Eight anti-India Intellectuals

and Academics you must be

Aware of
1. Angana Chatterji Books: Violent Gods: Hindu Nationalism in Indias
Present; Narratives from Orissa Land

IndiaFacts Staff @indiafactsorg

Identity (Distortion & Appropriation) | 20-11-2014

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1.Angana Chatterji

Books:

Violent Gods: Hindu Nationalism in Indias Present; Narratives from Orissa

Land and Justice: The Struggle for Cultural Survival in Orissa

Pronouncements:

In Gujarat, Hindu extremists killed 2,000 people in February-March of 2002.

Muslims live in fear there, victims of pathological violence. Raped, lynched, torched,
ghettoised. A year and half later, Muslims in Gujarat are afraid to return to their villages,
many still flee from town to town. Ghosts haunted by history. Country, community,
police, courts institutions of betrayal that broker their destitution. This is India today.

Grassroots movements in resistance to the debacle of nation making are

combating the sangh. Where Dalits, Adivasis and others are allied in subaltern
struggles for land rights and sustenance, Hindutva intervenes, seeking to divide them.
Grassroots democracy threatens upper-caste Hindu dominance and contradicts elite
aspirations. To domesticate dissent, the sangh invigorates militant nationalism. In
village Orissa, emulating Gujarat, the sangh works to create enmity between Dalits,
Adivasis, Muslims and Christians. Progressive citizens groups have initiated opposition,
including the Campaign Against Communalism in Bhubaneswar.

In Orissa, egregious infringements of human rights are taking place with the
disintegration of Adivasi and other non-Hindu cultures through their hostile incorporation
into dominant Hinduism.

After being nominated Chief Minister of Gujarat in October 2001, Mr. Narendra
Modi incorporated the teachings of Hindutva in his governance of Gujarat. According to
a Times of India article, entitled, In Modis Gujarat, Hitler is a textbook hero, tenth
grade school texts: present a frighteningly uncritical picture of Fascism and Nazism.

Controlling Kashmir requires that Kashmiri demands for justice be depicted as

threatening to Indias integrity. Indias contrived enemy in Kashmir is a plausible one
the Muslim Other, Indias historically manufactured nemesis.

Who are the Indian forces? Disenfranchised caste and other groups, Assamese,
Nagas, Sikhs, Dalits (erstwhile untouchable peoples), and Muslims from Kashmir, are
being used to combat Kashmiris. Why did 34 soldiers commit suicide in Kashmir in
2008, and 52 fratricidal killings take place between January 21, 2004 and July 14,
2009? Why did 16 soldiers commit suicide and two die in fratricidal killings between
January and early August in 2010?

Laws authorize soldiers to question, raid houses, detain and arrest without
bringing charges, and to prolong incarceration without due process. They blur
distinctions between military/paramilitary, legality/illegality. Citing national security,
Indian forces in Kashmir shoot and kill on uncorroborated suspicion, with impunity from
prosecution.

(Links 1, 2 & 3)

Career Summary

In 1989, Chatterji became involved with the work of the Narmada Bachao
Andolan (NBA, Save the Narmada Movement).

She is one of the leading lights of the radical Leftist outfit called Forum of Indian
Leftists (FOIL), which supports violent and banned organizations that regularly carry out
guerilla wars against the Indian state. As part of FOIL and its extremist offshoot, Friends
of South Asia (FOSA) she advocated that the people of Kashmir to rise against the
imperialist Indian state.

She equates Islamic terrorism with local communal incidents. In her view the
Kandhmal communal hostilities between Hindus and Christians prove the Hindu
majority to be fascistic.

She is the great-great-granddaughter of Gooroodas Banerjee, the first Indian

Vice-Chancellor of the University of Calcutta. Her formal education comprises a BA and
a MA in Political Science. She also holds a PhD in the Humanities from California
Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS).

Chatterji has served on human rights commissions, testified at briefings and

hearings, including to United Nations Bodies, the European Parliament Human Rights
Subcommittee, United Kingdom Parliament, and United States Congressional
Commissions and Task Forces. She has provided expert testimony and affidavits to
commissions, asylum hearings, and review boards, and conducted workshops and
lectured at various universities and organizations internationally.

Chatterji is the Co-chairman of the Research Project on Armed Conflict and

Peoples Rights at the Center for Nonprofit and Public Leadership, University of
California at Berkeley aimed at protecting peoples rights in situations of internal armed
conflict in India.

Chatterji co-founded the International Peoples Tribunal on Human Rights and

Justice in Indian-administered Kashmir with Parvez Imroz in 2008 and served as CoConvener from April 2008 to May 2012.

Angana Chatterji was suspended from CIIS on 19 July, 2011 and on 25 October
the CIIS Academic VP has recommended her termination. This was due to her links with
Ghulam Nabi Fai, an ISI mole in the USA.

2. Romila Thapar

Books:

Ancient Indian Social History: Some Interpretations, 1978

Cultural Pasts: Essays in Early Indian History, 2003; Oxford University Press

Cultural Transaction and Early India: Tradition and Patronage

Dissent in the Early Indian Tradition

Early India: From Origins to AD 1300

Pronouncements:

Early India: Some settlements in the north-west and Punjab might have been
subjected to raids and skirmishes [by the Aryans], such as are described in the Rig
Veda

I do not see the medieval period as one where the Muslims are the conquerors.
It was a period of creation of communities. Muslims came in various ways. They were
traders, they were pastoralists, they were conquerors, they were missionaries, and they
created different kinds of communities all over the subcontinentThe trauma of

Mahmud of Ghaznis raid on Somnath was never experienced at the time or even for
centuries thereafter. This trauma has been appropriated from the reading of the British
version of this event.

Career Summary:

After graduating from Punjab University, Romila Thapar earned her doctorate
under A. L. Basham at the School of Oriental and African Studies, the University of
London in 1958. Later she worked as Professor of Ancient Indian History at the
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. In the past she has served as a visiting
professor at Cornell University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the College de
France in Paris.

She was elected General President of the Indian History Congress in 1983 and a
Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy in 1999. At present she is one of the
members of the high profile Delhi Urban Heritage Foundation due to her proximity with
Najeeb Jung, Lt. Governor of Delhi.

Her standing and influence as a historian was largely based on repeating the
discredited theory of Aryans invading India.

She attempted to prove the non-existence of a temple in the disputed site of

Ayodhya. She attempted to prove that in ancient India the Nastika savants were in
constant loggerheads with the Vedic thinkers.

Romila Thapars name prominently figures in the factual expose by Arun Shourie
in his path breaking bookEminent Historians: Their technology, their line, their fraud. Her
credibility as a scholar of ancient India came unstuck when Sita Ram Goel, Arun
Shourie and similar scholars brought to light the fact that she does not know Sanskrit.

3. Father Cedric Prakash

Books : Yes, We Can! Book series. (Books on moral science)

Notable articles:

Let Us Not Be Naive About Naveen Patnaik

Can the election on April 16 in the Kandhmals ever be free and fair?

Vibrant Gujarat: Lies, Half Truths and Illusions

India: Gujarat Government Continues With Communal Agenda

Gujarat Carnage: Seven Years On . . . Seven Major Concerns and More

The aforementioned articles are mainly about the Kandhamal violence and
the Gujarat government then headed by Narendra Modi.
Pronouncement:
In June 2002, he testified before the US Commission for International
Religious Freedom (USCIRF) in Washington. His testimony is very
revealing, In the name of the thousands of [Gujarat riot] victimsI
earnestly appeal to you, to make all necessary interventions a clear
case of an Indian citizen asking an alien nation to intervene in Indias
domestic affairs in any manner it chose to intervene.
Career Summary

Father Cedric Prakash is a Jesuit Priest of the Gujarat.

He graduated from St. Xaviers College in 1972.

He worked full time with the AICUF (All India Catholic University Federation) in
Chennai and then spent a year with the TAIZE community in France helping to prepare
the World Council of Youth.

He is currently the Director of PRASHANT, the Ahmedabad-based Jesuit Centre

for Human Rights, Justice and Peace which he founded on October 2nd, 2001.

Following the Gujarat Carnage of 2002, Fr. Prakash has been a vocal critic of
Narendra Modi, often in collaboration with eminences like John Dayal and Teesta
Setalvad.

He was also associated with the US-based think tank, Ethics and Public Policy
Center (EPPC), which has a long history of promoting and influencing anti-India
sentiments within several successive US Governments. As part of expanding this, it has
managed strategic visits by Cedric Prakashwho also labels himself as a human rights
activistas a liaison for the Local Capacities for Peace Project at the Harvard
University.

Cedric Prakash was also invited to Luxembourg in 2002 and later, to London for
discussions with the European Union and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office of the
British Government.

Prakash has won several awards including:

The Kabir Puraskar by the President of India in 1995.

The Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Award by the Indian Muslim Council (USA) in June 2003.

Chevalier de la Legion Honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honour) by the

President of the French Republic in July 2006.

Minority Rights Award from the National Minority Commission, Government of

India in December 2006

The Human Dignity Award from the Diocese of Ahmedabad in February 2010.

4. John Dayal

Notable books:

Human Rights: A Close Look.

Justice & Peace Commission, All India Christian Council: Gujarat 2002: untold
and re-told stories of Hindutva lab.

John Dayal : A matter of equity: freedom of faith in secular India.

Pronouncement:
When the US based advocacy group Policy Institute for Religion and
State (PIFRAS) held a South Asia Conference, sponsored by United
Methodist Board of Church and Society and the National Council of
Churches of Christ in the USA John Dayal, as a participant, had
contended that minorities could not count on the Indian state to protect
them, or to prosecute crimes committed against them.
Career Summary:

Closely associated with the activities of the Sonia Gandhi-led National

Advisory Council (NAC), which was instrumental in several nation-wrecking
legislations.

As a member of the National Integration Council, he gave a completely negative

picture of Indian polity in his testament as a witness to the Tom Lantos Human Rights
Commission (TLHRC)s hearing titled Plight of Religious Minorities in India held on 4
April 2014 in Washington D.C.

John Dayal also had a significant role to play in the NACs nefarious attempt at
evolving a flawed and skewed Communal Violence Bill.

The likes of John Dayal in a way condone and support external interference and
interventions into the internal affairs of India, as long as their agenda is served. As the
renowned scholar Dr. Anirban Ganguly notes, The John Dayal types belong to that
intellectual underworld supported, sponsored, nurtured and protected by the Congress
party.

5. Vinay Lal:

Books:

Empire of Knowledge: Culture and Plurality in the Global Economy

The History of History: Politics and Scholarship in Modern India

Empire and the Dream-Work of America.

Introducing Hinduism

Pronouncement:
Labelled the Ramayana as a sectarian text that spoke of a clash between
Shaivites and Vaishnavites because Ravana is a follower of Shiva and
Rama is believed to be an avatar of Vishnu. He also dubbed the Puranas
as sectarian texts.

Career Summary:

He was a Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science at the
National Museum of Ethnology (Minpaku).

Presently associate professor of history at UCLA.

Earned his B.A. and M.A., both in 1982, from the Humanities Center at
The Johns Hopkins University and wrote his Masters thesis on Emerson and Indian
philosophy.

Studied cinema in Australia and India on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship before

commencing his graduate studies at the University of Chicago, where he was awarded
a PhD with Distinction from the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations
in 1992.

Was William Kenan Fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities

at Columbia University in 199293.

In his blog titled Lal Salam (Red Salute, making no secret of his commitment to
Communism), he describes himself thus: His views on American foreign policy and the
pax Americana have earned him a place in David Horowitzs book on the 101 most
dangerous professors in America today, while his critiques of extreme Hindu
nationalism have made him a target of Hindutva venom in the US. These are reliable
indicators, to his mind, that he is performing some useful public service, and that
academics and scholars must remain vitally engaged in the wider public domain.

6. Martha Nussbaum:

Books:

Cultivating Humanity

Sex and Social Justice

From Disgust to Humanity: Sexual Orientation and Constitutional Law

Platos Republic: the good society and the deformation of desire

The clash within: democracy and the Hindu right

The new religious intolerance: overcoming the politics of fear in an anxious age

Pronouncements:

In India, the perpetrators of violence are not Muslims (who are usually poor and
downtrodden, but not involved in perpetrating violence, except in the special case of
Kashmir) but Hindus who sought ideology in Fascist Europe and who model their
stance on European anti-Semitism of the 1930s.

A Hindu nation is not a benign establishment like the Lutheran Church of Finland.

The people who spoke Sanskrit almost certainly migrated into the subcontinent
from outside, finding indigenous people there, probably the ancestors of the Dravidian
peoples of South India. Hindus are no more indigenous than Muslims (The clash within:
democracy and the Hindu right)

What has been happening in India is a serious threat to the future of democracy
in the world.

Career Summary:

She is the current Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and
Ethics at the University of Chicago, a chair that includes appointments in the philosophy
department and the law school.

She also holds associate appointments in classics, divinity and political science,
is a member of the Committee on Southern Asian Studies, and a board member of the
Human Rights Program.

She studied theatre and classics at New York University, getting a BA in 1969,
and gradually moved to philosophy while at Harvard University, where she received an
MA in 1972 and a PhD in 1975.

Her interest in India started while working for Amartya Sen with whom she shared
an intimate relationship, a fact she herself has bragged about.

Her views on Indian society are no different from the ones presented by leftist
distortionists.

She does not have any qualification or training in archeology, Sanskrit, geology,
or metallurgy, yet writes with authority about the dating of the Vedas.

7. Vijay Prashad

Books:

The Poorer Nations: A Possible History of the Global South

The Darker Nations: A Peoples History of the Third World

Arab Spring, Libyan Winter

Uncle Swami: Being South Asian in America

Pronouncements:

Modern Hinduism is fascism and racism. It is the origin of what we would call
modern fascism. Based on a religious caste system that is Aryan in origin, it divides up
the world into three castes, warriors, priests, merchants, and in a slave class, the Dalits
or Untouchables.

Between Hindus and Muslims there has not been an endless rivalry for social
power. When Islam enters the subcontinent, it does not come in the saddlebags of the
Ghaznis or the Ghouris, but amongst the rumble of goods brought by traders. Early
conversions are not by the sword but by the merchants .There was killing, but that was
as much for reasons of warfare and plunder as for reasons of God and tradition. An
interested reader might want to look at the distinguished historian Romila Thapars
superb book Samantha: The Many Voices of a History (Penguin, 2005)...There,
Professor Thapar shows us that Mahmud Ghaznis destruction of the Shiva temple in
1026 was driven not so much by a fanatical religious belief but because his father,
Subuktigin (sic), needed money to sustain his faltering kingdom in Central Asia. Now it
is certainly true, as historian Mohammed Habib put it, that there was wanton
destruction of temples that followed in the wake of the Ghaznavid army..An article on
Hindu Holocaust (News India Times, Sept. 25, 2009)

Career Summary:

Vijay Prashad is the George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and
Professor of International Studies, at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.

Prashad is one of the founding fathers of the FOIL and is the author of several
books regarding South Asia, and has often written articles and papers on US
imperialism and capitalist hegemony and impacts of this across the world.

In case of India he has often supported Kancha Ilaiah who made his academic
repute by tossing out ill-informed interpretations of Indian mythology, presenting them
as Aryan-Brahminical conspiracies against the down-trodden, while simultaneously
claiming to be a follower of the rationalist Ambedkarite school of thought.

8. Meera Nanda

Books:

Breaking the Spell of Dharma and Other Essays

Prophets Facing Backward: Postmodern Critiques of Science and the Hindu

Nationalism in India.

Postmodernism And Religious Fundamentalism: A Scientific Rebuttal To Hindu

Science

The God Market

Pronouncements:

The roots of Vedic science can be traced to the so-called Bengal Renaissance,
which in turn was deeply influenced by the Orientalist constructions of Vedic antiquity as
the Golden Age of Hinduism. Heavily influenced by German idealism and British
romanticism, important Orientalists including H.T. Colebrooke, Max Mueller and Paul
Deussen tended to locate the central core of Hindu thought in the Vedas, the
Upanishads and, above all, in the Advaita Vedanta tradition of Shankara. Despite the
deeply anti-rational and idealistic (that is, anti-naturalistic) elements of Advaita Vedanta,
key Hindu nationalist reformers from Raja Ram Mohun Roy and Bankim Chandra

Chatterjee to Swami Vivekananda began to find in it all the elements of modernity.

Vivekananda took the lead in propagating the view that the monism of Advaita Vedanta
presaged the future culmination of all of modern science. Since modern science denied
the role of any supernatural force outside nature, Vivekananda claimed that only
Vedantic monism was truly scientific for it treated God as an aspect of nature and did
not invoke any force external to nature. (Prophets Facing Backward: Postmodern
Critiques of Science and the Hindu Nationalism in India)

The Hindutva literature is replete with glowing tributes to Hindu renaissance,

which they claim to be similar to the European Renaissance that ushered in the modern
age in the West. What they forget is that the Renaissance in the West re-discovered the
humanistic and naturalistic sources of the Greek tradition that had been overshadowed
by the Catholic Church the Renaissance humanists rediscovered this-worldly
philosophy of Aristotle and critical-realist Socrates over the other-worldly philosophy of
Plato. The neo-Hindu renaissance, in contrast, re-discovered the most mystical and
anti-humanistic elements of the Vedic inheritance Advaita Vedanta that had always
overshadowed and silenced the naturalistic and scientific traditions in Hinduism and
Buddhism. Neo-Hinduism is no renaissance, but a revival. There is no denying that the
neo-Hindu discovery of modern science in ancient teachings of Vedas and
Upanishads had a limited usefulness. Since they had convinced themselves that their
religion was the mother of all sciences, conservative Hindus did not feel threatened by
scientific education. As long as science could be treated as just another name for
Vedic truths, they were even enthusiastic to learn it.. (Prophets Facing Backward:
Postmodern Critiques of Science and the Hindu Nationalism in India)

Far from being considered the crown jewel of Hinduism, yogic asanas were in
fact looked down upon by Hindu intellectuals and reformersincluding the great Swami
Vivekanandaas fit only for sorcerers, fakirs and jogis. Not as Old as You Think
nor very Hindu either. There is telling evidence to debunk this nationalistic myth, Open
The Magazine, Online Edition,

Career Summary:

Meera Nanda is an Indian writer, historian and philosopher of science with a PhD
from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She was a John Templeton Foundation Fellow in
Religion and Science (20052007).

From January 2009, she became a Fellow at the Jawaharlal Nehru Institute for
Advanced Study, in the Jawaharlal Nehru University for research in Science, PostModernism and Culture besides being a visiting faculty of history and philosophy of
science at Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Mohali.

The bulk of her writings is a critique towards any attempt to study Hinduism in the
light of science. Interestingly as she was associated with the John Templeton
Foundation, she did praise the Protestant work ethic whereas the notion of Practical
Vedanta is criticized.