 Hi all, Salvatore here. I'm coming to today with an atypical video. It's a video about how to manufacture grievance and enforce academic intolerance, and it's based on my own personal experience. In fact, an experience I had today. Today, I received a letter today, Australia time, that is, it was, I guess, December 4th in the US, December 5th here in Australia, addressed to the editorial board of the International Review of Modern Sociology. Now, I do sit on the editorial board of the International Review of Modern Sociology. It is a rather obscure sociology journal. I've been on the editorial board for some 20 years, and I don't think I've even heard from the publishers in the last 10 years, but luckily, I found myself receiving this letter, and I say luckily because it gave me an insight into this whole anti-Hindutva madness that I've heard about, and I've recently been involved with, but which, well, at the time I got involved with the International Review of Modern Sociology, I had no idea about it. I'd never heard of Hindutva 10 or 15 years ago. Okay, now, of course, everyone now is aware of the Dispandling Global Hindutva Conference, the notorious conference from 2021, with all these letters of support from various organizations, including terrorist organizations, which I think is very funny that they include them on their list, and very typical academic conference, right, in which you give fact sheets on the RSS, and you tell people how to respond to being trolled by Hindutva activists, and you hear all the amazing, you know, all the universities involved with it, co-sponsors. I mean, this is a, well, anyway, let's go to the letter I received. I received a letter today. addressed to the editorial board, and this letter was about an article recently published in the International Review of Modern Sociology, Global Hinduphobia Construed, Constructed, and Unleashed from the West by a scholar named Lavanya Vemsani. Now, I had never, I've since looked her up. She seems a perfectly respectable academic, but I had never before heard of her. I hadn't read this article, but I did go ahead and read this article when I received this letter as a member of the editorial board. It was my duty. Now, the article, this letter, makes several very serious allegations. First, you know, the version posted by the author has several errors and citations and references. Okay, well, I mean errors and citations are pretty much par for the course for an academic paper. Okay, worse, this article also contains numerous inaccurate factual claims, and distorts and misrepresents the scholarship of other scholars. That sounds serious, something I should look into as a member of the editorial board. And finally, some of these distortions falsely and irresponsibly attribute shocking views to other scholars, which is potentially libelous. Oh, well, I might get sued as a member of the editorial board. They're shocked, shocked to find that the journal's peer review process did not catch these multiple errors, and they go on to tell me about, you know, our processes on the editorial board. Okay, thank you. Okay, then they offer evidence that the paper presents a narrow one-sided view of historical events and contemporary protests. Well, if it really did that, it would be a pretty typical academic paper. And now here, the works of several scholars mentioned in this publication, so a one-sided view of the works of the scholars, and they go on to say, you know, they go on to very virtuously opine. We live in a politically charged climate where scholars bear great responsibility not to exacerbate forms of majoritarian oppression and bigotry, and to examine political claims and ideology with care and nuance. And so, of course, we would expect these undersigned academics to examine political claims with care and nuance. And who are these people? Well, a bunch of senior, well, not senior, necessarily, but a bunch of tenured and well-published academics from Columbia University, University of Washington, University of Arizona, Tufts University. These are both senior academics, Eaton and Hatcher, and Northwestern, and there we go, Rutgers University. So I'll let you be the judge of the reputations of these scholars, but they all are establishment scholars, and they all do have, you know, established positions at major American universities. So let's look into their claims. I mean, I'm a fair person. Here's the article they are unhappy with. Global Hinduphobia, construed, constructed, and unleashed from the West, a kind of, you know, third-world scholarship that most of us in the social sciences tend to be sympathetic to. So let's take a look at it. Let's see what they say about it. So here is their analysis. This comes from the undersigned, the six good professors. So first, the first problem with this article, distortions of the scholarship of other authors, an inaccurate citation. So false references to Richard Eaton's work. Well, let's check what Vemsani says about Richard Eaton. We'll go to her article, and let's actually just search for Eaton and where Eaton is mentioned. All right. Eaton is mentioned claiming that Hinduism is not a religion, or Hinduism is only called such in the 15th century. And there are a list of three references, one of which is Eaton. Eaton may or may not have said this. I don't know. But numerous theses and books have been written noting that India did not have developed cities. Did Eaton claim that? Honestly, I don't know. And denying temple desecration and genocidal work. So these are claims that Eaton did things. Now, I don't know if Eaton actually said those things. When I go to the review, it says none of the works attributed to Professor Eaton are listed in the bibliographical references at the end. And that is, in fact, true. I searched, of course, and, you know, I'm sorry, Professor Vemsani, but, you know, you're a passionate author, but you are not a very good, a very good compiler of citations. Your reference list does not include Eaton at all. What's more, your reference, the reference list here isn't even an alphabetical order. I mean, it's sort of an alphabetical order. Then, you know, then it starts again with B. So there's a second, you know, starts a second time. This is not a high quality citation list. It looks like two citation lists squeezed together. That said, it doesn't sound like anything really terrible is said about Eaton. I mean, maybe the claims are right, maybe the claims are wrong, but they're pretty much par for the course. Eaton should probably be pleased that someone bothered to cite him. I certainly would be. No one's ever cited me correctly, but I'm always thrilled when they cite me. Okay, and a other scholar's name is misspelled. Well, again, you know, hardly something that I would be concerned about. It doesn't rise to the level of, you know, distortions of scholarship. Now, did Eaton actually say those things? They say he has not denied Temple desecration, but he has placed them in the longer history of state building and political formation. Now, you know, what did she say about it? Well, you know, doesn't seem like she says he denied Temple desecration and genocidal wars. Well, there might be a little bit of academic argument there. I don't know what the truth is. It's pretty subtle if it exists at all. Strangely, the six good professors criticizing this paper say that, in fact, two of the three works citing Eaton are impossible because he published nothing in 1990 and 1991. Now, I found that an unlikely claim. This is a very highly published author, so I downloaded his CV. And, you know, sure enough, on his own CV from the University of Arizona website, I looked for what he published. Well, there you go in his list of, this is a list of his own. I'm going to scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll to show you what this is. This is a list of book chapters that he has published and, well, turns out he published an article in the Women's Studies Encyclopedia when in 1991. All right. He also had a book banned, but let's forget that for a minute. So he had this published. Now, what about 1990? Did he have a book chapter published in 1990? Oh, there we go. Human Settlement and Collelation in the Sunderbond. So, again, I don't know who's right and who's wrong. I'm not going to do a full review of Eaton's works to see. The claims that are being made here, that these citations are impossible, well, that's clearly wrong. I could write a letter back to them saying, the claims you've made in your letter are clearly mendacious. After all, Eaton's own CV shows this. If I were so uncivil, I could do that. But of course that would be ridiculous. Now, the suggestion is that, you know, Vemsami does not engage with Eaton's claims. And look, I've been cited, well, a couple of thousand times and almost always it's just a long list of citations. And it mentions that, you know, Salvatore Bobonis is one of the people who said certain things and half the time it has it backwards. I'm not defending that. I'm just saying that to give me, let's see, one, two, three, four paragraphs in order to say that someone's work doesn't say what they've been cited to say. Well, if the work had been cited to say something really horrific, all right, you want to deny it. But these are pretty anodying claims being made about Eaton. Eaton suggested that India did not have developed cities until the arrival of Islamic invaders. I don't know if that's true. Actually, this is one that the authors of this letter don't deny. They simply deny that he denied temple desecration and genocidal wars against Hindus. Well, you know, is this sloppy citation? Absolutely sloppy citation. Does this warrant a letter to the editorial board saying that we should withdraw the article? I think that's a bit extreme. Okay, then we go on to Distorted References to Brian Hatcher's work. Now, this is the only, I believe the only citation of Hatcher in the whole article. And let's get it. Hatcher, all right. And I think that's the only one. Yep, only one. So Hatcher's only cited once in this entire article. All Hatcher is cited as saying is that Hatcher penned an essay that was purported to be evil since it was quoted by an evil fox. Now, that doesn't seem defamatory. Again, I don't know if it's right or wrong. What doesn't strike me as really something I would write a letter to an editorial board authored by myself and five of my colleagues saying that this article should be withdrawn because how dare they say that I penned an essay saying that a fox was evil. Again, maybe right, maybe wrong. I'm not defending it. I haven't gone into it in detail, but it does seem a bit over the top. They're saying that they got the year wrong, but of course there are many ways to get articles online and often the year doesn't match up with what was given in a particular reference. Now, to complain about this one sentence in the Vemsani article, we have one, two, three, four paragraphs. Well, that seems a bit extreme. So if we take the first half of this letter, the first half of this letter pretty much comes down to Vemsani's citation was sloppy. All right, Vemsani's citation was sloppy. You know, slap on the wrist. Please don't do it again. The rest of this letter is a really serious part, buried farther down in the letter, but the really serious part falls apart when you start looking at it. So the author of Vemsani, the author of Global Hinduphobia, claimed that the first Hinduphobia in North America began in the 1880s. Now, that would seem to be a pretty anodyne statement. After all, we know there was a lot of Hinduphobia when Vivekananda gave his Chicago speech in the 1890s. So we really want to question that there was Hinduphobia in America in the 1880s. Well, they want to question it because they accuse her of calling Sikhs and Muslims. Oh, and also Hindus. They accuse her of claiming that Hinduphobia, they're appropriating the Hinduphobia that was directed at Muslims and Sikhs as well as Hindus. Now, again, they're going to give me half a page trying to deny. They're not actually denying that there was Hinduphobia. They're not even denying that she was correct. They're saying that the evidence she gave showing that there was Hinduphobia in the 1880s was not proper evidence, although they seem to be open to the idea that there probably was other evidence that there was Hinduphobia in the 1880s. Okay, well, that's a bizarre claim. All right, then we get into the more serious ones about the Roma. So Vemsani does appropriate Roma as Hindus. Now, that's not very surprising since Roma are widely acknowledged to have originated in India. So if we search for Roma in the article, she says that Hindus were not aware of atrocities. So here we have historical atrocities against Hindus are not recorded. Okay, that's a reasonably reasonable and reasonably correct claim. Hence Hindus were not aware, but one of the groups subject to genocidal treatment during the Second World War were the Roma. Who were the largest Hindu groups subjected to various humiliation for centuries before? Now the question here is, is she appropriating the experience of Roma people who died in the Holocaust? Now, this is something we could debate whether Roma are Hindu, whether there's a broad conception of Hindu that includes Roma who are not practicing religious Hindus, or should Roma be considered an Indian origin people who are not Hindu? That would probably be the majority view. But again, she doesn't seem to be in some, she's not denying the Holocaust. She's not doing anything terribly bad about Roma. I mean, this is an academic disagreement over the status of Roma. Okay, reasonable enough. But they're saying calling them Hindus without basis and denies the unique Roma cultural religious identity. In other words, she is somehow herself committing a cultural genocide against Roma by appropriating them as Hindu. Well, that seems a bit far-fetched, but you know, there you go. And again, we have a couple more paragraphs. Now they claim that the reason she's doing this is to help Vemsani make a sinister link between modern scholarship on Hinduism and Nazi propaganda. In other words, she is effectively suggesting that attacking Hindus is Nazi propaganda. Attacking Hindutva is a Nazi type claim. Now, again, is there some way you could make that seem to stick? I mean, if I look for Nazi in this article. She does suggest that the steps of Nazi propaganda are replicated in the documents and comments included in the Dismantling Global Hindutva Conference. All right, well, if we look at the Dismantling Global Hindutva Conference, I could see that there are all these associations being mobilized to promote or to isolate a group of people. That's maybe a bit of a stretch. She also mentions the poster for the conference, somehow reminding people of anti-Jewish propaganda from the 1930s. Well, that's not so much of a stretch. I mean, it is kind of a socialist realist sort of poster. We see these RSS members, clearly people dressed as RSS, giving an RSS salute, being uprooted with a hammer. I mean, the claw of the hammer is literally uprooting RSS volunteers from the soil, presumably the soil of India. They're colored saffron, so they are being associated with Hinduism, and they're being uprooted by presumably people of ostentatiously different colors. We have two right hands on the claw of the hammer, which turns into a pencil. Now, I think it's probably going too far to call this Nazi-like poster. On the other hand, is this a typical academic conference? I mean, academics don't go around uprooting people from the soil of their countries with a hammer. I mean, this is certainly no ordinary academic conference. So, you know, a little too far on both sides, perhaps, but maybe not so too far on Vemsani's side. Now, they disagree with her characterization of the Hali against Hindutva celebrations, and fair enough, they disagree, but people disagree on lots of things. If I go again to where she actually wrote about that, there are debates on Hindutva versus Hindu, and she said that this has reared its ugly head in the form of Hali against Hindutva or Diwali against Hindutva organized on campuses across the United States. She acknowledges that such distinctions do not exist. Well, fine, that's her opinion. Others may disagree. But to say that she's somehow doing something inappropriate, or she even acknowledges explicitly here that Hinduism constitutes multiple practices. Again, it seems like, you know, fine, they disagree with her, but there's nothing really evil in the paper that I can see. Then she goes on to make the point. Some disgruntled politicians with support from academics and activists have made it their mission to propagate this misconstrued, divisive narrative as the progressive representation of India, blaming all Hindus who do not subscribe to this divisive narrative as Hindutva, or worse, sometimes referring to them as Hindu extremists and Hindu fanatics, even though it is utterly senseless to link religion and violence. Well, that sounds like a perfectly liberal, reasonable response to what she perceives rightly or wrongly as hatred directed against her and her community. All right, well, let's return to the review. They take issue with the fact that Vemsami claims that Hindutva as a term only means Hindunas. Now, again, this is something that is highly contested in India. Fine, she can feel this way in a paper. The fact that they feel differently is not something that really constitutes an issue for the editorial board of the journal. She calls the Hindus of India indigenous. Well, again, are the Hindus of India indigenous? Well, by one way of looking at it, absolutely yes. You could look at it a different way, but, again, that's a matter for opinion and for legitimate academic debate. The authors, the six authors of this letter seem to imply that she is somehow maligning indigenous people just as she has maligned, in their view, Roma people by appropriating these narratives. Okay, then we get to the final conclusion. Vemsami's essay also includes multiple unsighted claims. These are highly damaging to the scholars in question, and that's the basis for suggesting that we, the editorial board, might face the legal penalties of... And this goes back to the accusations of defamation and slander, but really all we have here is some sloppy citation. I mean, when I go through all of these many claims, all I come up with, and this is eight pages of claims, all I come up with is some sloppy citation errors and academic differences. Now, if I go to the paper itself, I can find much more serious issues that need to be discussed. So let's go to what the author actually says. First, she says there are a few important points I would like to stress before proceeding with my examination of Indian studies and Hindu studies and the rise of Hindu phobia. This examination is not focused on any individual academic, but on the general trend of partial examination of Hinduism noted in the academia, not very good English there, which can be generally traced to the colonial beginnings of Indic studies. In other words, although she has cited these authors, two of the authors who are writing the complaint letter, she has cited them, she has potentially miscited them, she has not attacked them. In fact, she has stressed that she is not attacking them. They've only been cited in passing as part of the background of this study. Okay, let me go a little further down to page 13. Let's see if I can get there a little more quickly. And here we go. Now, what has she experienced? She experienced, in June 2019, she had a call for papers for her own association, the American Academy of Indic Studies, an annual conference. She just posted an announcement of this conference on the ListServe Indology list. What did she get? She got the association and the scholars associated with it being canceled. People called them Hindutvaists, and the association pulled down their announcement. Okay, they went to another mailing list for South Asian studies. She shared her call for papers on another list. And again, it was called down, closed down. They weren't allowed to discuss it on the list. Now, if anyone is showing intolerance, it's not Vemsani. Now, Vemsani may disagree with the authors of this letter. She clearly seems to disagree with the authors of this letter. They disagree with her. Now, I would have no problem with the authors of this letter writing an article. Like, if they wrote to this journal and they said, we would like a right to reply. We would like to write our own article in which we provide a rebuttal. Well, fair enough, we academics do that all the time. But to write to the editorial board is akin to what was done to Vemsani on the mailing list. That is, it was an explicit effort to shut her down. They're not trying to disagree with her in a civil way in open academic debate. They're trying to shut her down. They're trying to shut her down by going to an editorial board who are composed of people, you know, me just three years ago. I would have had no idea what any of this meant. And we would have seen this letter from six well-credentialed scholars at top universities saying that you have an article in your journal that is a travesty for all these reasons. And the bizarre tactic is instead of foregrounding with any actual allegations. I mean, if there were serious allegations, they should be foregrounded. I mean, if there were serious allegations of problems to this paper that meant it had to be pulled off the website, it had to be unpublished. Distortions of scholarship, right? If there was something truly awful in this paper, you wouldn't lead off with your number one claim is, oh yeah, these articles aren't in the bibliography. These articles aren't in the bibliography is a typographical error. This hardly rises to the level of, you know, shut down this author. But, you know, a typical member of an editorial board who's not studying this sort of thing, knows nothing about these arguments, has never heard of the dismantling global Hindutva movement, just wants a simple, easy life on the editorial board. You know, we might have called for the article to be withdrawn just so that we wouldn't have any trouble. Now, that is distasteful tactic. It's not only distasteful tactic. It is clearly a tactic that is organized, that is organized to shut down debate. I mean, six scholars, four of whom aren't even mentioned in the article, being so angry about a paper in an obscure journal. I mean, an international review of modern sociology. Look, I know I'm on the editorial board, but this is a pretty darn obscure journal. I mean, if I search for it, you know, international review of modern sociology, you can see that I've searched for it before. Okay, I can find it, but it's a pretty obscure Indian journal. This is not, I mean, they don't even have their information posted here. It's not from a major, you know, it's not published by a major publisher. You know, even their website still has the Spring 2015 edition up as its graphic. I've never even, even though I'm on the editorial board, I've never heard of serials, publications, PVT limited, you know, to take an article in a truly obscure academic journal. Written by, and again, you know, no offense to my colleague Lavanya Vemsani, but you know, Shawnee State University is not a major university. What we see is six scholars at major research universities ganging up to beat up on and vilify a, let's face it, you know, a scholar from a developing country who takes a non-western, subaltern perspective in an obscure Indian journal that probably no one reads. This article would probably never be heard of had I not made. No, I mean, I'm sorry to my own heart if I had not made this video. So yeah, this is the manufacturer of grievance. They couldn't possibly, these six people could possibly have been so upset by this article that it required an eight page letter in response to the journal. What they are doing is they're trying to shut down anybody, anybody who disagrees with them. And I would be willing to bet. And please, if you're out there and you're listening to this, yeah, send me an email. I would be willing to bet they have done this to dozens of similar articles. But anytime someone publishes something that questions their dominance of the field, they're going out to get her no matter if she's female, no matter if she's subaltern, no matter if she's at a small college, you know, they are not there to protect the defenseless. They are there to attack the defenseless in order to assert their own dominance of the field. Look, this is how academia works. This is how peer review works. This is how academic intolerance works. Sorry for such a long video. Thanks for listening. And if you want to talk to me more about it, please do email me. I'm always happy to talk to people. Thank you.