Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

Figure 1: Example of a rape threat from Hindutva accounts online amidst the India-Pakistan tensions in 2025 Hindutva is an immoral ideology, constructing India as a Hindu nation modeled after Nazi Germany.  The production of the "Other" as a threat, as an immoral communicative act, threatens Hinduism at its heart. It perfects the art of communicative inversion, turning materiality on its head, that the ideology effectively seeds across the diverse registers of private, community, and public life. To the extent I am a victim, I can carry out the most immoral transgressions without being accountable. I have been wronged, the narrative goes, so I can legitimately discard the need for moral boundaries. References to the Hindu epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata, are drawn in to uphold this degeneracy. The ethical and reflexive journey of Hinduism as a faith tradition, critically interrogating its workings to build spaces for transformation, is framed as anti-Hindu, or Hinduphobic. Th...

Elsewhere I have argued that the hegemonic structures of neoliberal capitalism have thoroughly co-opted the language of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) to uphold and perpetuate racial capitalism.  In this blogpost, I will argue that the circulation of DEI within infrastructures of power has upheld toxic communicative processes that have worked to consolidate elite control while at the same time erasing those at the margins.  Undermining agency of communities, planting doubts, spreading rumors, organizing in cliques etc. emerge as strategies for maintaining and perpetuating power. These toxic strategies are then rebranded as methods for organizing for justice, thoroughly capturing power while erasing openings for critique. Any critique is projected as unsafe, uncivil, and non-collegial. The gatekeeping of knowledge systems and resources has been placed in the hands of those with power in discursive spaces, while simultaneously keeping out communities at the margins. ...

I read with profound sadness the statement made by the NZ Chief Human Rights Commissioner Dr. Stephen Rainbow about "the increase in Muslim immigration as threat to Jewish community." The sentiment expressed in the statement reflects the Islamophobia being circulated across Far-Right platforms globally targeting Muslim communities. In the US for instance, the networked infrastructure of the Far-Right has continually produced the image of the terrorist Muslim threatening Western civilization to stoke up fear and hatred. The Trump administration has mainstreamed this Far-Right extremism in the form of Islamophobia scripted into policies that have been dressed up as addressing antisemitism. Consider the targeting of international students, particularly Muslim international students, and international students expressing solidarity with Palestine and speaking out against the genocide being carried out by Israel. Similarly in the UK, Far-Right groups such as the English Defense Le...

The global ascendance of far-right extremism has been mainstreamed through political parties and public policies. In Aotearoa, this far-right extremism takes the form of anti-Māori racism, seeking to undo the globally recognized hubs of academic excellence that have emerged from Māori struggles within academia, in community life, and in public spaces.  I will begin by noting that one of the distinguished features of scholarship generated from Aotearoa that is globally recognized for its scholarly and social impact is the scholarship on/of decolonization, that directly emerged from Kaupapa Māori theories and methods, from the transformative work of scholars such as Professors Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Graham Hingagaroa Smith, Mason Durie, Joanna Kidman, and Jacinta Ruru (I am only naming a few of our Māori colleagues from a stellar constellation of names with global impact and recognition). This formative scholarship has not only dismantled the hegemonic theories and methods of producing...

For a large cross-section of the Indian diaspora bred on caste privilege, colonial tropes of Indigenous communities on dole hold a great deal of appeal.  These colonial tropes are layered over a deep-seated anti-Indigenous attitude embedded in the ideological infrastructure of caste.  One needs to closely look at the historic and systemic abuse of Adivasi (Indigenous) communities in India to understand the threads of historic racism toward Indigenous communities that flows through the Indian diaspora.  The casteist underbelly of racism turns into hate and is often mobilized as violence. Consider the historic uses of sexual, physical and material violence by upper castes to hold power and control over Adivasis across India.  Consider similarly the number of incidences of caste atrocities directed toward Dalits and Adivasis reported in India and across the diaspora. It is no surprise therefore that one sees the preponderance of racist tropes of the "lazy Māori" an...

(Photo credit: Image taken from  Manaakitanga – more than just hospitality - March 2021 - OnMAS ) Manaakitanga, a core Māori value, invites us to consider the ways in which respect, kindness, and collective responsibility shape how we interact with others.  In the context of how universities engage with international students, manaakitanga invites us to consider carefully our commitments to offering security, safety, and kindness to the many international students that come to study with us. As I have been observing with horror the mistreatment of international students in the US, the targeting of international students, the deployment of visa processes to silence and harass them, and the uses of techniques of migration-related violence to create a chilling climate, I am struck by how quickly universities in the US, many of them elite universities, have abandoned international students. As an American Indian who has benefitted from the scholarships and support infrastructures ...