ABSTRACT
This chapter engages in an act of concerned scholarship under three headings. The first, 'Intellectual Kshatriyas and a Hinduism Can Just Say 'No", provides an overview of the rise of Hindu American public intellectuals self-described 'intellectual kshatriyas' proponents of an assertive form of diasporic nationalism. The second, 'India's American 'Education Wars", explores the attempted erasure of Dalit's from South Asian Religious Studies curricula by specific cohorts of the diaspora living in the United States (US). And the third, 'Selfhood, Agency, Indianness', rectifies certain caricatures of Dalit Christianity prevalent in those same cohorts of the diaspora. In the years of relative quiet since the 'Academy Wars', Rajiv Malhotra has effected a notable U-turn, from overseer of American South Asian Religious Studies scholarship to prophet of a Huntingtonesque vision of an imminent clash of civilisations where Hinduism and India are the victim and Christianity and America the victimiser.
