Ultra-radical leftist Rohit Chopra is a Professor in the Department of Communication at Santa Clara University. He is currently the advisory board member of Raqib Hamid Naik’s The Center for the Study of Organized Hate, an Assistant Professor at Babson College, a Visiting Assistant Professor at Emory University and, a member of the South Asia Scholar Activists Collective (SASAC). The SASAC launched The Hindutva Harassment Field Manual that “offers educational and practical resources for the targets, allies, students, and employers of those subjected to Hindu Right assaults.” Rohit Chopra was the organising committee member of the deeply Hinduphobic Dismantling Global Hindutva Conference. He is also a Visiting Scholar at the Center for South Asia at Stanford University. His work focuses on global online communities and the relationship of media, culture, and political memory, with a particular focus on Hindu nationalist and rightwing communities.
Rohit Chopra authored The Gita for a Global World:Ethical Action in an Age of Flux and The Virtual Hindu Nation: Saffron Nationalism and New Media. Rohit Chopra was offered a Luce-AAR Advancing Public Scholarship Grant for his project “Hindutva Explained: Creating public-facing digital materials for teaching about Hindu nationalism“. The grant was from AAR (American Academy of Religion) and the Henry Luce Foundation. Readers should note here, that AAR started as an organisation of scholars of Biblical studies and Henry Luce of the Henry Luce Foundation was the founder of Time magazine, born in a family of Presbyterian Christian Missionaries.
Ken Chitwood, a Lutheran theologian, pastor, and professor at the University of Bayreuth‘s Department of Religion, edited and produced a guide on Hindu nationalism for those “harassed” by Hindu nationalists. All members of the SASAC contributed to this guide, in which they describe Hindu nationalism as a “far-right political ideology of Hindu supremacy…Also known as Hindutva”. According to the guide Hindu nationalism/Hindutva’s core objective is to transform India, “a constitutionally secular state, into a Hindu Rashtra (nation) where some Indians will be more equal than others”.
Writing in support of the Dismantling Global Hindutva conference in 2021, “Why the Dismantling Global Hindutva Conference is not ‘Hindu-phobic’“, Rohit Chopra states that, “Cynically and mendaciously, the individuals and organisations that are opposing the conference are conflating Hinduism and Hindutva, although the title and focus of the conference make it amply clear that the conference is centred on the latter.” The video from Hindus of Campus is evidence that the Conference’s target was Hinduism and was using the cloak of Hindutva to distract the uninitiated. He further writes “The framing of any criticism of Hindutva as Hinduphobia and anti-Hindu sentiment, and the strategic invocation of the language of genocide, pogroms, and holocausts to claim victimhood, is likely to confuse US organisations, which may otherwise wish to support principles such as the rights and freedoms of religious minorities in India.” In the article Rohit Chopra also lies about “disenfranchisement of Muslims through the Citizenship Amendment Act.”
In a 2020 post, Rohit Chopra called for the killing of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. As a result, Twitter (now X) suspended his account and required him to delete his threatening tweets. Rohit Chopra then ranted about far-right Hindu nationalists, Prime Minister Modi, Hindutva troll farms, and the BJP IT Cell. He claimed to be a victim, stating that he received death and rape threats. In addition to his remarks about Prime Minister Modi, Chopra made derogatory comments about Hindus and Hinduism. Consequently, the Indian think tank Observer Research Foundation (ORF) was forced to remove his essays due to his offensive statements.
Rohit Chopra and two other members of SASAC, Audrey Truschke and Ananya Chakravarti accused historian Dr.Vikram Sampath of plagiarism for his autobiography on India’s freedom fighter, Veer Savarkar. They wrote an open letter to the Royal Historical Society (RHS) where Sampath is a fellow, that he “borrowed largely” from an earlier essay by Dr. Vinayak Chaturvedi and that of Dr. Janaki Bakhle. Dr. Sampath in turn sued the three for defamation. In 2022, Delhi High Court ordered the passed an ad-interim order restraining them from “publishing any defamatory material against historian Vikram Sampath……on Twitter and other online or offline platforms.” In the letter the ‘concerned scholars’ blamed Dr. Sampath’s right-wing social media networks in India and the US to “harass, threaten, and intimidate these scholars for what constitutes free speech, proper ethics, and service to the profession”
In a 2022 Congressional Briefing held by Jamat-e-Islami’s Indian American Muslim Council (IAMC), Rohit Chopra says there is an ongoing “genocide” of Muslims in India. He goes on to explain that Muslims are targeted with flimsy evidence of violence against Hindus. He gives an example of the Gujarat 2002 riots which he calls “anti-Muslim violence”. He says the riots started “when a group of Muslims allegedly set fire to a train which was carrying Hindu activists who were screaming anti-Muslim slogans…evidence remains inconclusive that the fire was started by Muslim groups”. Readers please note, 31 Muslims were convicted in 2011 and the Indian Supreme Court awarded them death sentence to 11 while the remaining were given life sentences for the conspiracy of setting the train on fire. Furthermore, drawing comparisons with the Nazis, Rohit Chopra says “insulting or attacking Muslims has become defacto kind of hallmark of both being a good Hindu and being a true Indian citizen.” He blames Modi government for not granting US visa to Amnesty India’s Chairman, Akar Patel. He says “…which tells us something about how the Modi government is attacking and going after anyone who is critical of its policies.”
Speaking at another Congressional Briefing by IAMC “Hindu Right Weaponized Cyberspace to target Muslims & Promote Hindu Supremacy”, Rohit Chopra says “The Hindu right has weaponised the cyberspace to propagate its supremacist ideology known to demonise minorities and promote a dubious and factually inaccurate version of Indian history.” He further says that according to the Hindu right Muslims and Christians do not belong in India and believe in “dangerous and vile stereotypes about minorities as descendants of violent invaders, as groups that lack loyalty to India and are communities that are engaged in conspiracies to undermine Hinduism through religious conversion.” Talking about the internet era of the nineties, Rohit Chopra says that the Hindu right operated various websites that routinely described Muslims as “violent, treasonous, terrorists, and they were accused of perpetrating holocausts and genocides against Hindus since time immemorial.” He gives an example of trolling the Indian cricket team after a loss to Pakistan. Rohit Chopra says Virat Kohli’s 10-month-old daughter was issued with rape threats by Hindu nationalists. Nowhere in Indian or international news reports mention the troll’s links or associations with any Hindu groups.
Writing for Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs, “Hinduism, Soft Power, and the Remaking of Global Indian Public Culture under Narendra Modi” Rohit Chopra says since the victory of BJP in 2014 “the Hindu Right has used a broad range of measures and strategies to capture public space, discourse, institutions, and, indeed, the Indian public imagination itself to imprint its vision of Hindu and Indian identity on Indian society.” He further states that Hindu nationalists have managed to weaponise Hindu film industry, Bollywood “promote the ideology of Hindu nationalism and the cult of Modi himself.” He calls films like The Kashmir Files and The Kerala Story as “outright anti-Muslim propaganda”.
In “Online Hindutva as a global right-wing counterpublic” Rohit Chopra says since the mid-nineties Hindu genocide/holocaust “has been a staple of online Hindu nationalist rhetoric.” He further says that by presenting Hindus as victims of violence by Muslim invaders, “Hindu nationalists also seek to bring Hindus into a universal history of suffering, granting Hindus their rightful place with other groups that have been victims of mass violence.” Citing the example of The Kashmir Files, Rohit Chopra says it is “a shoddy work of anti-Muslim propaganda, has led to a resurgence of the idea that Hindus have been suffering an ongoing project of ethnic cleansing for centuries.” He concludes the essay by defining Hindu nationalism: “a violent right-wing majoritarian ideology that cynically speaks the language of minority victimhood.”
Speaking at the Center for South Asia (CSA) at Stanford University’s South Asian Studies at Stanford (SASS) Tube event on “Social Media and the Hindu Right“, Rohit Chopra’s talk was filled with massive disinformation and sometimes outright lies. He starts by explaining that the fundamental claim by Hindu right/Hindu nationalism/Hindutva is that “India is culturally a Hindu nation, its ethos is Hindu and that minorities especially Muslims and Christians are outsiders in the Hindu nation.” He then states “Hindu nationalism is not identical to Hinduism but it is part and parcel of the landscape of contemporary Hinduism” and draws parallels with Islamic and Christian fundamentalism. He calls systematic cow smuggling a bogus allegation. Then lies, again, that there is legal “disenfranchisement of Muslims through initiatives such as the CAA and to create a National Registry of Citizens where if someone is a Muslim and doesn’t have papers they can be accused of being an illegal immigrant from Bangladesh or Pakistan”. The National Registry of Citizens (NRC) has been shelved and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) has nothing to do with Muslims in India.
Rohit Chopra then lies that there is no conclusive proof that the Babri masjid site had any remnants of a Hindu temple despite the Archaeological Survey of India submitting their excavation reports that indicated the presence of a 12-century Hindu-like structure underneath the disputed structure. He calls the judgement of the SC as a “shameful decision” for awarding the site to Hindus. He further casts aspersions on Indian state institutions by calling them “fused with the BJP”.
Rohit Chopra then talks about Hindus taking objection to Western academia interpreting Hinduism through Western lenses. He lies that “The Hindu right literally wants that anyone who teaches Hindu studies or India or South Asian history in America should be cleared and vetted by them and they should decide the curriculum and the content”.
Speaking on the Dismantling Global Hindutva Conference, Rohit Chopra says Hindu nationalists doctored clips of the speakers. That is a lie. Hindus have never been accused of doctoring clips by the extremely Hinduphobic Western media. Touching on the topic of Modi, he says Modi “was complicit in an anti-Muslim genocide in Gujarat in 2002” which again is a lie as the Supreme Court exonerated Modi of all charges of failing to halt the violence. Talking about what started the violence, Rohit Chopra said, “Some Muslims set fire to a train bogie killing 58 people who were Hindu nationalist activists.” The train compartment carrying 58 passengers including children were, pilgrims returning from Ayodhya and not Hindu nationalist activists as claimed by Rohit Chopra.
Rohit Chopra said Hindu nationalists colonise digital space “endorsing and participating in violence against minorities especially the Muslim enemy has now become the mark of authentic Hindu and Indian identity”. On NRC of Assam, Rohit Chopra said Hindu nationalists consider any Muslim in India as an “allegedly Bangladeshi infiltrator” and that Hindus are creating a “bogey” of massive Bangladeshi and Rohingya Muslim infiltration into India. On being asked about Hindu nationalism and Bangladesh, Rohit Chopra states the “plight of Hindus in Bangladesh and Pakistan is a trope that the Hindu right has weaponised”. He further said that the Hindu right does nothing for the Hindus of Pakistan and Bangladesh and that the “Hindu right has spoken much about the oppression of Hindus much of that is imagined even if the incidences have some basis of truth and it is only for political capital”. Rohit Chopra said that the claims of Hinduphobia are “widely exaggerated” and love jihad is a fake discourse to attack Muslims of India.
Rohit Chopra’s X handle is @IndiaExplained. Below is a slideshow of some of his posts.
STOP HINDU HATE ADVOCACY NETWORK 