Week 218: Understanding Hinduphobia Conference Submissions, Sandeshkali
02/18/2024 - Modern Hindu Content
Welcome to Eternal Path! This week we feature: submissions for the Understanding Hinduphobia conference, a highlight on recent developments in Sandeshkali, and an Aesthetic!
Action Highlight: Understanding Hinduphobia Papers
The “Understanding Hinduphobia” Conference brings together writers, scholars, academics, activists, and more to help define, take stock of, and combat Hinduphobia both inside and outside academic environments. Chief among the cool things that this conference has accomplished in previous avatars is a clear and succinct definition of Hinduphobia, available here.
They have recently released a call for proposals, due April 1, 2024, and are timing the next conference for Fall 2024. More information is available at the link here.
The theme for this year is “Hinduphobia through Erasure”.
Hinduphobia Highlight: Sandeshkali
Sandeshkali is a village in the Indian state of West Bengal, located in the North 24 Parganas District and bordering Bangladesh. This area is very close to the famous Sundarbans natural area. West Bengal currently is ruled by the Trinamool Congress (TMC) a party who largely builds its governing coalition off of getting nearly 100% of the Muslim votes in West Bengal and about 30-45% of the Hindu votes.
The Sandeshkali area is currently governed by a TMC politician named Shahjahan Sheikh, a corrupt strongman who amassed a curiously large amount of wealth after switching parties from the Communist Party to the TMC in 2013. Under his rule the region has seen a large amount of infiltration of illegal Rohingya Muslims and his henchmen often extract payments from fish traders, farmers, and regular people, essentially as shakedown money.
The rise of the Rohingya population in Bengal, buttressed by illegal Bangladeshi Muslim immigration, as well as TMC leadership’s absolute reliance on Muslim votes means that religious issues are prominent in the area. When henchmen of Sheikh visited homes, they would often forcibly take away women, for the pleasure or TMC workers, often abducting them for days at a time. Generally speaking, even though the area is 30+% Muslim, only Hindu women were being abducted. Additionally, the TMC leadership turned a blind eye towards Rohingya illegal immigrants misbehaving with Hindu women.
Local women in February began fighting back and demanding the arrest of Sheikh as well as filing rape complains against his staff. In response TMC goons have been attacking the homes of protesting women and continuing assaults on villagers, while letting Rohingya perfidy go unpunished.
Swarajya Magazine has a great podcast episode on this topic on Spotify and a great summary article here.