Feminist Critical Hindu Studies Collective*

The Feminist Critical Hindu Studies Collective (FCHS) was founded in 2018. The ethics of FCHS begins with an awareness that contestations over the category “Hinduism” are political and, therefore, studying Hinduism is always also political. In every context in which we encounter it, we must interrogate how Hinduism is being constructed and by whom, who is served by the forms of power it enables, and what forms of injustice it perpetuates or resists. Employing the term “Hindu formations,” FCHS seeks to examine the intersecting processes of racialization, the regulation of sexuality, and the violence of caste. Using the idea of Hindu formations, we hope that scholars and students will come to better understand the ways in which religious traditions emerge over time and are deployed to various ends. FCHS asserts that the categories—Hinduism and Hindu—not only arise in conjunction with forms of white supremacy and caste supremacy but are imbricated with them. Currently, with the support of the Wabash Center for Learning & Teaching Theology,  we are engaged in a project to explore Critical Hindu Pedagogies, with a cohort of other scholars from throughout the country. 

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• "Hindu Fragility and the Politics of Mimicry in North America," Feminist Critical Hindu Studies Collective, Immanent Frame special forum on 'Hindutva and the Shared Scripts of the Global Right,' November 2, 2022. ​

• “Auntylectuals: An Anti-Taxonomy of Aunty-Power,” Feminist Critical Hindu Studies Collective Shreena Gandhi, Harshita Mruthinti Kamath, Sailaja Krishnamurti. Tanisha Ramachandran, Shana Sippy), Special Issue of Text and Performance Quarterly, 42:3, 2022. 

• “Feminist Critical Hindu Studies in Formation,” Religion Compass, Feminist Critical Hindu Studies Collective (Shreena Gandhi, Harshita Mruthinti Kamath, Sailaja Krishnamurti. Tanisha Ramachandran, Shana Sippy), March 2021. 

• “Episode 149—Teaching Hindu Studies,” with Sailaja Krishnamurti, Wabash Center for Teaching and Learning in Theology and Religion Podcast, December 7, 2021.

• “Not all Hinduism is Hindutva, but Hindutva is in fact Hinduism,” with Sailaja Krishnamurti, Scroll, September 15, 2021.  

• “Hinduphobia is a Smokescreen,” Feminist Critical Hindu Studies Collective (Shreena Gandhi, Harshita Mruthinti Kamath, Sailaja Krishnamurti. Tanisha Ramachandran, Shana Sippy, w/ Dheepa Sundaram), Religion News Service and Washington Post, September 10, 2021. 

• “More than a Reading List: Challenging Anti-Black Racism in the Field of South Asian Studies,” Shreena Gandhi, Harshita Kamath, Sailaja Krishnamurti, Tanisha Ramachandran, Shana Sippy Down with Brown Blog, 2020.

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Pictured from left to right: Harshita Mruthinti Kamath, Sailaja Krishnamurti, Shana Sippy, Shreena Gandhi

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* The Feminist Critical Hindu Studies Collective: Shreena Gandhi is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Michigan State University, Sailaja Krishnamurti is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Gender Studies at Queen’s University, Harshita Mruthinti Kamath is Visweswara Rao and Sita Koppaka Associate Professor in Telugu Culture, Literature and History at Emory University, and Shana Sippy is Associate Professor of Religion at Centre College and co-director of Religions MN at Carleton College.

 

Tanisha Ramachandran, Associate Teaching Professor in the Department for the Study of Religions at Wake Forest University, was a founding member of the Collective. In September 2021, Ramachandran took a temporary leave from the Collective in order to focus on other projects.