Sanaran Dharma and Bharat hater Angana P. Chatterji

Excerpts from the book Braking India by Rajiv Malhotra  and Aravindan Neelakandan. They reveal lies of leftist historian/professors in chapter 14 of the book. 

Angana P. Chatterji

Angana Chatterji is associate professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS), an institution that was established specifically to bring the spiritual teachings of Sri Aurobindo to the West. Ironically, she has used this position to do exactly the opposite, namely, to try to demolish the legitimacy of Indian spirituality and the Indian nation. She cites her interests as ‘identity politics, nationalisms, self-determination.’[i] Prior to joining CIIS, she worked in policy and advocacy research at the Indian Social Institute, which is run by Jesuits in Delhi, for the explicit purpose of propagating ‘Christian inspiration and following the social teaching of the Catholic Church.’^[ii]

Chatterji provided ‘critical assistance’ to a highly libelous and unsubstantiated report that damned a US-based Indian charity organization, India Development Relief Fund (IDRF), alleging that they were funding hatred and atrocities against Indian minorities.[iii] The driving force behind this was that IDRF’s schools in Indian rural and tribal areas were providing a successful alternative to Christian missionary schools involved in conversion, and Chatterji was brought in to defame the non-Christian competition that IDRF provided.

While she finds US intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan to be a violation of those countries’ rights and calls George Bush ‘a man who himself should be charged with crimes against humanity,’[iv] she still wants US intervention in India’s affairs, for example through the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. Chatterji provided testimony before the United States Congressional Task Force on International Religious Freedom on violence in Orissa,[v] chaired by Congressmen Trent Franks and Joseph R. Pitts, both with strong right-wing evangelical connections.[vi]

She also sent an unsolicited testimony on Orissa violence to the government of India, in which all her data came directly from the report by the All India Christian Council, which was discussed earlier. Her input was so one-sided that she completely ignored some well-established facts about the aggressive evangelism involved [vii] and the nexus between Christian evangelists and Maoists in the state.[viii] The violence was precipitated by the murder of a Hindu sage, who she dismisses as ‘a male Hindu proselytizer.’ She describes the social services done by Hindu organizations, as ‘conscription into Hindu activism,’ even as she praises the same kind of social work in ‘health care, education and employment offered by Christian missionaries.’[ix]

Chatterji is also a standard and predictable face at major events supporting Kashmir separatists, having declared herself to be working on ‘self-determination in Indian-administered Kashmir.’[x] At one such conference on Kashmir, organized by the Pakistani Students Association at George Washington University, the Embassy of Pakistan, and Pakistan’s Minister of Kashmir Affairs, she spoke of the ‘growing concern among civil society groups about human rights crises in Indian-occupied Kashmir in the areas of social, political, cultural, religious, and economic rights.’ She accused India of ‘continued occupation of (certain areas of) Kashmir.’[xi] Muhammed Sadiq, who maintains a Kashmiri news and analysis portal, explains how Angana Chatterjee uses human rights concerns in a lopsided way to play in the hands of Islamic terrorists:

[Angana Chatterji] announced the formation of the ‘International Peoples’ Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Indian Administered Kashmir’ on April 5 in Srinagar. Interestingly, this organisation too insists that the focus of HR investigations should be on the Indian side of Kashmir and not in PoK too. Moreover, this is a fault finding mission. Its only aim is to slam the Indian security forces, further highlight HR issues and vitiate the situation. There is no attempt at reconciliation, offering succour to HR victims or working with the government to ensure that HR violations do not take place. Dr Chatterji like many before her, are intent on primarily demonising the Indian security forces and thereby fanning hatred.[xii]

By depicting India as an undemocratic state filled with horrors of Hindu savagery, such left-wing academics have blurred the distinctions between Islamic terrorism and what they portray as equally bad violations by Indians against Muslims, Christians and Dalits. This seems to justify terrorist attacks on India as well-deserved. In the aftermath of the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, this view was reflected by Julian Duin, the religion editor of Washington Times:

The terrorist assault—this time by Muslims—on Mumbai later in the year highlighted the powderkeg India has become and how often in this Hindu-majority country, the oppressed don't get a lot of justice. The perpetrators in Orissa have gone unpunished.[xiii]

Another public event at the New York Public Library also featured the same view, namely, that Indians deserved the blame for the Mumbai attacks because they were illegally occupying Kashmir and oppressing Muslims in general. One of the prominent panelists with this view was Columbia University professor of philosophy, Akil Bilgrami, an Indian-American with staunch views against Indian civilization. The meeting was declared closed once a few Indians in the audience, led by Narain Kataria, started to point out the radical one-sidedness of the discussion.

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[i] (www.ciis.edu 1999:2009)

[ii] (www.fides.org 2004)

[iii] (www.proxsa.org 2002)

[iv] (Frontline 25-Mar-2005)

[v] (AICC 19-Dec-2008)

[vi] (Franks, Cleaver and Pitts 2008)

[vii] See for example the report (India Today 30-Mar-1998). According to this report, several Christian provocations such as row over the desecration of a village temple, Christians spreading rumors that Hindus were "poisoning the village wells" – incidentally a rumor used in medieval Christendom against Jews, changing the names of villages like referring Krishnapur as Krishtopur and "the missionaries on an overdrive."

[viii] Press Trust of India reported on 5 Oct 2008 that Maoist leader admitted that they derived support from Christians and that there was pressure from Christians to eliminate the Hindu sage.

[ix] (indianchristians.in 2008)

[x] (www.ciis.edu 1999:2009)

[xi] (Al-Jazeerah 30-Oct-2006)

[xii] (Sadiq 2008)

[xiii] (Duin 2008)