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One hundred and eighty million workers in India went out on strike on 2 September. It is the largest strike in human history. Workers came from all sectors – from the mines and crèches, from the rail yards and the banks. All trade unions – except the one backed by the RSS – backed the strike. Even workers in the RSS union joined the action. What was most notable about the strike was that it crossed lines of formal and informal sector, with the unions fierce in their determination on working-class unity at the deepest level.
 
A few days later, at Jawaharlal Nehru University, long-time campus adversaries – the Student Federation of India (SFI) and the All-India Students Association (AISA) – put up a united left slate to defeat the RSS-BJP’s student wing, the ABVP. The campaign was hard fought. In the name of JNU’s integrity, the Left fought to define the ABVP as party to the attack on freedom of expression and the rights of students across the country – from Hyderabad Central University to Jadavpur University to Himachal University. Student struggle against the pressure from the BJP-led government at the Centre has been fierce. The Left slate in JNU triumphed, winning the entire central leadership panel and most of the councillor seats in the various schools. SFI, AISA and the All-India Student Federation (who campaigned with the Left) understand that this is the time of Left unity. There were principled disagreements between the SFI and the AISA, but these were articulated in an honest and comradely fashion.
 
A few weeks before, in Una (Gujarat) and in Mumbai (Maharashtra), mass demonstrations took place that brought Dalit groups and the Left together to combat the atrocities against Dalits and the disregard shown to the legacy of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar. Despite great divides that still come between Dalit organisations and Left parties, all sides recognize that building bridges is the task of the present. As Brinda Karat, CPI-M Politburo member wrote at the LeftWord Books blog, ‘The slogan of class unity will have more meaning for a Dalit worker if working class and agrarian class organisations and movements, mobilize all workers against the specific oppression and exploitation that a worker faces as a Dalit’.
 
In this atmosphere, with Left Unity in the air, historian Jairus Banaji comes out with a harsh denunciation of CPI-M Politburo member Prakash Karat. It is a nasty piece of writing, ad hominem by definition, starting with crude statements to describe what Banaji thinks is Karat’s character. If Banaji’s larger point is that the need of the hour is unity of all forces against fascism, then his own prose fails the test – there is no comradely tone here, no attempt to win over Karat to Banaji’s view. The essay by Banaji oscillates between condescension and juvenile derision. To disagree is necessary and important. But how one disagrees is as necessary and as important.

Brinda Karat, CPI-M Politburo member wrote at the LeftWord Books blog, ‘The slogan of class unity will have more meaning for a Dalit worker if working class and agrarian class organisations and movements, mobilize all workers against the specific oppression and exploitation that a worker faces as a Dalit’

 
Why would Banaji write in this vein? It is as if Banaji is fighting ancient battles, the contest of Stalin versus Trotsky on the one hand, and the squabbles at JNU in the 1970s between the SFI and the Trotskyites on the other. His is not the tone of the United Front or the Popular Front, but one that emerges from the deepest wells of sectarianism. Must the Left return to those old debates to find its way in the present?

In most contexts, including in India, the debates between ‘Stalinists’ and ‘Trotskyites’ are of little concern. These are the parlour room discussions of hardened militants who find it hard to come to terms with the new debates over questions of strategy and tactics to organise the large segments of the ‘informal sector’ of workers who have been politically disarmed by neo-liberal policy and the mass media. But this is not Banaji’s interest. He is in the mood to score points.
 

Defending the BJP?

 
Prakash Karat makes a distinction in his short essay in the Indian Express between a fascist regime and an authoritarian one. What is the basis of this distinction? It is that fascism is an extreme form of rule sanctified by the bourgeoisie when the capitalist system faces great threats of collapse. No such signs are evident in India today. There is no imminent crisis to the fractured and complex Indian bourgeoisie, nor is there any indication that the BJP government has the stomach to move against the Constitution or even towards an Emergency regime. The BJP pushes its right-wing agenda, but it is hampered by a host of political adversaries – not only political parties, but also pressure groups and mass sentiment that will not allow it to enact its complete agenda. The fact that one hundred and eighty million workers went on strike shows that there remains wide opposition to the BJP’s ‘labour reform’ agenda, one that is otherwise quite acceptable to large sections of the parliamentary opposition (including the Congress Party).
 
The BJP itself, Karat acknowledges, is ‘not an ordinary bourgeois party’. It is, after all, part of the Sangh Parivar and linked, therefore, to the RSS. The RSS, Karat notes, ‘has a semi-fascist ideology’. What makes it ‘semi-fascist’, asks Banaji? It is semi-fascist or fascisant because it can never hope to achieve hegemony over the popular imagination, but has to impose its fascistic ideology from above, through the institutions, by manipulation of the media, by deceit rather than by the creation of conviction. Fissures along caste and regional lines are too deep to allow the RSS to dig its roots into the Indian popular imagination. If it elevates Hindi, it will alienate Tamils. If it pushes the Ram Mandir, it does not speak as loudly to Bengalis as those who read Tulsidas. The BJP – the electoral arm of the Parivar – finds it hard to break into regions of India where the RSS is not as powerful. It makes alliances. These are opportunistic. These alliances strengthen the BJP in Delhi, but do not allow it to penetrate the popular consciousness elsewhere.When the BJP is on the RSS’s (and VHP’s) turf, then matters are different. The Gujarat pogrom of 2002 took place in a setting where the RSS and the VHP had prepared the terrain. All this is well-described in TeestaSetalvad’s forthcoming memoir from LeftWord Books.
 
What we have in the BJP is authoritarianism – a strong determination to use force of various kinds to gets its way, to use fear to stifle dissent, to use intimidation to transform culture. Modi moves the authoritarianism of the BJP to its extreme. The leader is venerated, the style of politics is menacing, and the agenda is business-friendly. Echoes of Turkey’s AKP are loud, as Karat notes, but so too are there echoes of the Eastern European right-wing.
 
But in Turkey or Bulgaria, these right-wing parties are able to formulate a stable kind of racist nationalism. The societies appear more homogeneous. India is, in that sense, different. It is a multi-national state, with caste as a fissure that tears through society. No simple racist authoritarianism can succeed in India. That is why the BJP attempts to change the idea of India, push against the multi-national consensus towards what first appears as an anodyne One India politics but which later could provide the cultural basis for the Hindu Rashtra. But this feint is being contested openly and successfully. The BJP foists its representatives on the cultural institutions, but they are not obeyed. Legitimacy is not going to be easy to earn.
 
Because Banaji does not like Karat’s distinction between fascism and authoritarianism, he suggests that Karat is defending the BJP. That is outrageous. None other than the Left has been the fiercest combatant against communalism of all kinds. Others truck with communalism when it suits their electoral purposes. But the Left is principled on this issue. To make a distinction so as to clarify one’s tactics does not amount to a defence of the BJP.
 

Alliance with the Congress?
 

Banaji’s insistence that the BJP is a fascist party is not merely a technical discussion nor a debate about Germany in the 1920s (although it sometimes reads that way). This is an argument about the strategy for the Indian Left. Banaji seems to suggest – by analogy from Germany’s 1920s – that the Congress Party could be the Social Democratic ally that the German Communist Party of the 1920s rejected in the fight against Nazism. If the Communists in India today join up with the Congress Party, he implies, then they will be able to take on the BJP.

The essay by Banaji oscillates between condescension and juvenile derision. To disagree is necessary and important. But how one disagrees is as necessary and as important.

 
There are two strikingly peculiar premises to this assessment. First, the assumption that the Congress Party today is Social Democratic would be hard to sustain. The only reason that the Congress Party-led UPA 1 government adopted parts of a watered-down social democratic agenda was because of the Common Minimum Programme (CMP) it had to sign with the Left.
 
The CMP, even with the addition of the Left’s social welfare demands, remained neo-liberal in its orientation. There was no illusion about that. At that time, the Left had a bloc in parliament that made a difference to the stability of the government. It was able to force the Congress Party, whose temperament on economic matters is shared with the BJP, to pay attention to the acute crisis in the country. No such Left parliamentary bloc exists today.Evidence of the Congress Party’s social democracy is weak. Apart from the occasional speech about poverty, Congress leaders are utterly committed to the same kind of economic policies as pursued by the BJP.
 
The second assumption of Banaji’s text is that the Left – by abjuring an electoral alliance at the national level with the Congress Party – is somehow sectarian. In fact, the Left unions worked closely with the Congress unions for the September strike.
 
Sectarianism from below is not the agenda at all. In fact, it is the opposite – to build the largest coalition from below to confront the exercise of authoritarian power by the BJP government and semi-fascist power by the RSS in its boroughs. There is ample evidence of non-electoral joint struggles on the ground.
 
Banaji does not register this joint action. The Left’s hesitancy about the Congress is not a repeat of the Comintern’s social fascism doctrine, where actions with the social democrats were forbidden. If Leon Trotsky were to have appeared in India on 2 September and give his December 1931 speech, his words would appear to be quite ordinary: ‘Should fascism come to power, it will ride over your skulls and spines like a terrific tank’, he said. ‘Your salvation lies in merciless struggle. And only a fighting unity with the Social Democratic workers can bring victory’.
 
The Left mass organisations work closely with the mass organisations of other groups, and with workers and peasants who are not in any formal organisation. They are already building that ‘fighting unity’. The building of mass struggles – such as the strike of 2 September and the post-Una protests – is the task of our time.
 
Banaji’s ill-toned attack on Prakash Karat is evidence of the kind of sectarianism that the broadly defined Indian Left needs to shed. Left unity is essential if the Left in India is to create the unity of the workers and peasants whose lives and hopes depend on it. As Trotsky said in that 1931 speech, ‘Make haste, worker-Communists, you have very little time left!’
 
 
(Vijay Prashad is the Chief Editor of LeftWord Books. He is the author of No Free Left: the Futures of Indian Communism (2015) and the editor of Communist Histories, vol. 1 (2016), both published by LeftWord Books)

The post Time for Left Unity: Banaji’s Petty Prose Fails the Test appeared first on SabrangIndia.

Last year, the University of California at Irvine (UCI) was offered a substantial donation to set up four chairs in South Asian Studies. The shackles of the endowment irked the students and faculty. A faculty committee looked into the gift and decided to turn it down. The Dean agreed. It is an object lesson in who gets to fund higher education. This is that story.

Walking through the University of California's campus at Irvine is a startling experience. More than half the students are of Asian descent. When students set up their tables to advertise their clubs on the plaza, the diversity amongst the Asians is apparent. There is an Afghan Students Union and a Chinese Association, with at least six Korean American clubs. There is the Indian Students' Association, but also the Indian Sub-continental Club, a Hindu Yuva, the Muslim Students Union and the Secular Students Alliance (which hosts a Bhangra Night).

Student diversity is superb for brochures. But students complain – as a number of them told me – that they would like to see more classes about their histories. The Asian students and faculty who teach about Asia say that they would like to have more classes on the continent and its relationship to the rest of the world. But, as with most public institutions in the United States, the University of California system appears broke and is unwilling to spend what money it has on developing curricula to cater to the interests of the diverse student body about which it boasts.

While the University of California is making sweeping promises in response to students' complaints, it is unclear whether these promises will be backed with the financial commitments necessary to execute them. For example, starting in 2017, the University of California's Los Angeles campus will establish a diversity-related course requirement for students who enroll in 2017 and beyond. Students will be required to take a class that "substantially addresses racial, ethnic, gender, socioeconomic, sexual orientation, religious or other types of diversity." This is a laudable goal, but does UCLA have the faculty to provide classes necessary for the 16,000 students it enrolls in each class?

There's no question that hiring people to enrich the curriculum should be a major goal of higher education in the United States. The problem – for public universities – is that legislatures are hesitant to finance such initiatives. The university, then, must go to private entities to raise the money. Individuals of great wealth have their own agenda. Few would like to give money to a university for a use that they do not control – a situation that has been exacerbated as the status of the Humanities declined (now donors with no training in the Humanities believe that they have as powerful a claim to defining curriculum as scholars). This is one of the great dilemmas of 21st century higher education in the US.

Controversy Erupts Over Funding From the Dharma Civilization Foundation

In May 2015, UC Irvine announced a partnership with the Dharma Civilization Foundation and the Thakkar Family to endow a Dharma Civilization Foundation Presidential Chair in Vedic and Indic Civilization Studies. The gift of $1.5 million came from a prominent San Fernando-based nephrologist, Dr. Ushakant Thakkar and his wife Irma Thakkar. This money would be followed by other funds for a Sikh, Jain and Modern Indian Studies chair. This sounds like a good reason for UC Irvine to celebrate: money for four positions that would diversify the curriculum, providing classes that the students had long wanted.

So what's the problem? Why did many graduate students who work on South Asia express their dismay at this gift, and why have many faculty members joined in their outrage?

One problem is the donor – the Dharma Civilization Foundation. Kalyan Vishwanathan, the executive vice president of the foundation, tells me that the foundation is "an American organization, registered in the State of California." It is, in other words, legitimate. So what is the problem? A letter of concern from the UC Irvine Department of History points to the linkages between the Dharma Civilization Foundation and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), an extreme right group based in India, and its US affiliate the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS).

The founder of the Dharma Civilization Foundation – Manohar Shinde – is an RSS-trained man who was one of the founders of the HSS. Several of its trustees (Ved Nanda, Sunil Agarwal) have been leaders of the HSS – while its Vice President, Dr. Vinod Ambashta – was the HSS Director. Vishwanathan rejects that these groups have any role in the Dharma Civilization Foundation. On the other hand, Vishwanathan suggests that there is nothing improper in these groups, and those who argue against them "wish to discredit the millions of people who are involved in these organizations in India and elsewhere." Indeed, to take Vishwanathan's point further – the current Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, is a member of the RSS.

The faculty and students, however, do not believe that the RSS and the HSS are benign, nor do they believe that the Dharma Civilization Foundation is utterly independent of these organizations. There was good reason for the United States to deny Modi a visa to enter the country for a decade. Allegations of complicity in the killings of over 2,000 people in a pogrom in 2002 have dogged Modi. The sensibility of the RSS is anti-Muslim, and this sensibility has manifested itself in riots and in the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in 1948, following Gandhi's words of goodwill toward Muslims. A senior Congress Party leader – Digvijay Singh – once likened the RSS hatred for Muslims to the Nazi hatred for Jews.

After students and faculty spoke out against the donation, UC-Irvine's administration hastily backed off from their celebrations. The Dean, Georges Van Den Abbeele, appointed a committee to investigate the unease with the gift. I asked Dean Van Den Abbeele about the Dharma Civilization Foundation's linkage to the RSS. Irvine, he says, has a track record of increasing offerings in Asian religions that precedes the Dharma Civilization Foundation gift – for at least four years before the foundation came into the picture, the university used non-tenure-track faculty such as adjuncts and postdocs to teach these classes. Irvine, he said, wants to hire a full-time faculty member to "reverse the general and regrettable trend in academia towards increased reliance on contingent rather than permanent instructors."

This is a laudable goal, but not one that answers the question of the RSS's involvement. One of the faculty members who played a role in the episode, Professor John Miles, told me, "How close these alleged links are does concern me."

Stipulations Require Hiring of Scholars Who Imbibe Hindu Ethos

The Dharma Civilization Foundation asks those who take its money to follow two basic principles.

First, the foundation demands that its recipients hire scholars who "imbibe the spirit of Hindu Ethos in their personal lives." What does this mean? Does the scholar have to be a practicing Hindu? In its assessment of the University of Southern California, the Dharma Civilization Foundation writes approvingly of Professor Duncan Williams who teaches Buddhism because "he is a practicing Buddhist."

Second, and linked to this, the foundation stipulates that the hire must not be "confused and distorted by secularism." What does the foundation mean by this? Rajiv Malhotra, a telecom executive, has written a number of books against scholarship that "undermines Indian culture" by recourse to Western categories. The guidelines from the foundation say that such scholars exhibit "an outlook of contempt and disdain for anything Hindu." This, Vishwanathan told me, "is a cause for frustration among the members of the Dharma [Hindu] community."

Dean Van Den Abbeele told me that he informed the Dharma Civilization Foundation that UC-Irvine "cannot be bound by this phrase" – confused and distorted by secularism – "or any other stipulation that restricts the academic freedom of the chair holder." The committee set up by Dean Van Den Abbeele wrote at length about these restrictions. "We are particularly concerned about any language that implies that religious affiliation or participation in religious events is a prerequisite for chair holders," they write in their February 18 report.

Kalyan Vishwanathan of the Dharma Civilization Foundation suggests that these stipulations are an attempt to counterbalance the fact that religions from worlds outside Judeo-Christian traditions have for a long time been studied as inferior. Hinduism, he says, is often seen "as a kind of social pathology."

But has the Dharma Civilization Foundation created a straw man? Is there really disdain for Hinduism currently within the US academy? I asked several students at Irvine what they thought of this charge. Their reactions were skeptical. The academy, said Ali Olomi, is "not a locus of Hinduphobia." Olomi is the president of the History Graduate Students Association. "Both the faculty members and the student body have made clear their commitment to the academic study of Hinduism," he said.

Robert Goldman, who teaches at UC Berkeley, is the General Editor and one of the main translators of the enormous project to translate Valmiki's Ramayana (Princeton University Press). Goldman says that scholars who study India "do so out of love for the subject."

Telecom executive Rajiv Malhotra suggests that Western scholars – like Robert Goldman and Columbia University's Sheldon Pollock – lack adhikara, guru-given authority. Both Goldman and Pollock are members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Pollock was awarded a prestigious Padma Shri award by the Indian government. Neither is a practicing Hindu. Malhotra criticizes Pollock for his "leftist and secular commitments." It is this that seems more the burr under the saddle than the scholars' actual work, which is widely recognised to be of the highest quality.

Funding at the University of Southern California

The Dharma Civilization Foundation failed at Irvine, but it had a success at the University of Southern California, where it endowed a chair in Hindu Studies in 2012. The process for that chair took over a year, with active work from the president of the University of Southern California, the chair of the School of Religion – Duncan Williams, whom the foundation praised for being a practicing Buddhist – and Varun Soni, the Dean of Religious Life.

The University of Southern California hired Rita Sherma – who was on a list of scholar-practitioners provided by the Dharma Civilization Foundation to the university – on a two-year short-term position for that chair. Sherma is a major donor to the Dharma Civilization Foundation and is praised in multiple places on the foundation's website. That she was hired for the position suggests that the University of Southern California was not averse to following the guidelines given by the foundation.

Professor Sherma told me that she "applied along with others" and got the job. "I served my term and have taken a post elsewhere," she said. She now teaches at the Graduate Theological Union in a Dharma Studies program funded by the same foundation. She is, in other words, a key scholar-practitioner who is repeatedly hired for positions funded by the Dharma Civilization Foundation.

When the foundation made its gift to University of Southern California, the school's Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences was Howard Gillman, now the chancellor at UC-Irvine. I asked the chancellor if he had any role to play in the gift. Through his associate chancellor, Ria Carlson, chancellor Gillman said he "was not involved in conversations regarding the gift or the hiring of related faculty." Gillman's name is not on the gift agreement of June 25, 2012 – although he did not leave the university till 2013. It does seem unusual for the dean of the college not to be involved in such a substantial ($3.24 million) gift. It is even more curious that the foundation moved from the University of Southern California to UC Irvine – as Gillman moved from one job to the next.

The Danger of Reliance on Private Funds

Higher education is truly in a bind. New fields of study appear, but there is no money from austerity-driven legislatures. Reliance upon private funds has become commonplace. But UC Irvine's own history shows that higher education need not be prone before the funders. When the Massiah Foundation – created by Fariborz Maseeh, an Iranian-American entrepreneur – approached UC Irvine to create a Center for Persian Studies in 2005, the discussion was more mature. "A faculty-led committee negotiated directly with the donor," remembers professor Mark LeVine, who teaches Middle Eastern History at UC Irvine. This committee "was very explicit in how the donation would work, the importance of academic independence, and related issues and there have been no problems."

"Young children going to school and colleges in the US," Kalyan Vishwanathan from the Dharma Civilization Foundation said to me, "deserve a better approach to their heritage traditions." Of course, erroneous stories about any part of the world or any tradition would ill-prepare any student, not just those who can claim heritage from them. But the problem is not in this sentiment. It is in how better stories can be told. Should those stories be determined by a foundation with close ties to groups like the RSS? Or should they be produced by the rough and tumble world of academic debate and discussion, where protocols of academic freedom govern the sensibility of the scholars?

Ultimately, after consideration of the possibility of a program funded by the Dharma Civilization Foundation, UC-Irvine's faculty committee recommended that "none of the chairs be established." Dean Van Den Abbeele wrote to the faculty, "I will support these and other recommendations." It appears that the door to the Dharma Civilization Foundation at Irvine has closed. Students will continue to be eager for classes in Indian thought and history. The money will have to come from elsewhere.

This article, first published by Truthout and is being republished with the author's permission.

Academics protest as Law firm withdraws $250,000 gift to Harvard over Palestine event (demonstrating Zionism’s pervasiveness)

The issue of funders attempting to influence the practice of free speech and academic freedom at American universities also surfaced at Harvard University when a week ago the law firm of Milbank Tweed has withdrawn a gift of $250,000 to the law school because $500 of that money was spent on a pro-Palestinian event that Milbank wanted its name dissociated from. “The law school refused to accept those terms for the gift; and Milbank, Tweed walked,” according to a report published by the independent website Mondoweiss.

The incident has agitated academics from several American universities to address an open letter and requested others to add their names (at the link).
 
February 22, 2016

An Open Letter to the Law School Community:

As law school faculty, students, administrators and staff based in the US we join together to express our grave concern about an incident that has arisen at Harvard Law School that has troubling implications for all of our institutions.

Each of us supports and fosters at our law schools an atmosphere of robust debate among law students on matters of public concern, welcoming a wide array of perspectives on the most difficult legal and political issues of the day. We believe that a firm commitment to principles of free speech and academic freedom enriches law students’ education and is essential to one’s training as a lawyer and advocate. Student-run conferences, panels, speaker series, moot courts and other activities play an essential role in the creation of law school communities as sites where diverse viewpoints on a wide range of issues can be explored, debated and contested. Student-run events and law student groups are critical for fostering student leadership, incubating new ideas, and producing the next generation of legal professionals.

Student-run events require financial support and they often gain this support from funders outside the law school, in many cases from law firms. No matter the context, the high value we place on free speech and robust debate will be threatened if students perceive that their activities may be de-funded should they express opinions disfavored by a law firm funder. It is unacceptable for a law firm to provide a general gift to a law school to support student events – intended to be administered by law school staff – and then seek to exercise control over the content or viewpoints being expressed by students that seek funding from that general fund.

Unfolding events at Harvard Law School (HLS) raise the specter of illegitimate efforts by an external funder to censor or influence the viewpoints being expressed at student-run events. In 2012 the law firm Milbank LLP made a gift to Harvard Law School ($200,000 annually for five years) to establish the “Milbank Tweed Student Conference Fund” (the Fund). The Fund was set up to subsidize student events at Harvard, yet Milbank informed HLS that it desired to discontinue the Fund after it learned about an event sponsored by the student group Justice in Palestine that had received $500 in funding from the “Milbank Tweed Student Conference Fund” to cover catering expenses, and the students had acknowledged the Fund’s support in their announcements for the event – something required by law school policy. Assuming the truth of these allegations as reported in numerous news sources, they raise considerable concerns about the power of influential donors to undermine the principle of free speech and debate in the law school context. The fact that the donor in question here is a large law firm for whom many law students would like to work after graduation is of even greater concern.

Most of our schools receive substantial funding from law firms to subsidize student-run events. Some of our schools have been recipients of funds from Milbank. We are concerned that the experience at Harvard will have a chilling effect on the breadth of viewpoints, topics, and debates that students will feel free to take up in their events, whether it be Israel/Palestine or other highly contested issues such as government efforts to force tech companies to override privacy controls; corporate responsibilities to protect human rights; the meaning and scope of religious liberty; the constitutionality of gun control measures; the legality of state-sponsored targeted killings; or efforts to prosecute Wikileaks, to name only a few.

We urge Milbank to model a commitment to law schools as a particularly important context where robust debate on matters of public concern must be celebrated rather than censured, and where principles of free speech must be observed and defended most adamantly. As educators and students of law we neither need nor expect to be protected from ideas some may find uncomfortable or offensive. Rather we regard the contestation of ideas through vigorous debate to be a necessary and essential part of both legal training and of legal practice itself. Any efforts to censor, influence, or punish the expression of particular viewpoints in events sponsored by law students run contrary to the very spirit of the practice of law and of legal education, which must be “uninhibited, robust, and wide-open.” Tolerating anything less is bad for legal education and bad for the legal profession.

(Affiliations are listed for purposes of identification only. No signer of this letter claims to speak for the university with which he or she is affiliated.)

Katherine Franke
Sulzbacher Professor of Law
Columbia Law School

Brian Leiter
Karl N. Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence
Director, Center for Law, Philosophy & Human Values
University of Chicago

Steven H. Shiffrin,
Charles Frank Reavis Sr. Professor of Law, Emeritus,
Cornell University Law School

Sarah H. Cleveland
Louis Henkin Professor of Human and Constitutional Rights
Faculty Co-Director, Human Rights Institute
Columbia Law School

Sarah Knuckey
Lieff Cabraser Heimann and Bernstein Clinical Associate Professor of Human Rights Director, Human Rights Clinic
Faculty Co-Director, Human Rights Institute
Columbia Law School

Philip G. Alston
John Norton Pomeroy Professor of Law
Faculty Director and Co-Chair, Center for Human Rights and Global Justice
New York University School of Law

Kendall Thomas
Nash Professor of Law
Columbia University

Cynthia Grant Bowman
Dorothea S. Clarke Professor of Feminist Jurisprudence
Cornell Law School

Sheila R. Foster
University Professor
Albert A. Walsh Professor of Law
Faculty Co-Director, Urban Law Center
Fordham University

Sara-Anne Alkhatib
Columbia Law School (JD Class of 2017)

Bassam Khawaja
Columbia Law School (JD Class of 2015)

Elizabeth O’Shea
Columbia Law School (LLM Class of 2016)

Martin S. Flaherty
Leitner Family Professor of International Human Rights Law
Founding Co-Director, Leitner Center of International Law and Justice
Fordham Law School

Erez Aloni
Assistant Professor
Whittier Law School

Tracy Higgins
Professor of Law
Faculty Director, Leitner Center for International Law and Justice
Fordham Law School

Kate L. Morris
Columbia Law School (JD Class of 2016)

Holly Maguigan
Professor of Clinical Law
New York University School of Law

Amna Akbar
Assistant Professor
Moritz College of Law, The Ohio State University

The post Who Gets to Fund Higher Education? A Hindu Nationalist Donor Raises Controversy appeared first on SabrangIndia.

 
Indian political culture sits atop a fine edged blade. Pushing down on it is the Extreme Right, whose political wing – the BJP – is currently in power. Intolerance is the order of the day. India’s celebrated Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen recently said, “India is being turned intolerant. We have been too tolerant with the intolerance. This has to end.”

In the marrow of the Extreme Right is a demand for discipline enforced by violence. Anyone who strays from the authority of its world-view – Hindutva – is either anti-national or a terrorist. Political murders of well-regarded intellectuals and activists, such as Narendra Dabholkar, Govind Pansare, and MM Kalburgi, put the nation on alert.

The death of a young student – Rohit Vemula – of the University of Hyderabad sent all kinds of people onto the streets. Rohit had been hit hard by social discrimination, which manifests itself as a political assault on socially oppressed communities. “From shadows to the stars,” wrote this young man who was fascinated by astronomy. It was an indictment of the social disorder.

“Mother India lost a son,” said Prime Minister Narendra Modi. “I felt the pain.” He had waited five days to react, and reacted only after mass demonstrations of great feeling across the country. Rohit Vemula’s family rejected the Prime Minister’s remorse. They want to know why their son died. The answers lie firmly in the tentacles of the Extreme Right. It is where blame will eventually rest.

When Richa Singh, the new student leader at Allahabad University, invited senior journalist Siddharth Varadarajan to campus to talk about free speech, the Extreme Rights’s students’ group (the ABVP) blocked him. They called Varadarajan, who had been the editor of The Hindu, a “Naxalite” (Maoist) and “anti-national.” This is the chosen vocabulary. Singh later said, “There is a surge in intolerance in this country. The ABVP leaders are not willing to listen to anyone who contradicts their ideology.”

For generations, the Extreme Right in India has sought to erase the Left. But the Left in India is not near as strong as it should be to pose a threat to the Right. So what is it about the Left that the Extreme Right fears? It fears that the Left has an alternative narrative of India’s history and of its possible future – it is one that is rooted not in social exclusion and economic inequality, but in the very opposite of that. Whereas the Congress Party is hated by the BJP for its history and for its hold on institutions of power, the BJP does not believe that the Congress has an alternative powerful enough to challenge its own vision. Talking to Extreme Right leaders about the Left is always an experience in paranoia and hatred – venom holds the words together in their sentences.

For generations, the Extreme Right in India has sought to erase the Left. It fears that the Left has an alternative narrative of India’s history and of its possible future – it is one that is rooted not in social exclusion and economic inequality, but in the very opposite of that

One of the great citadels of the Left in New Delhi, the nation’s capital, is Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) – founded in 1969. From then till now one or another part of the Left has won student elections, and the struggles of the broad Left have allowed the campus to be democratic and decent. In the first half of the 1970s, the Students Federation of India (SFI), the student front of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) or CPIM, fought alongside the workers on the campus to improve their wages and rights. It fought to ensure a powerful students’ union and to create structures where the students did not toil at the mercy of their professors. It fought for decent living conditions for the students. This struggle set the template for the JNU that has existed since then. As SFI leader Prakash Karat wrote at that time, the students “have used every opportunity to challenge the government’s educational policies, and to defend democratic rights.”

Over the years, the same issues have re-emerged – treatment of staff and rights of students. The Left – now much more fractious – has continued to dominate the elections, keeping out the forces of the Extreme Right. Punctually, the Extreme Right – and the national media, which is based in Delhi – attack the students for being pampered and for being political. It has been said – over the decades – that the tax-payer should not have to underwrite the political lives of the students. They are there to study. This argument intensified after India “liberalised” its economy in 1991. Since then, private universities have been formed in and around Delhi, putting pressure on this flagship to reform its curriculum and change its standards. But the JNU Students’ Union (JNUSU) is strong and unyielding – resisting any attempt by the management to change the character of the culture.

Last week, a group of students held a forum on Afzal Guru, who had been executed by the Indian state in 2013. At the forum, some people yelled anti-Indian slogans. It is not clear who raised these slogans. This provided the Extreme Right with an opening. Strangeness was in the air. This government seems to rely on protocols of evidence that mean nothing. A fake twitter account of Hafeez Saeed, a terrorist leader based in Pakistan, was cited by home minister Rajnath Singh as evidence of collusion from across the border.

Plain-clothes security forces entered the campus and arrested the JNUSU president, Kanhaiya Kumar – who is a leader of the Communist Party of India’s student wing, All India Students Federation (AISF). They took him under the colonial era Sedition Law (Section 124-A). During a parliamentary debate in 1951, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru – after whom the university is named – said, “Take Section 124-A of the Indian Penal Code. Now as far as I am concerned that particular Section is highly objectionable and obnoxious and it should have no place in any body of laws that we might pass. The sooner we get rid of it the better.” It remained. Kanhaiya Kumar was arrested on that basis and held for three days [On February 17, a Delhi court has ordered 14-day judicial custody for Kumar].

Students knew intuitively that this was not about the forum,  it was an attack on their democratic culture. Large sections of the press merely repeated what the government said, drawing a stark connection between the tragic death of an Indian soldier – Lance Naik Hanamanthappa Koppad – on February 11 and the forum on Afzal Guru, who had been convicted on terrorism charges. It was enough to put these side by side to pillory the students. No one challenged the government, and previous governments, for failure to demilitarise the Siachen Glacier, where Lance Naik Koppad was serving. Since 2003, over two thousand Indian and Pakistani soldiers have died from frostbite and avalanches. It is anti-national and indeed anti-human to have soldiers at that altitude.

A close ally of a leading BJP politician, Jawahar Yadav said, “For the girls who are protesting in JNU, I have only one thing to say that prostitutes who sell their body are better than them because they at least don’t sell the country.” 

The JNU Teachers’ Association released a statement asking the administration “to maintain normalcy on our campus by immediately withdrawing the police and releasing all those detained.” It was not to be. A massive rally on campus brought leaders of the various Left parties and the Congress Party to campus. Students came to show solidarity for their president. Nearby, a small wake of Extreme Right students chanted slogans of disunity and anger. Defiance, by the rest of the students, was the mood against those chants These students would then form a human chain as a wall around their campus. Amartya Sen’s slogan – This has to end – seemed to inform their commitment.

Vandals of the Right targeted the office of the CPI-M, painting the words “Pakistan” across the signboard. Threatening phone calls came to the CPI-M general secretary Sitaram Yechury. A cartoon appeared in the world of social media that linked the communists to the terrorists, with a tag line that said “Jihadi Naxal University” (Naxal is a reference to the Maoists). The picture showed stereotypical images of “jihadis” and an image of a boy and a girl kissing, with a liquor bottle flying out the car – it condensed all the frustrations of the Extreme Right: against Islam, against Communism, against social freedoms enjoyed by young people.

The images of kissing are telling. Events such as this bring out the worst in the Extreme Right. Its toxic constipation ends. A close ally of a leading BJP politician, Jawahar Yadav said, “For the girls who are protesting in JNU, I have only one thing to say that prostitutes who sell their body are better than them because they at least don’t sell the country.” The Extreme Right likes to call journalists “presstitutes”. One person, on Twitter, sends out a tweet, “All anti-national pigs should be slapped with seduction charge by our PM.” It was a Freudian slip, seduction for sedition. But this is appropriate for the Right. Politics for them is suffused with the language of sex and with the fear of sexual freedom.

On Monday, Kanhaiya was to appear in court for the first time. A WhatsApp message went out amongst a network of lawyers. “Peacefully, we will teach these anti-nationals a lesson as per the law. We will show what it takes to be a patriot.” All the window dressing was there – peacefully, as per the law. But the venom tied these pieties together – teach these anti-nationals a lesson, show what it takes to be a patriot. They arrived for violence. As students and teachers went into the courts, these men – some in lawyers’ garb – beat them and went after the journalists. Some were beaten very badly. One of those who did the beating is a BJP Member of the Legislative Assembly – O. P. Sharma.

“There is no cause for despondency,” wrote Ayesha Kidwai, a professor of Linguistics at JNU. “I know that the orchestrated media campaign against JNU is very distressing. Let me assure you that the world knows this already, and knows why all this is happening.”
 

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On the eve of the Pope’s visit to India, the clamouring of Hindu communalist and fanatic groups within the country was matched by a statement issued by the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) on the eve of Diwali, praying for the deliverance of Hindus from all sin. Protests against this statement were made by both Indian secular groups, members of the Indian Catholic clergy and groups of non-resident Indians (NRIs) in the USA. Here is the text of one such statement issued by the Forum of Indian Leftists (FOIL), USA:

"On Tuesday, October 19, 1999, the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) released a statement instructing their followers to "pray that the world’s Hindus might be convicted of sin and see Jesus is the Light of the World" (www.sbc.net/bpDownload.asp).

This statement has been timed to coincide with one of the most popular festivals celebrated by Hindus, Deepawali or Diwali (Festival of Lights). Supporting this statement is a nine–page prayer booklet, ‘Diwali: festival of Lights. Prayer for Hindus’, that aids those who wish to pray for Hindus during Diwali celebrations (www.imb.org/frontpage.htm). Along similar lines, the SBC booklet, ‘Days of Awe: Prayers for Jews’, also calls on Christians to pray for Jews from Rosh Hashana to Yom Kippur, while a third pamphlet, ‘Ramadhan Prayer Guide: Prayers for Muslims’, which calls for Christians to pray for Muslims will be re–released during the coming month of Ramadhan (Ramzaan). Yet another pamphlet, directed towards Buddhists is also planned by the SBC.

We, the signatories to this letter, are a collective of various individuals and groups committed to the promotion of secular, democratic and egalitarian principles in the social, economic and political life of South Asians. We believe that the SBC pamphlets promote ignorance, divisiveness and intolerance and concur with Keith Parks, the former president of the SBC’s International Mission Board, when he criticises the campaign for "launching a new crusade that is confrontative and abrasive," and underscores the importance of not caricaturing other religions, insisting that it is "essential that a Christian’s descriptions of other faiths be acceptable to members of those faiths".

It is worth recalling the fact that the SBC argued in the 1950s that racial integration was a sinful idea since "the Good Lord set up customs and practices of segregation" (in the words of John Buchanan of Birmingham). Even as recently as last year, the SBC at their convention amended their statement of beliefs to include a declaration that a woman should "submit herself graciously" to her husband’s leadership and her husband should "provide for, protect and lead his family."

We call upon the SBC leadership to re–evaluate its position on other religions, as well as its position on women’s subordination, in the same spirit that led the SBC to adopt a 1995 resolution repudiating its past advocacy of slavery and lack of support for civil rights. Many of us come from diverse backgrounds and were raised as Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Jews, Jains, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, etcetera, and have a secular commitment to equal treatment of, and respect for members of all religious communities. We wish to affirm religious diversity and tolerance as important strengths of South Asian society and cultures. The current government of India, whose complicity in the attacks against Muslims, Christians and Dalits has been well–documented, is steadily undermining these values. Despite this climate of intolerance, there have been many dialogues between followers of different faiths. We support the efforts of the citizens of India who continue to affirm tolerance for different religious and cultural practices.

Just as we cannot condone the call by Hindu fundamentalist organisations to "reconvert" Christians and Muslims to Hinduism in India, we cannot condone the Baptist call to "pray" for Hindus, Muslims, Jews or Buddhists to convert to Christianity in the U.S. While prayer for another person or groups of people may be commendable, attempts to clothe bigotry and ignorance with a veneer of theological and cultural analysis is not.

The SBC ‘Prayer for Hindus’ booklet does not show any comprehension of the complex nature of the different theological and philosophical schools that have come to be known as Hinduism. More troubling is the authors’ use of Hindu fundamentalist interpretations of history to suit their own needs. Thus they uncritically accept and reproduce the mythology of a ‘Hindu’ resistance led by the Maratha ruler Shivaji against ‘Islamic’ Mughal rulers of India in the seventeenth century even while calling for active conversions of the Hindu Marathas.

The booklet sometimes veers toward the absurd; for instance, while describing Bangalore "the Silicon Valley of Asia", it calls upon Southern Baptists to pray that all educated Indian computer scientists become "open to the Truth." Moreover, there is not even a pretence of an understanding of, or respect for the cultural context of Indian Christianity.

Nor does the booklet display any knowledge of the historical diversity of Christianity in India, which includes Roman Catholics, Syrian Christians, Anglicans, Methodists, Episcopalians, Baptists, Presbyterians, and other Protestant denominations. Indians of all faiths and creeds have historically been tolerant and accepting of Christianity in India. It is not Hinduism that has led to attacks on Indian Christians but the communal practices of the Hindu fundamentalist organisations and political parties, which have been well documented by human rights organisations.

Ironically, the SBC pamphlets resonate with the increasingly intolerant practices and policies of the Hindu rightwing government and its cohorts in India. In this context, the response of many Indian Christians who have distanced themselves from the SBC literature is to be applauded. At the end of the millennium, we challenge leaders of religious institutions and progressive people of all faiths to propagate words and deeds that will end and not perpetuate hatred and ignorance".

Archived from Communalism Combat, November 1999, Year 7  No. 53, Special Report 3

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I n recent weeks, too many people seem to offer the banal sentiment that this time it appears inevitable that the BJP and its allies will triumph. The "there is no alternative" (TINA) hypothesis was much trumpeted in neo-liberal circles to demand liberalization; now the same political line is being taken on the elections. Both bespeak of a lack of political imagination and of moral judgement. The TINA position is erroneous on two grounds:

The first mistaken belief is that states can and should be ruled by single parties rather than by multiparty coalitions. Democracy must not be squandered for the sake of an expedient search for "stability." Multiparty coalitions allow many voices to enter governance and to place needed checks and balances on those who rule (especially in such vast countries as India).

The collapse of the Congress led to the National Front experiment, but that failed in large part because its members had an opportunistic attitude towards the coalition. The United Front, in contrast, has held together and its constituents appear to have created a modus operandi essential to political rule. The other successful coalition is the Left Front government in West Bengal that has survived for two decades through the creation of mechanisms for the management of intra-front problems. These coalitions show that the form is worthwhile and democratic.

The BJP recognized in the early 1990s that it would be unable to win sufficient support in most states to ensure its victory in Delhi. Therefore, over the years, it too has cultivated a platform for various parties who subscribe in some measure either to its ideology (Shiv Sena) or who are eager to take power in Delhi at all costs (George Fernandes’ Samata Party).

In seven states the BJP has created alliances that make little sense in terms of its own manifesto. For a party wedded to national unity, it embraced both the Akali Dal in Punjab (whose history of mild secessionism is well-known) and the Tripura Upajati Yuva Samiti (whose militancy is the stuff of legend). For a party that claims to oppose corruption, it is now in alliance with the extensively charge-sheeted Jayalalitha and the AIADMK. It embraces dissident Congress leaders (whose entry into the BJP is simply to ensure the maintenance of their fiefdoms) such as Aslam Sher Khan and Anadi Charan Sahu. And it allows considerable space to opportunistic fence-sitters like Navin Patnaik and Suresh Kalmadi both of whom have floated their own parties in alliance with the BJP rather than risk complete submission to it (the Biju Janata Dal and the Pune Vikas Aghadi).

Isn’t the vote bank culture of the Congress something that the party once vowed to abolish? In September last year, the party president L. K. Advani noted that "if the BJP is looking like the Congress, it is part of the democratic process. We are, after all, witnessing the transformation of an ideological movement into a party of governance." In other words, in order to rule, the party of Hindutva is willing to absorb corrupt elements within the Congress and use their venal thirst for power (at any cost) as a means to put its own anti-democratic, anti-cultural agenda into full motion.

The second error of judgement that appears on the internet and at gatherings of Indians is that the BJP has mellowed since its December 6,1992 days and it will now simply act as the party of "stability." The desire for "stability" is championed amongst the elite particularly since many have realized that the 1991 liberalization dynamic has made the Indian economy dependent upon foreign capital investment.

When Sakutaro Tanino, Japanese ambassador to India, told the Confederation of Indian Industry that "the political situation [in India] has made our people really apprehensive about investing," the Indian elite senses danger for itself. For this reason, perhaps, the big business houses have begun to line-up behind the BJP. On 25 December 1997, major newspapers carried a supplement in honour of Atal Behari Vajpayee’s 74th birthday, paid for by big business houses who are eager to protect their interests. The Left parties argue that the bill for the next election will exceed Rs. 8 billion ($211 million) and the party that collects the most support from big business is clearly at an advantage. The BJP, as the new beloved of big business, is slated to receive large funds.

‘Stability’ requires the promise of an end to communal violence, something that the BJP and its allies cannot guarantee. The desire for "stability" amongst the managers of the BJP led to the recent and sensational entrance of 90 retired military personnel into the party. One ex-officer noted on the occasion that "the armed forces can do anything better than others, whether administrative work in the government or running the politics of the country." This sentiment goes well with the anti-democratic statements of Thackeray and it shows us that the BJP plans to be the agent for the entry of a military "stability" to India. All those who cherish democracy must fight against this sort of political mayhem. n

Archived from Communalism Combat, February 1998, Year 5  No. 40, Comment

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