Talk:Thomas Bloom Hansen

From Hindupedia, the Hindu Encyclopedia

By Anirudha Patel


Thomas Hansen is the Reliance-Dhirubhai Ambani Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University. According to his university profile, his focus areas are anthropology of political life, ethnoreligious identities, violence, and urban life in South Asia and Southern Africa [1] .

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."[2]

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

  • He 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[edit]

Books[edit]

  1. Hansen, Thomas. Melancholia of Freedom. Social Life in an Indian Township in South Africa. Princeton University Press, 2012. South African edition, Witwatersrand University Press, 2013.
  2. Hansen, Thomas. Cool Passions: the political theology of modern convictions. University of Amsterdam Press, 2009.
  3. Hansen, Thomas. Wages of Violence. Naming and Identity in Postcolonial Bombay. Princeton University Press, 2001.
  4. Hansen, Thomas. The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modern India. Princeton University Press, 1999.

Journal Articles[edit]

  1. Hansen, Thomas. The Force of Symbolic Power Afterword in special issue of the Journal of Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Forthcoming, Spring 2020.
  2. Hansen, Thomas. The state as an object of ethnographic inquiry. Contributions to Indian Sociology, vol. 50, Sage, Delhi, 2018.
  3. Hansen, Thomas. Civics, civility and race in post-apartheid South Africa. Anthropological Theory, vol. 18, no. 2-3, 2018, pp. 296-325.
  4. Hansen, Thomas. On Law, Violence and Jouissance in India. Cultural Anthropology Website, 1 Nov. 2017, https://culanth.org/fieldsights/1226-on-law-violence-and-jouissance-in-india.
  5. Hansen, Thomas. Whose Public, Whose Authority? Reflections on the moral force of violence. Modern Asian Studies, vol. 52, no. 3, 2018, pp. 1076–1087.
  6. Hansen, Thomas. Communalism, Democracy and Indian Capitalism. Seminar, vol. 674, Oct. 2015, pp. 40-44.
    Thomas Bloom Hansen analyzes capitalism, democracy and Indian politics through his personal bias while ignoring Indian history or reality. He ignores the complex political reality of India and has a narrow focus that disconnects his analysis from reality.
    In this paper, he makes a number of allegations and unsubstantiated claims without looking at the broader and more complex reality of India:
    • Hindu principles and ideals vary along caste lines
    "the two most significant shifts since the 1980s have been liberalization and the rise of lower caste mobilization in politics – neither of them of the BJP’s making. The BJP did, however, author the third major innovation: to make aggressive Hindu majoritarianism an acceptable part of normal politics, paving the way for a cruder and more violently charged political discourse and practice at all levels."
    • Upper caste principles are privileged and the Hindu nationalist movement promotes those above others to the detriment of all other castes and their respective value systems
    "EVEN well into the 1980s, most social scientists in India would continue to associate communal politics with the backwaters of small town India, viewing it as an anti-modern mentality emanating from trading and high caste communities in India’s hinterland who felt threatened by the levelling forces of modern capital and popular democracy. "
    • The BJP made violence in political discourses acceptable.
    "The BJP did, however, author the third major innovation: to make aggressive Hindu majoritarianism an acceptable part of normal politics, paving the way for a cruder and more violently charged political discourse and practice at all levels. "
    • The BJP government promoted infrastructure development only in middle & high income neighbor hoods resulting in the segregation of the poor, Muslims and other minorities.
    "In the light of this overall thrust towards segmentation and separation, the principles of the ‘Gujarat model’ of urban development are entirely logical: Deliver infrastructure and clean, well policed public spaces within the middle income and high income neighbourhoods and effectively isolate and cordon off the poor, especially Muslims and social minorities, in designated areas, such as the old centre of the city."
    • BJP actively marginalize Muslims
    In summary, he blames the BJP government for the long standing social inequality that exists in India argues that, the BJP led government has played an active role in paving a way for inequalities in the society by marginalizing Muslim and other social minority communities and shaped the values of the nation on the basis of Hindu values and culture affecting its capitalism and encouraging communalism. At the same time, he doesn't account for the fact that the chosen prime minister of the BJP at the time of the writing of this paper was from a backward caste category.
  7. Hansen, Thomas. The Aesthetics of Arrival: spectacle, capital and novelty in post-reform India. Co-authored with Ravinder Kaur, Identities, vol 23, no. 3, 2015, pp. 265-275.
  8. Hansen, Thomas. Migration, Religion and Post Imperial Formations. Global Networks, vol 14(3), 2014, pp. 273-290.
  9. Hansen, Thomas. From Houses to Barbed Wire: on Houses and Walls in South Africa. Texas International Law Journal, vol. 47, Fall 2011, pp. 345-353.
  10. Hansen, Thomas. Urban Charisma. On the everyday mythologies in the city. Co-authored with Oskar Verkaaik, Critique of Anthropology, Vol 29 (1), 2009, pp. 5-26.
  11. Hansen, Thomas. Sovereignty Revisited. Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 35, 2006, pp. 295-315.
  12. Hansen, Thomas. Sounds of freedom. Music, taxis and the racial imagination in post-apartheid South Africa. Public Culture, 18 (1), 2006.
  13. Hansen, Thomas. ‘Predicaments of Secularism: Muslim Identities in Mumbai.’ Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 6, no.2, 2000.
  14. Hansen, Thomas. Plays and Politics: Politics and Cultural Identity among South African Indians. Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 26 (2), 2000. Also in Afriche e Orienti, (3), 2001, pp. 40-48.
  15. Hansen, Thomas. Inside the Romanticist Episteme. Thesis Eleven, No. 48, Feb. 1997, pp. 21-41. Also in Social Scientist, New Delhi, Autumn, 1996, and in Arnfred, S (ed.) (1995), Occasional Paper no. 15, IDS, Roskilde.
  16. Hansen, Thomas. Recuperating Masculinity: Hindu nationalism, Violence and the Exorcising of the Muslim Other. Critique of Anthropology, Vol. 16, no. 2, 1996, pp. 137-72.
  17. Hansen, Thomas. The Vernacularisation of Hindutva: Shiv Sena and BJP in Rural Maharashtra. Contributions to Indian Sociology, Vol. 30, no. 2, 1996, pp. 177-214.
  18. Hansen, Thomas. Controlled Emancipation: Women and Hindu nationalism. European Journal of Development Research, Vol. 6, no. 2, Dec. 1994. Also in Wilson, Fiona and Frederiksen, B. F. (eds.) (1994): Ethnicity, Gender and the Subversion of Nationalism, London, Frank Cass.

‌

Book Sections[edit]

  1. Hansen, Thomas. "Migration, Religion and Post Imperial Formations." Global Networks, vol 14(3), 2014, pp. 273-290.
  2. Hansen, Thomas. "From Houses to Barbed Wire: on Houses and Walls in South Africa." Texas International Law Journal, vol. 47, Fall 2011, pp. 345-353.
  3. Hansen, Thomas. "The Political Theology of Violence in Modern India." SAMAJ-Revue (online academic journal of South Asian studies edited in Paris), January 2009.
  4. Hansen, Thomas, and Oskar Verkaaik. "Urban Charisma. On the everyday mythologies in the city." Critique of Anthropology, Vol 29 (1), 2009, pp. 5-26.
  5. Hansen, Thomas. "Sovereignty Revisited." Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 35, 2006, pp. 295-315.
  6. Hansen, Thomas. "Performers of Sovereignty. On the privatization of security in urban South Africa." Critique of Anthropology, August 2006. Special issue on State Violence, edited by Toby Kelly and Alpa Shah.
  7. Hansen, Thomas. "Sounds of freedom. Music, taxis and the racial imagination in post-apartheid South Africa." Public Culture 18 (1), 2006.
  8. Hansen, Thomas. "Melancholia of Freedom. Humor and Nostalgia among South African Indians." Journal of Modern Drama, Vol. XLVIII, No. 2, Summer 2005.
  9. Hansen, Thomas. "Souveraene jenseits des Staates" (in German). Berliner Debatte Initial 14 (2003), 3, pp. 18-28. Special issue entitled "Indien: Postkoloniale Moderne."
  10. Hansen, Thomas. "Predicaments of Secularism: Muslim Identities in Mumbai." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Vol. 6, no. 2, 2000.
  11. Hansen, Thomas. "Plays and Politics: Politics and Cultural Identity among South African Indians." Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 26 (2), 2000.
  12. Hansen, Thomas. "Inside the Romanticist Episteme." Thesis Eleven, No. 48, Feb 1997, pp. 21-41.
  13. Hansen, Thomas. "Recuperating Masculinity: Hindu nationalism, Violence and the Exorcising of the Muslim Other." Critique of Anthropology, Vol. 16, no. 2, 1996, pp. 137-72.
  14. Hansen, Thomas. "The Vernacularisation of Hindutva: Shiv Sena and BJP in Rural Maharashtra." Contributions to Indian Sociology, Vol. 30, no. 2, 1996, pp. 177-214.
  15. Hansen, Thomas. "Controlled Emancipation: Women and Hindu nationalism." European Journal of Development Research, Vol. 6, no. 2, Dec 1994.

References[edit]

  1. ↑ Thomas Hansen CV PDF accessed October 8, 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"
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