I am reflecting on a very stimulating conversation I had with a student of mine at coffee today...It was a filled out room, there were other familiar faces, and the tables were situated pretty close by, so we had to somewhat monitor how loud we could get, and also watch our language/content somewhat, given the setting and our topic "Reflexivity, the postcolonial moment, dialogue, and proselytizing missions." This was an extension of an earlier class discussion where I had noted that "I feel more violated when someone is trying to convert me religiously than when a right wing republican says something really offensive about one of my ideals." The discussion in class was fruitful but for the sake of time, we had to move ahead to other topics. Our coffee conversation today was beautiful as it recognized for me once again the potential for dialogue as transcendental...When we explored ideas such as faith, the limits it places on dialogue, the openings it creates for dialogue, and the possibilities of working through differences at the same time recognizing oneness...we found many common entry points...Entry points that made me think hard about my own position and that I know will stay with me for a long while...also reminded me of my conversation with my colleagues Bud Goodall and Kathy Miller on Facebook...I so miss these conversations with all the responsibilties of my bureaucratic functions...and am grateful for all these opportunities of learning and partaking in conversations that teach me new things, new ways of looking at the world, and new ways for appreciating difference!
The Haka, the Hurt, and the Work We Owe An Indian in Aotearoa reflects on resistance, complicity, and the solidarities we have yet to build Mohan Jyoti Dutta I watched the haka. I watched it several times, in fact. Each time, I tried to sit with what I was feeling before reaching for what I was supposed to think. Let me be honest about who I am in this conversation, because that matters. I am an upper caste, upwardly mobile Indian man. I am a professor at a university in Aotearoa. I carry the accumulated privileges of Brahminical socialisation, of English-medium education, of institutional access that was never designed for the communities I now write about and alongside. I say this not as confession but as orientation — because where you stand shapes what you see, and I have learned, through years of working with communities at the margins, that the refusal to name your own location is itself a colonial habit. The haka directed at Parmjeet Parmar did not offend me. It ...