Vinayak Chaturvedi is professor of modern South Asian history at UC Irvine. He is the author of Hindutva and Violence: V. D. Savarkar and the Politics of History (SUNY, 2022).
Elite international universities have announced plans to open campuses in India. Yet Narendra Modi’s government has made it clear these won’t be oases of academic freedom — rather, they’ll help Hindu nationalists impose censorship even outside India’s borders.
The far-right ideology of Hindutva has gained frightening currency under Indian leader Narendra Modi. But in order to combat it, we first have to understand Vinayak Damodar Savarkar — the man who originated the violent ideology.