Dismantling Global Hindutva, a virtual gathering took place on the 9/11 weekend in the USA. The conference effectively dismissed and demonised Hindus who don’t share their viewpoint.
Hindu Council UK believes in academic freedom, but when the conference is politically motivated and bordering on hatred for Hindus, then it becomes an issue for the Hindu community across the world.
The conference focused on Hindu identity, which they associate with a notion of Hindutava, for Hindus it simply means “Hinduness” or “Being Hindu”. This is a distortion of scholarly discipline, which leads to misleading and confusing arguments. They have trouble even defining what Hindutva is, calling it “a set of often unformed and even negative ideas and values. This is nothing but politicising the Hindu identity of the only ‘inclusive’ religion which accepts spirituality in all religions.
Following are brief texts of what was said by a speaker “ I emphasize, without hesitation, that Hindutva is inseparable without Hinduism, and arguments that Hindutva is not Hinduism are deeply dangerous..& will not lead us to the future we want”. Further on, Panelists falsely equated Hinduism to caste. The Moderator then put it to them “Are the panellists saying that the caste system is inseparable from Hinduism? If that’s the case why not dismantle Hinduism and not just Hindutva?”
They didn’t even try to hide their antipathy for Hinduism. The conflation of caste and Hindutva with Hinduism is what it was always about. The conference said they want to Dismantle Hindutva, it seems what they were propagating was dismantling Hinduism.
One keynote speaker at Dismantling Global Hindutva is the author of a poem that literally smears the deity, Rama. This sounds very familiar to us in the UK. It reminds us of Dr Abhijeet Sarkar from Oxford University boasting about breaking Hindu Goddess idols and with his smear campaign destroyed the chances of a Hindu female student becoming the Oxford Union president. Now at Cambridge University, an Indian professor is attacking Hindus and Brahmins and the University’s Hindu Society, who have now removed their names from their website out of fear of reprisals and attacks on them. This has created an atmosphere of hate towards innocent Hindu students, as this unholy practice of Hindumisia goes to dangerous levels on social media.
These people who are Hindumisic are the brand ambassadors for their respective universities. They use their positions of power within publicly funded institutions to declare repeatedly that they are the experts on our religion to continue hoarding the authority to which they feel they are entitled. These influential actors are trying to choke Hindu voices and traditions and to filter them into something which is only acceptable to them while claiming that it is they who are the vulnerable targets. They shut down an opposing view with bullying, not an academic debate.
We must reach to Hindus all over, who are silent or sitting on the fence, and tackle these biased and well-organised academics running their dangerous propaganda against the peaceful Hindu communities.