Ramesh Nagaraj Rao

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Ramesh Nagaraj Rao is a professor of Communication at Columbus State University.

Columbus State University public institution of higher learning located in Columbus, Georgia, United States

Columbus State University is a public institution of higher learning located in Columbus, Georgia. Founded as Columbus College in 1958, the university was established and is administered by the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia.

Contents

Education

Ramesh Nagaraj Rao received his Bachelor of Arts degree from St. Joseph's College, Bangalore in Economics, Political Science, and Sociology in 1977 and a Post Graduate Diploma in Journalism from the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bangalore. [1] He had worked as a bank officer and school teacher, before migrating to United States in 1985. [1] Rao obtained a MS in Mass Communication from the University of Southern Mississippi and then obtained his PhD in Communication from Michigan State University in 1991. [1] [2]

A Bachelor of Arts is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, sciences, or both. Bachelor of Arts programs generally take three to four years depending on the country, institution, and specific specializations, majors, or minors. The word baccalaureus should not be confused with baccalaureatus, which refers to the one- to two-year postgraduate Bachelor of Arts with Honors degree in some countries.

St Josephs College, Bangalore Higher education institution in Bangalore, India

St. Joseph's College (Autonomous), Bangalore is one of the oldest colleges in the state of Karnataka with a history of more than 136 years. It has been conferred as College of Excellence by the University Grants Commission (India). The college is awarded a rating of A++ (3.79/4), in the 4th cycle of re-accreditation by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) in 2017. It imparts graduate, post-graduate and research education. St. Joseph's College has around 300 teaching and non-teaching staff and more than 5500 students. St. Joseph’s College is located at Langford Road near Richmond Circle, Bengaluru

Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan Indian educational trust

Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan is an Indian educational trust. It was founded on 7 November 1938 by Dr. K. M. Munshi, with the support of Mahatma Gandhi. The trust programmes through its 119 centres in India, 7 centres abroad and 367 constituent institutions, cover "all aspects of life from the cradle to the grave and beyond – it fills a growing vacuum in modern life", as Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru observed when he first visited the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in 1950.

Career

He used to be an Associate Professor at Truman State University [3] and an Assistant Professor at Northwest Missouri State University and worked on theories of conflict and hostage negotiations. [2] Rao has served on the executive council of the Hindu American Foundation [1] and has received grants from Rajiv Malhotra's Infinity Foundation. [4]

Truman State University University in Missouri, United States

Truman State University is a public university in Kirksville, Missouri.. It had 6,379 enrolled students in the fall of 2015, with 6,039 undergraduate and 340 postgraduate students, pursuing degrees in 50 undergraduate, and eight graduate programs.

Northwest Missouri State University United States historic place

Northwest Missouri State University is a public university in Maryville, Missouri. Founded in 1905 as a teachers college, its campus is based on the design for Forest Park at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair and is the official Missouri State Arboretum. The school is governed by a state-appointed Board of Regents and headed by President John Jasinski.

Hindu American Foundation Hindu American advocacy organization

The Hindu American Foundation (HAF) is a Hindu American advocacy group founded on September 3, 2003 and headquartered on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.. HAF is involved in the areas of human rights, civil rights and education among others.

Works

Discussing his forthcoming book Secular Gods'Blame Hindu Demons'in 2000, Ramesh Rao said of his aim to counter the plethora of criticism of the Sangh Parivar and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), that had been published after the destruction of the Babri Mosque in 1992 through a "programmatic and sustained campaign of vilification and demonization". [5]

The Sangh Parivar refers, as an umbrella term, to the collection of Hindu nationalist organisations spawned by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and remain affiliated to it. These include the political party Bharatiya Janata Party, religious organisation Vishva Hindu Parishad, students union Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, religious militant group Bajrang Dal and the worker's union Bharatiya Kishan Sangh. It is also often taken to include allied organisations such as the Shiv Sena, which share the ideology of the RSS. The Sangh Parivar represents the Hindu nationalist movement of India.

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh Hindu nationalist organisation in India

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, abbreviated as RSS, is an Indian right-wing, Hindu nationalist, paramilitary volunteer organisation that is widely regarded as the parent organisation of the ruling party of India, the Bharatiya Janata Party. The RSS is the progenitor and leader of a large body of organisations called the Sangh Parivar, which have presence in all facets of the Indian society. Founded on 27 September 1925, the RSS is the world's largest voluntary organisation. It is the largest NGO in the world, while the BJP is the largest political party in the world.

Ramesh Rao co-edited Gujarat after Godhra - Real Violence, Selective Outrage (2003) with Koenraad Elst; it includes a critique of a Human Rights Watch report that claimed complicity of the state in the 2002 Gujarat communal violence. [6]

Koenraad Elst Right wing Hindutva activist

Koenraad Elst is a right wing Hindutva activist, known primarily for his support of the Out of India theory and publication of Hindu Nationalist literature. He has been subject to heavy criticism from academics for the anti-Islamic and fundamentalist themes of his works.

Human Rights Watch New York City-based non-governmental organisation

Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures some governments, policy makers and human rights abusers to denounce abuse and respect human rights, and the group often works on behalf of refugees, children, migrants and political prisoners.

Reception

Martha Nussbaum has found it strange that Rao and his co-authors spent a lot of space in defending the history and politics of the RSS, which was supposedly unconnected to the IDRF. Much of the book is also devoted to personal attacks on the authors of the Sabrang report, with labels such as "Lies, More Lies and Noting But Lies," as well as their caricature as leftist intellectuals with Pakistani connections. Much of Rao's writings are found by Nussbaum to contain digressions and tirades that have little to do with the subject instead of calmly presenting information that allow the readers to judge for themselves. [7]

Martha Nussbaum American philosopher and academic

Martha Craven Nussbaum is an American philosopher and the current Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, where she is jointly appointed in the law school and the philosophy department. She has a particular interest in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, political philosophy, feminism, and ethics, including animal rights. She also holds associate appointments in classics, divinity, and political science, is a member of the Committee on Southern Asian Studies, and a board member of the Human Rights Program. She previously taught at Harvard and Brown.

He also has sympathetic connections to the politicians of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India. [8]

Related Research Articles

Hindutva ("Hinduness") is the predominant form of Hindu nationalism in India. The term was popularised by Vinayak Damodar Savarkar in 1923. It is championed by the Hindu nationalist volunteer organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP) and Hindu Sena. Some left-leaning Indian social scientists have described the Hindutva movement as far-right, adhering to a disputed concept of homogenised majority and cultural hegemony. In 2017, related to a plea to minimize electoral malpractices in terms of religion, the Supreme Court of India declined to reconsider its 1995 judgment that defined Hindutva as "a way of life and not a religion".

Bharatiya Janata Party Political party in India

The Bharatiya Janata Party is one of the two major political parties in India, along with the Indian National Congress. As of 2019, it is the country's largest political party in terms of representation in the national parliament and state assemblies and is the world's largest party in terms of primary membership. BJP is a right-wing party, and its policy has historically reflected Hindu nationalist positions. It has close ideological and organisational links to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

Bharatiya Jana Sangh Former Indian political party

The Bharatiya Jana Sangh was an Indian right wing political party that existed from 1951 to 1977 and was the political arm of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a Hindu nationalist volunteer organisation. In 1977, it merged with several other left, centre and right parties opposed to the Indian National Congress and formed the Janata Party. After the Janata Party split in 1980, the former Jan Sangh was recreated as the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is currently India's largest political party by primary membership and representation in the Lok Sabha.

K. B. Hedgewar Founding leader of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh

Keshav Baliram Hedgewar, also known as "Doctorji" within his organisation, was the founding Sarsanghachalak of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). Hedgewar founded the RSS in Nagpur in 1925, with the intention of promoting the concept of a united India rooted in the Hindutva ideology.

Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) is a right-wing all India student organisation affiliated to the Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)., It is said to be India's largest student organisation with more than three million members.

Jana Krishnamurthi Indian politician

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Kushabhau Thakre was an Indian politician belonging to Bharatiya Janata Party and Member of parliament.

Walter K. Andersen is an American academic known for his studies of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) – a Hindu nationalist organization. He currently serves as Senior Adjunct Professor of South Asia Studies at Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies and is a part of the faculty of Tongji University, Shanghai (China). Previously, he taught comparative politics at the College of Wooster before joining the United States State Department as a political analyst for South Asia specializing in India and Indian Ocean affairs. Additionally, he was an adjunct professor at The American University in Washington, D.C.

Vidya Bharati Indian chain of private schools

Vidya Bharati is the educational wing of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS). It runs one of the largest private network of schools in India, operating 12,000 schools with 32,00,000 students, as of 2016 and has its registered headquarters in Lucknow with a functional headquarters in Delhi and a sub-office in Kurukshetra.

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Hindu nationalism has been collectively referred to as the expression of social and political thought, based on the native spiritual and cultural traditions of the Indian subcontinent. Defenders of Hindu nationalism have tried to avoid the label "nationalism" by arguing that the use of the term "Hindu nationalism" to refer to Hindū rāṣṭravāda is a simplistic translation and is better described by the term "Hindu polity".

Muralidhar Rao Indian politician

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These are the references for further information regarding the Sangh Parivar.

V Satish is the National General Secretary (Organisation) of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Currently he is in-charge of West-Zone and Andhra Pradesh, Bharitya Janata Party. He is Full-time Worker, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and has been the senior functionary for the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh.

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Rao, Ramesh Nagaraj. "Welcome to the website of Dr. Ramish N. Rao" . Retrieved 2012-03-21.
  2. 1 2 Putnam, Linda; Roloff, Michael (1992). "Back Matter". Communication and Negotiation. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Books. doi:10.4135/9781483325880.
  3. Sitaram, K. S.; Prosser, Michael H.; Prosser, Michael (1998). Civic Discourse: Multiculturalism, Cultural Diversity, and Global Communication. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 491. ISBN   9781567504101.
  4. Dr. Ramesh Rao's Research Concerning Media Bias in Recent U.S. Reporting of India, Infinity Foundation, retrieved 2015-03-28
  5. Chalasani 2001.
  6. Witte, John; Green, M. Christian (2011-11-25). Religion and Human Rights: An Introduction. Oxford University Press, USA. p. 357. ISBN   9780199733446.
  7. Nussbaum 2008, pp. 313-314.
  8. Nussbaum 2008, p. 248.
Sources