Tag Archives: Manusmriti Dahan

Debates, Education, Right watch

Look who’s calling us anti-national! The pleasant antecedents of Sudhir Chaudhary and journalistic ethics of IBN 7

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[An edited version of this post has been published in Scroll.in with a more extensive set of links. I recommend reading it here.]

Sudhir Chaudhary of Zee News has been spewing venom at students and teachers of JNU for some time now, and I have been informed by concerned friends that over the last two days there has been a concerted campaign against me personally. Since I do not watch “news” on a channel that brazenly doctors videos and seems ignorant of minimum levels of journalistic ethics, I am relying on links sent to me by well wishers.

Last evening I believe a clip from a video made in 2014 was circulated, in which I am heard saying that Hinduism is the world’s most violent religion, because its very foundation is the caste system.

I am told that Sudhir Chaudhary challenged me to prove the video was doctored. I am certainly not going to engage with an alleged criminal extortionist (more about his pleasant antecedents in a bit), but here let me say that the clip I have seen circulating on twitter which I assume is the one on Zee, is not doctored, but it is massively decontextualized. I post below the link to the entire event – which was not a classroom lecture, but a political meeting organized by a student group in 2014 after the Kiss of Love protest was attacked in Delhi by Sanghis.

In Part I of this post I will deal with that video, and in Part II with Sudhir Chaudhury and IBN7. Continue reading Look who’s calling us anti-national! The pleasant antecedents of Sudhir Chaudhary and journalistic ethics of IBN 7 →

Bad ideas, Culture, Right watch

Peace on Earth and Social Justice – Christmas greetings!

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Protest at Delhi Police Headquarters after the burning of St Sebastian’s Church in Dilshad Gardens/ Image from The Indian Express

We observe Christmas today under the ominous cloud of Hindutvavaadi violence against minorities, which began on the very day of the BJP electoral victory seven months ago, and their determined attempt to obliterate all religious identities other than their own narrow version of Hinduism, a Hinduism that brutally excludes even large numbers of people who would consider themselves Hindu. From burning churches to physically attacking ‘Muslim-looking’ men, to trying to erase Christmas under the banal bureaucratese of Good Governance Day – Hindutvavaad has never had it so safe, never has it been so arrogant, as under the protective gaze of Modi, a Prime Minister who produces reams of flowery prose in his speeches, but through his public silence on these atrocities, satisfies both Hindutvavaad and his neo-liberal supporters – the one recognizing his benign encouragement, the other fooling itself that his silence shows displeasure. Continue reading Peace on Earth and Social Justice – Christmas greetings! →