Debate: Donât Accuse Critics of Indology of Being Handmaidens of Hindutva
In their quest for ideological purity, activists on the Left can sometimes resemble the Far Right, which has little tolerance for differing opinions.
Sita s agni pariksha. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
The Wire, Raju Rajagopal and Sunita Viswanath from a U.S-based advocacy group called âHindus For Human Rightsâ, criticised me for an article I had  published in
The Hindu where I had joined issue with the scholarship and teaching style of Audrey Truschke, an associate professor at Rutgers University, New Jersey.
In seeking to respond to what I had written, the two authors made a series of sensational, tabloid-style allegations that I was part of a nefarious and âwell-coordinatedâ campaign engineered by the âSangh Parivarâ to attack and silence Truschke.
Following an Al Jazeera investigation, a broad coalition of Indian American activists and United States-based civil rights organisations has called on the US Small Business Administration (SBA) to probe how Hindu right-wing groups received hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal COVID-19 relief funds.
A statement issued by the Coalition to Stop Genocide in India this week said the Hindu groups that received the funds have “existential links” with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the “fountainhead of Hindu supremacist ideology” and “ideological parent” of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Last week, Al Jazeera reported how five Hindu right-wing groups with links to Hindu nationalist organisations in India received more than $833,000 in direct payments and loans, according to data released by the Small Business Administration (SBA), a US federal agency that helps small business owners and entrepreneurs.