This Article outlines the rising threat to academic freedom from Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) organizations in the United States. The Article explores how the Hindu nationalist playbook in the United States works, the legal strategies they use to target scholars with whom they disagree, how they leverage social justice mechanisms for redress of grievances, and the broader endgame of these tactics. The Hindu Right both inside and outside of India has long sought to control and shape the content on Hinduism in educational institutions, media narratives, and increasingly, through the legal system. For example, in 2006, Hindutva groups filed suit in California in an effort to prevent teaching about caste as a core element of Hinduism in K-12 textbooks ; in the midst of the ensuing controversy, academics involved with that curricular revision were subjected to a systematic campaign of targeted harassment. Since then, groups such as the Hindu American Foundation (HAF), Hindu Svayamsevak Sangh (HSS), and Vishwa Hindu Parishad-America (VHPA), along with their affiliated student organizations, have used the legal system repeatedly as part of their broader efforts to shut down academic inquiry on Hinduism and Hindutva within academic spaces.

This Article focuses on HAF’s Title VI complaint against the University of Pennsylvania for its sponsorship of a 2021 academic conference, titled Dismantling Global Hindutva, which explored the global threat of Hindu nationalism. The conference was attacked by both domestic and international Hindu nationalist organizations through letter writing campaigns, harassment of university sponsors of the conference, speakers, and organizers. In the past five years, HAF has filed (and often lost) lawsuits against academics, state and local government officials, and faith-based organizations and leaders, ostensibly seeking to represent Hindu interests. However, as the Title VI complaint suggests, these activities risk creating a chilling effect on academic discourse by characterizing academic critiques of Hindu majoritarianism/nationalism, casteism, and Islamophobia as “Hinduphobic” and thereby facilitating targeted harassment of scholars who advance those critiques.