Dr.Akanksha Mehta is a Lecturer at UK’s Goldsmiths University. Her area of interests are Gender, Sexuality, and Cultural Studies and Co-Director of Center for Feminist Research. She has a doctoral degree from School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) and her thesis was “Right wing sisterhood:The everyday politics of Hindu nationalist and Zionist settler women in India and Israel-Palestine.” Along with her apparent hatred for Hinduism, Akanksha Mehta is anti-semitic too. In one of her articles, Akanksha Mehta describes herself “anti-capitalist“. Through her academic freedom she attacks Hindu and Jewish women.
In 2023, Akanksha Mehta signed a petition “Scholars of South Asia in Solidarity with Palestine” in support of Hamas terrorists attack on innocent Jewish men, women and children.The petition draws direct comparison between Hindutva and Zionism and calls India a ‘settler-colonial’ in Kashmir. She also posted on her X account, “Solidarity with Palestine. Today and forever” on the 7th of October, the day when Hamas terrorised, shot elderly citizens, raped women and burned alive families alive including children.
In 2022 Akanksha Mehta signed a letter addressed to UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, Ms Reem Alsalem and UN Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, Dr Fernand de Varennes. The letter was organised by South Asia Solidarity Group (SASG) where they write “We the undersigned are gravely concerned by the targeting of Muslim women in India characteristic of a prelude to a genocide. We call on you to urgently institute an investigation.”
In 2021, Akanksha Mehta was one of the invitees who spoke at the Dismantling Global Hindutva Conference. Here she said “Hindutva is inseparable from Hinduism and arguments that Hindutva is not Hinduism is dangerous and brahminical and laced with erasure and violence. It will not lead us to the future we want…..”
In the same conference, Akanksha Mehta said “notions of gender and sexuality rooted in caste and race are crucial to the Hindutva project“. She said Hindu women “build active discourses of violence that are gendered, caste based, sexed racialized and they distribute them far and wide. They participate in very specific everyday acts of violence, including physical violence and often encourage the men to do the same in order to become real Hindu men. ”
In a 2020 piece for The Polis Project “Pedagogy and Violence Mapping the Everyday politics of Hindutva“, Akanksha Mehta writes on the role of women in Hindu nationalist violence. While claiming Hindu women’s organisations like Durga Vahini and Sevika Samiti participate in everyday violence against Muslims, Christians, Dalits and others, Akanksha Mehta writes “Women in these organizations plan and participate in numerous acts of regular violence and also implore the men in their families to prove their masculinity by embracing violence.” She refers to India’s 10,000 year old history as “imagined India as a Hindu nation” and “glorified Hindu myths”. In the same piece, Akanksha Mehta opines Kashmir is “occupied” by India, calls India a “settler-colonial” and calls for “Azadi of Kashmir”. She ends the piece with “Can we dismantle one dream of the Hindu Rashtra without the dismantling of its longer, colonial, more violent and brutal dreams?” In short, she wants to dismantle Hinduism from India.
In a 2018 article on LGBTQ issues, Akanksha Mehta says Kashmir and Assam are colonised territories “suffocated by laws granting the Indian army and government-backed militia both extraordinary powers to put down separatist movements as well as immunity from prosecution. ”
Appearing on a panel discussion organised by South Asia Solidarity Group (SASG)‘s Amrit Wilson, Akanksha Mehta repeats her accusations on Hindu women indulging in everyday violence. She talks about Israeli Jewish women indulging in everyday violence against Palestinian women. She also talks about love jihad where she says accusations of love jihad “dehumanises the Muslim man”.
In the below video, Akanksha Mehta castigates the entire Hindu community as ‘rapists’ and/or those who justify rape against Muslim women because they are Muslim.
In 2014, Akanksha Mehta wrote “A Hindu right wing day out” for London School of Economics’s Research Festival. In this she explores young Hindu boys dressed up as Hindu nationalist leaders by their mothers. She writes “It examines how right wing women ritually appropriate history and mythology and manipulate political/religious discourse in continuity with a constructed glorious ‘Hindu’ past. ” At the same festival, Akanksha Mehta submitted another paper “Women for the Saffron Right” where she writes “Clad in saffron, the movement’s chosen colour, millions of women have embraced the violent and cultural/ethnic nationalist politics of the populist movement.”
In a 2012 piece “16 Days Campaign Theme series: Women’s Bodies as Men’s Playgrounds, by Akanksha Mehta” Akanksha Mehta says “For instance, in the discourse of the Hindu nationalist movement in India, the ‘Muslim’ man is identified as a ‘lustful rapist (polygamist)’ and the ‘Muslim’ woman is either seen as an ‘unchaste prostitute’ or a victim of ‘patriarchal Islam.’ This construction not only justifies physical violence against the Muslim community as means to protect the chaste Hindu women, but has also been used to justify rapes of ‘Muslim’ women as corrective and ‘purifying.’”
Below are some of the posts of Akanksha Mehta from her social media account. She has locked her X account.
STOP HINDU HATE ADVOCACY NETWORK 