← New Books Network
New Books Network
Feminism and Critical Hindu Studies with Shreena Gandhi, Harshita Kamath, Sailaja Krishnamurt, and Shana Sippy
01:01:13
Loading summary
Transcript76 lines
- [00:00]
Experian Ad Voice
My dad taught me a lot, including how easy it is to forget to cancel things. So I downloaded Experian, my bff. Big Financial Friend Experian could help me cancel my unused subscriptions and lower my bills, saving me hundreds a year. Get started with the Experian app today. Your Big Financial friends here to help you save smarter. Results will vary. Not all bills or subscriptions eligible Savings not guaranteed $631 a year average savings with one plus negotiations and OnePlus cancellations paid. Membership with Connected Payment Account required. See experian.com for details.
- [00:28]
Podcast Host Promoting College Matters
Experian hi everyone. I want to tell you all about another podcast I think you'll enjoy. College Matters from the Chronicle College Matters is a weekly show from the Chronicle of Higher Education, and it's a great resource for news and analysis about colleges and universities. You'll hear sharp discussions with Chronicle journalists offering fresh perspectives on the latest salvos from the Trump administration and keen insights about how faculty and students are adapting to technological changes. College Matters also features incisive interviews with newsmakers, including recent conversations with Chris Eisgruber, Princeton University's president, and Rick Singer, who is best known as the mastermind of the Varsity Blues admissions scandal. Check out College Matters wherever you get your podcasts.
- [01:24]
Ajantha Subramanian
Welcome to the podcast where we assemble scholars, activists, community organizers, artists, and others to make sense of what caste is, how it works, how it's experienced, and how it has traveled and taken root inside and outside of South Asia. What have people done to perpetuate, transform, and even attempt to abolish caste? I'm your host, Ajantha Subramanian, a professor of anthropology at the City University of New York. Joining me today are the members of the Feminist Critical Hindu Studies Collective, also known as the Auntie Lectuals. They are Srina Gandhi, professor of Religious Studies at Michigan State University Arshita Kameth, professor of Telugu culture, literature, and History at Emory University Sailaja Krishnamurti, professor of Gender Studies at Queen's University and Shana Sippy, professor of Religion at Center College. Welcome to the podcast.
- [02:20]
Shana Sippy
Thank you, thank you. Excited to be here.
- [02:23]
Ajantha Subramanian
All right, so I wanted to get started by asking each of you how you got into the study of Hinduism. And since this is a podcast on caste, it would be really helpful for me and for our listeners to hear whether and how the caste question shaped your thinking about your scholarship, your teaching, your public advocacy, et cetera. So why don't we begin with Shree?
- [02:49]
Srina Gandhi
Hi. Thank you. In terms of getting involved in Hindu studies, I have to go back to My childhood and the many conversations my grandfather and I would have while taking walks in the morning when he would visit me in New York. And also just for your visual, he was wearing his lung gi when we were taking that walk around the park. And my grandfather and grandmother had an inter caste marriage. They were shunned at first by parts of their family or for their entire lifetimes by parts of their family. So it's always been a part of my understanding of Hinduism, but I don't think it was as central as it needed to be until we formed this collective. And I learned from my fellow intellectuals or sisters about how castest I really was. As I reflect back on why that is, when I look at how I was taught about Hinduism, caste was always pushed to the side as something that happened back then or wasn't as prevalent until colonialism or doesn't really, you know, travel over to the US and or into the diaspora like my family's from Uganda and live in London. And that's the narrative we were given, even if the action didn't necessarily match those narratives. And as I reflect back, I realize the disconnect and the incongruencies there.
- [04:37]
Ajantha Subramanian
So interesting. And especially interesting given that your own members of your family experienced a form of stigma because of an intercast marriage and yet it was sort of not really spoken about openly. Interesting. Harshita, you want to go next?
- [04:56]
Arshita Kameth
Yeah, sure. Thank you so much for having us on your podcast and for My experience in terms of my entry into the field began when I was an undergraduate at Emory University and was taking courses with Bori Patton and Joyce Flickager on South Asian religions. I was like many of my students today, pre med and had planned on becoming a doctor and was taking a course with Lori Patten on early and medieval Hinduism and found that the course was something that was really familiar with in terms of some of the content. But the academic study of religion and the critique of religion was something that really excited me. And she asked me if I'd ever thought about it as a career. And I remember thinking no way. My parents would be so angry if I gave up on this doctor dream to go study South Asian religions. And. But she was very compelling and an amazing professor. And I remember being really like bothered by this ask that she had made meaning that it kept gnawing at me like, is this something I could do? And so I ended up taking the MCATs and finishing all my pre med requirements and convincing my parents that I would do two years of religious studies as a master's and then come back to the med school option. But in terms of my entry into the field, and on further reflection of, particularly in relation to this collective, there are a few things that I've come to realize as to why I was sort of tapped, which was one, it was a point in time in the early 2000s, that the Hindu community in the United States under Rajiv Malhotra was becoming increasingly mobilized under the idea of white academic studying and perhaps in their perspective, misrepresenting Hinduism, and so pointing to a lack of diversity within the field, on the one hand. And the response with academics who were in Hindu studies recognizing the lack of racial diversity and wanting to diversify their. The field itself by drawing on students in their classrooms. And those students that were naturally drawn to those conversations were course dominant caste students who could talk the talk.
- [07:15]
Sailaja Krishnamurti
Right.
- [07:15]
Arshita Kameth
Which was for me, as growing up in a Brahmin household and being exposed to things like the Gita or the Bishada or whatever it might be, made it easy for me to have a sort of entry into the field. And so one of the things that I feel like this collective has really done is to really think about what are those formations of how we as a scholarly field came to be, and also the ways in which access to that field has privileged dominant, cast voices, even in the kind of broader structure of trying to quote, unquote, under the label of diversity, that there are still some complicated issues there. And I'll just add that caste has been a long standing issue in terms of my own scholarship. So my first book is a critique of Roman masculinity. I think carefully around questions of caste in relation to the fields of, like, public literature and performance. But again, the work with this collective has really caused me to even take a much further step back to think, how do they get here and why am I here, or how did we get here and why are my students here? And I think that looks very different now than it did maybe in the early 2000s, in terms of the composition of the field and kinds of questions that we're asking together. But I'll pause there and pass it on to my overcloth of members.
- [08:41]
Ajantha Subramanian
Great. Thank you so much. Sailaja, you want to go next?
- [08:45]
Sailaja Krishnamurti
Yeah. Thank you, Ajantha. It's a. It's a funny question for me. How did I get into Hindu studies? Because I feel like it was an accident. As my fellow colleagues know, I wasn't actually. I was not trained in Hindu studies, and I wasn't trained as a scholar religion. And I say that up front Because I think it's important to think about interdisciplinarity in our field. I wrote my PhD dissertation in social political thought and I was studying Amarchita katha, which is familiar to, I think I imagine, many of your listeners. And you know, like Srina, I learned a lot about what I understood to be Hinduism from my family and my extended family and with my grandparents who would, you know, send me a machita katha each month. And I would, you know, learn about all of this sort of mythology and also about cultural relations. I think from reading these texts, though, when I went back to them during my PhD, I was really thinking about how nationalist histories were represented. And then I started really engaging with the idea of a sort of mytho historical version of Hinduism that is constructed in those comics. And so I kind of, I would say, fell into studying Hinduism by studying Hindutva and, and then trying to understand what the relationship between the two was, how to theorize it and how to engage with it in a social political context. So I still really sort of struggle with this idea of am I a Hindu studies scholar? I think I am somebody who maybe has a toe in this field and enough of a toe to try to cause a ripple. But it's not a field I necessarily identify with as a critical scholar. And I think all of us are struggling with that relationship in different ways.
- [10:57]
Ajantha Subramanian
Yeah, Shannon.
- [11:01]
Shana Sippy
Yeah. So I, I think my trajectory is very similar in some ways to Harshita's. I'm the old lady in the group. So on that front I would I just say that in that I, I was an undergrad and graduated in 1993 at a Barnard. And the destruction of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992, I think was a major turning point for the field of religious studies with respect to Hinduism and South Asian studies. And I watched and I was an undergraduate religion and history major and I watched as my own mentors and professors, people like Jack holley and Rachel McDermott and others, were confronting the reality that this, this, that Hinduism have this very ugly side. And while they had, had taught about it and, and mentioned it as an aside, I think the intensity of, of the ugly took over in ways that they couldn't ignore. And that really influenced me. And when I then later went on to do my master's and like Harshita to my master's and then PhD back at Columbia, I also have the same experiences with Malhotra, only I was a graduate student and we were one of, you know, among the very first graduate students who were of South Asian heritage and of Hindu heritage in PhD programs. And so when Malhotra came for our mentors, who were primarily, you know, white, of Christian backgrounds, I think we all felt simultaneously the need to defend our mentors, who we felt in many ways were doing really good work. And. And at the same time, we. We were kind of repulsed by what we were seeing in some ways and wanted to distance ourselves. We found ourselves in an interesting position of simultaneously defending our mentors and defending the field. While I'm recognizing that some of these critiques had some validity when we talk about representation or when we talk about. And these were critiques that our own mentors were actually quite sympathetic to. And so there was a push and pull there. And the other thing that I would say is that in some ways that experience echoes in a very different way the way that our collective actually emerged. And so that we were actually Sailaja and myself and another earlier member of our collective, Tanisha Ramachandan, were at a panel at the American Academy of Religion on race and Hinduism. And it was a. It was a pretty much all white panel, a white male panel called a Mantle. And we had. We were all kind of having these different responses to what was being said. And Silaja piped up with a question that Tanisha and I had been sitting there trying to, like, like, kind of enraged and upset. And she spoke up and asked this articulate question, as she always does. And it was this moment of profound recognition and also real sort of immediate love and care of being like, there is a woman who sees and is saying exactly what we feel, which is we are simultaneously really troubled by the sort of whiteness of the panel and the way in which that's not being named and the maleness of the panel. And at the same time, we recognize that there are haf people in this room from the Hindu American foundation and other places with whom we do not want to align ourselves. And that situation is one that I think, with respect to positionality, really with respect to race and Hindu and South Asian heritage, is something that we were all quite aware of. And I think we recognized together in many ways that caste was something that we also had to add to the picture.
- [15:20]
Ajantha Subramanian
That's great. Thank you so much. I think this kind of very difficult middle ground that you were trying to inhabit between the sort of erstwhile whiteness of the field of Hindu studies and the appropriation of the discourse of decolonization by the kind of Hindu. Right. Like, how does one inhabit that middle ground where, yes, you're Trying to diversify this field without falling into the trap of a kind of nativist argument. Right. So I, I wonder if you could speak to the forming of your collective as. As your kind of way of trying to inhabit that middle ground. And I'd be. I'm very curious about two things. One is in your, in the founding statement of your collective, you say that contestations over the category Hinduism are political, and therefore studying Hinduism is always also political. And, you know, you've talked about how your mentors, many of whom were kind of white scholars of Hinduism, were sort of pushed to contend with the inherently political nature of their scholarship in some ways by the world. Right. Whether it was the destruction of the Bari Masjid or some other event in the world. Right. The world kind of provoked a reckoning with the field. So I wonder if you could say a little bit about that, you know, how much of a departure from the mainstream of Hindu studies, or even of religious studies, is this view of Hinduism, as always, also political? Why don't we start with that?
- [17:22]
Sailaja Krishnamurti
Yeah, and I, maybe I'll just sort of work backwards, beginning with what you just proposed, which is thinking about what makes Hinduism, the study of Hinduism, inherently political. And I guess my short answer is it is because we can't talk about Hinduism. We can't study Hinduism without thinking about the way in which our understanding of the thing we call Hinduism is constructed through a history of colonialism and through a history of casteism. Right. So the things that we call Hindu are already determined by these structures of power. I wanted to just go back to what you're saying about the sort of middle ground. You know, say, I think it's, to me, it feels less of a middle ground. We're not arguing for sort of a sort of like a moderate or sort of middle opinion, but rather it's sort of like. It's like a, you know, to use an earlier theoretical framework, a sort of third space.
- [18:29]
Ajantha Subramanian
Okay.
- [18:30]
Sailaja Krishnamurti
You know that we're trying to say that we are thinking about Hinduism not in. Only the frame in which some of us received it in an academic context, not in the frame that we may have received it from our families, which we're also contesting. Right. But to say that we need to have a different approach that actually acknowledges our positionalities now as people living in the diaspora, as in this. In this smaller group of us as CIS women, as, you know, some of us speaking from queer positionalities, to think about the work we do as anti racists or as activists means that we have to all of that comes into play when we're trying to understand how we think about Hinduism.
- [19:24]
Ajantha Subramanian
Thank you for sort of gently suggesting that middle ground was not the best way of characterizing this. I think you're absolutely right. And I, and I. I wonder if you could say something. I mean, you've already sort of gestured to the importance of positionality and how once you think about different vantage points from which people either experience, you know, personally or approach the study of Hinduism, in your own description of your, of your collective, you flag feminism as a particularly important orientation. So can you say something about how why feminism as a, as an intellectual or a kind of political stance is important to the kind of critical approach to Hinduism? I mean, what is it about feminism that is especially important for all of you?
- [20:32]
Shana Sippy
For us, that dimension of the intersectional feminist approach that really pays attention to the interdependent axes of oppression was one piece of it for us. I also think that we talk in our work about interrogative positionality as a way of taking a sort of approach to our fields and to our subjects of study that is constantly interrogative and demands that we question ourselves. And one of the ways that I think that questioning has, for me, I know, been so productive is not just I come up with questions for myself, but that I have these really brilliant, challenging people to sit and challenge me and ask me questions about my work. And that feminist dimension of having a network of care and learning and together that is safe at the same time as it is really challenging and demanding, I think has been a really key piece of what we mean by feminist critical induced studies.
- [21:53]
Ajantha Subramanian
Harshita, when you were talking about your own kind of entry into the field, and, you know, several of you have mentioned this, that part of challenging the whiteness of Hindu studies was by insisting on, you know, widening representation to include other people. But, you know, as we all know, there is a way that caste disappears from view when inclusion is principally thought of in racial terms. Right? So, and I think all of us have benefited from, you know, the politics of diversity in the American university. And we've benefited in a way that almost depends on the invisibilizing of caste, right. That we stand in for the minority voice. I wonder if you guys could talk about caste and whether you have yourselves as a collective face challenges from caste oppressed scholars or just in general, how you've contended with the supplanting of kind of white privilege by caste privilege, right. In the makeup of the kind of, you know, Hindu studies or even broadly South Asian studies field.
- [23:22]
Sailaja Krishnamurti
Yeah.
- [23:22]
Arshita Kameth
So I think that one of the formations of the field that happened in the early 2000s, which was in some ways inevitable and important to quote, unquote, diversify by including the voices of South Asian scholars, those of South Asian descent, many of whom might be from Hindu backgrounds, was an important transformation that perhaps needed to happen or had needed to happen. I think what the challenge there was was that it was, let's just add, Brown people in mix and keep the same kinds of questions, perspectives that we as a field have done. And what has been surprising to me about the formation of this field is actually how apolitical it is, how scholarship on Hindu studies has continued to just to work in a very sort of Orientalist manner. And I know that we keep bringing back Ghastlani's piece, but I think he's specifically pointing to the formation of the field is continuing to perpetuate orientalist and colonial legacies so that we no longer have white co Orientalist scholar and, you know, Brahman pundit. We have white scholar and Brown student, privileged caste, Brown student in the classroom. So that is a particular formation. But really, I think came to the fore in the early 2000s. And as somebody who benefited from that myself, right, somebody who benefited from my cast privilege to be able to have entry, I'm really deeply cognizant of the ways in which that was an important step, but also didn't quite work. And because there wasn't a real recognition both of caste and race and that formation that happened in the early 2000s and right now in 2025, I think I'm deeply concerned about the ways in which marginalized caste students are being integrated, whether it's into the field or in our classrooms. And how do we as scholars from caste privilege positions? I'm not speaking for everybody. I'm just speaking for myself, let's say from a caste privilege position, particularly from a position of a Brahman background. What, you know, how can I not replicate the very same sorts of patterns of models that happened in the early 2000s? I taught a graduate seminar, Critical Hindu Studies, and the graduates, in response to a collective, was a really interesting one, which was that perhaps we are heading towards an annihilation ourselves, that we are sort of not relevant at some point. We're here now at this point in time because it's important to have a feminist and recognition of the ways in which caste and race are, you know, have formed the academy. But at some point we would hope that we would get beyond this point where we as scholars do not need to be the voices that are speaking for this conversation. I see that Balaja has her hand up, so maybe I'll pin her.
- [26:28]
Sailaja Krishnamurti
I just wanted to say, just to a couple of things that you raised earlier. Firstly, you know, just to underscore the degree to which I think that Savanna scholars, upper caste scholars, and Brahmin scholars in particular in the field of Hindu studies, but also more broadly, I think in South Asian studies have played a role as a sort of, you know, as gatekeepers and the degree to which that has limited the training and mentorship of caster press students. And I think it comes down to, you know, what we talked about as kind of Brahman fragility. Right. Sort of, sort of echoing the idea of white fragility, that the people who, especially those of our, you know, sort of seniors, our senior mentors, who as Savannah people really had to fight or be challenged by racist institutions to get tenure, to get published, to get where they were, to now be sort of challenged by saying, you know, you actually had access to a certain kind of privilege through cast is really difficult, I think, for some folks to hear. And so I think there's a sort of an element of resistance that kind of comes from there. And then the last point was you asked about whether or not we're getting pushback from caste oppressed folks about the work that we've been doing. I think the biggest critique that we've gotten from our caste oppressed allies and critics has been whether or not it's useful to be talking about Hindu studies at all and if actually our lens should be changed.
- [28:27]
Arshita Kameth
Right.
- [28:27]
Sailaja Krishnamurti
And I, I think we have kind of committed to challenging the institution of Hindu studies because we see ourselves as having some, some access or responsibility to that. But we're also looking away from it and towards other kinds of, other kinds of work. And all of us are doing anti caste work in other areas of our research and our, our teaching and our activism.
- [28:55]
Srina Gandhi
I also.
- [28:56]
Sailaja Krishnamurti
Yeah, sorry, go ahead.
- [28:58]
Shana Sippy
Add to that. Which is, I think it's really important to, to actually acknowledge that we have learned a tremendous amount from, you know, Dalit feminists as well as, you know, just scholars who are working on caste as, you know, from different across caste backgrounds. So, you know, whether it's Shailaja Paik's work or Tenmuri Sundarajan's or Jesse Gadot's or, you know, reading Ambedkar or the Pulse or like, we spent a long time together reading and learning, but we've also really been privileged to learn like with Tanmuri like spending time with her on zooms and really learning from her and reading her book, you know, before it was published and wanting to be allies however we could and resources that. So there's much that we can be critiqued for like without question. But I think our position is that we've wanted to be allies wherever we could. And that meant, you know, writing letters to the California State legislature or writing letters, you know, you know, to the Seattle City Council or you know, other places in moments when we could use our scholarly position also to support Dalit and anti caste causes. And I just want to acknowledge that we keep learning, I think from Dalits and this work doesn't like what we're doing, can't happen actually and is completely dependent on the fact that they've helped us to learn and see and they have shared their experiences and the ways in which, you know, our like our own positionalities are causes of harm and damage for, for a broadcast communities and continue to be, I think is something that we keep reckoning with because we're in relationship and want to continue to be.
- [30:55]
Sailaja Krishnamurti
So.
- [30:58]
Ajantha Subramanian
I, I want to go back to the self annihilation idea that Harshita brought up. One way to think about that is that the point is to get rid of Hindu studies altogether and, and substitute it with maybe critical caste studies. Right? So make Hindu studies redundant, I don't know. So there's that kind of annihilation. Another way one could think about it is that the patronage of Savannah or upper caste scholars would be unnecessary. Right. So that structure of patronage through which, you know, Savannah scholars induct caste oppressed students into the field, like that structure would be annihilated, right? Yeah. Harshita.
- [31:56]
Arshita Kameth
So because I brought up the self annihilation part, I wanted to just say that you know, we especially because as Shauna mentioned, we read together and so we're very aware, I think, of the particularly working with Dr. And Baker to think about what is the, the, the point of being part of a tradition that inherently perpetuates harm. And that's not to say, let's just be very clear that we're not speaking when we say feminist critical Hindu studies. We're not speaking as scholars who are thinking about our own Hindu practices. We are scholars of Hinduism. So that is important to note. But even in that project, is there an inherently, is it an inherently failed project? If we take Dr. Maker's work seriously, then why should we be participating in this disciplinary formation or researching this to begin it? So that's a question that's gotten asked us. And it's a question that I think we all grapple with in different ways. And one answer for that is a kind of self annihilation, which is to say, well, then ultimately maybe we're not asking, but maybe Hindu Studies, should it be the way in which we are forming together as an intellectual project? Maybe something like Critical Caste Studies makes sense. So there's that on the one hand, but then there's on the other hand. I think we know as religious study scholars that this academic study of Hinduism is not going away. And so I think that's really important to note. And I think, and we draw on Sara Ahmed's work in our initial foundational piece to think about disorientation. And I think our project in some ways is a disorienting project to the field. And so we see ourselves, I hope my reflect for my colleagues that we see ourselves doing this work of disorienting. And if we just go away, then we feel, and I, I've seen it, that the, that the academy will just go back to its old habits and we continue to just get the same old stuff. And we've seen it time and time again at every year at the air. We have the same kind of panels, the same kinds of questions being asked, and when we are there, we are doing this disoriented work that makes people honestly quite uncomfortable. I think ideally, if we could get to a place where Hindu Studies is critical Hindu Studies or is feminist critical Hindu Studies, then we as a, as a collective wouldn't need to exist and that would be great. I would love that future. And so. But I'm not sure right now in this particular configuration whether that is possible if we don't continue to exist as a correct group together.
- [34:31]
Shana Sippy
I do think it's worth saying that I think Critical Caste Studies already exists as a field that people are working in a lot of sort of different disciplines and in a lot of arenas.
- [34:44]
Ajantha Subramanian
Right.
- [34:44]
Shana Sippy
Because we know caste isn't only operative in Hinduism. Right. And for that reason. Right. I don't think that those two things can be collapsed because it's one. It's not. It's not fair to Critical Caste Studies to suggest that the only subject of caste is Hinduism. Right. That's not the case. But also I think Hinduism has many dimensions to it as well that require. And caste is one important piece of it. But I also don't think we can collapse it into simply a caste formation. And that's the caste isn't always operative, it just is only One dimension of it, sure.
- [35:30]
Ajantha Subramanian
Yeah. I think that's a really important point. And I think, Shauna, you had said earlier that part of what you're trying to do is not limit your work as a collective to scholarship. That you've also been, you know, sort of lending a hand to some of these kind of anti caste efforts, such as, you know, the effort to outlaw caste discrimination. Right. And to make caste a protected category in law and policy. And I, I, and you know, we've seen that there's been this intense backlash against those efforts. Right. So even as within the university there, there are these ongoing efforts to sort of foreground caste within the field of Hindu studies, but also more generally within South Asian studies. Right. You have this kind of discursive denial of caste that's kind of fueling this backlash against anti caste efforts in the diaspora. And I, you know, this, this kind of discursive denial takes a variety of forms, Right. Sometimes, you know, it's through the outright denial that caste exists in the diaspora. So the idea is that, you know, caste, yes, you know, caste might exist in South Asia and more specifically maybe in rural South Asia, but it certainly doesn't carry over to the diaspora. Right. So that's kind of one sort of argument and another is about caste as culture, right? Caste is this benign expression of Hindu culture. It has nothing to do with inequality or stigma or, you know, the operation of power more generally. And a lot of these kinds of arguments, a lot of these forms of pushback against anti caste activism sort of accuse such efforts of being anti Hindu. Right. Or sort of Hindu phobic. And I'm sure that many of our listeners have heard these arguments in circulation. I wonder if you could help, help us unpack some of these, some of these arguments.
- [37:59]
Shana Sippy
So there's a long history of sort of definitional projects. And so whether it's, you know, definitions of racism or definitions of sexism that are then used in, you know, Title nine or title six. Right. These, these definitions that get instantiated into law. And American Jewish organizations saw the importance of having definitions of antisemitism. Right. Established, which makes a lot of sense, just like you need definitions of all sorts of things. But then the sort of jockeying over which definition was going to, you know, be, be chosen. You know, organizations like the ADL and others really pushed a particular definition of antisemitism that conflates anti Semitism with, with anti Zionism. And groups like the Hindu American foundation have not just implicitly been inspired by these groups, they have actually partnered with Them with groups like, you know, Stand With Us and have taken their cues in creating definitions of Hinduphobia explicitly from the IHRA definition. And we know this because they have joint, you know, have had joint webinars on fighting antisemitism and like shining a light on antisemitism and Hinduphobia. And a whole host of these projects that have really worked to try to situate Hindu, like any critique of caste as a critique of Hindus and any critique of caste, as they say, dismantling Hinduism and Hindus. And what's interesting about that move is that on the one hand, they want to say Hinduism is not all casteist. They want to say caste is not exclusive to Hinduism.
- [40:00]
Sailaja Krishnamurti
Right.
- [40:00]
Shana Sippy
And in fact, most Dalit and anti caste activists in the US have been really explicit about saying when we're fighting caste, we're not only fighting it in Hinduism and we're not actually talking about Hinduism explicitly. We see that caste, you know, persists in all of these other religious traditions. Our investment is in dismantling caste, not in dismantling Hinduism as such. Right. The, the, the issue is caste for us and whatever else needs to, you know, happen, you know, in order for caste to be dismantled. That's, that's the project is about caste, Right. And it's not exclusive to Hinduism. But Hindu groups have very intentionally conflated the critiques of caste with critiques of Hinduism, much the way they critique, critique any critique of Hindutva as a sort of writ large critique of Hinduism. And that those conflations are really powerful because they actually are the means by which caste and Hindutva are fortified. Right. Because you conflate those two things and then you're. We're no longer talking about caste, now we're talking about the Hindu victim, when the reality is, of course, like, the Hindus aren't the victims.
- [41:19]
Sailaja Krishnamurti
The other thing I wanted to just sort of mention, you know, Sean and I have written before about the idea of, like, the need to not separate Hindutva out from Hinduism. And I, I want to reiterate why that's important.
- [41:36]
Ajantha Subramanian
Because before you continue, could you just like, define Hindutva? You just say what it is, just in case. I just realized that we've been like tossing the term around and you haven't said what it does.
- [41:47]
Sailaja Krishnamurti
Yeah, yeah, so, so I would, short version, I guess, define Hindutva as saying a version of Hinduism or Hindu identity.
- [42:04]
Ajantha Subramanian
Which.
- [42:06]
Sailaja Krishnamurti
Sees Hinduism as part of Indian nationalist identity. And so Hinduism and India being inextricably linked to each other in a, in a very ahistorical kind of frame. And so, you know, if we think about Hindutva as being an explicitly Indian ethno nationalist discourse, it's a version of Hindu identity which posits this intrinsic connection. There are other Hindu identities, I think, throughout the Diaspora which don't have that strong tie. But my worry is, and I think the thing that we've been trying to articulate is that when we have progressive Hindu groups that say Hindutva is not Hinduism, that's some other political thing. We don't know what that is. But we are over here being the real Hindus. We're getting into an argument about who is more authentically Hindu.
- [43:07]
Shana Sippy
I think the other thing about that is one of the reasons we feel that it's so important to recognize the ways in which Hindutva is a form of Hinduism has to do with the fact that it gains its power precisely because it is using the language, the symbols, the narratives of Hinduism, the rituals. Right. All of those things are a part of Hindutva and a part of Hindutva's power.
- [43:34]
Ajantha Subramanian
Just to sort of go back to the Zionism comparison, I mean, a lot of the pushback from, say, Jewish Voices for Peace, for instance, right. Is to kind of recuperate a form of Jewish ethics that is not collapsed into Zionism. Right. So it is to argue for the distinction between Judaism and Zionism, right. So that we can think about practice of religion as. As not always already ethnationalist. A group like Hindus for Human Rights, for instance, right. Seems to be trying to. To not allow for that collapse of Hinduism into Hindutva. Right.
- [44:17]
Shana Sippy
Can I just chime in on that?
- [44:19]
Ajantha Subramanian
Yeah, yeah.
- [44:20]
Shana Sippy
So, and then. And Astrolaja has something to say too. I. I guess I would say, on the one hand, this is where I feel like I'm a scholar of Hinduism, right. So my project isn't redeeming Hinduism or destroying Hinduism. My project is to think about how it functions, Right? My project is like, what is happening and how does it work? That said, I think groups like Hindus for Human Rights are quite explicit in working with and partnering with jvp, right. Jewish Voice for Peace and other groups like Rabbis Torah, ceasefire, who are trying to articulate a different kind of Judaism. They're very much trying to articulate a different kind kind of Hinduism. And that, to me is a project that is. Seems really important if there are going to be alternative ways of being Hindu. And I don't think, as Harshita said, I don't think the study of Hinduism is going away. And I don't think Hinduism is going away. Right. And so for there to be alternative ways of being Hindu and ways to articulate a politics as a Hindu that are different that, that to me seems an incredibly important job. Neither like I don't think those groups are denying, at least with respect to JVP and others, right. Groups like Ravaz Rasisar, they're not saying there aren't groups that are using Judaism in ways that are explicitly political and explicitly conflating Zionism and Judaism. And we see those as one form of Judaism that we repudiate. I think that, that Hindus for Human Rights has been more on the fence about whether or not they want to say they're, they're a form of Hinduism that we repudiate. And saying they're not Hinduism, that's a bastardization of Hinduism. And that's, that's I think where the article Sadhga and I wrote sort of was trying to say something different.
- [46:13]
Ajantha Subramanian
Srina and Harshit, I think you both wanted to speak.
- [46:15]
Srina Gandhi
This entire conversation I'm listening to everyone and I can't help but think about Tamaka Mazuzawa's really important book in our field, the Invention of World Religions and how. And it goes back to this idea that studying all religions is political because the emergence, the study of religion comes from a political colonial place, right. Which was developed in a way to justify colonial rule and to justify European supremacy and European universalism. And part of that intellectual move, if you will, was to demonize Islam and to, and to categorize it as a religion that is anti everything else.
- [47:02]
Sailaja Krishnamurti
Right.
- [47:02]
Srina Gandhi
And in many ways it was a projection of I would say Protestant Christian, European Protestantism upon Islam. And so the very study of religion and the very study of Hindu studies which then impacts Hindu formation is not only rooted in European universalism, colonialism, but is Islamophobic and unearthing. That is, is, is daily work, especially I would say the last 10, 15 years. And it has really ramped up in the last five years to the point where the Islamophobia in our family, I'll speak for my family, in my family, I would say is even more intense and terrible than it was in 2001.
- [47:57]
Ajantha Subramanian
I think this goes back to this idea of Hinduism as a model minority religion, that there is something about the relationship between Hinduism and liberal universalism that allows it to be even in its ethno nationalist form that allows it to be consistent with liberal principles. Right. And part of that I think is the, the role of Islam as the kind of Outside, Right. So, so Hinduism becomes. And, and one can say that about maybe Judaism as well. Right. So Hinduism, Judaism become kind of model minority religions in the context of the United States and, and even in their kind of ethnonationalist iterations are still seen as consistent with liberal principles, right? Liberal universalist principles. And I think a lot of that depends on seeing Islam as the kind of illiberal, you know, non universalist, you know, inherently violent, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, problematic minority.
- [49:12]
Shana Sippy
Well, I think this is also where we see how the work and institutionalization of multiculturalism and pluralism as a project actually in many ways functions well to serve fascism.
- [49:31]
Ajantha Subramanian
Right?
- [49:32]
Shana Sippy
In the sense that, right. If we, you know, see sort of see different groups based on these sort of identity, you know, communities that we're trying to hold up and celebrate in this, this sort of pluralism, whether it's in America or in Canada or the U.K. right, these, these sort of multicultural environment, then we're already sort of functioning in tribalist kind of frameworks that see, you know, groups as these sort of bounded entities that you can celebrate or you can injure. And so I think this is actually where we saw, you know, we see regularly, you know, white Christian nationalist groups claiming their injury as an entity, right. Sort of weaponizing the language of multiculturalism and saying, we too are a tribe that's being injured. And then that sort of defense of the tribalism functions simultaneously kind of to use multicultural language and also to upend it. Right? And I think that's where we've seen the problem with all these groups sort of speaking for Hindus, with the ways in which Hinduism has been conflated with India.
- [50:55]
Ajantha Subramanian
Right.
- [50:55]
Shana Sippy
And that sort of conflation that happens on a regular basis. But I do think this sort of language of injury, the language of harm, is actually something that, you know, that is being used by kind of rising fascism. We are seeing the dark side of liberal multiculturalism in really sort of deep ways because of the ways it's manifest in this moment, the way it's being used to suppress free speech, the way it's, you know, and it's, the way it's selected. It's like selective injury.
- [51:30]
Sailaja Krishnamurti
Right?
- [51:30]
Shana Sippy
So which groups are going to, you know, whose injury is going to be more important?
- [51:35]
Ajantha Subramanian
Right.
- [51:35]
Shana Sippy
They're, they're using the language, as you mentioned earlier, right. We've talked about how, you know, people like, like Malhotra and others have weaponized the language of, you know, decoloniality. Well, so too have they weaponize this language of, of multiculturalism of ethnic groups. So that's, I think, I think it actually explodes the very project of liberal multiculturalism as we are seeing its like current iteration. Right.
- [52:03]
Arshita Kameth
And I just wanted to maybe come back to the fact that we, it seems like we've, we're collapsing sort of what's happening in the Indian context with what's happening in the diaspora. And so I think to answer your question about this, you know, is it liberal multiculturalism, is it fascism, is it both? Are they mutually exclusive? I think look different when we ask that question in the Indian context than when we ask that question here in the diaspora. Because I think at least, and I want to, you know, give my colleagues a chance to chime in, but here in the US I think that the appeal to multi liberal multiculturalism is part of the ways in which an organization like the Hindu America foundation or Hindu advocacy organizations are appealing to a broader public, specifically state and you know, legislatures that are trying to mobilize on behalf of quote unquote, Hindu communities for the sake of upholding a kind of liberal multiculturalism here in the US and at the same time a deep recognition that those very communities are fundraising and supporting Hindutva ideologies in India. So it's a kind of both end and I'll just give you the quick example of I'm in Georgia and so Georgia has, the state legislature has proposed a Hindu phobia bill which and if it were to pass it would be the very first in the United States. And what's really interesting is that the bill was initially proposed in our northern counties where there's a high population of South Asians, particularly Hindu Hindus, Indians from who were Hindu by background. And it's a bipartisan bill that was supported the state legislature. So that's again, but again primarily with Republican support, but also with one Democrat who signed off like initially at the stages. So it hasn't gone through the whole process yet. But again, thinking about what are the appeals that are being made by Hindu communities to their, you know, their local state representatives in terms of appealing to the specific discourse around again the affective dimension of we don't want, you know, our Hindu kids to experience forms of violence. So therefore there should be a bill about Hindusobia.
- [54:15]
Ajantha Subramanian
Right.
- [54:15]
Arshita Kameth
And, and so I think that that, you know, and then who is going to speak out against that bill? I think it's the other question, right is that I think as we've seen in the context of California, it has been etc activists and organizations, but they've Also taken a huge amount of critique and targeting, especially Equality Labs, in terms of the ways in which the Hindu community has, you know, has. Has told them, critiqued them, targeting them online in a variety of ways. And so thinking about, also just about the work of our collective too, about what does it mean for us to be scholars of religion to realize all these nuances, right? About how does Hinduism operate in India? Aspira, how does it operate in India? How are we thinking about, you know, the roles of, of Hindu advocacy organizations like HAF versus the roles of progressive Hindu organizations like Hindus for Human Rights? I think we as scholars then, you know, coming back to this, like self annihilation, I mean, in some ways is the case against that, because today actually we can talk about the Hindu Phobia bill and be able to provide quite a bit of nuance in relation to the various ways in which this discourse of Hindu phobia has been mobilized on college campuses, on, you know, at the, you know, the local city context, maybe in the state context. But Chana, I think you wanted to jump in in terms of the kind of affective dimension. I want to make sure you get a chance to do that.
- [55:38]
Shana Sippy
I think what is, what is so powerful about the ways in which Hindu phobia is being discussed is that while we can talk about the sort of fabrication, right. Of. Of injuries, I also think that there are ways in which real forms of hurt are, are sort of used to build like a, a larger kind of project.
- [56:06]
Sailaja Krishnamurti
Right.
- [56:07]
Shana Sippy
A definitional project and then a policy project and an institutional project that then can be sort of weaponized for certain particular political aims.
- [56:17]
Arshita Kameth
Right?
- [56:17]
Shana Sippy
But there are real injuries that I think do occur. Right? And this is where I think, you know, Harshita just said, well, who's going to sort of oppose a bill on Hindu phobia, right? If you're progressive, how do you say, like, I'm for phobia, right? Like that's not what's going to happen.
- [56:35]
Sailaja Krishnamurti
Right?
- [56:36]
Shana Sippy
So this is why the language is so powerful and why the, the discourse of injury is so powerful is because it's absolutely an unacceptable position to say, you know, I'm for harming these groups. Except for when these groups are, of course, right, like as we know, right. You know, Dalits or whatever, but they're not actually what's strategic about this is they're. None of these groups are saying, I want to do harm to caste groups. They're like, castism is bad. That's just not what's happening here. Living in the south and having Done some field work in the south and also in the Midwest. You know, I think there are real ways in which Hindus are marginalized and experience real forms of, of, you know, injury because they're Hindus. That said, I don't think Hindu phobia is this thing that requires institutionalization or even is a sort of a coherent, long standing form of hatred. The way that. Right. There actually is a robust history of antisemitism that has a really long and, and, you know, complicated track record. The same is not true with Hindu phobia, but it is being constructed as such. So now it has, I think, been institutionalized enough that I think it is, it is a real entity that now we have to nuance and complicate and circumscribe and we have to be vigilant about saying this is not Hinduphobia.
- [58:07]
Sailaja Krishnamurti
Right.
- [58:08]
Shana Sippy
To talk about caste is not Hindu phobic. And if you're going to insist that there's something called Hindu phobia, okay, you've insisted that you've institutionalized it, but we can tell you these things are not it. Right. And that's a really tricky thing.
- [58:22]
Ajantha Subramanian
Thank you. That's very, very helpful. Yeah. That there, there are, it's not that there aren't real injuries, but that the sort of transposition of racism onto anti caste activism, you know, in order to advance this project of institutionalizing Hindu phobia. I think that that's the danger, and I agree that that's a danger that needs to be checked by people like you guys who have both a kind of intellectual and a political project that is intended precisely to capture the nuances of Hinduism. Right. As a sociopolitical and intellectual formation and also to try and combat its misuses. Right. Its uses and misuses. So I hope that you don't dissolve this collective. The collective seems like a kind of a remarkable project of both critical inquiry and as you said, collective care. Right. And both of those things, the critical inquiry piece and the collective care piece, are so badly needed in our moment of rising fascism. So I wanted to thank you all for coming on this podcast. This has been incredibly illuminating and I'm sort of envious that you have each other to thank with because it seems like a really remarkable group. Thank you so much. Thanks to all our listeners for joining us. The cast pod can be accessed through our website, thecastpod.org and through our partner, the New Books Network. Sound editing and website design are managed by Siddharth Ravi. And the opening and closing theme music is from the song Combat Breathing written by Vijay Iyer and performed by Vijay Iyer, Linda May Han. Oh, and to Sean. Sorry. If you enjoyed today's episode, please be sure to share it on social media and send us your suggestions for Future episodes@thecastpodmail.com this is Ajantha Subramanian signing off. Until next time.