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Journalism of Courage
RSS-affiliated magazine Panchjanya has called a resolution passed recently by the Seattle City Council to add caste to anti-discrimination laws as a sign that “Hinduphobia is being promoted in the US through the institutional route”, and that there is a conspiracy to stymie the progress of Indian talent in the US.
An opinion piece written by Panchjanya editor Hitesh Shankar in the Hindi weekly says: “By passing an ‘anti-caste’ resolution, the Seattle City Council has proved that Hinduphobia is being promoted in the US at institutional level. Targeting Hindus in the name of anti-discriminatory laws is merely a tool to discriminate against Hindus in the US and elsewhere. In this resolution, Hindus, who are a minority in the US and are known all over the world for peace and harmony, have been marked for investigation.”
The pace of “increasing Hinduphobia” and its funding was a matter of concern and its “institutional form” was dangerous, the article says.
It identifies Seattle as well as Harvard and Oxford universities as “dens of Hinduphobia”, and adds that if they think that by “such activities, India will again become a British colony, they are in deep slumber”.
Such institutionalization of anti-Hindu sentiments was dangerous as many Indian intellectuals and students participate in the seminars and conferences organised by these institutions, says the Panchjanya editorial.
“Here, India’s technical centres, such as the IITs, are accused of all sorts of things. IIT students are currently working in respectable positions across the world. Now these students are being accused of casteism and racism without any evidence. The intention is to force these students to focus on mounting a defence rather than showing their talent,” as per the article.
The biggest irony, Shankar says, is that a section of Indians living abroad is in agreement with this “Hinduphobia”.
Notably, the resolution to add caste to anti-discrimination laws in Seattle was moved by an Indian American member of the city council, Kshama Sawant.
She had earlier moved a resolution against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act passed by the Modi government and its plans for a National Register of Citizens, leading to the Seattle council condemning the decisions. Later, she had moved a resolution in support of the 2020-21 farmers’ protests.
The Seattle resolution came on the back of several universities in the US, including Harvard, ushering in anti-caste discrimination policies. In December 2019, Brandeis University near Boston became the first US college to include caste in its non-discrimination policy. Since then, the California State University System, Colby College, Brown University and the University of California, Davis, have adopted similar measures.
In 2021, Harvard University also instituted caste protections for student workers as part of its contract with its graduate students’ union.
Some Hindu groups in the US have opposed these developments as “discrimination against Hindus”.
The Panchjanya article says the Seattle resolution was passed without any evidence. “Seattle has taken up the propaganda of groups which want to destroy Hindutva as evidence,” it says, connecting the resolution to a supposedly large conspiracy “to defame India”.
As per the article, this conspiracy includes putting India below Pakistan and Sri Lanka in the Hunger Index, ranking countries with no private media as having greater press freedom than India, and putting countries where women are not allowed to study ahead of India on women’s empowerment index.
As per the article, the critical race theory (which says race is inherent in the dominant institutions running the US) has morphed into the caste theory. “It is laughable that those who do this are called social scientists. Most social scientists do not have to pass IIT exams; they do not need to understand complex rules and principles. They just have to inflate a balloon.”
