CARE: Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation stands in solidarity with its research team members Richa Sharma, Balamohan Shingade, and others (Indigenous women and women of colour) not mentioned in this report for their courage in documenting extremist #Hindutva nationalism and in building culture-centered preventive interventions rooted in dialogue, peace, and voice.
Massey University researcher Richa Sharma. Photo / Mark Mitchell
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Richa Sharma was doing research on religious extremism in Aotearoa when she got a call from her mother. Her aunties and uncles, close family friends who have known her since she was born, were convinced she was a terrorist.
For a few months last year, Richa Sharma did not go out after dark, always making sure she had safe ways to get around for work and meetings.
The 18-year-old was interning at Care, a Massey University research centre that was copping online abuse for publishing a white paper about the far-right nationalist ideology known as Hindutva and its creeping presence in Aotearoa.
There were calls for centre director Professor Mohan Dutta to be sacked, even burned alive. Police said the trolls were overseas, but an Auckland-based Indian news site published a piece calling Dutta a “left-leaning bigot under the garb of an academician”, and part of “a gang of some smelly rats”.
The Hindu Council and Hindu Youth New Zealand chimed in with nearly identical statements, condemning the paper for “accusatory and unsubstantiated assertions” that made the Hindu community look bad. Hindu Youth said it was “outright Hindu hatred”.
Most of the vitriol was directed at Dutta but his team, some of them South Asian and female, were not spared. Their profiles were public on the Care website and social media pages.
“We had to watch our steps carefully,” said Sharma, now 19. “I really didn’t feel safe. We had a police file open.”
Shortly after, an auntie and uncle reached out to Sharma’s mother back home in Palmerston North. They were not related by blood but it was custom in the community to address close family friends as auntie and uncle.
Over tea, Sharma’s mother was told her daughter worked for an anti-Hindu outfit and was urged to intervene. Auntie and uncle were convinced Sharma was a “left-wing, radical terrorist”.
Another auntie sent text messages condemning the white paper, including a petition against Massey University to take it down.
The year 2021 brought with it a lesson that I hope to carry forward in my academic journey in the coming years.
That the sources of power will seek to silence the voices emergent from the margins is a lesson I have borne witness to over the last two decades of academic-community work, in some instances, at personal cost.
As we built the activist-in-residence program, starting with the transformative conversations with Braema Mathi, Sue Bradford, and Tame Iti, the organizing role of power in silencing dissenting voices became all too evident.
From generating disinformation campaigns, to planting false narratives, to carrying out witch hunts framed as audits, to targeting academics with hate messages, threats of violence, and incarceration, dominant structures will draw upon a wide array of strategies and tools to silence academic voices that speak with and alongside the margins.
In the face of these practices of silencing, academia can continue to thrive as a vital space of dissent that generates oppositional intellectual registers, working alongside intellectuals and activists in movements, political parties, and communities.
2021 brought home the message that academia is a critical resource in the ongoing work of challenging extreme neoliberalism, hate politics, and authoritarian populism. Academia is a powerful space for resisting, intervening into, and dismantling these structures of dominant power that threaten to colonize communities, societies and democracies across the globe.
This recognition of the power of academia as a space that can offer a critical anchor to dismantling the control of dominant actors is vital to the ongoing politics of transformation.
The role of academics in building infrastructures of listening to voices of the subaltern margins that are hitherto erased, working alongside social movements and activist organizing, is an important ingredient in the labour of challenging oppressive structures.
For academics to participate in and sustain dissent, our power lies in forging solidarities as collectives. These collectives ought to be built both within academia, and outside academia.
Within academia, our ongoing work ought to build strategies for challenging the precarization of academic labour. Centering conversations on academic freedom and connecting these conversations to the ongoing challenges of precarious academic labour are vital to our unions in the education sector. Connecting across diverse spaces, linking with the struggles of non-academic staff, connecting with the struggles of students are vital elements to sustaining collectives within academia.
Connecting across spaces in academia also translates importantly into connecting across geographies. In the face of the increasing repression of academic freedom across geographies, listening across, centering attention on, and building bridges that reach out to the margins of global geopolitics is an essential ingredient in a global politics of transformation.
Outside of academia, building connections with unions, working-class movements, movements against neoliberalism, Indigenous movements, movements for diversity (gender, race, ability) are critical resources in sustaining the politics of transformation.
Most importantly, 2021 has highlighted the vital role of community agency in empowering academia in its role in the politics of transformation.
The recognition that the neoliberal onslaught on academia that has privatized it through donor and state control can be resisted by re-turning to community, forms the basis for re-imagining the relationship between academia and community.
That academics are accountable to communities at the margins re-imagines the textures and roles of academia in creative ways. In this imaginary, academics are sustained by communities, and in turn, are committed to sustaining communities.
It is in this friendship with communities, particularly communities at the margins, that academia offers a politics of transformation.
We at CARE are delighted to welcome Dr. Leon Salter, the 2021 recipient of the MBIE Science Whitinga Research Fellowship. Dr. Salter will be leading CARE’s work on precarity, labour and digital futures.
Dr Leon Salter graduated with a PhD in Communication and Journalism in 2018. Leon has taught widely on the Masters and Bachelor of Communication at Massey and his research interests are in Political Communication, Digital Media, Social Justice Movements and Unionism. Leon began working for CARE on the Experiences with COVID-19 among gig workers project and was awarded the MBIE Science Whitinga Research Fellowship in June 2021 to chart the expansion of the gig economy in Aotearoa New Zealand.
TALK ABSTRACT: Gig work is growing rapidly in Aotearoa and internationally, and is expected to play a key role in the post-pandemic economy. This panel of experts is an opportunity to take stock and reflect on the successes of the union movement in combatting the kinds of insecure work that characterise the gig economy, as well as discuss the unique challenges it presents for organising. Also, strategies will be shared on how best to organise gig workers in the future.
Moderated by Professor Mohan Dutta & Dr. Leon Salter
CARE is looking forward to this activist-in-residence conversation with Byron Clark. Byron has played an instrumental role in exposing the networks of white supremacy in Aotearoa. We will explore together the collaborations between white supremacy and Hindutva, and strategies for resisting the fascist forces.
Online Event Dates:
Tuesday, 19 October @ 1 pm CARE in Conversation with Byron Clark and Prof. Mohan Dutta
CARE in Conversation with Byron Clark and Prof. Mohan Dutta
Byron Clark is an activist from Christchurch. For the past two years his work has focused on the reemergence of the far-right and the spread of misinformation online. Much of this activism has taken the form of video essays on YouTube mixing humour with educational content. Clark also has a background in oral history, having recorded an oral history of the ‘Occupy’ protest in Christchurch that took place in 2011 and has written for Fightback, Overland and David Farrier’s Webworm.
Wednesday, 20 October @ 12 pm CARE Public Talk – Digital Hate in Aotearoa with Byron Clark
Digital Hate in Aotearoa
Over the past decade the world has watched as movements like the alt-right and Qanon have emerged online, and have in turn affected offline politics. Aotearoa has not been immune to this phenomenon. This talk examines the origins of hate on the internet, and how social media fueled its growth, with a particular focus on the new far-right in Aotearoa.
Thursday, 21 October @ 11 am CARE Workshop – Countering Online Hate and Misinformation with Byron Clark
Countering online hate and misinformation
Everyone has a role to play in countering the spread of hate and misinformation. This workshop demonstrated how to report content to social media platforms as well as utilising institutions like Netsafe and the Broadcasting Standards Authority. It also featured discussion about preventing radicalisation and possibilities for de-radicalisation. White Paper – Anti-Social Networks: Hate and misinformation online and strategies for responding.
Friday, 22 October @ 10 am CARE White Paper Launch and Strategies for Responding with Byron Clark and Prof.Mohan Dutta
White Paper – Anti-Social Networks: Hate and misinformation online and strategies for responding.
This paper examines the networks spreading hate and misinformation that have emerged online in Aotearoa in the past few years, and how they have been able to influence mainstream politics despite their small numbers. Ideologies and conspiracy theories from overseas – in particular the United States – have mixed with false narratives that are locally specific. The authors look at strategies for countering these narratives.
Professor Mohan Dutta, director of the Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) at Massey University.
Hindutva, a political ideology that seeks to construct India in the structure of a Hindu nation (Hindu Rashtra), draws its conceptual tenets from the organising framework of fascism. As a modern project, Hindutva is rooted in the desire to create a Hindu nation that is organised on the principles of the European nation-state through cultural hegemony that homogenises the population, simultaneously erasing the rights of religious minorities.
The fascist root of Hindutva is evident in the writings of one of the key architects of the concept, MS Golwalkar, who writes: “German race pride has now become the topic of the day. To keep up the purity of the race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races – the Jews … a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by.”
Note here the deep interplays of the ideology of Hindutva and white supremacy. The purity of race and culture that forms the hate structure of white supremacy is mobilised in the political formation of Hindutva. Hindutva embodies the colonial imposition of a politics of purity through the purge of the ‘other’ organised by the state.
One of the key architects of Hindutva, Vinayak Damodar Savarkar, wrote the book Hindutva in 1923, outlining the concepts of a common nation (rashtra), a common race (jati) and a common culture or civilisation (sanskriti). Note the parallels here with the ideology of the German Nazi party, anchored in ein volk(one people), ein reich (one nation), ein Fuhrer (one leader).
At the heart of this ideology is the production of the ‘other’ that is outside of the nation. Similar to the construction of Jews as the outside of ein volk in Nazi ideology, Muslims and Christians are constructed as the outside of the Hindu rashtra in the ideological construction of Hindutva.
The effects of this ideology are evident in the hate and violence that have been directed at Muslims. The ongoing political project of disenfranchising Muslims through the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) is a reminder of the Nuremberg Laws passed in Nazi Germany to strip German Jews of their citizenship.
The communicative infrastructure of Hindutva is deployed through the articulation of a monolithic ‘Hinduness’ as the basis for organising the political project. To belong, one has to declare their ‘Hinduness’ and allegiance to the Hindu Rashtra, as defined by the political project of Hindutva.
To dissent from this monolithic vision of Hindutva is to be anti-Hindu. Within the organising structures of India, to dissent against the ideology of Hindutva is to be anti-Indian. The political project of Hindutva threatens the pluralism, polymorphism, and democratic ethos of Hinduism.
The celebrated Indian film-maker Anand Patwardhan, observed at the Dismantling Global Hindutva conference, “If Hindutva is Hinduism, then the Ku Klux Klan is Christianity.”
The recent attacks on me, the Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE), Massey University, and on academics globally writing on and debating about the pernicious effects of Hindutva, are reflective of the hegemonic communicative infrastructure of Hindutva. At the heart of this hegemonic infrastructure is the silencing of dissent while imposing a monolithic ideology. In this instance, Hindutva proclaims to speak for all Hindus as it carries out this fundamental attack on academic freedom.
From trolls reproducing digital hate, to hateful propaganda published in diaspora digital portals, to letter writing campaigns targeting the university, to petitions attacking the university for steadfastly supporting academic freedom, forces of Hindutva draw on a wide range of strategies. Hindutva deploys bullying and rhetorical fallacies to silence dissent because it lacks the tools of argumentation to appeal to reason.
Referring to these forces of Hindutva at work to silence academic freedom in the form of the organised attacks on the Dismantling Global Hindutva conference, Professor Gyan Prakash, Dayton-Stockton Professor of History at Princeton University, observes: “The extraordinary thing about the conference was the massive disinformation campaign by those seeking to prevent the academic scrutiny of Hindutva. The campaign launched against this conference was concerted, comprehensive, and entirely without scruples. As has been covered in the Guardian and Al Jazeera, many participants received threats, including death threats. We know that, as a co-sponsoring institution, you also faced overwhelming pressure to pull out from this conference. The threats include nearly every threat to academic freedom listed on the AAUP’s (American Association of University Professors) website.”
Of particular concern in western democracies are the threads of foreign influence and interference into academic freedom and the fabric of pluralism.
In western democracies, Hindutva seeks to silence criticism by communicatively inverting the violence perpetuated by the political ideology of Hindutva, while simultaneously playing to the ethos of superficial western multiculturalism. It projects a narrative of fragility, constructing references to Hinduphobia, in seeking to assert its cultural hegemony in the diaspora, while simultaneously silencing dissent and articulations of social justice. Hindutva actively erases the voices of adivasis (indigenous people), oppressed caste communities, women experiencing gender violence, gender diverse communities, and minority communities in seeking to establish the hegemony of its monolithic values.
In our work at CARE that seeks to co-create spaces for the voices of the ‘margins of the margins’ to be heard, we will continue to pursue our justice-based scholarship in spite of the organised forces of hate seeking to silence these voices by policing the term Hindutva. We are empowered in this work by the steadfast support of the leadership of Massey University in safeguarding our academic freedom, and in the protections offered by the Education Act 1989.
CARE congratulates Professor Mohan J. Dutta, Dean’s Chair Professor and Director, CARE for his recognition as a 2021 National Communication Association (NCA) Distinguished Scholar
Presented annually, the Distinguished Scholar Award is NCA’s highest accolade. It honours a lifetime of scholarly achievement in the study of human communication. Recipients are selected by their peers to showcase the best of the communication discipline.
Over a span of two decades, Professor Dutta has developed the culture-centered approach through his ethnographic justice-driven communication scholarship carried out in solidarity with communities at the “margins of the margins” across the globe. Spanning seventeen countries across four continents, the impact of this scholarship is felt in communities experiencing structural deprivation, through the creation of infrastructures for voice, participation, and community democracy. Fostering community participation in everyday grassroots democracies for social change, the program of research led by Professor Dutta has created community development solutions; designed material infrastructures such as community-owned food systems, hospitals, educational infrastructures, and systems of clean drinking water; led community-owned advocacy and activist campaigns, and guided public policy.
The Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation (CARE) built by Dutta has led and carried out over fifty community-led social change projects across the globe, working with Indigenous communities, low-wage migrant workers, refugees, sex workers, precarious workers, domestic workers, rural communities, communities experiencing poverty, disabled communities, rainbow communities, minority communities, ageing communities, and farmers. The activist-in-residence programme at the Center, white papers, and community dialogues created anchors for structural transformation.
Theoretically, the framework of the culture-centered approach has been recognised as one of the most significant theories of communication, reflected in the Charles H. Woolbert Research Award, given to a “journal article or book chapter that has stood the test of time and has become a stimulus for new conceptualizations of communication phenomena.” His work with landless oppressed caste women farmers in Telangana organised into a cooperative has been recognised with the NCA Golden Anniversary Monograph Award. The CCA has formed the basis for over hundred research projects in marginalised communities across the globe.
Upon the recognition with the Distinguished Scholar award, noted Professor Dutta,
“The significant challenges of health and wellbeing, poverty, inequality, climate change, food security, access to clean drinking water, and peace and social cohesion outlined in the Sustainable Development Goals call for creative solutions built through community leadership and participation. I am humbled with this recognition as it speaks to the transformative power of communication, and particularly of voice infrastructures at the margins in leading the processes of structural transformation.”
In carrying out this work, Professor Dutta has educated, mentored and nurtured over three generations of students, community leaders, and activists, many of whom represent marginalised identities. His mentorship of scholars from the Global South has been recognised with the International Communication Association Aubrey Fisher Mentorship Award. Earlier this year, he was recognised with the NCA Health Communication Division Award for “Outstanding contributions to promoting Equity and Inclusion.”
Professor Dutta is also recognised with the 2015 ICA Applied Public Policy Communication Researcher Award and is an ICA Fellow.
The NCA citation reads,
“Dr. Dutta’s research examines the role of advocacy and activism in challenging marginalizing structures, the relationship between poverty and health, and the ways in which participatory culture-centered processes serve as axes of global social change, among other topics. Dr. Dutta’s research program includes 10 books, over 200 articles and book chapters, and has been cited over 12,000 times. Dr. Dutta provides extensive intellectual leadership; they have directed 46 doctoral dissertations, facilitated numerous workshops, and served as editor of Journal of Applied Communication Research.”
Professor Dutta will be receiving the award at the NCA 107th Annual Convention in November.
#CAREMassey #MasseyUni #CARECCA #National Communication Association #NCA21
It gives us all @ CARE so much joy to celebrate this achievement, says Center for Culture-Centered Approach for Research & Evaluation (CARE) Director, Prof. Mohan Dutta.
Congratulations to Dr. Satveer Kaur-Gill, on behalf of everyone at CARE, for your recognition with the National Communication Association Health Communication Division Early Career Researcher award.
Dr. Satveer Kaur-Gill
Prof. Mohan Dutta said, “This award speaks to your brilliance, courage, and social impact. You are the kind of scholar that reflects the mission of our discipline, to work through communicative practices to build better health and wellbeing for all. Your bold, structurally transformative, insurgent scholarship bears testimony to the power of the discipline in transforming structures, elucidating the power of communication in creating infrastructures for better health and wellbeing among the most marginalised by placing your body on the line. Your program of research rooted in community-engaged service, research anchored in community voice and teaching practice committed to nurturing an ethics of care rooted in social justice reflect the futures of health communication, depicting the powerful contributions communication scholarship can make to the contemporary global challenges of health inequities. It is rarely do we see a scholar who embodies such a strong combination of theoretical depth, methodological rigor, and commitment to transformative health communication practice. Most importantly, it is your courage and your integrity that offer the pathways for what it means to practice health communication for structural transformation.”
