Academic Hinduphobia is a real thing. For the uninitiated, the term academic Hinduphobia means anti-Hindu bias and hatred being systematically perpetuated by the academia. According to experts on Bharatiya civilization and culture like Rajiv Malhotra, this biased Hinduphobic narrative is mainly pushed forward by the premium universities of the west like Harvard and then percolated down to the Humanities and Social Sciences departments of Bharatiya universities.

If academic Hinduphobia indeed exists in western universities, the possibility of Hindu students studying there becoming victims of Hinduphobia isn’t a far-fetched one. But it’s something that’s been hushed under the carpet. While the prevalence of Islamophobia and antisemitism in western universities is widely critiqued and debated, the presence of Hinduphobia or anti-Hindu hatred on these campuses is not even recognized. It’s at best dismissed as an ultra-right-wing conspiracy theory. Rashmi Samant in her pathbreaking book “A Hindu in Oxford” breaks this chain of silence by drawing attention to the issue of Hinduphobia on western university campuses through her personal case study.

“A Hindu in Oxford “is based on Rashmi Samant’s personal life story, a young meritorious Bharatiya student who secures a coveted spot to study at Oxford University, known as one of the best universities in the world. Rashmi seems like your usual Bharatiya student trying to find her way in a foreign country, starry-eyed at the imposing and magnanimous architecture of Oxford and just the general vibes of an English town. However, her life turns upside down when she decides to contest the elections for the post of the Oxford Student Union President. 

Still steeped in idealism and blissfully unaware of the colonial biases of the hallowed portals of Oxford University, Rashmi makes decolonization of the Oxford University campus and the syllabus a main issue of her election manifesto. As narrated poignantly in the book, Rashmi is shocked at seeing the colonial side of Oxford. She is unable to come to terms with the statues of colonizers and oppressors and orchestrators of brutal genocide of the native people of Asia and Africa adorning the Oxford University campus. That is when she decided to stand for the election on the issue of decolonization.

The election campaign takes place during the time of COVID restrictions and online canvassing is all one’s allowed. Rashmi narrates various hurdles and institutional biases she has to undergo during her candidature along with the relevant proof of those biases. She is the first Bharatiya ever to context the election of Oxford University Student Union President but as a woman of color from a former colony, she is made to feel anything but welcome.

Despite all the odds, Rashmi wins the elections with an overwhelming margin but that’s when the real story begins. Rashmi becomes the target of a vicious hate campaign in which the trollers pull out innocuous social media posts made by Rashmi when she was a teenager and accuse her of Islamophobia, antisemitism, transphobia, etc. Rashmi’s Hindu roots were not directly attacked by the trolls initially but later a Bharatiya faculty member of the university’s history department started defaming and harassing her parents online by creating a vicious post on her parents being ultra-Hindutva elements and supporters of Narendra Modi’s right-wing ideology and haters celebrating the demolition of a mosque to build a temple (Ram Mandir), etc.

The Hinduphobic Professor stalks Rashmi Samant’s parents on social media and pulls out their old pictures to prove his point and demonize them. All this is because Rashmi comes from a family of devout Hindus and doesn’t shy away from displaying her Hindu identity in public. That’s when the real motives of the troll campaign become clear to Rashmi, that she is being targeted only because she is a Hindu and the baseless allegations being leveled against her are just a façade.

What follows is a period of intense turmoil and mental breakdown for Rashmi when she resigns from the post of President despite being elected with an overwhelming majority. But she decided to pursue her case with the Oxford University authorities.

“A Hindu in Oxford” is a compellingly written book that’s a must-read for every Hindu. The book starts on a lighter note with Rashmi talking about her childhood in Udupi, Karnataka,and how it was embedded in the Hindu or the Sanatan way of life. She then describes Oxford through the gaze of a young student who is obviously enamored by the grandeur of the place and the Harry Pottersque world of Oxford. The narrative then takes a sharp turn as we move to chapters where Rashmi begins to see the deep-seated racism and neocolonialism that seems to be lurking around the beautiful campus of Oxford University. 

Rashmi’s story is in a way story of every Hindu student who moves to the US or UK to study at the top universities and looks forward to a great learning experience. The students go there without any preconceived notions and biases, embracing the local culture as much as they can and trying to take everything with an open mind and heart. But what if you realize that the very institution you revere as a seat of learning will always think of you as a lesser being, no matter what you do, just because of your skin color, country of origin, and the religion you practice, that just breaks your heart.

 Rashmi’s book uncovers the deep-seated nexus of institutionalized racism and Hinduphobia in western universities. Rashmi’s Hindu identity became more of a threat when she started getting vocal about the issue of decolonization in her election manifesto. She repeatedly quotes a statement in the book where she is being asked in one of the presidential debates that why she stood for decolonization when colonization clearly liberated the people of your land and gave them a better life.

To any Bharatiya, this blatant glorification of colonialism would come across as a shock. But it seems, for a university like Oxford, their very brand value is built on the exploits of colonialism and that can be a very eerie and unsettling feeling for a Bharatiya student.  That’s why I think this unsettling account of Rashmi Samant also provides an opportunity for these “prestigious” universities to self-introspect and detach themselves from the baggage of colonization.  After all, talk of diversity and inclusion doesn’t make sense if they have statues of colonizers propped up around the campus, and if the syllabus of the Humanities and Social Sciences departments reeks of colonial biases.

 Many of the facts that Rashmi has shared through this book have already been out in the public domain since 2021. The Bharatiya media was compelled to tell Rashmi Samant’s story when she started putting out material about her Oxford University experience on her social media accounts. I have myself seen the extremely vile and vicious Facebook post of Oxford University’s Hinduphobic Professor Abhijit Sarcar who put out a blackened image of Rashmi’s parents attacking them for their Hindu roots and proudly declaring that he is happy she has resigned and clearly Oxford university isn’t ready for a Sanatani President.

The thing is it’s extremely hard for even the most vicious of naysayers to accuse Rashmi Samant of exaggeration and propaganda. A lot of what she has put out in the book form has already been out in the public domain. Also, it’s a fact that the whole hate campaign against her was run on very thin grounds – solely on the basis of some random social media posts made by her years ago.

Had there even been a single instance of Rashmi Samant practicing transphobia or Islamophobia in real life and attacking someone for their identity, it would have been all over the news. But that the trolls never offered any public counterview to Rashmi Samant’s media interviews is a clear testimony to the authenticity of her side of the story. Moreover, as Rashmi herself points out, the trolls were anonymous. They never came out with their identity in public. This is ample proof that she was the victim of a well-orchestrated Hinduphobic and racist hate campaign. Furthermore, she has provided a lot of factual evidence in the book to corroborate her statements.

 Rashmi Samant’s “A Hindu in Oxford” also provides a valuable insight into the woke tactics of mob mentality and public shaming. Rashmi was harassed and shamed so much by the woke mob that she was almost brainwashed into believing that she had done something horribly wrong, and she even issued an apology to the trolls. But the trolls persist, their aim was to get her to resign, and they succeeded in that. Victim-playing and public shaming are common tactics of leftist woke circles on university campuses not just in the west but Bharat. These tactics have long been used to silence any opposing voices as Hindutva vadi, right wing, fascist, etc. “A Hindu in Oxford” aptly draws our attention to these woke tactics.