By The Breach
Concordia University’s campus was set for a sleepy late summer public lecture, but that’s not how commentary online made it seem.
“Blatantly Hinduphobic,” one post on X blared. “Baseless #propaganda,“ said another. “DISGUSTING behaviour from Concordia.”
Objecting to a panel discussion on rising fascism in India and its diaspora in August, the statements were put out by groups with innocuous names like Coalition of Hindus of North America and Canadian Organization for Hindu Heritage Education.
Calling for the event to be shut down, some posts gathered thousands of reposts and likes, building up momentum over the next day.
The only wrinkle?
The event was put on by a coalition of progressive groups, with the speakers including a journalist, a professor from Toronto Metropolitan University, and a young Muslim activist whose family’s home was bulldozed by Indian government officials.
And those innocuous-sounding organizations? They were far-right ultra-nationalist Hindu groups tied to the right wing Indian government.
But by the next day, Concordia University had caved to the online pressure campaign, cancelling the groups’ auditorium booking.
It wasn’t the end of the story. The event’s organizers, the South Asian Diaspora Action Collective and the Centre sur l’asie du sud, moved the event to the offices of the Quebec Public Interest Research Group-Concordia, a nearby community activism hub. The evening of the event, dozens of men blocked the entrances to the event, chanting, and tried to force their way into the room.
This story was originally published in breachmedia.ca. Read the full story here.
