Sharmila Rudrappa is the Director of South Asia Institute at the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin[1][2] as of May 2024. According to her university profile, she teaches and researches issues related to gender, race, and labour. Her specific interests focus on "reproductive markets" in the U.S. and India.
She has published no books, papers, or research pertaining to Hindus, Hinduism, the Indus Civilization, caste or Ancient India.
In her Book chapter titled "Law’s Culture and Cultural Difference” published in the book "Body Evidence: Intimate Violence against South Asian Women in America" the term South Asian refers generically to women facing violence in the region but she treats women as a homogeneous group in the region and ignores the reality that laws and the treatment of women vary widely across India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan[Publications 1].
Her work focuses on reproductive rights in India and the United States and holds no relevance to the allegation she made in a letter supporting the "Dismantling Global Hindutva" Conference.
"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."[3]
On November 5, 2017, she signed the letter submitted by the South Asia Faculty Group (SAFG) to the California State Board of Education[4] where she:
- She misrepresented scholarship stating "Mythological terms substitute for historical ones for example the 'Indus Valley Civilization' (a fact-based geographic term) appears to be replaced with a religiously-motivated and ideologically charged term 'Indus-Saraswati/Sarasvati Civilization'. The Saraswati is a mythical river"[5][6][7]
- Implied that Christians and Muslims existed in Ancient India, prior to the founding of these religions
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Books[edit]
- Rudrappa, Sharmila. Discounted Life: The Price of Global Surrogacy in India. New York University Press, 2015. [1](https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt15zc5nx).
- Rudrappa, Sharmila. Ethnic Routes to Becoming American: Indian Immigrants and the Cultures of Citizenship. Rutgers University Press, 2004. [2](https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/ethnic-routes-to-becoming-american/9780813533711/).
Book Chapter[edit]
- Rudrappa, Sharmila. "Law’s Culture and Cultural Difference." Book Chapter in Body Evidence: Intimate Violence against South Asian Women in America. Rutgers University Press, 2007
Journal Articles[edit]
- Rudrappa, Sharmila. "Reproducing Dystopia: The Politics of Transnational Surrogacy in India, 2002-2015." Critical Sociology, vol. 44, no. 7-8, 2017. [3](https://www.cifp.sociology.cam.ac.uk/directory/sharmila-rudrappa).
- Rudrappa, Sharmila. "Land, Women and Techno-pastoral Development in Southern Karnataka, India." Reproductive Biomedicine and Society Online, vol. 7, 2018. [4](https://www.academia.edu/38392046/Land_women_and_techno_pastoral_development_in_Southern_Karnataka_India_pdf).
- Rudrappa, Sharmila. "What to Expect When You’re Expecting: The Affective Economies of Consuming Surrogacy in India." Positions: Asia Critique, vol. 24, no. 1, 2016. [5](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297598819_What_to_Expect_When_You're_Expecting_The_Affective_Economies_of_Consuming_Surrogacy_in_India).
- Rudrappa, Sharmila. "Working India’s Reproductive Assembly Line: Surrogacy and Reproductive Rights?" Western Humanities Review, vol. 66, no. 3, 2012, pp. 77-101. [6](https://journals.sagepub
References[edit]
- ↑ Sharmila Rudrappa page on University of Texas at Austin accessed on May 26, 2024
- ↑ Sharmila Rudrappa page on Academia accessed on May 26, 2024
- ↑ "Letter of Support", Dismantling Global Hindutva Conference website, accessed August 7, 2022
- ↑ 2017 South Asia Faculty Group (SAFG) Letter to the California State Board of Education
- ↑ Chakrabarti, Dilip, and Sukhdev Saini. The Problem of the Sarasvati River and Notes on the Archaeological Geography of Haryana and Indian Punjab. Aryan Books International, 2009.
- ↑ Danino, Michel. The Lost River: On the Trail of the Sarasvati. Penguin Books, 2010.
- ↑ McIntosh, Jane R. A Peaceful Realm: The Rise and Fall of the Indus Civilization. Westview Press, 2002, p. 24. where she stated "Suddenly it became apparent that the “Indus” Civilization was a misnomer—although the Indus had played a major role in the development of the civilization, the “lost Saraswati” River, judging by the density of settlement along its banks, had contributed an equal or greater part to its prosperity. Many people today refer to this early state as the “Indus-Saraswati Civilization” and continuing references to the “Indus Civilization” should be an abbreviation in which the “Saraswati” is implied. There are some fifty sites known along the Indus whereas the Saraswati has almost 1,000. This is misleading figure because erosion and alluviation has between them destroyed or deeply buried the greater part of settlements in the Indus Valley itself, but there can be no doubt that the Saraswati system did yield a high proportion of the Indus people’s agricultural produce"