Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

From Instagram I write from Aotearoa New Zealand, where the land itself—whenua—whispers a truth the world keeps forgetting: diversity is not decoration. It is the operating system of life. Yet halfway across the planet, two mirror-image movements are busy flattening that truth into a single, suffocating slab of grey. One calls itself white Christian nationalism. The other, Hindutva. Both promise greatness. Both deliver mediocrity. Not the mediocrity of low IQ or bad haircuts. No. This is the mediocrity of supremacy—a structural laziness that mistakes exclusion for excellence, homogeneity for harmony, and loudness for leadership. From New York Times The Core Lie: Inheritance is the Original Sin Let’s name the lie plainly. White Christian nationalism is not about Christ. It is about whiteness—and the quiet, murderous belief that white skin is the measure of all things. Hindutva is not about Hinduism. It is about Brahminical caste hierarchy—and the ancient, murderous belief that birth in ...

From the New York Times The global political landscape often presents conflicts as isolated events rooted in ancient hatreds. The Culture-Centered Approach (CCA) insists we look deeper—at the structure of power, the systems that marginalize culture, and the mechanisms that silence voice. It situates these forms of cultural erasure in the context of the erasure of voice and the project of expelling colonized peoples from land and livelihood. Applying this lens reveals that the ideologies of Zionism and White Supremacy are not merely analogous forms of ethno-nationalism, but deeply intertwined colonial projects rooted in the same Western imperial structure that sought to dominate both land and people. The Core Structure: Settler Colonialism The CCA argues that communication and culture are shaped by underlying structures—the political, economic, and institutional arrangements that allocate power. Both Zionism and White Supremacy function as archetypal settler-colonial structures. White S...

As the vibrant festival of Diwali lights up homes and hearts across the Indian diaspora, the crackle of fireworks often symbolizes celebration, joy, and cultural pride.  Yet, in recent years, this luminous tradition has sparked a darker narrative—one where the reckless use of fireworks by diaspora Hindus in Western spaces exposes the destructive impact of Hindutva across the Indian diaspora. From houses set ablaze to far-right Hindutva handles on X blaming the fires on poor housing architecture in the West (with a sense of glee), the Diwali fireworks  controversy lays bare a critical intersection: the confluence of Hindutva ideology, caste entitlement, and the politics of the Indian diaspora as a petri dish for global cultural contestations. Fireworks and Fires: A Symbol of Disregard In cities across the West—be it London, New Jersey, or Toronto—reports have surfaced of Diwali celebrations marred by fires caused by unregulated fireworks. These incidents, while often u...

Image courtesy: RNZ I’m diving into the open letter from New Zealand’s Public Service Minister, Judith Collins, to unpack how words wield power in the ongoing public sector strike debates. In the blog, I draw on the theoretical framework of the culture-centered approach (CCA) to explore the ways in which the voices struggling in an economically disempowering climate—those of workers are marginalised by elite narratives. The targeting of worker voices exists in continuity with the pathologizing of communities struggling with poverty, indigenous peoples, and migrant communities, who are also the targets of elite narratives serving the interests of extreme capitalist accumulation. Collins’ letter, addressed to “patients, students, and families,” offers a textbook case of how governments use communication to flip realities, sideline workers, and uphold neoliberal structures. Let’s break it down using CCA’s tools—communicative inversion, rhetorical fallacies, and the interplay of culture, s...

In working with the Culture-Centered Approach (CCA), I write and research from the conviction that justice must be spoken from the margins of the margins. The CCA insists that genuine transformation emerges not from the corridors of privilege, but from the voices and struggles of those most systematically silenced. It is in listening to, theorizing with, and standing beside these communities that truth is uncovered. Yet, this very commitment—to listen where power forbids listening—has made me, like many other academics who dare to publicly critique Israeli settler colonial violence, a target of relentless attacks. I, and we as a collective, have become a site of projection for the anxieties of imperial power. The disinformation infrastructures that weaponize Zionist narratives have mobilized to erase, distort, and criminalize my scholarship. These campaigns are not random acts of disagreement; they are well-coordinated assaults designed to delegitimize critical inquiry itself. The powe...

The Assault is Here Here in Aotearoa, the far right has breached the walls of our universities. As I write this piece, I am well aware of the concerted effort at silencing critical academic speech: political interference threatens not only our positions as academics, but the very foundations of academic freedom in this country. The ACT Party is celebrating a supposed “victory” at the University of Auckland. Their prize? The gutting of the Waipapa Taumata Rau (WTR) courses—the core, compulsory first-year offerings on Aotearoa New Zealand history, Te Tiriti o Waitangi and te ao Māori.  ACT MP Parmjeet Parmar now goes further, demanding student refunds for supposed waste of credits. What she frames as liberation for students is in fact political influence, designed to delegitimize Māori knowledge and dismantle the democratic function of our universities. Now most new courses go through consideration of student feedback, which further shapes the delivery of the course, the course desig...

Figure 1: The depiction of the Overton Window shifting to the far-right, mainstreaming U.S. far-right extremism The politics of my research work empowers marginalized voices, challenges colonial and extractive orders, and enacts global justice, naturally situated within the progressive imaginations of politics. This research notes the global pattern of the rise of the far-right, organized around political processes designed to entrench the extreme marginalization of those at the margins. I watch with alarm and deep concern as I observe the digital ecosystem in Aotearoa New Zealand, the increasing presence of U.S. far-right discourse in this ecosystem, the political mainstreaming of the U.S. far-right, and the uptake into policy infrastructures the articulations that mimic the U.S. far-right. Based on this observation and in the context of the present politics of global uncertainty, I am compelled to notice the crucial necessity to preserve the political space of the center right as a n...