aka The Feminist Critical Hindu Studies Collective*

Shreena Gandhi, Sailaja Krishnamurti, Harshita Mruthinti Kamath, Shana Sippy

Feminist Critical Hindu Studies Collective pictured

The Feminist Critical Hindu Studies Collective (FCHS)

The Auntylectuals aka The Feminist Critical Hindu Studies Collective was founded in 2018. The ethics of FCHS begins with an awareness that contestations over the category “Hinduism” are political and, therefore, studying Hinduism is always also political. In every context in which we encounter it, we must interrogate how Hinduism is being constructed and by whom, who is served by the forms of power it enables, and what forms of injustice it perpetuates or resists. Employing the term “Hindu formations,” FCHS seeks to examine the intersecting processes of racialization, the regulation of sexuality, and the violence of caste. Using the idea of Hindu formations, we hope that scholars and students will come to better understand the ways in which religious traditions emerge over time and are deployed to various ends. FCHS asserts that the categories—Hinduism and Hindu—not only arise in conjunction with forms of white supremacy and caste supremacy but are imbricated with them. Currently, with the generous support of the Wabash Center for Learning & Teaching Theology,  we are engaged in a project to explore Critical Hindu Pedagogies, with a cohort of other scholars from throughout the country.  In 2022, we were granted our first $30,000 Wabash Large Grant to pursue this work and in 2023, we were granted a second Wabash Large Grant to continue this work focusing on “Pursuing Justice: Critical Hindu Pedagogies in Formation,” which seeks to further reimagine our work in light of the the intersections of anti-Black racism, Islamophobia, casteism, homophobia and sexism in the field of Hindu Studies.

Publications and Public Scholarship

  • “Feminist Critical Hindu Studies,” Oxford Bibliographies in Religion, forthcoming.

  • “Feminist Critical Hindu Studies in Formation,” Religion Compass, Feminist Critical Hindu Studies Collective (Shreena Gandhi, Harshita Mruthinti Kamath, Sailaja Krishnamurti. Tanisha Ramachandran, Shana Sippy), March 2021. 

* Members of the Feminist Critical Hindu Studies Collective:

Shreena Gandhi is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Michigan State University

Sailaja Krishnamurti is Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Gender Studies at Queen’s University

Harshita Mruthinti Kamath is Visweswara Rao and Sita Koppaka Associate Professor in Telugu Culture, Literature, and History at Emory University

Shana Sippy is Associate Professor of Religion and Chair of Asian Studies at Centre College and co-director of Religions MN at Carleton College

Our work has been generously supported through grants from the Wabash Center for Learning and Teaching Theology and Religion. The Collective was first supported through a $5000 grant and since then we have been awarded two $30,000 grants to work with a larger group of scholars in developing Critical Hindu Studies Pedagogies. The most recent of the two grants, awarded in the spring of 2023 is focused on Pursuing Justice: Critical Hindu Studies Pedagogies in Formation.

Tanisha Ramachandran, Associate Teaching Professor in the Department for the Study of Religions at Wake Forest University, was a founding member of the Collective. In September 2021, Ramachandran took a temporary leave from the Collective in order to focus on other projects.