[LINK] "The Hindu right is quietly funding—and lobbying—American universities"

[rfmcdonald]

Quartz' report about Hindu nationalist propaganda at American universities is alarming.

In October 2015, the University of California, Irvine, announced the creation of an endowed chair—the Thakkar Family-Dharma Civilization Foundation Presidential Chair in Vedic and Indic Civilization Studies—supported by a $1.5 million grant.

As reported in this article in a local newspaper, following pushback from faculty and students because of the suspected Hindu nationalist or Hindu-right sympathies of the foundation, and concerns about excessive interference in the hiring process, the plans for the chair seem somewhat uncertain at present.

Compared to the shenanigans of Hindu-nationalist organisations and their supporters, the controversy, thus far, appears relatively tame, more of the order of a dull tussle between faculty and administration about procedural autonomy than about anything else.

The interventions of the Hindu right in the academic field, in India and more broadly, have generally fallen into the category of the absurd or the violent. The former is exemplified by the routine claims of the achievements of the ancient Hindu civilisation—Vedic aeroplanes, plastic surgery, intergalactic travel, and so on. The recently concluded 103rd edition of the Indian Science Congress, for instance, featured a bizarre conch-blowing performance by an officer of the elite IAS (Indian Administrative Service), ostensibly as an act of impeccable scientific merit.

Much more at the site.