Thread by @hinduoncampus

THREAD on how journalists deliberately leave out Hindu student voices when it doesn’t fit their narrative:

1/ Two weeks ago, we received the following email from @arunNYC. After reading the email, we spoke to the students who had taken Audrey Truschke’s class and were involved in the complaint against her. They declined to take the interview, for valid reasons …

2/ For those who do not know, Truschke has a long history of stalking Hindu students’ parents and subtweeting Hindu students, particularly when students speak out. In fact, she is proud of this behavior.

https://twitter.com/indumathi37/status/1373301786640056320

https://twitter.com/RashmiDVS/status/1387417084687171588

Many Hindu students are the children of immigrants or are immigrants themselves. Truschke's abuse of power led them to fear for their safety and that of their families.

If other Hindu students who were outspoken about Truschke’s hate were getting stalked, what would happen to them? Naturally, they were intimidated and told us that they would like to decline the offer. We emailed @arunNYC with this:

3/ While he said he respected it, he asked us whether we would like to take part in the interview. We also declined, given Truschke’s history of intimidation, harassment, stalking and disparaging any outspoken Hindu as a “Hindu extremist” (Hint: we are not)

4/ Finally, this is how the conversation with @arunNYC ended. We never heard back after this, but it doesn’t matter what we thought. He pushed us to reveal our identity when we have made a point of remaining anonymous for our own safety.

5/ Today, @arunNYC released his “interview”, and of course, none of Truschke’s harassment or history of stalking were brought to light.

wnyc.org/story/american…

Instead, the radio show focused on how Truschke is outspoken about the Modi government. The (misleading and erroneous) claim is that *this* is what makes her controversial.

Fact Check: False. Not a single one of Hindu students’ concerns had to do with political disagreement..

..or Indian politics. Calling Hindu gods misogynistic pigs, disparaging statements on the Bhagavad Gita or Mahabharata are not political issues.

6/ In an intellectually dishonest interview, Arun centers politics when they were never the concern to begin with.

7/ But this is not an isolated media incident. It is a distinct pattern of behavior. When we first launched our campaign against Truschke, @SaraWeissman, a journalist from Diverse Magazine contacted us for an interview.

We did not see any harm & reached out to Hindu Rutgers students with whom we were in touch. Instead of supporting those Hindu students (as she has done for other groups), she wrote an article in support of Truschke, completely ignoring the violent threats Hindu students received

“Rutgers Supports Professor Facing Online Attacks After a Hindu Student Petition” - as if Hindu students are somehow responsible for the threats, when every Hindu organization has condemned all violent threats.

diverseeducation.com/article/207604/

Has Truschke ever condemned the violent threats Hindu students received? Not once. Has she ever recognized that her Hindu students take issue with her scholarship and not her stance on Indian politics? Nope.

Check out this violent threat in particular. TW //

https://mobile.twitter.com/hinduoncampus/status/1377293099194519553

96% of Hindus are Asian or Asian American. Hindus are a religious minority. Most Hindus are brown immigrants. These facts do not matter. Journalists have pre-determined the perpetrator (mostly brown, immigrant, religiously-minoritized students) and who is...

...the victim (a white, tenured professor). Their insistence on repeating this one story ensures that no “woke” activist would ever think that Hindu students have legitimate grievances. They erase the actual power dynamics within a university in favor of the sensationalist story.

8/ Another reporter from @ThePrintIndia reached out for an interview. We suggested that she email us with the questions, which we were happy to answer. Here are her questions.

9/ Here are our responses:

10/ Of course, since our answers were not Islamophobic or Sikhphobic, nor fit into any political narrative, no story was ever written about us.

11/ Another reporter from @RNS DMed us with questions and tried to pressure us into revealing our identities, even though we repeatedly said we were not comfortable.

12/ So here are her questions, and here are our responses.

13/ Again, nothing was published. Why? Because our answers do not fit the narrative.

The same journalist echoes the same talking points in other articles - even though no Hindu student concern was about "Hindutva"

religionnews.com/2021/05/20/hin…

14/ It's also notable that multiple journalists were pushing us - a group of students - to identify ourselves but NOBODY appears to be asking Truschke to verify that the hate mail she received came from actual Hindus.

Because according to their paradigm, Hindus are always guilty of suspicious behavior and the white, tenured professor can never be.

15/ We are mostly Hindu American college students, with team members from both American and British universities. We are not politically affiliated with any party, whether in the U.S, U.K or India. We care about making a difference for Hindu students on campus.

16/ But apparently, that’s too difficult to understand. Instead, "journalists" are desperate to paint us as “Hindu extremists” or “Agents of the BJP” (Because being a Hindu means you are part of Indian political parties) just because we care about fair & equitable treatment.

17/ Arun’s interview today is just another version of what all of these journalists, Truschke and other “South Asian” academics are desperate to do:

Find an outspoken Hindu → Label them as “Hindutva” → Show ties to Modi → Claim Modi and the BJP are inspired by the Nazis, so Hindus = Nazis, therefore don’t trust or believe Hindus (unless they agree with this equation).

18/ Data from the Pew Research Survey contradict these claims. If India was taken over by those with extremist ideologies, these statistics would be true. But, they are 🤷🏾‍♀️

Credit: @hindusamata

wouldn't*

#AcademicTwitter

@MichaelHillNJ @jamifloyd @alecchamilton

We kindly request you to read this. Such behavior, harassment and intimidation of any minority student by a white professor is unacceptable. This must apply fairly for Hindus too, who are a religious minority.