Mohan Dutta: Culture-Centered Approach

  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...

The political ideology of Hindutva is built on the infrastructure of hate, and in turn, holds up the circulation of hate.  The hate that is circulated on digital platforms is created, produced, and funded by brick-and-mortar organizations. In this sense, the hate that is rendered viral through digital platforms is rooted in material presence.  The online world is sustained by and held up by the offline world.  Digital infrastructures are integral to the consolidation of Hindutva hegemony. The digital armies of Hindutva deploy social media infrastructures to circulate hate.  These social media infrastructures pick their targets, draw on their networks to create campaigns, and continue to amplify the messages of hate. Threats of sexual violence are key tools in this infrastructure of hate. An overarching rape culture produces the threat of rape, amplifying toxic messages of othering. The recent targeting of the nine-month-old daughter of the captain of the Indian cric...

 Community voices at the "margins of the margins" threaten the hegemonic status quo. The status quo works through the ongoing erasure of community voices, creating and circulating logics of power and control that retain power in the hands of the elite. The communicative act of erasure of subaltern voices is deeply intertwined with the maintenance and reproduction of power and control.  The state, private capital, an d the professionalized non-profit sector profit from the everyday erasure of the subaltern voice. Through its control over funding flows, the state reproduces its oppressive structure, reified through civil society that must rely on state patronage to sell the subaltern to the market. State bureaucrats, educated in the techniques of producing discipline, on one hand, perform the narrative of addressing the needs of communities, while on the other hand, cultivating networks of professionalized NGOs that whitewash the strategies of power and control to serve the pre...

On turbocharged neoliberalism, chasing the bull, and Hindutva Mohan Dutta I have often been struck by the appeal of the Ayn Rand ideology of unfettered free market neoliberalism among the convent educated Hindutva ideologues. This particular species of the Hindutva ideologue speaks chaste English, performs well the convent-educated accent and mannerisms, sits in the boardrooms of tech corporations and global investment capital, on one hand loves everything American and White, and on the other hand, holds deep hatred for Muslims and disdain toward oppressed caste communities.  She/he passes on well as the diversity hire, as the model minority who has climbed through the ranks of financial-technology capital. The finance technology corporations declare having fulfilled their diversity quotas. Moreover, she/he knows well how to play victim, producing the narrative of the margin to claim marginality in multicultural contexts. Through this claim to  a marginalized identity, the con...