The University of California in Berkeley has announced a panel discussion titled 'Indian Elections 2024: Hindu Nationalism, Ayodhya and Dispossession', scheduled to take place on 26 April.
The discussion is being co-hosted by the Institute for South Asia Studies (ISAS) and the Center for Race and Gender at the University of California.
Focussed on India's upcoming Lok Sabha election, the panel discussion will feature speakers who are known to be some of the most stringent of critics of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government policies in India.
Angana P Chhatterji, an Indian-origin activist, author and a research anthropologist, accuses the BJP of drawing inspiration from the Nazis, according to her write-ups in Indian media.
In an article published in The Wire this month, Chhatterji launched a scathing criticism of the BJP-led government over the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the Ram Temple consecration in January.
"Both signalled the erasure of the Muslim from Hindu-India, portentous of the unfolding grotesque," she wrote.
Audrey Truschke, a professor of South Asian history at Rutgers University and an author, is another speaker at the UC Berkeley event.
She accuses the Modi government of refashioning India as an ethno-religious state primarily for Hindus.
Publishing in Time Magazine in January, she described Ram Temple's consecration as the "biggest political testament yet to Hindu supremacy over Indian Muslims".
Thomas Blom Hansen, a professor of anthropology at Stanford University, has directly accused Modi and his supporters of inflicting gradual "structural violence" against Indian Muslims.
"Not just because Mr. Modi wants it, but because many of those who brought him to power would like to see that," Hansen said in one of his previous interviews.