This article originally appeared at Desicritics.org, a Blogcritics.org network site, providing news and information on media, culture, politics, sports, etc. with a South Asian focus. Visit Desicritics.org for more fine stuff.
Posted on Desicritics by Gazelle.
India's history is under debate in California in the latest chapter of US textbook revisionism. Californian school history textbooks were altered to support Hindutva and related perspectives, under the advice of Hindu organizations like The Vedic Foundation and Hindu Education Foundation. This is as politically explosive in the US as it is in India and elsewhere.
Schools are where we first socialize with the burgeoning world. And school textbooks are where we decipher the world's written memory - history and how 'we happened'. The debate in California is between Hindu nationalists and others, including academics, who are outraged by the whitewash that is being performed in saffron. Coalitions have broadened. The Hindu nationalist - Hindutva - character of the revisionists has put diversity and religious pluralism at risk.
The advocacy site friendsofsouthasia.org describes this as the "Hindutva assault on school history textbooks of the kind that went on a few years ago in India". According to ZMag the positions are "consistent with the attempts of Hindutva groups toward rewriting history in India, where sectarian education campaigns undertaken by Hindu extremist groups demonize minorities through the teaching of fundamentalist curricula".
In the US, controversies over history textbooks are nothing new. They have been documented for current reference. Jonathan Zimmerman in a review of Joseph Moreau's Schoolbook Nation (2003) writes: "The texts have always presented a hodgepodge of complex and even contradictory perspectives, reflecting the diverse interests and influences of the Americans who sought to change them: neo-Confederate white southerners in the 1890s, anti-British immigrants in the 1920s, African Americans in the 1960s, and so on."
Books analyzing content and attacks on textbooks include Frances FitzGerald’s America Revised (1979), James Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me (1995), Joseph Moreau’s Schoolbook Nation (2003), Jonathan Zimmerman’s Whose America? (2002) and Gerard Giordano's Twentieth-Century Textbook Wars (2003).
While revision of South Asian history was due, as was evident when issues of incorrectness arose in Virginia some time ago, the ideologues have overstated their case in California. The Christian Science Monitor correctly takes this to be the global assertion in the US, of a particular religious nationalism. It notes that: "The Board of Education has already heard from South Indians who argued that the HEF [Hindu Education Foundation] and Vedic Foundation represent a North Indian upper-caste perspective."
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Links:
friendsofsouthasia.org
ZMag
zimmerman
Times of India
Sepia Mutiny on issue in Virginia
CSMonitor - India history spat hits US
Article comments
1 - Interesting, I want more
Can anyone shed some light on this issue? I'd like to know what's being changed in California schools' history textbooks.
2 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
"California. The land of fruits, nuts and just a few flakes."
Ronald Reagan
3 - Purple Tigress
I think the comment about fruits, nuts and a few flakes could pertain to any state or country.
Yet it fails to enlighten us on this obviously serious concern.
I'd also like to hear more about this representation of Asian Indians and how it coincides with the representation of other Asians.
4 - concerned parent
Hindus in California are asking the Board of Education to follow the law, the Education Code, which states that all religious faiths be presented with respect, and none as inferior to another.
For example, when California social studies texts write about God in Christianity, they use a capital "G". When they write about God in Hinduism, they use a small "g". This is one example of the changes asked for.
To go a little deeper into this issue, it is based on a semantic problem. Hindus believe there is one Supreme God, and so should rightly be classified as monotheists.
Hindus also believe in great divine beings who help us along the way. Christians and Mormons refer to these beings as "angels" or "archangels". A Mormon would never call Archangel Micahel "god". However, for some reason, these divine beings are called "gods" in Hinduism. A few of these great angels are Ganesha, Hanuman, Vayu, Indra, Agni. Because the word "gods" is used instead of "angel", Hindus are mis-branded as polytheists in the California textbooks. Sounds like a juvenile, obvious mistake, and it is, and it needs fixing.
If you want to go a little deeper, here is the rest of this issue: The word "Hinduism" is a name applied by outsiders. In India there are actually four complete religious faiths considered Hindu, as similar and different as Judaism, Islam and Christianism. Each of these four faiths have their own scripture, hymns, priests, temples, traditions. Each is monotheistic. The four are: (1) Smartas, who call the one God Brahman; (2) Vaishnava, who call the one God Vishnu; (3) Saiva Dharma, who call the one God Siva; and (4) Shaktas, who call the one God Shakti.
Some textbook authors have tried to lump all four together and then applied the label polytheist. See the problem?
So this is one example of the changes requested by the Hindu community in California. As an American parent I don't give a whit about Hindu nationalism. I know I have two kids in school who don't even recognize or respect their own religion when they read these textbooks. That's what needs changing.
5 - gazelle
California Textbooks - specific issues #1
Select edits with comments
http://www.friendsofsouthasia.org/textbook/TextbookEdits.html
FAQ
http://www.friendsofsouthasia.org/textbook/FOSA_CAC_Position.html
Interview: Professor Michael Witzel (Harvard) - Rediff, December 30, 2005
http://www.rediff.com/news/2005/dec/30inter1.htm
6 - gazelle
Caliornia Textbooks - speciic issues #2
Dr. Amartya Sen, Nobel Laureate, on Hindutva Reinvention of History
http://www.friendsofsouthasia.org/textbook/AmartyaSen_On_Hindutva.html
Detailed comments by the Hindu groups HEF & VF on Witzel, Wolpert, Heitzman, etc (pdf)
http://www.hindueducation.org/ca/SecondCRPAnalysis.pdf
7 - California Resident
Here are a few more links for those who need to study more. I am not a fanatic, but I despise the ways that some anti-Hindu organizations are politising the issue. It is a well known fact that California Textbooks are derogatory of Hinduism. It is high time that Hindu parents take notice and change that. It is seriously affecting the self-esteem and confidence of Hindu youth. There are many horror stories of bullying, etc. at school and later as a result of the mis-informaion in the textbooks.
http://tinyurl.com/9r2lw
Listen to some california students in these Podcasts India in Classrooms Podcasts
8 - Lynn Johnson
India-West Article
9 - godoggo
Here's a wikipedia page.
Glass houses, Ruvy.
10 - godoggo
BTW, that wiki page has some really good links.
11 - Public record: Witzel background
This is the man leading the group that wants to keep anti-Hindu bias in California schoolbooks.
"Four graduate students interviewed by The Crimson said that Witzel should lose his tenure and be removed from the University."
"Students said they found the man disruptive and did not understand why he was there"
- excerpts from The Crimson, Harvard's newspaper
Witzel has been disruptive for 10 years. See entire article:
12 - Govind Nishar
This is not a debate about Indian history but about the portrayal of Hindus and Hinduism. Furthermore, this is about the double-standards being applied on one hand to semitic religions, which are portrayed in a positive light based upon their own self-perceptions, and Hinduism, which is mocked, ridiculed and portrayed in a negative light that would put any practising Hindu to shame. These are fine disctinctions that need to be made by any who have the discernment and the good-will to seek and to arrive at the truth of this matter.
13 - Sunil Kumar Bhattacharjya
Many who critcise Hindu Dharmashastra do not know that the Manu Smriti, which in its entirety was only for the Satya Yuga, made it incumbent on the man to take complete care of the security and the safety of the weaker sex so much so that it appeared as if the women had no freedom. At that time father was to look after their daughters completely, husband was to look after their wife completely and son was to look afetr their mother completely such that the freedom of woman was very restricted. However the status enjoyed by the women was the highest. Manu said that to a son mother was thousand times more respectable than his father. Manu anticipatyed that woman would not like to be protected so much at the cost of their liberty in the later ages. That is how for the other three yugas there are three separate Smritis and gradually the women were given more and more liberty in keeping with the social changes such that women would not suffer due to any fault of man. If there were any lacunae anywhere during the treatment of women those were due to the human failings and not due to the Dharmashastras.
14 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
Godoggo writes,
Glass houses, Ruvy
My comment about California being the land of fruits, nuts and a few flakes, refers not to the South Indians seeking changes in the textbooks, but to the idiots on school boards who don't pay attention to what they are buying to educate their children.
From the subsequent comments I see at this article, my comment remains most appropriate, even if on the nasty side.