizing HSS’s “Health for Humanity Yogathon.” The proclamation specifically called out HSS as a “nonprofit organization with over 235 branches in 164 cities” and praised the group for its “community service.” Its verbiage – both about HSS and the yogathon – was practically identical to that used for previous such proclamations in neighboring cities.

Contacted for comment, a Folsom spokesperson was coy.

“No,” they could not discuss the research conducted on HSS before granting the proclamation. It was given, they said, “to highlight the significance of yoga as an ancient Hindu practice.” They were (but only because my questions brought their attention to coverage in The Nation) aware that three neighboring cities had recently rescinded identical resolutions, but could not comment on it.

This is not to single out Folsom or Roseville – or, indeed, even Newark – but rather to expose a chink in the armor that should surround and protect secular democracy in America. In the apparent interest of maintaining an equal opportunity open door policy to all citizens, and upholding a pluralistic ethos that welcomes and celebrates all that is good in humanity, these cities have neglected to filter out bad actors who can and do use these local governmental platforms to their own less than honorable ends.

In contrast to Roseville and Folsom, three of their neighboring cities did, in fact, become the first few in the nation to retract their proclamations after learning about the HSS’s antecedents.

Manteca, CA – an hour south of Folsom and Roseville – led the way in August 2022. Lathrop and Elk Grove immediately followed suit.

The retraction process at Manteca, in particular, vividly illustrated just how much the HSS apparently values these proclamations.

It was a swift process. After HSS critics (including myself) raised the issue at a regular city council meeting, the city convened a special meeting just two weeks later to consider retraction. When HSS supporters got wind of it, approximately 75 of them mobilized to attend in protest. As Manteca ran a hybrid meeting permitting public comments both in person and via Zoom, perhaps another 40 called in to oppose retraction.

The city’s solution to the whole matter, once evident, provoked outrage from these HSS sympathizers.

After briefly considering amending the proclamation to remove references to the HSS, the city decided to instead fully retract it since it not only praised the HSS but was also given to them. In return, the city proposed to pass — from itself — a proclamation recognizing the International Day of Yoga (which is in June) rather than the Health for Humanity Yogathon (a distinctly HSS event in January).

Yet the HSS supporters appeared aghast. Several of them became visibly disturbed, started standing up, and even cried out in protest. “No,” they seemed to say, “we don’t want you recognizing yoga unless it includes mention of the HSS.”

Their reaction, combined with the massive number speaking against retraction (an estimated 4-1 against versus for, judging by the list of nearly 60 speakers recorded in official minutes of the meeting), indicated the immense importance – to the HSS – of these city proclamations.

Just like Kailasa, the HSS routinely “happily promotes its victories on social media.” Just as reported about that fake nation, the large and growing stack of prior proclamations that the HSS can present when approaching new cities does much to “make the group seem legitimate.”

Yet, just as with Kailasa, if American cities relied on a bit of basic research on Google rather than the face value claims of the HSS, they would swiftly discover a truth which would almost certainly compel them to close off the group’s official access to these local halls of political power.

That truth is that, just as Gandhi was being assassinated by an RSS member in India in January 1948, a group of RSS members emigrating from the country founded the HSS to be, in the words of its founder, a “Sangh expansion overseas.” Rather than the “Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh” (National Volunteer Corps), they called it the “Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh” (Hindu Volunteer Corps) because it was based outside India.

Today, the HSS — which exists in perhaps 100 or more countries — is especially entrenched in English-speaking nations like Australia, Canada, the UK, and, of course, the US. Just as at most RSS meetings, the HSS’s meetings typically feature, on stage, garlanded photos of the first two chiefs of the RSS. Every five years, the RSS hosts India-based training camps for HSS members from around the world. Not only does the HSS regularly host tours of its chapters by senior RSS leaders, but many of its teaching sessions are also reportedly conducted by visiting RSS members. Moreover, the HSS’s Global Coordinator is a full-time RSS worker.

Data collated from a wide variety of sources — including RSS-approved researchers, Indian diaspora media reports (usually put out by HSS sympathizers), and HSS social media — confirms beyond a shadow of a doubt that the HSS is linked to the RSS. Aside from the legal distinction between the two entities, in practice, the HSS and the RSS appear to be one and the same thing.

The HSS is, in short, the international wing of the RSS.

In that context, the most important lesson the Kailasa con job can teach us is that the naïveté and negligence of American elected officials can have real world consequences. These officials seem to assume that every organization soliciting their support is acting in good faith, as though no one requesting a governmental stamp of approval needs to be verified as legitimate before they get it.

With Kailasa, the outcome is, thankfully, nothing more than embarrassment — as well as mild amusement for those of us observing from the sidelines. Yet it’s a far graver situation when local governments are similarly hoodwinked into platforming and praising the HSS. While Kailasa is a fake nation holding no real political power, the HSS is the international wing of the world’s oldest, largest, and fastest-growing fascist movement: the RSS.

Through the BJP, the RSS has ruled India since 2014. Thus, although the HSS is probably betting on the likelihood that local American governments won’t realize it is the international wing of the RSS, every time these governments award the HSS a proclamation (or some other kind of recognition), they’re aiding and abetting — albeit inadvertently — the RSS-BJP’s ongoing and escalating implementation of an authoritarian, anti-minority agenda in India.

Ultimately, the Kailasa con job reveals how easily real harm can occur when these local governments so readily grant acclamation without double-checking whom they are acclaiming. “With little or no background checks, the HSS’s political outreach continues to yield results,” reported The Nation. Not only has HSS stockpiled hundreds of proclamations, but it has also — like Kailasa — been embraced even by members of US Congress. Beyond that, various state legislatures and governors have even applauded it in formal greetings, platformings, and resolutions. In fact, HSS’s infiltration into the US political arena has been so unnoticed and unopposed that an HSS-USA director was even appointed to a Department of Homeland Security role in 2022.

Yet, as the few cities which have now rescinded proclamations to the HSS demonstrate, enlightenment about its true nature as the international wing of the RSS can — and should — make it persona non grata for those enlightened.

Ultimately, as the truth spreads, many officials in the US at city, county, state, and federal levels will have to grapple not with the embarrassment endured by Newark but with a far deeper level of shame. Had they bothered to check, they could have avoided empowering the RSS’s international wing. The amends they must make when they learn the reality of what they have done ought to extend far beyond simply quietly backtracking. That’s the least they owe to the marginalized people of India who are being crushed beneath the boots of the RSS-BJP.

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Twitter Gives $2.5 million to --Sewa International-- "Welfare Wing" of India's RSS Paramilitary | Pieter Friedrich

 

Twitter Gives Millions to "Welfare Wing" of India's RSS Paramilitary Sewa International gets $2.5 million despite ties to militant Hindu nationalist group

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who on 10 May 2021 announced a $2.5 million donation to Sewa International, must have missed journalist Neha Dixit’s viral tweet, published a week earlier, urging Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) not to support the controversial nonprofit organization because “they work as the welfare wing of RSS.” As COVID-19 ravages India, Sewa International recently announced its plan to raise $10 million for medical equipment to support the country’s struggle against the virus. Meanwhile, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi — a member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the paramilitary which gave birth to the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party — faces scathing international criticism for his regime’s apparent indifference to and outrageous mishandling of the COVID crisis. Yet, just weeks after Modi’s regime ordered Twitter to censor tweets critical of his pandemic policy, the social media giant now, ironically, plans to pour millions into the coffers of an RSS-BJP affiliate which has been accused of funneling international funding to “racist and anti-Muslim” groups in India. “I am satisfied that Sewa International is a front for controversial militant Hindu organisations,” said British Lord Adam Patel in August 2002. As a patron of the nonprofit, Patel had helped it raise relief funds for victims of a 2001 earthquake in Gujarat. Yet he resigned in disgust — “I very much regret ever having been part of this racist organisation,” he declared — after an earthquake of a different nature shook Gujarat immediately after Modi became chief minister of the state in February 2002. The 2002 Gujarat Pogrom left thousands of Muslims dead. The RSS-BJP, reported Human Rights Watch, were “the groups most directly responsible” for the violence. The RSS, explained UK human rights outfit Awaaz South Asia Watch, follows a “supremacist ideology called Hindutva” which was “formed in the 1920s and 1930s,” was “influenced by Fascism and Nazism,” and teaches that India should be an “exclusive Hindu nation-state.” In a 2004 exposé, Awaaz claimed that Sewa International’s “main purpose is to raise funds for and support a distinct family of organizations associated with the extremist RSS.” Madhukar Deoras, third chief of the RSS, founded Sewa Bharati in 1989 as a service — or welfare — wing of the paramilitary. Sewa International was subsequently launched, states the nonprofit’s website, “to engage the Indian Diaspora (NRI) worldwide.” The US branch — the recipient of Twitter’s largesse — was registered in 2003 to, it says, to serve as part of the “larger movement that started in India in 1989” under Deoras. “Rashtriya Sewa Bhar[a]ti and Sewa International both are part of the same non-profit organisation affiliated to RSS,” explained right-wing Indian media outlet OpIndia in May 2021. “While Rashtriya Sewa Bhar[a]ti operates nationally, Sewa International has volunteers working both in the US and India, coordinating the work of raising funds.” According to Awaaz, both organizations “are dedicated to building a Hindu nation based on Hindu extremist ideas, glorifying the RSS, recruiting for the RSS and expanding RSS physical and ideological training cells (shakhas) in India.” Sewa International, reported historians Walter Andersen and Shridhar Damle, is “managed mainly” by “activists” of the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS), the international wing of the RSS. Outside of India, the nonprofit is chaired by Ramesh Bhutada. An industrialist based in Houston, Texas, Bhutada also serves as vice-president of HSS-USA and has worked closely with Overseas Friends of the BJP USA (OFBJP-USA) — the American wing of the BJP, which is now registered as a foreign agent — to help get Modi elected in 2014. Sewa International’s board also includes HSS Global Coordinator Saumitra Gokhale. In 1995, while in India, Gokhale reportedly served as a pracharak (full-time officer) of the RSS. In 2012, he and Bhutada helped host RSS’s Suresh Joshi — who recently retired as the paramilitary’s second-in-command — on a six-week tour of HSS shakhas in the US. “For our activities outside of Bharat [India], the source of inspiration remains the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh,” he later saidat a presentation in California. In July 2020, Gokhale gave the concluding remarks at a Sewa International conference where Arun Kankani was announced as the nonprofit’s new president. Kankani — an employee of Bhutada’s Star Pipe Products — has a long track record of involvement with the RSS-affiliated family of organizations known as the Sangh Parivar. In 2010, for instance, he joined a Houston delegation to attend an HSS-RSS summit in India; in 2019, he keynoted an HSS conference in Houston. When Kankani became president of Sewa International, the nonprofit suggested it was because he had proved his worth serving as head of operations for the team that organized the September 2019 “Howdy Modi” mega-reception in Houston. Bhutada and several members of his close family also took a leading role in organizing the controversial event, as did Sewa International (Houston) President Gitesh Desai. In January 2014, Desai introduced Bhutada at an OFBJP-USA event organized to support Modi’s election. “To make a strong India, Narendra Modi and the BJP are the right vehicles,” said Bhutada. Detailing plans to organize up to 10,000 volunteers in the US to campaign for Modi, he described how he was coordinating closely with BJP in India. One of those volunteers was Desai himself, who joined a team of so-called “volunteers turned political warriors” to travel from Texas to India to serve as boots on the ground for Modi. In parting remarks to the political warriors, Bhutada told them it was “the moment to pay our debt to our motherland.” After Modi won in May 2014, Bhutada argued that his “upbringing in the culture of RSS is an asset” and praised his “RSS training” as the reason for his success. When Modi won re-election in May 2019, Bhutada and Desai both spoke in his honor at a victory party in Houston. “There is no leader better than Prime Minister Narendra Modi ji with vision and mission to lead India in the 21st century,” declared Desai. Sewa’s leadership — aside from Desai, Kankani, Gokhale, and Bhutada — also includes at least a half-dozen directors and advisors who are apparently either HSS executives in the US or long-time activists with the RSS in India or both. Advisor Yashwant Pathak is a former RSS pracharak who has been described as a joint coordinator for HSS. Honorary board member Radheshyam Dwivedi, who reportedly joined the RSS in 1947, is a former president of HSS-USA. Both Pathak and Dwivedi have regularly spoken at RSS summits alongside senior Sangh Parivar leadership. Manohar Shinde, a director, has been described as “an RSS-trained man who was one of the founders of the HSS” and reportedly maintains close ties to the BJP regime in India. Sewa International’s sentiments towards the Hindu supremacist paramilitary are no secret. Its sympathies were further exposed when, in 2017, the nonprofit opened its annual report with a glowing commemoration of the late RSS pracharak K Suryanarayan Rao. Praising the 70-year veteran of the RSS (who died in November 2016) as “a visionary,” the report explained that Rao was both inspired by the vision of first RSS chief, KB Hedgewar, as well as “deeply influenced by the ideological, philosophical and spiritual stance” of second RSS chief, MS Golwalkar. The RSS’s “cardinal principle,” Rao once said, is the belief that India is a Hindu Rashtra (nation). “It is our life breath,” he proclaimed. “RSS is convinced that only when every person in this country realises that he is after all part and parcel of this Hindu Rashtra, this nation can progress, standing up as one man.” Rao’s vision mirrored Golwalkar’s. The vision Golwalkar spoke of, however, explicitly included an India where minorities were stripped of citizenship if they refused to glorify it as a Hindu nation. Golwalkar, the longest-serving and most notorious of the six chiefs the RSS has had to date, was inspired and influenced by Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. Describing non-Hindus in India as “threats,” “foreign,” and even traitorous, he suggested they should be stripped of citizenship. Praising Hitler’s “purging” of the Jews as “race pride manifested at its highest,” he concluded that the Nazi dictator’s racial policy was a “good lesson” from which to profit. Nearly 100 years after the RSS’s founding in 1925, its political wing, the BJP, is now attempting to weather a public relations crisis alongside the raging healthcare crisis; yet the RSS-BJP, no stranger to controversy, refuses to miss the chance to turn the situation to its advantage even as COVID tears across India. In March 2020, India’s first lockdown extinguished the pressure of mounting protests against the regime’s Citizenship Amendment Act; now, as the regime loses control of the virus, it has diverted growing international pressure away from the ongoing farmers protest. Meanwhile, as local administrations empower the RSS by partnering with it for COVID relief efforts, the paramilitary’s members have gotten special passes and sometimes even police powers. Furthermore, when Sewa International gets showcased as a role model relief organization, the Sangh Parivar as a whole reaps huge public relations dividends — especially as the organization is granted global legitimacy in the form of, for example, a multi-million dollar donation from Twitter. As Twitter offers millions to Sewa International despite its links to a violent, Hindu nationalist, and literally Nazi-inspired paramilitary, humanitarians everywhere can only hope that Jack Dorsey might be persuaded to listen to reason and reconsider financing the welfare wing of the RSS.

Pieter Friedrich is a freelance journalist specializing in analysis of South Asian affairs. He is the author of Sikh Caucus: Siege in Delhi, Surrender in Washington and Saffron Fascists: India's Hindu Nationalist Rulers as well as co-author of Captivating the Simple-Hearted: A Struggle for Human Dignity in the Indian Subcontinent. Discover more by him at PieterFriedrich.net.

Canada: Consul General of India in Toronto Delivers Keynote Speech at Hindu Nationalist Event organised by International arm of RSS

Source: http://www.minoritiesofindia.org/torontos-consul-general-india-keynotes-hindu-nationalist-event/

Toronto’s Consul General of India Keynotes Hindu Nationalist Event

Admin | On 31, Oct 2018

“Dinesh Bhatia’s presence at an RSS event inspires fear,” say Indian minorities

ONTARIO, Canada: Oct. 31, 2018 — Some minorities of Indian origin are asking for Dinesh Bhatia, the Consul General of India’s Toronto consulate, to resign after he appeared as the keynote speaker at an Oct. 19 event which was hosted by Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS), the international wing of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the world’s largest paramilitary.
“Thousands of Indians fled religious and ethnic persecution in India to find refuge in Canada,” says Ram Mohan, an activist with Canadian Minorities of India (CMI). “Many refugees, including Christians, Dalits, Muslims, and Sikhs have endured persecution at the hands of the RSS. The moment Consul General Bhatia spoke on a stage featuring photographs of RSS leaders, he discarded his diplomatic credentials. Bhatia’s presence at an RSS event inspires fear in the hearts of many Canadians from Indian minority communities. He must resign.”
Bhatia was joined at the event by Ved Nanda, Sanghchalak (Leader) of HSS North America, and Saumitra Gokhale, International Coordinator of HSS. Garlanded photos on the stage included K.B. Hedgewar and M.S. Golwalkar. Hedgewar, who founded the RSS in 1925, said his intention was “to put in reality the words ‘Hindustan of Hindus.’” He stated, “Hindustan is a country of Hindus. Like other nations of other people (eg. Germany of Germans), this is a nation of Hindu people.” Golwalkar, who was the RSS’s longest-serving leader, stated, “We repeat: in Hindustan, the land of the Hindus, lives and should live the Hindu Nation.”
“The RSS calls Indian Christians ‘foreigners’ and murders them,” says Bill Rogers, a U.S.-based observer of international Christian persecution. “One horrible example is the 2008 Odisha Pogrom, where the government of Odisha is on record saying that it was the RSS and its affiliates who massacred dozens of Christians and made so many tens of thousands refugees in their own country. A diplomat who claims to represent a secular country has no business going anywhere near an RSS event.”
The RSS is the parent of a family of organizations known as the Sangh Parivar. According to the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, “Sangh Parivar entities aggressively press for governmental policies to promote their Hindu nationalist agenda, and adhere in varying degrees to an ideology of Hindutva, which holds non-Hindus as foreign to India.” In June 2018, the CIA labeled the RSS as a nationalist organization and its affiliate, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), as a religious militant organization.
“The RSS, VHP, and HSS are supremacist groups which spread hatred against non-Hindu Indians,” explains Pieter Friedrich, an analyst of South Asian affairs. “The RSS and VHP are implicated in pogroms against Indian minorities, assassinations of journalists, and terrorist acts. They share ideological affinity with white nationalists. White nationalists want a whites-only nation while the RSS wants a Hindus-only nation. Both are anti-Semitic. Both glorify Aryanism. Both lynch minorities. Horrifying events like the Tree of Life Synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh are regularly replicated in India by Hindu nationalists who invade churches, mosques, and gurdwaras.”
Friedrich notes, “The goals of the RSS are very clearly indicated in the writings of Golwalkar and of Savarkar — the originator of the term Hindutva. Both suggested that Indian minorities should be treated the same way as Nazi Germany treated the Jews.” He identifies a selection of quotes from both figures taken from the 1920s to 1960s.
“We are Indians because we are Hindus and vice versa,” wrote Savarkar. He said that, “India must be a Hindu land, reserved for the Hindus.” Asserting that “so far as the Moslem minority is concerned… we must watch it in all its actions with the greatest distrust possible,” he concluded, “If we Hindus in India grow stronger, in time these Muslims… will have to play the part of German-Jews.”
“Conversion of Hindus into other religions is nothing but making them succumb to divided loyalty in place of having undivided and absolute loyalty to the nation,” wrote Golwalkar. He demanded, “Muslims and Christians here should give up their present foreign mental complexion and merge in the common stream of our national life.” Claiming that “the first Semitic religion was Judaism — an intolerant faith,” Golwalkar declared,
“To keep up the purity of the race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races — the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-nigh impossible it is for races and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.”
Bhatia courted controversy earlier this year when his office protested the presence of a Punjab pavilion at the July 2018 Carabram multicultural festival in Brampton, Ontario.
According to Brampton Mayor Linda Jeffrey, consular officials threatened to “go to the highest office in the country and cancel this festival.” Their objection was that the Sikh community wanted to host a Punjab pavilion apart from the India pavilion. “This type of unwarranted interference by Indian officials in a local cultural festival in Brampton was shocking,” said Jeffrey. The office of Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland stated, “Interference in domestic affairs by foreign representatives in Canada is inappropriate.”
Meanwhile, RSS Sarsanghchalak (Supreme Leader) Mohan Bhagwat and HSS Sanghchalak Ved Nanda have both sparked protests in the U.S. over the past year.
In September 2018, Bhagwat faced relentless resistance when he keynoted the VHP-organized World Hindu Congress (WHC) in Chicago. African-Americans, Buddhists, Christians, Dalits, Muslims, and Sikhs united in two days of street protests. Several U.S. politicians who were scheduled to attend dropped out, some issuing statements.
Representative Tulsi Gabbard, the first Hindu elected to U.S. Congress, was confirmed to chair the WHC but dropped out after protests against her sharing the stage with Bhagwat. She stated, “Due to ethical concerns and problems that surround my participating in any partisan Indian political event in America, effective immediately, I respectfully withdraw myself.” Ram Villivalam, a nominee for Illinois State Senate, was scheduled to appear but also dropped out. Citing the presence of “nationalist individuals and organizations affiliated with WHC 2018,” he stated, “Therefore, I cannot participate in this convening…. I do not support any group and/or an event arranged or led by organizations that intimidate minorities, incite discrimination and violence, commit acts of terror based on race or ethnic background, promote hate speech, and/or believe in faith based nationalism.”
In November 2017, Nanda stirred controversy in California when the Uberoi Foundation for Religious Studies, an organization he chairs, sponsored demands to revise school curriculum. A broad spectrum of Indian minority groups — including Dalits, Muslims, Sikhs, and Ravidassias — protested proposed revisions which included removal of the word “Dalit,” insertion of language claiming that the caste system created “social stability,” insertion of language suggesting that Dalits (formerly known as Untouchables) chose to do “dirty work” which made them untouchable, insertion of references to the mythical Saraswati River as a geographical reality, removal of references to Sikh Guru Nanak’s opposition to Brahmanism (the philosophy holding the highest caste, Brahmans, as superior) and the caste system, and labeling of U.S. Congressman Dalip Singh Saund as an Indian instead of a Sikh.
“Nanda directly modeled his efforts to revise American curriculum after efforts by Bhagwat and his predecessors to rewrite Indian curriculum according to the whims of Hindu nationalists,” notes Arvin Valmuci, a spokesperson for Organization for Minorities of India (OFMI). “We have seen solidarity among diverse communities protesting the California curriculum changes as well as the WHC in Chicago. Indians in Canada, including freedom-loving Hindus, should also unite, speak out, expose, reject, and eject Consul General Dinesh Bhatia’s affiliation with the agenda of militant religious nationalism.”

Arunabha Bagchi on Hindutva in America (in The Statesman)

The Statesman - 1 May 2016

Hindutva in America

Arunabha Bagchi

| 01 May, 2016

In a recent article, “The Hindu Consensus” (13 March 2016), I had analysed the reason behind the rise and rise in India of the Hindu Majoritarian Consensus, and had pointed out that the traditional arguments of our liberal intellectuals need to be reconfigured to effectively counter this alarming trend. To my utter surprise, two US-based Hindutva organisations picked up my article and published it on their websites. They must have agreed to the reasoning provided for the phenomenal rise of the Hindu Majoritarian Consensus, and ignored the rest. This made me think about the Hindutva movement abroad that gained momentum in conjunction with the Ram Janmabhoomi movement starting in 1990, and now has a significant presence in many countries. This has been spectacularly demonstrated by the grand show at the Madison Square Garden in New York where Narendra Modi delivered the ‘victory speech’ to his countless admirers in the United States. The same show was repeated elsewhere, most notably in Sydney and London.
The most effective Hindutva movement abroad developed in America. Hinduism has been practised in the United Kingdom for a long time, but it was essentially fragmented along regional lines reflecting the diverse regions in India with different languages and religious practices. The same trend started in the United States as well, when the first wave of immigration began after 1965 with the dramatic relaxation of immigration rules for people of non-European origin. This group consisted mostly of engineers, scientists and other professionals, and they were brought up in a milieu where the Gandhi-Nehru ethos prevailed. They were happy to observe their regional religious festivals and gather together to teach their children rudiments of their own languages. I had personal experience of this period in Los Angeles.
The second wave, from 1980 to 1995, consisted primarily of entrepreneurial and corporate management professionals. They included migrants from Africa of Indian origin. These migrants were wealthy and highly religious. They started constructing temples in large cities, originally devoted to deities specific to their regions in India. This was also the period of resurgence in Hindutva politics in India. Due to lack of choice, Hindus in America coming from all regions of India started flocking to those temples for pujas, just as their counterparts do in pan-Indian places of pilgrimage back home. This fit well with the ideal Hindutva ideology of forming a united Hindu community without any regional bias. I had direct experience of this development during my sabbaticals and professional visits to the US during summers. The third group of immigrants from 1995 onwards were IT professionals, and they used these temples for their religious needs. This period also saw a large increase in relatives of already settled Indian Americans migrating to the US under the family reunion schemes, which only increased the popularity of those temples.
With the resurgence of Hindutva politics in India, the Sangh Parivar made significant efforts to increase its footprint in America. Of course, the RSS went global on a modest scale decades ago when it set up branches in Africa to satisfy the demand among the Indian trading communities there. This received a new impulse with the setting up of the HSS (Hindu Swangsewak Sangha) in the UK in 1966 and subsequently in the US in 1973. Viswa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the religious/ cultural offshoot of the RSS, also opened its UK and US branches, VHP-UK and VHPA, respectively, around the same period. America provided a fertile ground for the rapid expansion of VHPA. They could use the social and economic homogeneity of the upper caste Indians that largely formed the Indian diaspora there. Many new Hindutva organisations sprang up in course of time, with no declared connections with one another. Scholars have now discovered, through detailed studies of their cyber-activities, that they are all parts of the Sangh Parivar. The most intriguing among them is HMEC (Hindu Mandir Executives’ Conference), a yearly get together of community leaders who control the temples in North America. This seemingly innocent organisation provides a significant forum for propagating the Hindutva ideology in North America. James McCallum Wiker, in his Masters thesis at the University of Washington, made a detailed study of their activities.
The first joint activity of the Hindutva brigades in India and abroad was ingeniously devised by the VHP at the start of the Ram Janmabhoomi Andolon in 1990. They came up with the idea of collecting Ram shila from everywhere to be used for building the planned Ram temple after the destruction of the Babri Masjid. These were consecrated bricks, to be collected from all corners of India, but in which the Hindutva advocates in diaspora participated with full vigour. Once a common purpose was identified, it was a small step for the diaspora to start actively helping in the political campaign of the BJP in national and state elections. They contributed financially, and used their knowledge of the election process in the United States to provide voluntary services to the BJP candidates in India. All these started slowly during the 1990s and took a massive form during the 2014 parliamentary election that brought Narendra Modi to power. The most obvious sign of their contribution, besides the financial one, was to transform our parliamentary election into a US presidential one.
Sangh Parivar activities in America, to be relevant to the diaspora there, have some specific features with no direct counterpart in India. Two such critical areas are ‘proper’ history of Hindus and practical descriptions of sanskaras; or, more specifically, the rites of marriage and death. State boards of education in the US, in keeping with the changing demographics with increasing non-Christian population of students, are paying some attention to other world religions. VHP associates are actively advocating more ‘Hindu’ accounts in the school history lessons. This is in line with the efforts of the previous BJP administration under Atal Behari Vajpayee to ‘adjust’ school textbooks in India to reflect their viewpoint about our unblemished glorious past. HMEC fought hard to ‘adjust’ the curriculum of the California State Board of Education. Reputed American scholars of Indian history, as well as Indian historians and anthropologists there, have largely thwarted their efforts. However, on some points of contention they did have  their say. Meanwhile they are distributing their view of our history to the guardians of Indian students for additional reading. Rewriting history by ‘experts’ is now in full swing with the advent of the latest BJP dispensation in Delhi. This is sure to make the job of Hindutva advocates in America considerably easier. Regarding sankskaras, VHP associates are writing simple tracts explaining the procedures to be followed during the marriage ceremony and cremation rituals in regional languages, as well as in English. They come very handy with the Indian diaspora who feel helpless on such occasions. Providing these indispensable services reinforces their support among the Indian migrants. The liberal Indian intellectuals in the US are alarmed with these developments, but are too fragmented and too high-browed to have much impact among most of the migrants.
The Hindutva advocates in America are increasingly behaving like the Jewish interest groups there. The negative perception of Muslims after 9/11 is making their efforts somewhat easier. One has to be careful, however. Americans are largely Christian and highly religious. In fact, as far as religion is concerned, the country does not seem to have progressed much beyond the state of affairs in late nineteenth century Europe, as Bertrand Russell often pointed out. The yoga hype and weird followers of Indian babas notwithstanding, Americans are not really interested in Hinduism. Judaism is an altogether different matter. Pushing Hindutva too far in America may backfire with intensified anti-Indian attitude among the common people there.
The writer is former Dean and Emeritus Professor of Applied Mathematics, University of Twente, The Netherlands.

Academics Open Letter to the University of California, Irvine regarding donors’ intentions to fund only certain kinds of religious practitioners

The Petition
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Open Letter to the University of California, Irvine



We write to you to express our concern regarding the initiative to establish four endowed chairs at the University of California, Irvine: the Thakkar Family-Dharma Civilization Foundation Presidential Chair in Vedic and Indic Civilization Studies, the Dhan Kaur Sahota Presidential Chair in Sikh Studies, Shri Parshvanath Presidential Chair in Jain Studies, and the Swami Vivekananda-Dharma Civilization Foundation Presidential Chair in Modern India Studies.

While such endowments have the potential to greatly enhance the study of South Asia, we are troubled by news reports that the Dharma Civilization Foundation (hereafter DCF) has put forward its own list of acceptable candidates based on race and religion. Further, we are concerned about reports that the DCF has already brought their favoured candidates to the UC Irvine campus, in the absence of any advertised search for these positions. According to Inside Higher Ed’s report on December 21, 2015, the DCF has proposed a list of possible candidates to fill the chairs, as well as a list of proscribed candidates, describing these lists as a “suggestion” to the University. Prevailing normative codes at public Universities and standard academic procedures require an advertised search where qualified candidates are vetted by established scholars selected from a wide pool of academic expertise. Reshaping academic selection via criteria based on ethnic origin or religious belief opens the door to discriminatory practices that are consequential for educators and students everywhere, not just at UCI.

Donors’ intentions to fund only certain kinds of religious practitioners, or only supporters of certain religiously-defined communities, contravenes not only anti-discrimination law but also standards of academic excellence. While it is possible that scholar-practitioners of a religion can enrich its study, it is widely accepted that being a practicing member of a religious group should not be a requirement for studying and teaching that religion. We fear the DCF’s efforts will lead to the appointment of scholars who do not represent the intellectual richness and rigour in religious studies and South Asian history. South Asia is a deeply heterogeneous multi-religious sub-continent, and its religious practices are highly decentralised, varying across region, class and caste. Academic study requires empathy, curiosity, and rigour, not a certificate of belonging or a methodology that is monitored by donors. We are particularly concerned about the specific ideological sympathies of DCF associates, and the commitment to compliance with donors’ intent currently embedded in the gift agreement (as published in the Orange County Register on December 16, 2015).

The DCF is part of a right-wing Hindu group of organisations that has been known to undermine Indian pluralism through an agenda that seeks to redefine true “Indianness” in terms of a historically-fabricated continuity in “Indic” religions (a list of religions that excludes the sub-continent’s traditions of Islam, Christianity and Zoroastrianism), and a privileging of upper-caste, “Vedic” Hindu identity. The DCF, although registered as a US non-profit organisation, is directly tied, through its office holders and its ideological roots, to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (hereafter RSS), an organization that is the main proponent of the political ideology of Hindu nationalism, or "Hindutva." DCF office holders have held, or continue to hold, positions within the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (hereafter HSS), which is a global partner organisation of the RSS (with an international program to extend RSS ideology, including raising money in the UK and US to be used for RSS schools).

The RSS and HSS misrepresent not only Hinduism’s relationship to other religions but also the historical fluidity and philosophical complexity within Hinduism itself. The RSS defines ‘Hindu-ness’ using an especially narrow interpretation of Sanatana Dharma and Vedic thought. The RSS is a militarist organization that has upheld violence as a means to reach political goals; it has used fatal force against religious minorities and political adversaries in the past. The RSS has been banned three times in India for its active participation in mass violence against Christian and Muslim minorities and its role in the 1948 assassination of Mahatma Gandhi. The HSS promotes a similar sectarian, exclusive, and xenophobic idea of Hinduism. Organisations linked to the DCF have been actively involved in hate campaigns and public smearing of diverse scholars of Hinduism who disagree with their interpretations of Indian history. Many members of the DCF board are office-holders and members of the HSS, and have tried to advance their ideological agenda in other educational settings. DCF affiliates have attempted to introduce factually inaccurate changes to California sixth-grade textbooks about Hinduism. The right-wing Hindu campaign to change California textbooks promoted a reductive idea of the religion, seeking to introduce elements that had been widely discredited by scholars of Hinduism. The Endowed Chair agreement between the DCF and UC Irvine, to our surprise, specifies that adherence to this intellectually discredited interpretation of Hinduism will serve as a litmus test for future faculty in the UC system. The candidates hired will be required to forge “partnerships with the Vedic and Indic heritage community in the Western diaspora,” and to fulfill the “Donors’ primary foundational intention” to uphold their vision of “Applied Dharma.” It is a matter of scholarly and financial concern that a gift agreement would specify that candidates prove alignment with Donor intent in order to be hired, and that certain faculty members of the UC system will be required to meet annually with private donors “to preserve a constructive collaboration with the Donors’ intent” in perpetuity.

We value the mission of the University of California and its commitment to robust faculty governance, public education and academic freedom. We support the diversification of research and pedagogy, but urge you to recognise the danger of privileging forms of expression which present themselves within the spectrum of “diversity,” while promoting or justifying religious or ethnic hatred, discrimination, or intolerance. Based on recent statements by the DCF and our understanding of the agreements that the School of Humanities signed, we are extremely concerned that it will be difficult to maintain a clear separation between “donor intent” and university processes. If UCI is unable to establish clear academic criteria for the vetting and hiring of candidates based on wide consultations with present faculty who teach South Asia-related courses, and if UCI is unable to ensure that there is no involvement of donors in academic decisions, we urge UCI to return the gifts and to end this relationship with the DCF and its associates.

Academic research and decision-making processes ought to evolve in the best traditions of independent thought and inquiry. At a time of State disinvestment from public education and the rising importance of private money in the growth of education, we understand the pressures on administrators to promote fundraising initiatives. However, the University of California has the responsibility to conduct due diligence, to protect its faculty, staff and students, and to follow ethical guidelines for broad democratic participation in our joint educational futures. We urge the University of California system to uphold the best ideals of academic freedom, and to reject partnerships with donor organisations or individuals who propagate narrow sectarian agendas that violate the very spirit and mission of a public university.

Sara Abraham

Researcher, Lahore University of Management Sciences

Meena Alexander

Distinguished Professor of English, Graduate Center/ Hunter College, City University of New York

Frederick M. Asher

Department of Art History,University of Minnesota

Jayadev Athreya

Director, Washington Experimental Mathematics Lab University of Washington

Gajendran Ayyathurai

Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Göttingen University, Germany

Paola Bacchetta

Associate Professor, University of California, Berkeley

Amit R. Baishya

Assistant Professor, Department of English, University of Oklahoma.

Sarada Balagopalan

Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Childhood Studies, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Sukanya Banerjee

University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Srimati Basu

University of Kentucky

Dr. Rachel Berger

Associate Professor, History Department, Concordia University

Varuni Bhatia

Assistant Professor, Hindu Studies, Asian Languages and Cultures, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Nilanjana Bhattacharjya

Honors Faculty Fellow, Barrett, the Honors College, Arizona State University

Tithi Bhattacharya

Director, Global Studies, Associate Professor, History, Purdue University

Debjani Bhattacharyya

Assistant Professor, Drexel University, Department of History, 3250-60 Chestnut Street, Suite 3025 MacAlister Hall, Philadelphia, PA 19104

Purnima Bose

Associate Professor, English and International Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington

Timothy Brennan

Professor, U of Minnesota

Laura C. Brown

Assistant Professor, University of Pittsburgh

Madhurima Chakraborty

Assistant Professor, Department of English, Columbia College Chicago.

Mrinalini Chakravorty

Associate Professor, English, University of Virginia

Shefali Chandra

Associate Professor of South Asian History, Washington University in St. Louis

S. Charusheela

Associate Professor, Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, University of Washington, Bothell

Partha Chatterjee

Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University

Indrani Chatterjee

Professor, History, UT Austin

Angana Chatterji

Center for Race and Gender, University of California, Berkeley

Swati Chattopadhyay

Professor, History of Art and Architecture, University of California, Santa Barbara

Zahid Chaudhary

Princeton University

Preeti Chopra

Professor, Department of Art History, University of Wisconsin, Madison

Rohit Chopra

Associate Professor of Communication, Santa Clara University

David Clingingsmith

Dept. of Economics, Case Western Reserve University

Ananya Dasgupta

Assistant Professor, History, Case Western University

Veena Deo

Professor, English,CLA, Hamline University

Jigna Desai

Chair & Professor, Dept. of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies, University of Minnesota 425 Ford Hall

Wendy Doniger

University of Chicago

Richard M. Eaton

Professor of History, University of Arizona

Mayanthi L. Fernando

Associate Professor of Anthropology, Director of Undergraduate Studies, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz

Keya Ganguly

Professor, Department of Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature, University of Minnesota

Toorjo Ghose

Associate Professor, Chair,School of Social Policy & Practice, University of Pennsylvania

Bishnupriya Ghosh

Professor, English, UC Santa Barbara

Jayati Ghosh

Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India

Prof. David Gilmartin

North Carolina State University

Priyamvada Gopal

University of Cambridge

Inderpal Grewal

Yale University

Richard Grusin

Professor of English, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Charu Gupta

Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Delhi

Mary Hancock

Professor of Anthropology and History, University of California, Santa Barbara

Ziaul Hasan

Retired Professor, University of Illinois, Chicago

Qadri Ismail

Associate professor, University of Minnesota.

Dr.Chinnaiah Jangam,

Assistant Professor, Department of History, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada

Pranav Jani

Associate Professor, English, Ohio State University

Vidya Kalaramadam

Assistant Professor, William Paterson University of New Jersey

Sangeeta Kamat

Associate Professor, Education, University of Massachusetts at Amherst

Suvir Kaul

A. M. Rosenthal Professor, Department of English, University of Pennsylvania

Prashant Keshavmurthy

Assistant Professor of Persian-Iranian Studies, Institute of Islamic Studies, McGill University

Jesse Ross Knutson

Assistant Professor of Sanskrit and Bengali, Department of Indo-Pacific Languages and Literatures, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa

Sankaran Krishna

Professor of Political Science, University of Hawaii at Manoa

Aishwary Kumar

Stanford

Smita Lahiri

Visiting Lecturer, Anthropology, Harvard University

James W Laine

Professor of Religious Studies, Macalester College, Saint Paul. MN

Joy Laine

Philosophy Department, Macalester College

Vinay Lal

Professor of History, UCLA

Premesh Lalu

Director of the DST-NRF Flagship on Critical Thought, Centre for Humanities Research, University of the Western Cape.

Jean M Langford

Professor, Anthropology, U of Minnesota

David Lelyveld

Professor (retired), William Paterson University

Simon Leung

Professor, Department of Art UC Irvine

Ania Loomba

Catherine Bryson Professor of English, University of Pennsylvania

Kama Maclean

University of New South Wales, Australia

Sudhir Mahadevan

Associate Professor, Comparative Literature, Cinema and Media, University of Washington, Seattle

Saba Mahmood

Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of California at Berkeley

Sunaina Maira

Professor, Asian American Studies UC Davis

Neepa Majumdar

Associate Professor, Department of English, University of Pittsburgh,

Marc Matera

Assistant Professor, department of history, UC Santa Cruz

Biju Mathew

Associate Professor, College of Business , Rider University, New Jersey

Saloni Mathur

Associate Professor and Director, Graduate Studies, Chair, Art Journal Editorial Board, UCLA | Dept of Art History

Monika Mehta

Associate Professor of English, Binghamton University

Dilip M Menon

Director Centre for Indian Studies in Africa, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa

Raza Mir

Professor of Management, Cotsakos College of Business, William Paterson University

Madhuchhanda Mitra

Professor, English, College of Saint Benedict/St. John’s University

Durba Mitra

Assistant Professor of History, Fordham University

Megan Moodie

Associate Professor of Anthropology, UC Santa Cruz

Projit Bihari Mukharji

University of Pennsylvania

Sucharita Sinha Mukherjee

College of Saint Benedict/Saint John’s University, Minnesota, USA

Rahul Mukherjee

University of Pennsylvania

Richa Nagar

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Vijaya Nagarajan

Associate Professor, Dept. of Religious Studies, Program in Environmental Studies, University of San Francisco

Sandhya Devesan Nambiar

JMC, University of Delhi

Balmurli Natrajan

Associate Professor, Anthropology, William Paterson University of New Jersey

Britta Ohm

Institute of Social Anthropology, University of Bern, Switzerland

Goldie Osuri

Associate Professor, Sociology, University of Warwick

Shailaja Paik

Assistant Professor of South Asian History and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Affiliate, University of Cincinnati, Ohio, USA

Joyojeet Pal

Assistant Professor, University of Michigan, School of Information

Gyan Pandey

Emory University

Vasudha Paramasivan

University of California, Berkeley

Andrea Marion Pinkney

Assistant Professor, Faculty of Religious Studies, McGill University

Sheldon Pollock

Arvind Raghunathan Professor of Sanskrit and South Asian Studies, Chairman, Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and Africa Studies, Columbia University in the City of New York

Gyan Prakash

History, Princeton University

Shalini Puri

University of Pittsburgh

Neshat Quaiser

Associate Professor Department of Sociology, Jamia Millia Islamia, Central University New Delhi

Gloria Goodwin Raheja

Professor of Anthropology, University of Minnesota

Arvind Rajagopal

Professor, Dept of Media, Culture and Communication, New York University

Rajeswari Sunder Rajan

English, New York University

M. V. Ramana

Nuclear Futures Laboratory & Program on Science and Global Security, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University

Lucinda Ramberg

Cornell University

Maia Ramnath

Professor of History and Asian Studies, Pennsylvania State University.

Anupama Rao

History, Barnard College, Columbia University

Raka Ray

Professor, Department of Sociology, Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley

Chandan Reddy

Associate Professor, English and Gender, Women and Sexuality Studies

Vanita Reddy

Assistant Professor, English, Texas A&M University

Marcus Rediker

University of Pittsburgh

Sharmila Roy

Attorney at Law, Laveen, Arizona 85339

Modhumita Roy

Associate Professor of English, Tufts University

Parama Roy

University of California, Professor of English, Davis

Poulomi Saha

Assistant Professor of English, University of California, Berkeley

G.S. Sahota

Assistant Professor, Literature, UC Santa Cruz

Yasmin Saikia

Hardt-Nickachos Chair of Peace Studies & Professor of History, Arizona State University

Laila Shereen Sakr

Assistant Professor , Department of Film and Media Studies, UC Santa Barbara

Bhaskar Sarkar

Associate Professor, UC Santa Barbara

Priya Satia

Associate Professor, Department of History, Stanford University

Freya Schiwy

Associate Professor, University of California, Riverside

J. Barton Scott

Assistant Professor, University of Toronto

Arijit Sen

Associate Professor of Architecture, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

Nayan Shah

Professor, American Studies & Ethnicity and History, University of Southern California

Svati P. Shah

Associate Professor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

S. Shankar

Professor and Director of Creative Writing, Department of English, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa

Aradhana (Anu) Sharma

Chair and Associate Professor, Anthropology, Wesleyan University

Jenny Sharpe

Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and Gender Studies , Department of English, University of California, Los Angeles, CA

Elora Shehabuddin

Rice University

Dr. Zoe C. Sherinian

Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology, Women and Gender Studies (Affiliate Faculty), University of Oklahoma

Greg Siegel

Associate Professor, Department of Film and Media Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA

Pritam Singh

Professor of Economics, Faculty of Business, Oxford Brookes University

Shana Sippy

Religion Department, Carleton College

Ajay Skaria

Professor, Department of History/Institute for Global Studies, University of Minnesota

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak

University Professor, Columbia University, New York, USA.

Mytheli Sreenivas

Associate Professor of History and Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Ohio State University

Tulasi Srinivas

Associate Professor, Emerson College.

Banu Subramaniam

Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies Program, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Ajantha Subramanian

Professor of Anthropology and of South Asian Studies, Harvard University

Abha Sur

Program in Women's & Gender Studies, MIT

Raja Swamy

Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Tennessee

Ratnakar Tripathy

Senior Research Fellow, Asian Development Research Institute (ADRI)

Siva Vaidhyanathan

Director, Center for Media and Citizenship, Robertson Professor, University of Virginia, Department of Media Studies

Vamsi Vakulabharanam

Associate Professor of Economics, University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Peter van der Veer

Director Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Göttingen, Germany

A.R. Vasavi

Social Anthropologist, Bengaluru, India

Gowri Vijayakumar

UC Berkeley

Rupa Viswanath

Professor of Indian Religions, University of Goettingen, Germany.

Gauri Viswanathan

Class of 1933 Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University

David Gordon White

J. F. Rowny Professor of Comparative Religion, University of California, Santa Barbara

Michael Witzel

Wales Professor of Sanskrit, Harvard University

Benjamin Zachariah

University of Trier, Germany

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