Talk:Balmurli Natrajan

By Renuka Joshi

Balmurli Natrajan is Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Community Development and Social Justice at William Paterson University of New Jersey, USA as of 2022. According to his university profile, research focuses on on group formation, Identity & Inequalities (caste, race, community, culture, diversity, cognition, variation, and transmission); Globalization and International development (sanitation, domestic work, indebtedness, livelihoods); India and South Asia.

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

1. Natrajan, Balmurli. The culturalization of caste in India: Identity and inequality in a multicultural age; Routledge; 2011 https://www.routledge.com/The-Culturalization-of-Caste-in-India-Identity-and-Inequality-in-a-Multicultural/Natrajan/p/book/9780415857864
2. Natrajan, Balmurli. Co-edited volume "Against Stigma: Studies in Caste, Race and Justice Since Durban" (2009)
3. Natrajan, Balmurli. Racialization and ethnicization: Hindutva hegemony and caste; Ethnic and Racial Studies; Volume 44, 2021 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01419870.2021.1951318

   Balmurli makes up a strawman 'Hindutva' and proceeds to beat it up in this paper. This term is used in many different ways and with an imaginative and expansive definition including:

   • An ideology that the democratically elected government of India supports while breaking from its election manifesto (which he doesn't seem to have read or understood)
   • A supremacist movement that is rooted in upper caste led oppression and its opposite movement is the all-inclusive Dalit movement
   • A set of vaguely defined & unnamed set of organizations that:
     • Trigger riots targeting Muslims and further claims that all such riots were triggered by these organizations
     • Forcibly convert people to Hindu dharma
     • Label all Muslims as terrorists

   The majority of the Indian population have constructed an "Other"

   Political ideology that includes Hindus, Muslims, and others of various religious faiths

   He falsifies definitions used in Indian popular discourse claiming that each of these terms demonizes a social group as a cultural and anti-national Other and legitimizes violent actions." but fails to substantiate any of his claims or definitions. These terms include:

   • “gau rakshak” and “gulabi kranti” as terms used by people who believe in Hindutva (as the ideology) and want to dominate others. "just as the terms gulabi kranti and gau rakshak legitimize cow vigilantism and secure the domination of culturally constructed Others"
   • “love jihadi” as a term that legitimizes the actions of Sangh vigilantes who forcibly “rescue” Hindu women by claiming they (women) have been “kidnapped” by Muslim men
   • “ghar vapsi” as forced ritual “reconversion” to Hindu dharma. He believes that people of India were not Hindus prior to the Islamic invasions
   • “presstitutes” as a pejorative that legitimizes attacks on independent media persons who dissent or oppose governmental decrees;
   • “sickular” and “libtards” as pejoratives that legitimize attacks on secular individuals;
   • “urban-Naxal” brands secular, Left or anti-Hindutva intellectuals and social activists as “anti-national” and legitimizes the application of draconian anti-terror laws to incarcerate them or even assassinate them”
   • "Hindu Rashtra": “...constructs its own membership in three broad categories. Those constructed as “Internal Other” include “Dalits” and “Adivasis” who are to be tolerated but sought to be disciplined, domesticated, and incorporated as subordinate citizens.”

   Natarajan continues to falsely claim that there is no religious freedom in India. All Christians and Muslims are forced to convert into Hinduism. However, as per him, it is okay for Christian and Muslim Missionaries to forcibly (or under false pretenses) convert people to Christianity and Islam.

   Balmurli makes the following claims about a country and its democratically elected government's rights & duties:

   • Should not enforce the laws of the country such as those around identity documentation
   • Should not legislate or implement laws and policies (regardless of whether they address historic injustices and promises)
   • Should not enforce the country's borders and control the movement of people across those borders

   According to the author, Dalits should have a reservation category across all institutes across the world, and the opportunities should be begged by Dalits for the sake of reservations at any job or education around the globe.

   • Balmurli calls Dalit - "India’s “exuntouchable” caste group and that Muslims are also Dalits

4. Natrajan, Balmurli. Why don’t they use the toilet built for them?’: Explaining toilet use in Chhattisgarh, Central India; Volume Contributions to Indian Sociology, 55(1), 2021 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0069966720972565
5. Natrajan, Balmurli. Cultural Identity and Beef Festivals: Toward a ‘Multiculturalism Against Caste’; , Contemporary South Asia; Volume 26, 2018 https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ccsa20/current
6. Natrajan, Balmurli. Against Stigma: Studies in Caste, Race, and Justice Since Durban; Orient BlackSwan; 2009
7. Natrajan, Balmurli. Castes Without Casteism? The Real Beef with Caste and ‘Culture’ British Association of South Asian StudiesNottingham, 2017
8. Natrajan, Balmurli. “Caste as Political Identity: Difference, Hegemony, Solidarity”Rethinking Difference in India: Racialization in Transnational Perspective American University, D.C.Washington D.C, VA 2019