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We examine the impact of the current colonial-racist discourse around Hindu Dharma on Indians across the world and prove that this discourse causes psychological effects similar to those caused by racism: shame, inferiority, embarrassment, identity confusion, assimilation, and a detachment from our cultural heritage.

Talk:Paola Bacchetta

From Hindupedia, the Hindu Encyclopedia

By Sachi Anjunkar

Paola Bacchetta is Professor of Gender & Women’s Studies at University of California, Berkeley[1], as of November 2022. She is also co-chair of the Political Conflict, Gender and People’s Rights Project based at Center for Race and Gender at University of California, Berkeley. According to her bio, her research areas includes the span across Transnational Feminist and Queer Theory, Decolonial Theory, Critical Theory, Movements, Activisms, Artivisms and France, India and the U.S.

In 2021, she 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."[2]

On November 5, 2017, she signed the letter submitted by the South Asia Faculty Group (SAFG) to the California State Board of Education[3] where she:

  • She misrepresented scholarship stating "Mythological terms substitute for historical ones for example the 'Indus Valley Civilization' (a fact-based geographic term) appears to be replaced with a religiously-motivated and ideologically charged term 'Indus-Saraswati/Sarasvati Civilization'. The Saraswati is a mythical river"[4][5][6]
  • Implied that Christians and Muslims existed in Ancient India, prior to the founding of these religions ​

Publications related to India[edit]

Book Publications[edit]

  1. Bacchetta, Paola, and Margaret Power. Right-Wing Women. Routledge, 2013.

Journal Articles[edit]

  1. Bacchetta, Paola. Re-interrogating Partition: Voices of Women/Children/ Dalits in the Partition of India and Pakistan. Feminist Studies, vol. 26, no. 2, 2000, pp. 567-586.
  2. Bacchetta, Paola. Sacred Space in Religious-Political Conflict in India: The Babri Masjid Affair, in Space and Ethnic Conflict. Growth and Change, vol. 31, 2000, pp. 255-284.
  3. Bacchetta, Paola. Militant Hindu Nationalist Women Re-Imagine Themselves: Notes on Mechanisms of Expansion/ Adjustment. Journal of Women's History, vol. 10, 1999, pp. 125-147.
  4. Bacchetta, Paola. When the (Hindu) Nation Exiles its Queers. Social Text, vol. 61, 1999, pp. 141-166.
  5. Bacchetta, Paola. Hindu Nationalist Women as Ideologists. Embodied Violence: Communalizing Women's Sexuality in South Asia, edited by Kumari Jayawardena and Malathi de Alwis, Kali for Women, 1996. Also published by Sage Publications, 1996, pp. 126-167.

Book Chapters[edit]

  1. Bacchetta, Paola. When the (Hindu) Nation Exiles Its Queers. Jura Gentium: Rivista di filosofia del diritto internazionale e della politica globale, University of Florence, 2013, www.juragentium.org/topics/rol/en/bacchetta.
  2. Bacchetta, Paola. The (Failed) Production of Hindu Nationalized Space in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. Gender, Place and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, vol. 17, no. 5, 2010, pp. 551-572.
  3. Bacchetta, Paola. Gendered Fractures in Hindu Nationalism. The Oxford India Hinduism: A Reader, edited by Vasudha Dalmia and Heinrich von Stietencron, Oxford University Press, 2006, pp. 373-395.
    Paola Bacchetta shows her hate for Sanatana Dharma by using disparaging terms like Brahmanical referring to Brahminism[7]
    She creates a strawman named 'Hindu nationalist' and the beats it using various fake terms and arbitrary (but not stated) definitions for example:
    1. "I place 'Hinduism' and 'Hindu' in quotes, to signify that the Hindu nationalist definitions of the terms do not coincide with any specific spiritual practice in India."</ref>
    2. "Hindu nationalism can be defined as an extremist religious fractional-nationalism of elites."
    3. Hindu nationalism is a political project and Hindu nationalists themselves range from atheists to practising Hindus of various sects."
    4. "Hindu nationalism is elitist, as it was configured by individuals within middle class, western educated Brahmin milieux to defend their privileges"
    5. "Hindu nationalism arose in opposition to Indian nationalism which includes as citizens people of all faiths."
  4. Bacchetta, Paola. Hindu Nationalist Women as Ideologues. The Sangh Parivar: A Reader, edited by Christophe Jaffrelot, Oxford University Press, 2005.
  5. Bacchetta, Paola. Extra-Ordinary Alliances: Women Unite against Religious-Political Conflict in India. Feminism and Anti-Racism: International Struggles, edited by Kathleen Blee and France Winddance Twine, New York University Press, 2002, pp. 220-249.
  6. Bacchetta, Paola. Hindu Nationalist Women Imagine Spatialities. Right-Wing Women across the Globe, edited by Paola Bacchetta and Margaret Power, Routledge, 2002, pp. 43-56.
  7. Bacchetta, Paola, and Margaret Power. Introduction. Right-Wing Women across the Globe, edited by Paola Bacchetta and Margaret Power, Routledge, 2002, pp. 1-15.
  8. Bacchetta, Paola. Hindu Nationalist Women: On the Use of the Feminine Symbolic to (Temporarily) Displace Male Authority. Jewels of Authority: Women and Textual Tradition in Hindu India, edited by Laurie Patton, Oxford University Press, 2001, pp. 157-176.
  9. Bacchetta, Paola. All Our Goddesses Are Armed: Religion, Resistance, and Revenge in the Life of a Militant Hindu Nationalist Woman. Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, vol. 25, 1993, pp. 38-51.

References[edit]

  1. ↑ Paola Bacchetta page on University of California, Berkeley accessed November 7, 2022
  2. ↑ "Letter of Support", Dismantling Global Hindutva Conference website, accessed August 7, 2022
  3. ↑ 2017 South Asia Faculty Group (SAFG) Letter to the California State Board of Education
  4. ↑ Chakrabarti, Dilip, and Sukhdev Saini. The Problem of the Sarasvati River and Notes on the Archaeological Geography of Haryana and Indian Punjab. Aryan Books International, 2009.
  5. ↑ Danino, Michel. The Lost River: On the Trail of the Sarasvati. Penguin Books, 2010.
  6. ↑ McIntosh, Jane R. A Peaceful Realm: The Rise and Fall of the Indus Civilization. Westview Press, 2002, p. 24. ​where she stated "Suddenly it became apparent that the “Indus” Civilization was a misnomer—although the Indus had played a major role in the development of the civilization, the “lost Saraswati” River, judging by the density of settlement along its banks, had contributed an equal or greater part to its prosperity. Many people today refer to this early state as the “Indus-Saraswati Civilization” and continuing references to the “Indus Civilization” should be an abbreviation in which the “Saraswati” is implied. There are some fifty sites known along the Indus whereas the Saraswati has almost 1,000. This is misleading figure because erosion and alluviation has between them destroyed or deeply buried the greater part of settlements in the Indus Valley itself, but there can be no doubt that the Saraswati system did yield a high proportion of the Indus people’s agricultural produce"
  7. ↑ Brahmanical here refers to "Brahmanism" which was coined by Orientalists inspired by the disparaging and now archaic Protestant terms for Catholicism including popeism, popery, papalism and papist. See Vishwa Adluri and Joydeep Bagchee, The Nay Science, A History of German Indology, Oxford University Press, 2014.
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