A Reflection

At the end of September, I made a FB post.

“I am finalizing my doctoral dissertation at an R1 institution on four second-generation Indian American teachers who are committed to social justice and were all raised in Hindu homes. Currently, some of my most...

...inspiring supporters are my professors within the academy. They say my work is really important. And my most disturbing detractor is a businessman who is not a qualified scholar and has built a career off the premise that academia is anti-Hindu. He says that I’m a nobody.”

I had just met with my advisor, a wonderful, compassionate scholar, who has guided me for years with a sense of possibility and wonder as well as grounded, consistent rigor. She was as baffled as I was that this person and their minions had come after me – as a scholar...

– when they had no idea what my scholarship was about. My work is in K-12 education and teacher education. Obviously, as an educational scholar, she had never even heard of this individual. This wasn’t the first time that I found myself telling her that I was being attacked...

...as a result of my activism/social media presence. Previously, I had to alert her that a notorious & conniving Hinduphobe had threatened to call up the dept. and “out me” as an RSS-paid stooge. (Which is hilarious, bc doctoral students are always looking for funding, right?)...

Not for a moment was I concerned that she would take either of those accusations (plagiarism and Hindu terrorist sleeper cell) seriously. I have spent years building solid relationships in my department with sincere, reflective professors, staff, peers, and students.

Who and how we are in these spaces matters.

In fact, I have been consistently supported by so many of my professors at my college when it has come to these issues. They have always only expressed concern that I am okay, not that I am secretly an evil fascist (!).

They are also all rigorous scholars, who hold themselves and their students to the highest of academic and research standards. Which is why I had started that post with the R1-institution reference.

The impetus behind my post was neither to boast nor to garner sympathy.

It was to shed light on the broader range of possibilities that exist for Hindus in the academy. We are not completely black listed across the entire range of humanities.

My dissertation rejects the colonized categorizing of Hinduism as a religion; it takes up the lens of decoloniality and asserts Hinduism as an indigenous onto-epistemology. It includes the experiences of my 4 participants as K-12 students, as the children of Hindu immigrants.

They shared generously & honestly, allowing me to dive deep into nuanced analyses of the dances & tensions that often get erased by dominant lenses of race & identity by popular discourse.

At the end, I wrote “When social justice is taken up by the outsiders of a community, applying an external epistemic analysis to correct the inequities within that community, when that community has its own framework for self-analysis and self-correction, this is colonization...

...This critique sits at the heart of this dissertation, and is a central concern of my scholarship and work.”

All of this work was supported & appreciated by my committee. When my advisor pushed me, it was to further support my arguments, analyses, and statements, to bolster...

...them with even more references to the work of other scholars, or to tell me how it read, and suggest that I might be more effective framing it differently. When I shared that I couldn’t cite xyz authors because they had a demonstrable record of being Hinduphobic...

there was zero pushback; only that I had to find other scholars.

I started my defense by chanting Shanti Mantra. The entire defense was so beautiful, so powerful, so uplifting that I still find myself tearing up with gratitude. Not just because it was my defense.

This is important, and I can’t say it enough:

When I share that I achieved something like this in the academy, it is not about personal accomplishment. It is because I am doing it for Dharma, for us. It means that there is real possibility to bring Dharmic expression and...

voice into these spaces in really meaningful ways that are sincerely appreciated by scholars whose own work is not threatened, but is actually expanded, by it...

So when I post something like “they say my work is important”, what I am telling you is that scholars in the academy believe Dharmic voices are important to real, disruptive and expansive conversations about education, social justice, curriculum, and teaching.

This is not about me as an individual. I am a nobody, I have no problem with that. I am telling you that there is hope for all of us, yes, even in the humanities, which have been so terrible to Hindus for far too long. Perhaps not enough in Indology or South Asian studies.

But there is a world of humanities outside of those disciplines where we can still make a difference. And I am saying that I have proof that it can happen and that people are excited about it.

Which doesn't mean it’s easy!

But, for sure, there are many real and important opportunities awaiting us for generations to come. How will we embrace them?

JGD.