Skip to main content

Disclosing receipts and witnessing Hindutva extremism: Cutting through the deception


In earlier talks delivered at the Center for Culture-centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE), I have outlined Hindutva's uses of deception. 

One such strategy of deception is through equivocation, communicating opposite narratives at the same time. 

I have noted how Hindutva speaks to its internal audience in one language while communicating with its external audience in an entirely different narrative register. 

Hindutva's hate-mongering, and otherizing of Muslims would often come as a shock to white liberals in the diaspora, who are used to being invited to a nice Indian meal of daal and naan while being regaled with stories of "Hinduism as a religion of peace."

Hindutva in the diaspora actively works to project the narrative of Hinduism as a language of peace while participating in promoting the extremist anti-Muslim ideology to its internal audience. You will witness Hindutva ideologues narrate stories of Hinduism as a religion of giving while funding Hindutva hate groups and traveling to India to volunteer for Hindutva's hate activities.

It is no surprise then that Hindutva ideologues in the diaspora would quickly change colors and start singing the opposite song about India's democratic and secular values, now with the turn in the election results in the General Elections of 2024. With Hindutva's political arm, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) losing its hegemonic position, and with the Congress-led opposition coalition, INDIA, securing a strong presence in the Indian parliament, it is to be expected that the Hindutva propagandists peddling hate would quickly switch the narrative.

The same propagandists peddling disinformation and hate, emboldened by the populist authoritarianism of Narendra Modi, will now turn to singing songs of India's democracy, secularism, and pluralist values.

This turn though should not be a surprise to those that study Hindutva. The story of Hindutva begins with cowardice. One of its key architects Savarkar had pleaded with the British for forgiveness and collaborated with the British. It is only an extension of this ideology then that when the electoral tides are changing and large cross-sections of India's poor and marginalized are standing up through the electoral system to rally behind India's constitutional values, the Hindutva propagandists in India and in the diaspora would start singing songs of secularism and democracy.

It is important at this juncture then to disclose the receipts witnessing the Hindutva linkages, Rendering visible these linkages is critical to uprooting and dismantling the infrastructure of hate. Hate doesn't change through reflection. It needs to be removed through strong policy responses. To eliminate the ideology of Hindutva from India and from the diaspora calls for continued mapping and vigilant preventive responses. Witnessing the ideologues behind the movement is a critical step toward that broader transformation.

Popular posts from this blog

The whiteness of binaries that erase the Global South: On Communicative Inversions and the invitation to Vijay Prashad in Aotearoa

When I learned through my activist networks that the public intellectual Vijay Prashad was coming to Aotearoa, I was filled with joy. In my early years in the U.S., when learning the basics of the struggle against the fascist forces of Hindutva, I came in conversation with Vijay's work. Two of his critical interventions, the book, The Karma of Brown Folk , and the journal article " The protean forms of Yankee Hindutva " co-authored with Biju Matthew and published in Ethnic and Racial Studies shaped my early activism. These pieces of work are core readings in understanding the workings of Hindutva fascism and how it mobilizes cultural tropes to serve fascist agendas. Much later, I felt overjoyed learning about his West Bengal roots and his actual commitment to the politics of the Left, reflected in the organising of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), a political register that shaped much of my earliest lessons around Global South resistance, collectivization, and orga...
Read more

Zionist hate mongering, the race/terror trope, and the Free Speech Union: Part 1

March 15, 2019. It was a day of terror. Unleashed by a white supremacist far-right terrorist. Driven by hate for brown people. Driven by Islamophobic hate. Earlier in the day, I had come across a hate-based hit piece targeting me, alongside other academics, the University of Auckland academic Professor Nicholas Rowe , Professor Richard Jackson at Otago University, Professor Kevin P Clements at Otago University, Dr. Rose Martin from University of Auckland and Dr. Nigel Parsons at Massey University.  Titled, "More extremists in New Zealand Universities," the article threw in the labels "terror sympathisers" and "extremist views." Written by one David Cumin and hosted on the website of the Israel Institute of New Zealand, the article sought to create outrage that academics critical of Israeli settler colonialism and apartheid are actually employed by universities in New Zealand. Figure 1: The web post written by David Cumin on the site of Israel Institute ...
Read more

Whiteness, NCA, and Distinguished Scholars

In a post made in response to the changes to how my discipline operates made by the Executive Committee of the largest organization of the discipline, the National Communication Association (NCA), one of the editors of a disciplinary journal Rhetoric and Public Affairs (RPA), Professor Martin J. Medhurst, a Distinguished Scholar of the discipline, calls out what he sees as the threat of identity (see below for his full piece published in the journal that he has edited for 20+ years, with 2019 SJR score of 0.27). In what he notes is a threat to the "scholarly merit" of the discipline, Professor Medhurst sets up a caricature of what he calls "identity." In his rhetorical construction of the struggles the NCA has faced over the years to find Distinguished Scholars of colour, he shares with us the facts. So let's look at the facts presented by this rhetor. It turns out, as a member of the Distinguished Scholar community of the NCA, Mr. Medhurst has problems wit...
Read more