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A Debate Rages in India Over Conversion, Secularism, and “Spiritual Violence”

By Murali Balaji

…—the fear of a disappearing tradition is stoked primarily by demographics. Indian census numbers show that the percentage of those identifying as Hindus dipped below 80 percent for the first time. But while there is much talk about a rising Muslim population, the actual spikes have come among Christians, where the mass conversion of tribal groups and Dalits has been part of a sustained and systematic effort of “Great Commission” movements such as…

Gandhi, his Grandson, Israel, and the Jews

By Shalom Goldman

…e Gandhians political exile was evident to Martin Luther King. When King visited India in 1956, he split his time and attention between representatives of the Indian government and the students of Gandhi and quickly became aware of the tension between the two groups. India was then in the grips of a patriotic fever often expressed through Hindu nationalism. The Gandhians, like their teacher, were wary of religiously-infused politics. Gandhi, says…

Religious Affiliation, ‘Mankind’: India’s Anti-Corruption Activist Leads Second Freedom Struggle

By April L. Bogle

…a prima donna, given her stature. This is someone who had issue a parking ticket to India’s Prime Minister some time during a career that spanned police work, book writing, UN advising, tennis championships, and the Magsaysay Award (a.k.a. Asia’s Nobel Prize). I had a vision of our meeting. She would pour tea for us in the serene and ordered living room of her expansive hotel suite, sitting erect in the crisp khaki Indian Police Service uniform I…

Policing Academic Freedom: A Book, a Controversy, and the Ominous Aftermath

By Michael Jerryson

…s have not suffered, but rather prospered amidst the controversy (see “The Book India Most Wants to Read” and “India braces for Wendy Doniger’s The Bedtrick: Tales of Sex and Masquerade”). However, the larger platform of academic freedom has been hurt. The controversy over The Hindus has bolstered politically engaged religious groups in the United States and India to censor alternative voices in their attempts to monitor and control discussions on…

Our Failure To Understand Ferguson: A Cognitive Explanation

By Andrew Aghapour

…ed: they couldn’t facilitate bribery. We would have to buy new, full-price tickets to Iran. On the phone with JetBlue’s customer service line that night, my righteous fury dissipated quickly. Could JetBlue really be to blame for bad weather, or a mechanical problem, or whatever system error had made our flight impossible? Don’t I benefit regularly from this massive travel infrastructure that, like Lady Justice, doles its punishments out blindly? I…

The World’s Most Influential Yoga Teacher is a Homophobic Right-Wing Activist

By Andrea Jain and Michael Schulson

…the Hindu nationalist mantra “Bharat Mata Ki Jai,” meaning Honor to Mother India. (Some Indian Muslims consider the mantra incompatible with their religious commitments, since it personifies India as the Goddess). The consequences of a sustained campaign against India’s religious minorities could be devastating: India has more than 200 million religious minorities, the majority of them Muslims. Alone, they would form the sixth largest country in t…

Mile-High Identity Politics: What We Can Learn From the Same-Sex Seating Controversy

By Eboo Patel

…e broader movement of cultural progressivism which ought to be raised. The airline example reveals some of these. First of all, there is a religion-shaped hole in the worldview of cultural progressivism. The rancor expressed towards Orthodox Jews on the Times website is one example of this. The preferred identities of cultural progressivism are race, gender and sexuality. There are good reasons that these identities are favored. Each category incl…

Religious and Political Silence on India’s LGBTQ Decision Speaks Volumes

By Andrea R. Jain

…ssion of Section 377 away from systemic inequality and toward the putative best interest of Indian society was emblematic of the right-wing attempt to erase sexual diversity. Although right-wing Prime Minister Narendra Modi has remained silent on Section 377 since his election campaign in 2014 (during hearings in July 2018, the central government announced that it was not going to take a position on Section 377), the silence spoke volumes and went…

India’s Elections and the “Doniger Affair”

By Murali Balaji

…eligion as a tool of social oppression. This is perhaps why the most vocal Indian (or Indian expatriate) defenders of Doniger in the wake of the controversy have, for the most part, been intellectual or activist Marxists. Penguin’s decision to withdraw her book gave them new ammo in a battle against what they perceive as Hindu majoritarian aggression, exemplified by the destruction of the Babri mosque and the 2002 Gujarat riots. Many of these inte…

Blame Series Bonus: Why We Want That Dish For Free, an Uncut Interview with Bertram Malle

By Andrew Aghapour

…nfairness. We have put in our part—we went to the airport, we paid for our ticket, we spent our time, we stood in line—and then the flight was cancelled. So there’s a discrepancy between the inputs and the outputs, there’s a sense of injustice and unfairness—that’s why compensation is so important. That’s also why dissatisfied customers at restaurants want to get their dish for free, or get a free glass of wine, or a free dessert, because that bal…