Talk:Malini Ranganathan

By Anirudha Patel

Malini Ranganathan is an Associate Professor in the School of International Service at American University, as of November 2022. According to her university profile, she researches on environmental casteism and environmental racism in urban contexts and specifically she studies how caste and racial histories shape segregated housing and property relations, water and sanitation access, and flood and climate vulnerability.

In 2021, she endorsed the "Dismantling Global Hindutva" conference and made the allegation

"the current government of India [in 2021] has instituted discriminatory policies including beef bans, restrictions on religious conversion and interfaith weddings, and the introduction of religious discrimination into India’s citizenship laws. The result has been a horrifying rise in religious and caste-based violence, including hate crimes, lynchings, and rapes directed against Muslims, non-conforming Dalits, Sikhs, Christians, adivasis and other dissident Hindus. Women of these communities are especially targeted. Meanwhile, the government has used every tool of harassment and intimidation to muzzle dissent. Dozens of student activists and human rights defenders are currently languishing in jail indefinitely without due process under repressive anti-terrorism laws."

Publications

Books

1. Ranganathan, Malini, et al., editors. Rethinking Difference in India Through Racialization: Caste, Tribe, and Hindu Nationalism in Transnational Perspective. Routledge, 2022.

Journals

1. Ranganathan, Malini, and A Bonds. "Racial Regimes of Property: An Introduction." Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, vol. 40, no. 2, 2022, pp. 197-207.
2. Ranganathan, Malini. "Towards a Political Ecology of Caste and the City." Journal of Urban Technology, vol. 29, no. 1, 2022, pp. 135-143.
3. Ranganathan, Malini, et al. "Rethinking Difference in India Through Racialization: An Introduction." Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 45, no. 2, 2022, pp. 193-215.
4. Ranganathan, Malini. "Caste, Racialization, and the Making of Environmental Unfreedoms in Urban India." Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 45, no. 2, 2022, pp. 257-277.

   The author critiques the caste system and wrongfully extends the caste system not just to Hindus but also to Muslims, and says that upper caste Muslims have been discriminating towards lower caste Muslim Dalit communities without explaining what upper caste and lower caste means. Further, the author misleads the readers without mentioning the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) to talk about a made-up term, “Hindutva neoliberalism,” and states that the government is labeling the current citizens as "encroachers," "illegals," or "anti-nationals”.

5. Ranganathan, Malini. "Rule By Difference: Empire, Liberalism, and the Legacies of Urban 'Improvement'." Environment and Planning: A (Economy and Space), vol. 50, no. 7, 2018, pp. 1386–1406.
6. Ranganathan, Malini, and S Doshi. "The Color of Corruption: Whiteness and Populist Narratives." Society and Space, blog for the journal Environment and Planning: D, 2017.