Vamsee Juluri

I recently had the privilege of presenting a paper on a panel at the National Communication Association conference alongside one by Professor Charu Uppal on the subject of – Priyanka Chopra. This paper, unlike Barkha Dutt’s selective intervention, was the whole deal, a complete analysis of the global celebrity apparatus with its ruthless, shameless, avaricious system of inclusion, exclusion, objectification, packaging, and denial

Gandhi remains an enduring and respected icon among even younger American generations born well after Gandhi, King, Lennon, and other peace icons, and the video gave us much to talk about in terms of culture, representation, and the many meanings of Gandhi in the contemporary world

Both this recent film and Slumdog Millionaire revelled in filmmakers' utter callousness towards the victims of terrorism and a kid-glove treatment offered to a community, ideology and even a nationality that might be offended, if not targeted, if they are held accountable for the violence perpetrated on innocent Indian civilians

Why can’t there be just one simple, straightforward voice, one logical, well-understood narrative path with rules for what can and cannot be said, for Hindus in private and public?

The incident of severing the tongues of two priests of the Bhayanak Nath temple of Auraiya, Uttar Pradesh, should jolt Indians out of their slumber in which they believe all faiths have been peacefully co-existing in the country

Hindus need an institutional — yet non-governmental and not necessarily monetised — approach towards building the right discourse. Until every child, student, and narrative worker in India can find himself or herself rewarded professionally for pursuing and expressing the truth about Hinduism in his or her career, all we have done so far will remain only a shadow narrative, not where it has to be at all.

'Saffronization', in short, became the stand-in for what the same people who coined it would have called 'Coca Colonization', or even just 'Americanization'.  And 'Saffron', to use the same example, became in this discourse the stand-in for 'White', leading to absurd extremes of colour-coding liberties like Professor Wendy Doniger

A Black Mirror-like device about Hindus being subhuman or dangerous is getting cozily implanted into more and more peoples’ heads through media and education, and this is happening not only with media in other countries where Hindus live..