@AudreyTruschke via Twitter
It aims to offer guidance to academics “targeted by hate” – specifically those who find themselves “the target or a witness to a Hindu Right assault”. That’s the stated objective of the Hindutva Harassment Field Manual, which was launched on Tuesday by a group of academics in North America who call themselves the South Asian Scholar Activist Collective. “The Hindu right has attacked US-based scholars for the past few decades, attempting to dissuade and discredit academic research, and the assaults have intensified recently,” some members of the collective wrote in
They explained, “Such hate seeks to undermine our genuine, nuanced research, which presents a vision of South Asian history, religions and cultures as multifaceted and pluralistic. In so doing our scholarship undercuts Hindutva’s project to remake India and Indian history.”
Revisiting Macaulay’s Children
To be Indian, our pursuit of knowledge must be rooted in an appreciation of the values of our 5,000-year civilisation based on interdependent castes and acceptance of the religious in our lives
Mohan Ramanan 02 July 2021, Last Updated at 10:32 am outlookindia.com 2021-07-02T10:32:48+05:30
Many years ago I wrote an essay for the titled ‘Macaulay’s Children’. Thirty-five years on, I am pleasantly surprised that I still essentially think the same way. The main ideas of that essay were the need for roots, the English educational system that had made us into brown sahibs, the seductive attraction of English literature that I teach, and the need for an Indian perspective on that literature. I asked for a historic-minded criticism that would enable us to read ‘Indianly’. On this last point I have a different view now as will become apparent.
UPDATED: June 5, 2021 11:58 IST
Salman Rushdie; Getty Images
Salman Rushdie was 72 when he contracted Covid in March 2020. His age and asthma gave his family cause to worry. The virus, thankfully, never reached his lungs. Having recovered 17 days later, he, like so many others, missed his children. After Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa against
The Satanic Verses in 1989, calling for Rushdie’s death, the author was forced to move from one safe house to another. When New York went into lockdown, he was told, “This must be familiar to you.” Rushdie’s comeback, one he thought but never articulated, is as funny as it is unnerving: “A stone thrown at a man’s head in a village square is not the same as a lethal avalanche of boulders descending upon that village and destroying it.” There are, however, other reasons to enjoy his essay, ‘Pandemic’.
Calling Modi “an inspirational leader for the youth”, PRH India describes the 2018 guide as an “inspiring book for students” that will “be a friend in acing exams and facing life”. Advice from Modi includes: “Do not merely dream of becoming a doctor, engineer or lawyer. Think of how best you can make a difference to society and let that ideal guide you”; and: “Proper feedback is one that makes the other person reflect, and not feel repulsed.”
Mishra wrote to Shrinagesh: “I am sure you know of the desperation with which parents and children have been beseeching the government to postpone exams. Nor do I need to tell you of Modi’s recent record in office: the list is long, from his brutal crackdown in Kashmir to his super-spreading election rallies. I am more concerned in this context, since Modi is now a Penguin ‘author’, with his government’s violent persecution of writers and journalists.”