Victory over Hindu nationalists in California textbooks rewrite
Sacramento,
California, Feb 28: The intense struggle over the
content of Indian history in California textbooks ended yesterday
afternoon at 2 p.m. with the special committee of the California
State Board of Education [SBE] voting unanimously to overturn a
majority of contentious changes proposed by Hindu right-wing groups
to California school textbooks. This decision is a victory for
community organizations such as Friends of South Asia (FOSA), the
Ambedkar Center for Peace and Justice, the Federation of Tamil Sangams of
North America, and the Coalition Against Communalism (CAC), who have
worked diligently to ensure that ahistorical and sectarian content
proposed by Hindu right-wing groups is removed from California
textbooks. Hundreds of South Asian scholars from across the United
States and nearly fifty internationally renowned Indologists had
repeatedly written to the Board as well, protesting the changes
proposed by the Hindu nationalist groups.
At
a public hearing on February 27th, the SBE special committee heard
testimony from scores of people, regarding controversial edits for
6th grade history-social science textbooks proposed by two
Hindu Nationalist Indian American groups, the Vedic Foundation (VF)
and the Hindu Education Foundation (HEF). These organizations have
provoked outrage from a broad spectrum of South Asian community
groups for pushing sectarian agendas and revisionist histories which
whitewash references to the oppression of women and Dalits (formerly
known as “untouchables”), and present Hinduism as a monotheistic
religion and Aryans as indigenous to India, despite overwhelming
scholarly evidence to the contrary.
Parents,
students, working professionals, faculty, first and second generation
immigrants, and representatives of many community groups eloquently
stressed the importance of presenting children with accurate,
scholarly information on all aspects of ancient Indian history. Some
of the most moving testimony before the SBE came from individuals who
had personally experienced caste oppression. Representatives of Dalit
organizations urged the SBE to restore references to Dalits and the
caste system, which had been deleted from the textbooks on the HEF’s
and VF’s recommendations. “The caste system is the single most
important repressive social phenomenon that has been unique to
Hinduism for over 3,000 years and should therefore find a place in
the textbooks,” reminded Rama Krishna Bhupathi of Friends of South
Asia and a Dalit himself. Speaking for the Federation of Tamils of
North America, Thillai Kumaran, a concerned parent who stated his
lower-caste origins during his testimony, strenuously objected to the
textbooks’ suggestion that the caste system is no longer relevant
in modern India. “Hinduism continues to affect the social status of
people in India, and has condemned millions of Dalits as social
outcasts,” he said. Hansraj Kajla, also a parent and representative
of the Guru Ravi Dass Gurdwara (a Dalit group), suggested that the
deletion of references to the caste system and the word “Dalit”
in the textbooks was tantamount to “wiping out the histories of
more than 160 million people in India.”
The
powerful and stirring testimony from Dalit groups was met with
outright denial from the HEF and VF supporters. One speaker claimed
that there was no oppression against lower castes in India and indeed
it was only higher classes in India that faced discrimination due to
the affirmative action programs, while another argued that the very
fact that some Dalits had migrated to California is evidence enough
that Dalits are a privileged community in India.
While
supporters of the VF and HEF claimed that references to negative
aspects of Hinduism such as the caste system and the oppression of
women damage the self-esteem of their children, others strongly
disagreed. Speaking from her experiences of learning about caste and
gender oppression in middle school, Veena Dubal, a joint law and
doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley,
explained, “Like many of my European-American classmates whose
ancestral histories could be traced to a time before women and people
of color were given independent legal identities and allowed
political participation… I was painfully embarrassed to read about
the injustices committed in my parents’ homeland. Yet it was
precisely these lessons that taught me about the necessity for
universal civil liberties and human rights.” Simmy Makhijani, who
also remembers facing racism and sexism in American classrooms while
growing up, challenged the attempts by HEF and VF to sanitize Indian
history. She asked, “My concern is why should history be
(re)written to make us feel better?”
One
of the most contentious edits that received considerable attention at
the meeting was one where the HEF sought to replace the original
text, “Men [in ancient India] had many more rights than women”
with one that read “Men had different duties (dharma) and rights
than women.” The staff of the California Department of Education
recommended against making this edit yesterday, in keeping with the
demands of groups such as Friends of South Asia, Coalition Against
Communalism and others who insisted on a historical approach to
ancient India. As Kasturi Ray, a specialist in Gender and Women’s
studies in UC, Berkeley, and herself a Hindu-American parent said in
her letter to the Board, “This sentence also equates difference
with what were actually systematically-denied duties and rights based
on gender. With this sentence, we lose the opportunity to understand
what women really had to do (and continue to do) to win equal duties
and rights.” Angana Chatterji, an Associate Professor of
Anthropology at the California Institute of Integral Studies,
concurred that an accurate understanding of history can inspire
individuals to become better citizens. In her letter to the SBE,
Chatterji observed, “We must make distinctions between a national
pride that wishes to put forward a uniform and glorifying version of
history and the scholarship of history, which seeks to present the
complexities of societies. Fiction as history does not benefit
Indian-American and other California school-goers.”
Speakers
at the special committee meeting also pointed out the VF and HEF have
organizational ties to militant Hindu groups such as the Vishwa Hindu
Parishad (VHP) and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in India
that have been linked to large-scale violence against religious
minorities. Others underscored the pluralistic nature of Hinduism.
Shiva Mandalam challenged the Hindu Education Foundation’s claim
that the Vedas constitute the source of Hinduism “Popular Hinduism,
as it is practiced today,” he pointed out, “is a complex set of
practices, which has little to do with the Vedas.” He claimed that
the VF and HEF promote the views of high-caste Hindu elites “who
view culture in terms of neat, boxed, and segregated religious
categories and feel threatened by practices that are egalitarian and
tolerant of other religions.”
Raju
Rajagopal, an organizer for CAC, marveled at the overwhelming
community mobilization against the VF’s and HEF’s campaign to
insert sectarian material into California textbooks. He also
highlighted that this controversy was not just abstract debate but
had immediate social relevance. “Hindu right wing historians claim
that the Taj Mahal in Agra and the Kaaba in Mecca and some 1000
mosques in Ahmedabad were once Hindu temples. This was clearly on the
mind of VHP/RSS rioters in 2002, when they destroyed or converted
into temples over 270 mosques during the massive Gujarat pogroms.
Rewriting history the Hindutva way – as suggested by many of the
edits by VF/HEF -- are designed and destined to lead to more communal
conflicts in India. “
The
SBE is slated to make its final decisions regarding textbook adoption
on its meeting on March 8-10, 2006.
