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To Whomever It May Concern:

Hindu Students Council, representing tens of thousands of Hindu students and alumni at Universities throughout North America, strongly condemns a Twitter post made on December 11 by Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government Senior Fellow Suraj Yengde. In the post, Dr. Yengde calls Hindus the “sick people of India,” arguing that it is “their religious books who train the mind.” The post is reproduced below.

As Hindu students and allies throughout North American campuses, we feel compelled to speak out and bring this egregious instance of Hinduphobia to your attention. Deplorably, this instance follows a line of statements made by faculty, post-doctoral researchers, and employees and institutions attached to Harvard University that have a chilling effect on Hindu members of the University community. As any premier research institution, Harvard has a responsibility to balance the interest of fostering free speech with its stated commitment to diversity, inclusion and belonging, reproduced below:

At Harvard, there is a call to action to create greater diversity, inclusion and belonging (DIB) throughout our campus communities. We each have the opportunity — and the responsibility — to create an inclusive and hospitable culture.

As should be clear, Yengde’s words fall into recognized categories of religious bigotry. His words imply that Hindus are brainwashed by Hindu dharma’s revered, sacred texts and conditioned into an inherently violent and oppressive outlook on the world. Hinduism is thus reduced to a single monolithic bloc, inherently incapable of evincing a positive outlook towards members of other communities or classes.

Calling the 900 million Hindus in India “sick” similarly vilifies Hindus as inferior, in need of being removed and disabused of a dangerous, diseased ideology.

What is worse is that Yengde, whom Harvard calls “one of India’s leading scholars and public intellectuals,” has a grossly distorted view of Hinduism, to put it euphemistically. We stand against violence towards Dalits, no matter which religion they practice. Caste discrimination is a problem across South Asia that transcends religion— Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Christians, and Muslims all encounter caste-based discrimination across South Asia. It’s shameful that we have to put this disclaimer in our statement, but this is exactly what Yengde’s post does. He forces Hindus to apologize for caste discrimination as if our scriptures are to blame. This is in spite of the fact that Hindu scriptures themselves provide a rich, foundational basis from which to battle against discrimination in all its forms.

This type of vilification and anti-religious sentiment is of course not uniquely experienced by Hindus. Harvard has in fact recognized, and its administration acted against, this type of obvious bigotry towards other religious groups. Yet, we find, persistently, that Harvard has never recognized even the existence of Hinduphobia within its community, let alone its embeddedness at an institutional level. We mention here just two other recent examples. In February, as part of its India Conference, Harvard University hosted spoken word poet Hussain Haidry, who has insisted on using the word “Hindu” only as a descriptor for acts of terror; he instead chooses to use “Brahminism” to refer to Hinduism which he then calls “root of all that is evil in India.” (To point out the commonality in anti-religious bigotries here, Haidry has also justified the Holocaust)

Tweets from Hussain Haidry’s Twitter handle. These repeatedly juxtapose the word “Hindu” with “Terrorism” while also refusing to use the word “Hindu” to describe the religion. Instead, Haidry uses “Brahmanism” to describe the religion.

In April, Harvard University Press circulated an event titled, “Meritocracy and Democracy: The Social Life of Caste in India,” along with a racist cartoon of Hindus from the era of British colonialism that portrays Hindus as inherently oppressive and manipulable. At that time, Hindu Students Council had contacted Harvard about this incident and received no reply. How can Harvard continue to justify suborning Hinduphobia within its ranks?

In the past, when the Hindu community contacted Harvard, the University defended the actions of its employees under the overarching banner of free speech. This does not pass muster. The University has made an honorable commitment to uphold the inclusion of all individuals at the University. When the repeated actions of members of the community infringe on that sense of inclusion in a manner as flagrant as anti-religious hate speech, the University must recognize its imperative to act and speak to ensure inclusion. When the University recognizes certain kinds of anti-religious hate speech, but remains silent when the Hindu community is explicitly attacked in this way, it unfortunately sends a clear message to Hindus at Harvard that they do not belong. The right to free speech does not preclude—but rather calls upon— Harvard University’s administration to speak out and affirm the belongingness of Hindus at Harvard, condemning anti-Hindu bigotry. A failure to do so is a tacit endorsement of Yengde’s words.

Today, Harvard’s choices about how it chooses to address its own institutional Hinduphobia will speak volumes about its values. Over the past few weeks, several members of Harvard’s community—its Medical School and undergraduate and graduate communities—have reached out to us with grave concern over Yengde’s words and how they may lead to their alienation within the University, in combination with the prevailing culture of Hinduphobia that already pervades the College. Members of all faith communities deserve to be respected and own their identity at Harvard. Will the University reduce its own commitments to a dead letter, or reaffirm the way in which the Hindu community enriches Harvard? We urge Harvard to embrace the latter path by, at minimum, issuing a public statement recognizing this instance of Hinduphobia and explicitly reaffirming the inclusion of the Hindu community at Harvard.

On Behalf of Hindu Students Council,

Arnav Kejriwal President, Hindu Students Council