To suspend this professor is a horrifying example of Western hegemony, cultural ignorance, and anti-Chinese bias.
@USC -- There are words in lots of languages that sound off to English speakers. Learning and overcoming one's own biases are part of learning a foreign language.
I once had an English-only American tell me that Pakistan should change the name of Lahore, to avoid confusion in English. No joke. I responded: "Maybe you should learn Urdu."
Sikh. As in, imagine in an intro to South Asia course, "The person you see on this slide is Sikh."
Note that there is a clear difference between the Indian term (in many languages) "Sikh" and English "sick", but English-only speakers usually cannot hear the difference.
God help anybody speaking in Hindi who decides to borrow the Sanskrit word for city and say it with a Hindi pronunciation. I'd never thought of this until this USC thing.
tithi, meaning date in Sanskrit and Hindi.
Like with Sikh, this sounds different than the English word with which it might be mistaken, but English-only speakers might not hear the distinction.
Another example (borrowing from a reply on this thread) but goes the other way -- Randy.
Normal English name, but could be mistaken for something else in Hindi.
I'm going to cut off examples. In closing, let me return to my key point --
There are often sound similarities across languages, especially for those who only know one of the languages in play. We don't censor foreign languages because we mishear them in English. We learn. @USC
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India’s ASI just produced an 800+ page report on, so far as I know as a Mughal historian of this period, a completely uncontested fact. Namely, there is a destroyed Hindu temple beneath the Gyanvapi Masjid.
Historians agree on this. There is a plethora of evidence.
So, Why is the ASI blabbering on (in a not-fully released report for added ridiculousness) about something we all know?
Because it changes the question and displaces attention from the real issue.
Modi claimed Indian freedom after "1,000 years of slavery."
History review -- British colonialism only lasted 200 years in India, so where's the other 800 coming from?
That would be Indo-Muslim rule under a variety of different dynasties.
Hindu nationalists hate Indian Muslims, and they relentless demonize this religious minority.
In fact, Hindu nationalists like Modi regularly use disinformation attacks on Muslims in Indian history (e.g., they enslaved Hindus) as a dog whistle for hating Indian Muslims today.
Let's run through the 3 lies over which this actor just became the Indian state's most recent political prisoner.
These are all pretty basic things that any South Asia historian could go over (I happen to be, critically, outside of the BJP's Hindu Rashtra at present).
Lie 1: Indian nation was founded when Ram defeated Ravan.
Reality: The Indian nation was founded in 1947. Ram is mythology character and god (sometimes both; sometimes one or the other, depending on text, time period, and believer), said to have lived millennia ago.
Folks -- I'm happy to answer historical questions on Twitter re the Mughals.
But general tip -- If what you're citing as "evidence" is a cartoon drawing you saw on WhatsApp... you shouldn't need a historian's professional opinion to tell you it is bullshit.
Whereas Lorenzen traces a social construct, i.e. the religion of Hinduism, across varied vocabulary, I trace a single term, i.e., "hindu," across diverse meanings.
This is a long, meandering journey over 2 1/2 millennia. Some highlights --
Both articles included “a lot of concrete facts” that HAF “didn’t even contest” or allege as false.
“They didn’t contest that HAF’s treasurer is the son of the National Vice President of the US wing of the RSS...
"They didn’t contest that his family had donated a significant sum to HAF in 2018. They didn’t contest that a co-founder of HAF was formally associated with an affiliate of the RSS....