A Massey University academic is getting online bashing for his work on right-wing Hindu nationalist groups.
Dean’s Chair in Communication Professor Mohan Dutta says Hindutva trolls have been flooding his social media accounts in recent weeks, some of them abusive and calling on Massey University to fire him and retract his work.
“I get that with white supremacists,” said Dutta, who also addresses hate and white supremacy in his work, “but the sheer scale of this is really the first time.”
He is getting up to 80 Twitter and Facebook messages and tags a day calling him names like “grade A twat”, “stinking a**hole” and “boot licker”.
“And not just from one or two, but a set of different people and what seem like organisations,” he said.
Dutta’s work critiques Hindutva ideology and maps the influence of Islamophobia in Indian groups associated with it.
Hindutva seeks to establish the hegemony of Hindus and Hinduism in a secular India, a movement critics have described as extremist right-wing, even fascist.
This story first appeared on nzherald.co.nz
