Hindu Supremacists in a White World
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 8204992 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Audrey Truschke (Department of History, Rutgers University-Newark , 175 University Avenue, Newark, NJ 07102 , USA, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2022 |
| Volume | 90 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 805-808 |
| Publication date | 2022-12-31 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of the American Academy of Religion (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0002-7189 • E-ISSN: 1477-4585 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jaarel/lfad027 |
| OpenAlex | W4381737920 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 8 |
HINDU RIGHT assaults on North American academics unfold within, to borrow WEB Du Bois's phrase, a "white world" (Du Bois 2007, 69). This context is critical for understanding how Hindu supremacists have advanced some of the broad goals of white supremacy through anti-intellectual attacks. Scholars have long recognized that the Hindu Right-a broad group of individuals who sympathize with aspects of the political ideology known as Hindutva or Hindu nationalism-advances a narrow agenda of prejudice within the white-dominated context of North America. In 2000 Vijay Prashad argued "Yankee Hindutva fights a bigoted culture [racist culture in the US] with its own bigoted worldview" (Prashad 2000, 320). In 2000 Biju Mathew and Vijay Prashad drew attention to "Yankee Hindutva's affinity with US racism" (Mathew and Prashad 2000, 523). In 2007 Prema Kurien warned about the essentialist tendencies of "Hindu American groups," whose "challenge to Eurocentrism is grounded in an essentialist, unicultural, valorized model of Indianness that is in many respects the mirror image of what they seek to critique" (Kurien 2007, 184). In 2022 the Feminist Critical Hindu Studies (FCHS) Collective analyzed how Hindu supremacist discourse "mimics and reformulates the discursive grievances of white supremacy culture" (Feminist Critical Hindu Studies 2022). I build on these arguments by analyzing one key shift indicated by the South Asia Scholar Activist Collective's (SASAC) Selective Timeline of Hindu Harassment of Scholars: namely, the Hindu Right predominantly targeted white scholars in the 1990s to early 2000s, whereas in more recent years they have directed their ire primarily against scholars of South Asian descent. In progressing from white targets to scholars of color, I argue that the Hindu Right has relied on the tools of white supremacy readily available in the United States context and, in so doing, has erected roadblocks to progressive attempts to diversify the North American academy.
Harassment · Hinduism · Hindutva · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Sociology · White (mutation) · Anthropology · Critical Race Theory in Education · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law · Philosophy · Race, History, and American Society · Religious studies
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1,5 |
| Citation span | 2024 - 2026 (3) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |