Topic: Hinduphobia in American Academia and Media : protests and objections are gaining steam.

Speaker: Avatans Kumar https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/blogs/author/avatans-kumar/ Avatans holds graduate degrees in Linguistics from the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), and MBA from Webster University. Avatans has keen interest in topics involving Indian Intellectual Tradition, history, and current affairs. He has taught undergraduate level linguistics and Hindi classes at JNU and UIUC respectively. Avatans is the President and National Convenor of INDICA, Inc., the US subsidiary of Indic Academy.  Topic: Hinduphobia in American Academia and Media : protests and objections are gaining steam. Date/Venue:  March Ist, 2020  (Sun)  at Cerritos Library 1:30 PM - 3 PM @ Skyline Room, Cerritos Public Library, 18025 Bloomfield Ave, Cerritos, CA, 90703 Subject:    Hinduphobia in the society, media, and academia has more that 200-year old legacy in the West. It is, like any phobia according to Jeffry Long, a Professor of Religion and Asian Studies at the Elizabethtown College in the USA, “an intense and deeply rooted aversion – a fear and hatred – in this case, of Hindu and Hinduism.” This Hinduphobia, writes Long in his paper ‘Reflections on Hinduphobia: A Perspective from a Scholar-Practitioner’, “as a set of intellectual claims that portray Hindus and Hinduism in a negative light.” One of the salient features of a Hinduphobic discourse, writes Long, is that any positive and progressive aspects of Hindu faith and society are either ignored or attributed to outside, non-Hindu influences. During the last 200 years or so, foreigners and the Marxists have dominated the study of India, its culture, traditions, texts, religions, etc. For example, the emergence of Indology as a field of study of India can be traced back to neo-Protestant theology and their debates over scriptures as well as its anti-clerical prejudices. These prejudices over time, but consciously, were applied to the Indian texts where one can easily trace the antecedents of anti-Brahmanism. These Indologists, according to Vishwa Adluri, a Professor at Hunter College of the City University of New York, USA, held the belief that “Indians lacked access to the “true” meaning of their texts… for Indians never developed scientific critical thinking.” Similarly, Hinduphobia has deep roots in the centers/departments of South Asian Studies across the globe. In the US universities, the emergence of the departments of South Asian Studies as the powerhouse of academic activities related to India is purely a result of the political and strategic exigencies of the US government during and after the WWII. One of the main objectives of such Centers was intelligence gathering in the South Asian region. Many of the stalwarts of these South Asian centers, according to Nicholas Dirks, a South Asia expert and the Chancellor of the University of California, Berkley, were spies of the US working undercover in India. The struggles of the Hindu-Americans in fighting the biases and inaccuracies in the California high school history textbooks is testimony to the Hinduphobia perpetuated by these South Asian centers. Mission Statement of Bharatiya Vichar Manch: To promote dialogue by which Dharmic philosophy, culture, and traditions can positively influence global thought and action. Some of the past lectures are available at: http://www.youtube.com/bharatiyavicharmanch http://www.facebook.com/bhartiyavicharmanch.la If you want your email address to be added to the mailing list, please send an email to bvmanchla@gmail.com   Please forward the lecture invitation to your contacts who might be interested in attending. Sign up for our list! Going forward flyers will be posted at this web address, please save this address in your favorites section of your web browser. We will try to post the flyer for the following month lecture by 25th of each month.  This way, if you do not get an email for the lecture for any reason, the flyer can be viewed at this address. https://bvmanchflyers.blogspot.com/ Feel free to send an email to bvmanchla@gmail.com if you have any comments/suggestions about the lectures, would like to volunteer few hours a month to organize the lectures or want to recommend a speaker who can be invited to give a lecture.  All lectures are free of cost, including free parking.  Lectures are normally 40-50 minutes long followed by 30-40 minutes of Q & A session.   http://www.youtube.com/bharatiyavicharmanch