Talk:Anustup Basu

By Anirudha Patel

Anustup Basu is a Professor in English, Media and Cinema Studies, and Criticism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, as of November 2022. According to his university profile, his research interests include film and media, the political philosophy of information, postcolonial theory, digital cultures, science and technology.

In 2021, he along with Hibatullah Akhundzada, the supreme leader of the Taliban, co-signed a letter supporting "Dismantling Global Hindutva" Conference, as an academic and scholar and made the allegation

"the current government of India [in 2021] has instituted discriminatory policies including beef bans, restrictions on religious conversion and interfaith weddings, and the introduction of religious discrimination into India’s citizenship laws. The result has been a horrifying rise in religious and caste-based violence, including hate crimes, lynchings, and rapes directed against Muslims, non-conforming Dalits, Sikhs, Christians, adivasis and other dissident Hindus. Women of these communities are especially targeted. Meanwhile, the government has used every tool of harassment and intimidation to muzzle dissent. Dozens of student activists and human rights defenders are currently languishing in jail indefinitely without due process under repressive anti-terrorism laws."

In 2016, he signed a letter endorsing a letter submitted by the South Asia Faculty Group where it addressed the State Board of Education, California Department of Education, dated May 17, 2016. In this letter they requested removing the word India from textbooks. In addition, they falsely stated:

1. "There is no established connection between Hinduism and the Indus Civilization."
2. "It is inappropriate to remove mention of the connection of caste to Hinduism."

Publications related to India or Hindu Dharma

1. Basu, Anustup. Hindutva as Political Monotheism. Duke University Press, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478012498.
2. Basu, Anustup. Bollywood in the Age of New Media: The Geo-televisual Aesthetic. Edinburgh University Press, 2010. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1r2brj.
3. Basu, Anustup. "Hindutva 2.0 as Information Ecology." In Spaces of Religion in Urban South Asia, edited by I. Keul, Routledge South Asian Religion Series. Routledge, 2021. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003106067-13.

   Anustup Basu makes a strawmans tatement: "Hindutva 2.0 as Information Ecology" and selects unrelated events to create a false trend that he uses to project his straw man as being predominant across Indian society. The author also finds it upsetting that people express their religious identity on digital platforms. The author states that that people should not talk about religion online because media-savviness has led to a “redefinition of Indian secularism” and any change to his perception of the current 'Indian secularism' is bad.

4. Basu, Anustup. "The Popular." BioScope: South Asian Screen Studies, vol. 12, nos. 1-2, 2021, pp. 144-147. https://doi.org/10.1177/09749276211026158.
5. Basu, Anustup. "Counter-History, Counter-Memory and the Harami: The Fictional World of Kangal Malshat." In Nabarun Bhattacharya: Aesthetics and Politics in a World after Ethics, edited by S. Bhattacharya, A. Chattopadhyay, & S. Sengupta, pp. 132-147. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020. https://doi.org/10.5040/9789389812473.ch021.
6. Basu, Anustup. "Dharmendra Singh Deol: Masculinity and the Late-Nehruvian Hero in Hindi Cinema." In Indian Film Stars: New Critical Perspectives. Edited by M. Lawrence. British Film Institute, 2020.
7. Basu, Anustup. "Filmfare, the Bombay Industry, and Internationalism (1952–1962)." In Industrial Networks and Cinemas of India: Shooting Stars, Shifting Geographies and Multiplying Media, edited by M. Mehta & M. Mukherjee. Routledge, 2020. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429326028-12.