San Francisco professor fears rape by militant Hindu activists

Mark Williams:

A San Francisco professor has become embroiled in a dispute with militant Hindu activists who, she says, threatened to parade her naked in the streets and rape her because she was working with a local organization investigating religious and caste tensions in eastern India.

Angana Chatterji, an associate professor of social and cultural anthropology at the California Institute of Integral Studies, says the threats against her and other female members of the Indian People's Tribunal on the Environment and Human Rights were made last week as they took testimony from residents in impoverished Orissa state.

Over the past few years, Orissa has become a focal point in a campaign by Hindu fundamentalists to turn secular India into a Hindu nation ruled by Hindutva, a set of strict Brahmin principles. The campaign has heated up into a simmering "war for souls" as Hindu nationalists struggle to halt conversions to Islam and Christianity among the state's impoverished lower castes and classes.

Chatterji, an Indian citizen born in Calcutta, has stirred the ire of Hindu nationalists before by writing about religious violence in other Indian states and campaigning in the United States to block funding for extremist Indian groups.

The controversy last week came as Chatterji and other members of the tribunal were taking depositions from activists belonging to three Hindu groups -- the Bajrang Dal (army of the monkey god, Hanuman), Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Council) and the women's wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteers Group).

The meeting was peaceful, Chatterji said by telephone, until her group received a fax from the state office of the Hindu council labeling the tribunal a collection of "leftists, fellow travelers (and) Hindu baiters." In a pointed reference to Chatterji, it said: "The inclusion of an NRI (nonresident Indian) well known for anti-Hindu activities in the U.S. suggests foreign funds from sources bent on destabilizing the country."

"At that point," Chatterji said, "things started to get violent."

Activists from the Bajrang Dal and the World Hindu Council surrounded the tribunal members -- academics, human rights workers and retired judges among them -- and demanded that the audio recordings of their testimony be handed over. Chatterji refused, but to placate them, she said, she destroyed the tapes in front of them, and hearings were canceled for the day.

Outside, the crowd grew agitated, Chatterji said, with some shouting, "We will rape those women" as others allegedly called out: "We will parade them naked."

India's official National Human Rights Commission has reported that the stripping and public parading of women is a tactic used by upper-caste and Hindu nationalists to intimidate and punish those who oppose them.

Sangh Parivar activists disrupt tribunal hearing