Vijay Prashad

Nephew of Indian political and member of Communist Party of India – Marxist (CPI-M) Brinda Karat, Vijay Prashad currently is a journalist, the Chief Correspondent for Globetrotter, an executive-director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and the Chief Editor of LeftWord Books. He was also George and Martha Kellner Chair in South Asian History and a professor of International Studies at Trinity College in Connecticut, United States from 1996 to 2017. In 2013–2014, he was the Edward Said Chair at the American University of Beirut and has been a Senior Fellow of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs in Beirut. Vijay Prashad is also related to Bollywood film maker Shonali Bose of ‘Amu’ fame. His wife, Elisabeth Armstrong is Professor of the Study of Women & Gender in Smiths College and also a known leftist.

He regularly contributes for Frontline magazine, The Hindu newspaper and BirGun (Turkey based left-wing daily) . Incidentally, Globetrotter is a project of the Independent Media Institute , has formerly received funding from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, Ford Foundations, Barbara Streisand’s Streisand Foundations that funds left-of-centre activism, Former US President Henry Wallace’s Wallace Foundations which funds left-of-centre activities and movements, among others.

Prashad is the co-founded FOIL (Forum of Inquilabi Leftists) with Biju Mathew. He launched an attack on IDRF long with fellow FOIL member Biju Mathew. He also belongs to Campaign to Stop Funding Hate (CSFH) and Coalition Against Genocide (CAG). In an article for People’s Democracy, March 25 2001, Viajy Parshad and his co-author wrote an article Hinduvta for a Few Dollars “The BJP-RSS are patriotic, but only to the Brahmin-Banya-Big Bourgeoisie, not to the bulk of the Indian population. Those who mistook the RSS-BJP for a patriotic party did not see that it was only the party of a certain section of the population.”

In an article for New India Times, on 25th September 2009, Vijay Prashad categorically denies Hindu genocide by Mughal invaders. He repeats the same argument in another article, Frenchman stokes Hindutva hate on 8th Januray 2013 for Islamic mouth-piece Milli Gazette. This is what he wrote in New India Times.

Between Hindus and Muslims there has not been an endless rivalry for social power. When Islam enters the subcontinent, it does not come in the saddlebags of the Ghaznis or the Ghouris, but amongst the rumble of goods brought by traders. Early conversions are not by the sword but by the merchants . There was killing, but that was as much for reasons of warfare and plunder as for reasons of God and tradition. An interested reader might want to look at the distinguished historian Romila Thapar’s superb book “Somnatha: The Many Voices of a History” (Penguin, 2005). There, Professor Thapar shows us that Mahmud Ghazni’s destruction of the Shiva temple in 1026 was driven not so much by a fanatical religious belief but because his father, Subuktigin, needed money to sustain his faltering kingdom in Central Asia. Now it is certainly true, as historian Mohammed Habib put it, that there was “wanton destruction of temples that followed in the wake of the Ghaznavid army.

Vijay Prashad in his article Hindu Holocaust ,News India Times, Sept. 25, 2009

During the vicious attack on Hindu Students Council (HSC), Vijay Prshad wrote A Letter to Young American Hindu, where we weaves his own interpretation and makes general sweeping statements despite accepting he is not an expert on Gita. According to him, Gita was composed long after the Mahabharata during Gupta era, confuses Varna system with Portuguese invented caste system,.

The Gita is a remarkable book, precisely because of its history (it was composed long after the Mahabharata, written in classical Sanskrit of the Gupta era, and interpolated into the long epic much later). Frustrated with the hierarchy promoted by Brahmans through the Vedic traditions, scores of people turned to Sramanic traditions (most familiarly, Buddhism). The Gita is a sublime response to the power of Buddhism with concepts such as karma drawn from it. The genius of the text is that it takes concepts and ideas from these popular traditions and brings them into line with some of the central principles of Brahmanism (varna, mainly). 

A Letter to Young Amerian Hindu, 23 May, 2007

On 26th October, 1996 Vijay Parshad gave a talk “Diwali and Decolonisation” in Brown University. He makes several anti-Hindu statements some even blaming Lord Rama for the Hindu-Muslims riots post the temple demolition. He wonder ““The blood which has sanctified this deity makes me wonder if there is any need to remember Diwali through him”, decribes Lord Rama as a “commonplace hero” transformed later into a “personal God accessible to the masses”, “Rama does not keep to his varna domain, but consorts with various oppressed castes and outcast tribes.”, he then uses more racist theories while explaining the final battle between Lord Rama and demon King Ravana “black” southern Dravidians and “white” northern Aryans.

The Ramayana argues for the colonization of the peoples of the subcontinent while the
Ramcaritmanas argues for the worship of an iconic figure rather than, for instance, a
consideration of the Upanishads’ metaphysics.

Vijay Parshad, Diwali and Decolonistaion, Brown University 26th October 1996

According to Rajiv Malhotra and Aravindan Neelakanda, authors of Breaking India, Vijay Prashad endorses the Afro-Dalit movement, which paints ‘Dalits’ as ‘Blacks’ of India and non-Dalits as ‘Whites’ of India. In an article Fear and Hatred for Frontline, Oct 2012, Vijay Prashad supports, defends and justifies the violence of Muslim mobs violent reaction to Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses, cartoons and videos depicting Prophet Muhammed is due to Islamophobia which gives rise to “frustration and humiliation” among Indian Muslims.

The violence as a response to the video is not a symptom of “Muslim rage”. That violence has to be seen in the context of a general sense of dispossession and subordination in the global South. This is not a natural situation, with the mob gratuitously destroying and killing…. Islamophobia is not simply the cultural denigration of Islam and the political fear mongering about Muslims (and those who resemble Muslims), but it is also the denial of the context of frustration and humiliation in the global South.

Vijay Prashad, Frontline, October 2012, Fear and Hatred

Below are some video snippets on his recent interview with Jacobin Magazine‘s Bhaskar Sunkara, live streamed on You Tube 1st April 2020. Listen to how he lies about Godhra, fear-mongers about Muslim genocide, outright and blatant lies about Government of India’s schemes for the poor, lies about handling of Government’s handling of Covid-19. Interesting to note that he is on-record accepting that the Left in India is against Hindu culture.