Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

Bollywood’s cultural narratives often serve as contested spaces where societal values, moralities, and ideologies like Hindutva intersect.  The films "Dil Dhadakne Do" (2015, dir. Zoya Akhtar) and "Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani" (2023, dir. Karan Johar) exemplify this tension, particularly through the portrayal of male characters—Anil Kapoor as Kamal Mehra and Dharmendra as Kanwal Lund—who embody immorality through infidelity, non-ownership of the infidelity, and abusive behavior.  Despite their transgressions, both films construct narrative arcs that excuse or sanitize this immorality, projecting a veneer of liberation while ultimately reinforcing the patriarchal, upper-caste, North Indian Hindi-speaking Hindutva culture.  The communicative inversion that turns Kamal Mehra and Kanwal Lund into victims of their circumstances forms the narrative infrastructure of Hindutva misogyny, incorporating within the discursive space claims of liberation and emancipation whil...

Beloved Palestinian academic, poet and author Refaat Alareer who was murdered by Israel. The liberal academy loves its activists. It celebrates the scholar who writes fiery critiques of authoritarian regimes, who pens eloquent op-eds on human rights abuses in distant lands, and who performs dissent in air-conditioned conference halls. These academics are lauded as champions of justice, their CVs gleaming with grants, keynotes, and citations. Academic-activism is a neoliberal cache. You see entire sub-disciplines, divisions, and majors evolve around this performative market of academic activism. Yet, when it comes to Palestine—when it comes to the brutal machinery of empire grinding through Gaza, the West Bank, and beyond—these same voices often fall silent. This silence is not neutral. It is complicity. It is hypocrisy. It is the liberal establishment’s role as a cog in the genocidal structure of empire.  T he academic activist thrives on selective outrage. They will dissect the ...

On this Indian Independence Day, I find myself reflecting on the soil of Midnapore, the land of my birth, and the revolutionary spirit it has nurtured across generations. Among the many brave hearts who emerged from this region, Khudiram Bose stands tall—a symbol of youthful defiance, of courage rooted in justice, and of a dream for a free India. Born in 1889 in the village of Habibpur in Midnapore, Khudiram was just a teenager when he took up arms against the British Empire. At the age of 18, he was executed by the colonial state for his role in the Muzaffarpur bombing—a moment that would etch his name into the annals of India’s freedom struggle. His final walk to the gallows, barefoot and smiling, remains one of the most powerful images of resistance in our collective memory. As someone who also traces his roots to Midnapore, I often think about the cultural soil that gave rise to such revolutionary consciousness. Midnapore has long been a crucible of dissent—home to farmers, workers...

The Mughal Emperor Aurangazeb, one of the key actors targeted with Hindutva's revisionism. As a scholar of communication studying the culture-centered approach as a framework for building narratives that articulate materiality, my work has long grappled with the intersections of culture, communication, and storytelling. From the spaces of Santali villages in rural West Bengal to the digital battlegrounds of global disinformation, I have witnessed how communicative infrastructures shape, sustain, and challenge power.  Wendy Doniger, one of the authors targeted by Hindutva One of the most insidious projects I have encountered in my scholarship is the fascist ideology of Hindutva, which seeks to rewrite India’s pluralist history into a monolithic narrative of a Hindu Rashtra (nation).  An example of a revisionist construction of history upholding the fascist ideology of Hindutva, peddled as decolonization. This project, with its roots in colonial constructs and fascist pedagogies...

 By Mohan Dutta, Self-Appointed Chronicler of the Absurdity of Hindutva uncles [Disclaimer: This piece is satire. If you find your BP climbing while reading this piece, please forward this to 10 people to restore your karma. Or just have a samosa and relax.] Alright, folks, buckle up for a wild ride through the land of saffron flags, WhatsApp forwards, and the ever-elusive “Hindutva chutiya.”  Now, before you clutch your pearls or your sacred threads, let me clarify: this is a tongue-in-cheek jab at the absurdities that sometimes parade under the banner of ideology. No cows were harmed in the writing of this blog, but a few egos might get a gentle nudge. So, what’s a “Hindutva chutiya,” you ask?  Picture this: a guy (it’s usually a guy, let’s be real) who’s watched one too many YouTube videos titled “India Was a Superpower Before Aliens Invented Taxes.” He’s got a WhatsApp University PhD in revisionist history, a tilak the size of a small planet on his forehead, and an ...