Amid the escalation of war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, in a lecture on 'The History and Politics of the Palestinian Present' at OP Jindal Global University in India, professor Achin Vanaik allegedly made several anti-Hindu remarks.
On 1 November, a retired Professor of International Relations and former Head of the Department of Political Science at the University of Delhi, now an activist made several antisemitic and anti-Hindu comments.
“There's a difference between Zionism and Hindutva. Both are racist and exclusivist forms of nationalism. But Zionism is not anti-Muslim. It is anti-Palestinian…But it is happy to piggyback on current Islamophobia. Hindutva is fundamentally foundationally anti-Muslim,” he said during the lecture in the name of solidarity with Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
He further glorified suicide bombing and said, “Understand one thing about suicide bombing, suicide bombing expresses above all the determination of not to kill so much as the determination to die.”
He also argued against the notion that Hindus are the original inhabitants of India and stated that the belief attributing Hinduism as one of the oldest civilizations is incorrect. Vanaik claimed that the "archaeological and scientific evidence shows that Vedic civilizations are much older than the emergence of Vedas by around 2000 years, so now you have to desperately talk about the Saraswati Valley Civilisation."
However, when Law Street Journal tried to talk about the controversial statements of the retired professor to the university, a senior spokesperson of the university said that, “We are unable to respond to this query at this moment.”
