Thread by @vjgtweets

IMO one of the strangest things about this whole DGH affair is how desperate the organizers were to enlist the support of universities and senior academics. What is the rationale there? Aren't they trying to portray themselves as besieged radicals fighting the good fight?

In what universe does having the co-sign of the incumbent academic elite help bolster that image? What happened to "decolonizing the academy"? My preferred theory-- which I stated previously-- is that they're not really ideologically invested in this fight at all

What this really is is a last gasp effort by a bunch of precarious academics desperate to climb the career ladder to protect their epistemic monopoly in the field of "South Asian Studies" and preserve their grasp on the lucrative market for native informants

The problem is that in their desperation to protect this monopoly, these academics have revealed a fatal weakness in their position. The south asian "postcolonial" academic is engaged in a delicate dance wherein they posture publicly as radicals invested in decolonization...

while OTOH folding like a worn dish sponge when confronted with the colonial, anti-hindu legacy of their own field. So while they are trying to break into the academy, they insist that the institution is a bastion of white supremacy, that peer review is racist, etc,

but once they are in and the unwashed masses both in India and the diaspora suggest that their field is responsible for perpetuating colonial distortions, all of a sudden they turn into paladins for enforcers for academic orthodoxy and enlightenment values. So much for dissidence

Turns out it's a lot easier standing up against the half-literate trolls on twitter than it is to stand up to the senior academics in your own field who control your career trajectory

In any case, it seems clear that they are feeling the pressure, and as a result their arguments are only becoming more unhinged and indistinguishable from the screeds we'd see from 19th century British orientalists (tho dressed up in appropriately fashionable language)

They've only gotten away with it this long because of our relative indifference, but now that people are speaking up they have nowhere to hide. Circling the wagons is a natural reaction, but ultimately reveals the fragility of their position.

Case in point: Expect more repudiation of “decolonialism” in toto from these academics. It was once gospel for them, but now that they have tenure and fancy professorships it no longer has utility