Talk:Rohit Chopra

By Rutvi Dattani

Rohit Chopra is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, College of Arts and Sciences, Santa Clara University as of August 2022. He is also the co-founder and co-host of the India Explained podcast. He is also a part of the South Asia Scholarly Activist Collective (Description - an initiative committed to inclusive politics, academic freedom, and scholarship in the humanities).

As per his bio on Santa Clara University webpage, Rohit Chopra’s research and teaching focus on global media and cultural identity, new media technologies, and post colonial media.

In 2021, he endorsed the "Dismantling Global Hindutva" conference and made the following unsubstantiated statement

"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."

In 2016, he signed a letter addressed to the State Board of Education, California Department of Education, dated May 17, 2016. The letter stated the following:

1. "There is no established connection between Hinduism and the Indus Civilization. The Rg Veda contains numerous mentions of horses and chariots but there is no conclusive material or fossil evidence for either at any Indus valley archeological site."
2. "It is inappropriate to remove mention of the connection of caste to Hinduism."
3. "The geographic location of the Indus Civilization lies in what is now contemporary India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The use of "South Asia" to describe this shared civilizational heritage is thus entirely appropriate in some places of the framework, even though South Asia is a modern term, and some source materials use the term ‘Ancient India.' "

Publications related to India

1. Chopra, Rohit. The Virtual Hindu Rashtra: Saffron Nationalism and New Media. Harper Collins, 2019.

   In the conclusion of his book "The Virtual Hindu Rashtra: Saffron Nationalism and New Media", he criticises the democratically elected Indian Government for enforcing laws related to "hate speech", yet he calls for technology companies, operating outside India, to decide for Indian citizenry what should become "permissible speech," independent of the Indian laws when presenting information in India. He accuses the Hindu Right of propagating religion based and caste based violence in Indian cyberspace using biased and selective anecdotes and provides no explanation regarding the criteria of sample selection. He does not analyse Indian government targeting women from various communities in his works, as he claims in the letter supporting the "Dismantling Global Hindutva" Conference.

2. Chopra, Rohit. The Gita for a Global World: Ethical Action in an Age of Flux. Context, 2021.
3. Chopra, Rohit. Technology and Nationalism in India: Cultural Negotiations from Colonialism to Cyberspace. Cambria Press, 2008.