Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

Radical politics of social change emerges from and is intricately intertwined with the struggles of the body.  Social change as structural transformation necessitates the placing of the body on the line.  To transform structures calls for the creation of conditions that make the status quo untenable. When it no longer is sustainable for the structure to continue in its existing form, the processes of social change start unfolding. The organizing for social change, therefore, is one of creating the conditions that enable social change. To create these conditions, communities and activists at the margins routinely place their bodies on the line.  The "body on the line" narrates the oppressions written into the structure, witnessing the everyday forms of violence carried out by the structure. It accounts for, questions, and explores the fissures in hegemonic formations through the act of speaking. So what does "body on the line" look like? In culture-centered organizin...

The year 2021 brought with it a lesson that I hope to carry forward in my academic journey in the coming years. That the sources of power will seek to silence the voices emergent from the margins is a lesson I have borne witness to over the last two decades of academic-community work, in some instances, at personal cost.  As we built the activist-in-residence program, starting with the transformative conversations with Braema Mathi, Sue Bradford, and Tame Iti, the organizing role of power in silencing dissenting voices became all too evident. From generating disinformation campaigns, to planting false narratives, to carrying out witch hunts framed as audits, to targeting academics with hate messages, threats of violence, and incarceration, dominant structures will draw upon a wide array of strategies and tools to silence academic voices that speak with and alongside the margins. In the face of these practices of silencing, academia can continue to thrive as a vital space of dissent...

Nana with her newspaper In my childhood, an old black and white picture hanging on the family wall stood as a reminder of the possibilities that was India. We knew to pay our respects to the hanging picture, alongside other pictures of ancestors who had passed on our way out the door. Paying homage to the hanging picture was particularly important before exams.   My grandmother, we called her nana, would fondly recall the stories of her Jnan kaka (uncle in Bengali), the bespectacled man, dressed in a white shirt and with a smile, in the picture. She would recall the stories of growing up, of her doctor father, and her Jnan kaka, the scientist in the family. Those conversations would almost always underscore the nation building role of science in modern India.  Sir Jnan Ghosh writing at his desk In the picture, Jnan dadu as we would call him, following our parents, appeared more like a poet, perhaps an invitation to consider the poetic relevance of his role as an architect...

  Hindutva forces attacking Muslim prayers As I have been witnessing my social media feed inundate with stories of Muslims and Christians being attacked by Hindutva forces in November/December 2021, listening to genocidal speeches delivered by Hindutva ideologues calling for attacks on Muslims, I am reminded of the powerful communicative inversion, the turning of materiality on its head through symbols, carried out by Hindutva organizations in the diaspora.  Hindutva, deploying violence targeting religious minorities in India, mobilized around symbolic and material strategies rooted in hate, appeals to multiculturalism and multi-faith accommodation in Western democracies to forge the space for itself. It turns itself into a minority, appealing as a minority, building persuasive registers that speak to the overarching logic of diversity and inclusion in Western democracies.  This communicative inversion, the turning of its materiality of hate into a symbolic appeal to the ...

Social justice, the articulations of justice rooted in equality, attend to the question of human dignity for all, especially for those at the margins of societies. Amidst the global rise of the far-right and its infrastructure of hate, social justice forms the dialogic anchor for resistance.  Given the role of religion in the attacks carried out by the far-right, interfaith dialogues are key registers for social justice.  Through the conversational spaces created for diverse faiths, registers can be built to organize against the politics of hate.  In these interfaith conversations, majority communities have a vital role to play in listening to the articulations of justice at the margins, in fostering the spaces for claiming human dignity, and in building infrastructures for religious freedom. In India, the rise of the far-right Hindu nationalist forces is embodied in the mobilization for Hindu nation ( Hindu rashtra ). This Hindu nation is built on the monolithic impositi...

  Over the week, in our monthly college magazine, I read the story of a colleague retiring. The story talked about how this colleague was such a key part of our college. I was overwhelmed with powerful emotions reading the story. A sense of sadness gripped me. The sadness seemed to appear like a tsunami, lifting me up in a tide of emotion. Reading the story, I realized suddenly how I had been putting off sending a "thank you" note to this colleague for the past several weeks to tell them how much I appreciated their kindness and their presence in the college. The rhythms and demands of building and sustaining community-academic-activist partnerships often mean that I am negotiating multiple commitments. Amidst these commitments, which are complicated by the various hate groups that target our anti-racist work at CARE, I end up spending a large part of my labor fire fighting. But perhaps that is an excuse I give myself for not adequately expressing my gratitude to people that ...

AP Photo/Jenny Kane, File   In carrying out the work of the Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) in mapping the flows of hate, the effects of hate on human health and wellbeing, the effects of hate on social cohesion, and communicative strategies for countering the effects of hate, one of the powerful lessons is tied to the response of hate groups. I am sharing these thoughts as reflections on my own experiences being targeted by hate groups and drawing on in-depth interviews I have been carrying out with academics negotiating the challenges to academic freedom. A wide array of hate groups, be it white supremacists or Hindutva supremacists will attack the work through the deployment of a wide array of strategies. These strategies will range from violent attacks including death threats and rape threats to deploying institutional mechanisms to target the anti-hate work. The response of the hate groups is carried out both online and offline, supported...