Dismantling the Hinduphobic conference, one University at a time.

Dismantling Global Hindutva conference: Exercise to spread anti-Hindu propaganda

It is not even Labor Day yet when I am writing this, and the Dismantling Global Hindutva conference or DGHC website is coming crumbling down one edit at a time. So what if Voldemort’s congregation still comes together on 9/11. Let the Muggle hunt commence.

A conference that was launched with great in-your-face shock value, the DGHC will now be a lame-duck affair of many missteps that are scam worthy and a reflection of a congregation assembled by Harry Potter’s “You know who;”

A litany of gaffes and repercussions are listed here:

1. Fraudulent claims of sponsorship by universities.
2. Multiple edits to the “Dismantling Hindutva” website as universities withdraw.
3. Written denouncement from 125+ major Hindu organizations and temples.
4. Requests from all universities to take down the logos.
5. Withdrawal of universities and denial of university involvement in this political rally.
6. A legal challenge from Harvard University for using its name to scam people.

And as I said, it’s not even Labor Day yet.

Given the number of universities that are denying any association with this conference, it has become a lame-duck political meeting of notorious India-baiting cast of characters (read, Nandini Sundar, Anand Patwardhan, Kavita Krishnan, and cabal) that emerge out of the woodworks for any treacherous and paid hit jobs.

Even young Indian American students could google up the hateful band of what resembles the congregation of Voldemort’s death eaters and Dark Wizards. The students of an organization called “Hindus on Campus” came up with comprehensive research of the prejudice and virulence of the speakers at this DGHC conference. Here’s the infographic they tweeted:

BREAKING: Our research team has uncovered the real motivations of the “Dismantling Hindutva Conference,” prior statements from speakers on Hinduism, and the wider issue at hand: Hinduphobia within South Asian Studies.#HOCExposesHate #SponsorUH2022 pic.twitter.com/x6rHnc1tJT

— Hindu On Campus (@hinduoncampus) August 20, 2021

It is the 9/11, Stupid

In case you’re living under a rock, I need to tell you about the DGHC or Dismantling Global Hindutva Conference organized on 9/11 by the SASAC collective, a suspicious body of Hinduphobic academics in reputed Universities.

The 20th anniversary of the worst terror attack by radical Islamic terrorists on American soil is 9/11. The official date of withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan is 9/11 and the medieval reign of terror and atrocities by the Taliban has begun already. Restrictions on men and subjugation of women under the Islamic Sharia laws are applied in Afghanistan.

Yet, the so-called intellectual academia of the South Asian departments of many major universities has displayed a combination of moral bankruptcy and intellectual dishonesty. They are in sync with Audrey Truschke’s hate-mongering towards Hindus and are the chorus to her contralto. The choice of date is not a coincidence. It is a callous attempt to deflect attention from the anniversary of 9/11 and the terror in Afghanistan by portraying Hindus in a bad light in a treacherous conference.

Truschke’s Hindu hate has been captured in her tweets many times. Hindus on campus tweeted a recent update that shows the Hinduphobia discussed in her classroom and how she wishes the end of Hinduism.

BREAKING: What goes on in Truschke’s lectures? What comments are made in the Zoom chat?

“Hindus should be banned from entering US”
“How can you trust people who worship millions of Gods”

Xenophobia and bigotry against Hindu Americans is actively encouraged. #Hinduphobia pic.twitter.com/fS2H18WqsZ

— Hindu On Campus (@hinduoncampus) August 31, 2021

Sweet Nexus of Academia, Neo Coloniality & Hinduphobia

The fake claims around university sponsorship aside, their website is replete with false claims of Hindutva being different from Hinduism. These are two words in two different languages and no translations are attempted. The DGHC website also throws all kinds of dirt on Hindus with no evidence – homophobic, check! anti-women, check! supremacists, check! Racist, of course!!

DGHC is very clear in their muddleheads that Hindutva is not equal to Hinduism, yet the gang also wants us to believe that Brahmanism (their invention) is equal to Hindutva.

The shameful ignorance about Hinduism passes off as ACADEMIC FREEDOM and allows the shallow trolls like Trushke and Doniger to spew their hate-filled bigoted venom against a billion people.

In a conference in India, when someone in the audience asked Audrey Truschke as to what gave her the right to spread lies and insults on Hinduism, she said she is a “trained historian.”

The bias is in that training!

Anyone who has taken courses in Hinduism in South Asia knows that there is borderline dementia to the curriculum that is replete with Hinduphobic assertions. The quackery is evident to anyone who has lived even for a short stint in India. “Portrayal of India is inaccurate, and it is deliberate,” says Yvette Rosser a scholar who has written dissertations on this topic.

A recent social media tweet by a student reiterates this fact:

My gf and I (both Indian-American) are engineering students at a big US university. We need to take a culture class as part of the degree, so we decided to punish ourselves with “Intro to South Asia.” This thread will document what college is teaching unaware ABCDs about India.

— Bihari American (@BihariAmerican) September 3, 2021

125 Hindu Organizations condemn DGHC in unison In this information age, such high-handed xenophobia is not going to hold for much longer. In fact, if it was any other faith, such faculty would have been fired long ago. But the cultivation of Indian diasporic faculty in academia has gone on for far too long and the indoctrination is exposed now due to the open conflict on social media.

CoHNA (Coalition of Hindus of North America) launched a campaign of collective denouncement of this conference. Over 125 temples and Hindu organizations have signed on to denounce this Hinduphobic gathering. It is clear evidence that Hindu Americans, are not differentiating between attacks on Hindutva and Hinduism, as the organizers of DGHC would like to hypnotize us into believing.

If some indoctrinated academics and fake organizations endorse this conference, they are the anomaly and what practicing Hindus call the HINOS – ‘Hindus in name only.”

Let a million emails storm

Surely, the conference organizers thought that the Hindus are sleeping and will not react. Or why would they fraudulently flaunt university logos on their website only to capitulate later?

When the universities received over a million emails from irate Hindus, they reacted. So the “Dismantling Global Hindutva” website came down and we find bland, plain vanilla columns listing the universities, maybe a few more than before.

Yes, more universities are being added!! From New Zealand and a few from Europe. Clearly, Hinduphobia is not localized to the USA and Canada and the global nexus stands exposed.

But one thing is certain, the denial of Hinduphobia among the organizers and universities in the USA and Canada is stronger than in other countries. This is indicative of the inimical nature of the conference and the canceling of Hindu dissent by notorious places like the University of Toronto and Rutgers University. At least when the news traveled down under we had a tweet from Sarah Gates a Ph.D. scholar in Australia who denounced the idea of such Hinduphobia.

This is not a congress hearing. Don’t be mistaken. It’s a set up to make official sounding events intimidate Hindus and incite them with Hinduphobic provocation. The words Hindu Supremacist have to be banned. It’s like Muslim Supremacist. It’s NOT ideology it’s about Hinduism. https://t.co/Gj1npkxYlQ

— Sarah L Gates (@SarahLGates1) September 2, 2021

The blatant mockery of the term Hinduphobia as if it exists only in our head, and quoting of the “Equality Labs guide to Doxing” on the DGHC website, clearly shows their contempt and lack of humanitarian values. Apparently, Equality Labs with their fake campaigns and fake survey reports (as per Carnegie Endowment) are also in bed with the DGHC.

As Hindus in America and Canada resist and mainstream news in India cover this extensively, the controversy refuses to die. With legal challenges from Harvard University, the website is down again for an umpteenth time. How many times SASAC? Audrey?

9/11 is also when Swami Vivekanada enthralled Chicago

For Hindus, 9/11 is also the anniversary when Swamy Vivekananda enthralled the world, with spiritual words of wisdom at the first World’s Parliament of Religions in 1893. Hindu Americans held a 3-day commemorative event in 2012 in Chicago to celebrate the 150th anniversary.

That is what Hindu Americans bring to the USA. Spiritual upliftment, economic wellbeing, intellectual contributions to every endeavor whether in science and technology or medicine or space research or as pillars that uphold the Silicon Valley.

Dharma is the way of peace and the path to evolution.

A swarm of mad locusts that try to sweep and destroy the cultivation of this positivity cannot make dent a spiritual civilizational construct like Hinduism or Hindutva.
We will easily survive this sort of misinformation campaign now that Hindus are fighting for their voice and their Kshatriya spirit has awakened.

The indoctrinated and brainwashed South Asian department professors and journalists in cahoots in this endeavor need to do some soul searching. The witch hunt is coordinated by our very own who have sold their souls for petty rewards.

As Swami Vivekanada once said,” The Europeanized man has no backbone, he is a mass of …ideas unassimilated, undigested, and unharmonized. What is the motive power of his work? In a few patronizing pats from the English people, his schemes of reforms, his vehement vituperations against the evils of certain social customs …have some European patronage. Why are some customs called evil? Because the Europeans say so. That is about the reason he gives….These unbalanced creatures are not yet formed into distinct personalities, what are we to call them, men, women, or animals?

As the Dismantling Hindutva Conference with its violent imagery and ties to Equality Labs continues its tirade against Hindus, Swami Vivekananda’s words echo in the USA again.

Just as Voldemort’s gang of Death Eaters swung its dark gaze to eradicate the impure Half-bloods or mudbloods, so also, the likes of Audrey Truschke and Equality Labs, who tweet about the death of Hinduism, are full of sinister violence.

Yes, we are the Hindus!

We are the mudbloods, the Hindus who worship many Gods and murtis and celebrate festivals they don’t like. For many years, Hindus especially the convent-educated lot, had trouble wearing their faith on their sleeve. Not anymore. More and more Hindus are now aware of the beauty of their traditions and faith and are returning back to their roots. If we are mudbloods we are okay with that. Like Hermione said once,

We are proud of our Hinduness or Hindutva because the exact translation of Hindutva is Hinduness, the essence of being Hindu. We are the indigenous peoples who are not colonizers and who did not get colonized despite several attempts. We are the upholders and the source of the universal natural religion that existed all over the earth at one time before the three colonizing forces of Christianity, Islam and Communism took over the world through expansionism, colonialism, and medieval brute force. We carry that Sanatan spirit, the holiness of Swastika, and the spirituality of Om.

We are the Mudbloods and proud of it. We are Hindus, torchbearers of Hindutva.

Note:
1. Text in Blue points to additional data on the topic.
2. The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of PGurus.

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Richa Gautam

Richa Gautam is a Senior Research Associate at the Center of Indic Studies at Indus University. Her research focuses on emic and indigenous ethnographic studies and documenting lived experiences of Indian communities like Bheel, Kolis, Suthars and those deemed as Dalit, Adivasis during British rule and Criminal tribes by the heinous Criminal Tribes Act of 1871. Richa has spent the last six years dividing her time between field studies, advocacy efforts and documenting and conducting research for her clients at Sycamore Research. Richa Gautam has published articles under her byline for various newspapers internationally and is a speaker and presenter in media and social media. She actively works in the field of diversity, inclusiveness, and minority rights as well as decolonial practices as Founder and Executive Director at Cares Global.

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