No safe place for Hindu students

CHICAGO: Rashmi Samant, a small-town girl from Udipi, Karnataka, was all excited about being elected the first Indian woman to be the president of the prestigious Oxford University Students’ Union. Samant, who ran her campaign on the “Decolonization and Inclusivity” platform, received 1,966 of the 3,708 votes cast in a keenly contested election. She made the headlines in India and across the world. All major Indian and diaspora news outlets proudly covered this news. Two days later, however, it all fell apart. Samant had to resign amid allegations of “racism”, “antisemitism”, and “transphobia”. These allegations had roots in some of Samant’s past social media posts when she was a teenager.

On her part, Samant promptly apologised, saying: “They were the posts of a teenager who just had access to the world of social media. I again reiterate my apology to those genuinely hurt for my ignorance but not to those with malicious intent who targeted me on ‘insensitivity’.”

A few days later, Samant quit Oxford and was on her flight back to India after being bullied, threatened, and abused for her Hindu faith.

Leading the charge against Samant was Abhijit Sarkar, faculty of History at the University of Oxford. Sarkar went hard after Samant with his personal, Hinduphobic attacks. “She has come to Oxford from Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT) in Karnataka,” Sarkar wrote in his Instagram post, “whose official website displays a photo of Modi, the supreme leader. She has come…from coastal Karnataka which is a bastion of Islamophobic far Right (sic) forces… Yes, far Right (sic) Desi forces hate white people and Western modernity because they want to reinstate Sanatan Hindutva.” In another social media post, Sarkar gleefully wrote, “…when I was a kid, I broke several Saraswati idols…”

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