In support of Divya Dwivedi and Shaj Mohan

Suppression of thinkers, philosophers and dissidents by fascists is not a new act. But it seems that this repression has not only increased, but has found a more comprehensive and serious trend. Indian philosophers Divya Dwivedi and Shaj Mohan are important figures in philosophy today and have been repeatedly threatened by fascism in India for their positions.

 In January 2021 with J. Reghu they published the now seminal long essay “Hindu Hoax: How the Upper Castes Invented a Hindu Majority”. At that time Le Monde reported that the authors of the essay received serious threats. Jean-Luc Nancy, who passed away in August 2021, wrote in the newspaper Liberation defending their position and expressed serious concern.

Divya Dwivedi and Shaj Mohan are currently targeted by Hindu nationalists. They are paying for “their extraordinary commitment to justice, equality and political freedoms for people around the world”. A group of intellectuals, including Étienne Balibar, Slavoj Žižek, Georges Didi-Huberman or Barbara Cassin, provide them with support. They and they warn about "harassment", and "the suffocating atmosphere of intimidation and the physical threats they face".

According to their statement published in the leading French newspaper MediaPart,

“Divya Dwivedi and Shaj Mohan are among the most important philosophers alive today. Dwivedi and Mohan developed their thought beyond the “Western” conception of philosophy within a community of friendship with Jean-Luc Nancy, Bernard Stiegler, Achille Mbembe and Barbara Cassin. Their project with Jean-Luc Nancy is to find a new beginning for philosophy beyond the geo-politicized and “racialized” histories of philosophy while recognizing the teachings of the deconstruction of philosophy undertaken by Heidegger and Derrida. Their contributions as scholars are valuable not only to the discipline of philosophy, but also to science and politics. 

Their extraordinary commitment to justice, equality and political freedoms for people around the world comes at a high cost. In India, where they reside, they are regularly harassed and threatened with death on social networks. These threats are serious. In recent years, while foreign scholars have been denied entry to India, Indian scholars have been imprisoned or murdered. Last year, it was reported in Le Monde that Dwivedi and Mohan had been threatened with beheading by the Hindu far right in India, and on this occasion Nancy wrote in Liberation to support them and condemn this situation. 

Dwivedi and Mohan's scholarly contributions on caste oppression in India - which they have called India's oldest form of racism and apartheid - are the source of animosity from the Hindu far right to their regard. As Dwivedi and Mohan have repeatedly demonstrated, caste oppression is often masked by Hindu majoritarianism. Although there is widespread awareness of the oppression of religious minorities in India, the world has yet to grasp the realities of caste oppression. They also showed that in India, the postcolonial theory and the decolonial project both aim to restore the supremacist idea of ​​India's upper caste. Their famous work on MK Gandhi, "Gandhi and Philosophy:, appeared with a preface by Jean-Luc Nancy. In this complex work, they argue that Gandhi's contributions to creating postcolonial and decolonial projects must be understood to combat new forms of racisms and political tendencies. 

We express our solidarity with the philosophers Divya Dwivedi and Shaj Mohan. We are deeply concerned about the harassment, the suffocating atmosphere of intimidation and the physical threats faced by Dwivedi and Mohan.

To sign the petition, it's here.

Signatories:

Etienne Balibar (philosophy)

Slavoj Žižek (philosophy)

Barbara Cassin (philosophy)

Emily Apter (philosophie)

Stuart Kauffman (sciences)

Antonio Negri (philosophy)

Judith Revel (philosophy)

Hélène Nancy (philosophy)

Augustin Nancy (law)

Ana Soto (sciences)

Patrice Maniglier (philosophy)

Frédéric Worms (philosophy)

Maël Montévil (philosophy and science)

Kamran Baradaran (philosophy and literature)

Anthony Ballas (philosophy)

Daniel Tutt   (philosophy)

Jean-Claude Monod (philosophy and cinema)

Mazarine Pingeot (philosophy)

Jacob Rogozinski  (philosophie)

Giuseppe Longo (philosophy and sciences)

Carlos sunshine (sciences)

Aspen Ballas (humanities)

Paul-Antoine Miquel (philosophy)

Céline Flécheux (philosophy)

Henrik Zetterberg - Nielsen (literature)

Ginette Michaud (literature)

Sophie Wahnich (story)

Todd McGowan (philosophie)

Marc Crépon (philosophy)

Robert Beshara (psychology)

André Bernold (literature)

Jean-Christophe Bailly (literature)

Georges Didi - Huberman (philosophy)

Mathieu Potte - Bonneville (philosophy)

Nicholas Bernold (literature)

Michel Surya (literature)

Nicolas André (technology)

Suzanne Doppelt (literature)

Boyan Manchev (philosophie)

Marcia Cavalcante Schuback (philosophie)

Myriam Revault d'Allonnes (philosophy)

Matteo Mossio (philosophy)

Anne E. Berger (literature)

Rodolphe Burger (arts)

Olivier Landau (technologie)