Harshita Mruthinti Kamath is Visweswara Rao and Sita Koppaka Associate Professor in Telugu Culture, Literature and History, Director of Undergraduate Studies at Emory University’s College of Arts and Sciences. Her pronouns are she/her. In 2019, Harshita Kamath authored a book, Impersonations: The Artifice of Brahmin Masculinity in South Indian Dance, that “traces themes of gender, caste, and power in the South Indian dance form of Kuchipudi.” As per Emory University’s website, she is currently authoring “Sanitizing Sex: Erotic and Devotional Entanglements in Telugu South India, ” which traces the relationship between eroticism (śṛṅgāra) and devotion (bhakti) in the short lyrical poems of the Telugu poets Tāḷḷapaka Annamayya (ca. fifteenth century) and Kṣetrayya (ca. seventeenth century).”
Harshita Kamath is a member of the radical-leftist group Feminist Critical Hindu Studies Collective (FCHSC), A.K.A The Auntylectuals, which is known for spreading Hindu hatred in American academia. The other members are Shana Sippy, Shreena Gandhi and Sailaja Krishnamurti. Harshita Kamath is also working on a multi-year collaborative project on intersectional Hinduism supported by the American Academy of Religion and partially funded by the Wabash Centre. As per their website, the Collective received an initial grant of $5,000 and, since then, has received $30,000 to develop Critical Hindu Studies Pedagogies. The most recent grant was in 2023 by the Wabash Centre for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion to focus on Pursuing Justice: Critical Hindu Studies Pedagogies in Formation.
Harshita Kamath, in “Hinduphobia is a smokescreen for Hindu nationalists” as part of the Auntylectuals group, argues “Hindutva is a political movement that claims that only Hindus can be legitimate citizens of India, excluding India’s thriving Muslim, Dalit, Bahujan and Adivasi communities.” They further write that Hindus faced no persecution, which makes them use the term “Hinduphobia” as a smokescreen that “co-opts the language we use as social justice activists to challenge racism, white supremacy, casteism and Islamophobia, even as Hindu nationalists claiming victim status troll and threaten South Asian studies and Hindu studies scholars.” According to them, Hindus use the classic tools of fascism – Hinduphobia, violent Hindutva rhetoric, misinformation and fear.
In their first article as Feminist Critical Hindu Studies Collective, “More than a Reading List: Challenging Anti-Black Racism in the Field of South Asian Religions“, Harshita Kamath and others agree that any study of South Asian religions should “integrate gender and race” along with critical race theory, gender, and sexuality studies into their classes and research. They contend that the study of South Asian religions was formed by “white supremacy, brahminical supremacy, and hetero-patriarchy”. They write, “racism, anti-Blackness, sexism, casteism, Islamophobia, and orientalism inherently inform the scholarship on and pedagogy of South Asian religions.” Indians are perceived as a “model minority” in the US, which the authors believe is “rooted in anti-Black racism.”
In “Hindu fragility and the politics of mimicry in North America“, FCHS members draw parallels between White supremacy and Hindutva. They write, “By examining contemporary debates around caste in the United States, we illustrate how Hindu fragility—an expression of Hindu supremacist logics—is weaponized and performed by North American Hindus, mimicking white supremacy culture and propagating everyday Hindu nationalism.” They argue that in North America, Indians as “model minority” is a myth that presents Hindus are victims of discrimination and not as perpetrators of discrimination. They describe Hindu fragility as “Hindu fragility then refers to how caste-privileged Hindus leverage ideas about their collective precarity and vulnerability, making it seem that any criticism of Hinduism or India harms Hindus and enacts violence against the community.” They further state that Hindu groups practice “homohindunationalism” that expresses “solidarity with LGBTQ+ groups but reject working with anti-caste groups.” They mention the Indian Union territory of Jammu & Kashmir as “occupied by India”. In conclusion they write “Caste supremacy in South Asia and South Asian diasporas, which has been sustained over thousands of years through a wide-array of religious texts and practices as well as economic and social structures, upholds brahminical patriarchy at the expense of caste-oppressed communities, religious minorities, and others not included in the vision of Hindu supremacy.”
In her 2022 article “Resisting Brahminical Patriarchy in Kuchipudi Dance“, Harshita Kamath uses an example of Muslim Kuchipudi dancer Haleem Khan to challenge and resist Brahminical patriarchy in Kuchipudi dance. She contends earlier Kuchipudi tradition that required brahmin men to don stri-vēșam (women’s guise) is ‘brahminical patriarchy”. She writes “Brahminical patriarchy in Kuchipudi village also extends to the domain of performance, particularly by prescribing which bodies can and cannot dance….brahmin men’s control over dance, in turn, serves brahminical patriarchy writ large by secluding women from public spaces and maintaining the village’s endogamous system of marriage.” She further says a Muslim man donning the stri-vēșam “affords him a new perspective, or “mask” from which to perform expression based pieces..” She even appreciates the Muslim man diluting Kuchipudi dance performed in honour of Hindu Gods towards Urdu ghazals and English poetry, taking it away from Telugu and Sanskrit.
In a 2024 paper, Vedantam vs. Venus: Drag, Impersonation, and the Limitations of Gender Trouble, Harshita Kamath compares men playing female roles in Kuchipudi with American drag performance to shed light on “new ways of interpreting gender and caste in contemporary South India.”
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