Home
FOSA/CAC Position
Letters of Support
Textbook Edits
Action
Alerts
Press Coverage
IN DEPTH:
|
Letter to the California State
Board of Education
from Dr. Angana Chatterji, Associate
Professor, Gender, Ecology and Society Emphasis, Graduate Studies in
Social and Cultural Anthropology, California Institute of Integral
Studies.
Ms. Glee Johnson
State Board of Education
1430 “N” Street, Room 5111
Sacramento, CA 95814
Cc: Mr. Jack O’Connell, Superintendent
California Department of Education
Cc: Dr. Thomas Adams, Director
Curriculum Frameworks and Instructional Resources Division
California Department of Education
Re.: Proposed sectarian edits to California textbooks
February 17, 2006
Dear Ms. Johnson and Members of the California State Board of Education:
I am writing to express my serious concern at the Curriculum
Commission's decision to accept the recommendations proposed by the
Hindu Education Foundation (HEF) and the Vedic Foundation (VF), two
Hindu sectarian organizations in the United States, to revise segments
on India, Indian history, and Hinduism in 6th grade textbooks in
California State schools.
The changes proposed by HEF, VF, and the Ad Hoc Committee of the State
Board of Education, on the basis of recommendations made by Professor
Shiva Bajpai, who is affiliated with the World Association for Vedic
Studies, another Hindu sectarian organization, assert a mythic history
of India as 'social fact'. Contrary to reputable scholarship, the
revisions refute the migration of Aryans, associated by historians with
the emergence of Hinduism, from Central Asia into India. The revisions
posit Hinduism as indigenous to India, rendering mute the histories of
adivasis (tribal, first peoples) and their subjugation by Hindus. For
example, the Ad Hoc Committee proposed, and the Curriculum Commission
accepted, that the current text, 'The Aryans created a caste system',
be replaced with: 'During Vedic times, people were divided into
different social groups (Varnas) based on their capacity to undertake a
particular profession.' Such storying dissociates the caste system from
Hinduism, discounting the oppressive structure and politics via which
the caste system was constituted. It presents the caste system as a
fluid arrangement whereas a more scholarly understanding of caste
entails recognizing it as a Brahmanic system of social classification,
where status was determined by ancestry and reinforced through
religious sanctions for discrimination and violence against lower-caste
groups. As numerous scholars have argued, the caste system was also
aligned with the Varna (color) system, which categorized people into
four groups: Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Sudra (referred to as
'dasas' or slaves). Others 'outside' the Varna system, such as Dalits,
were historically considered 'untouchable'. The Ad Hoc Committee also
advocated deleting mention of Dalits from the text; the Curriculum
Commission agreed to their recommendation that the current text, 'In
modern India, these people are now called Dalits, and treating
someone as an untouchable is a crime against the law,' be replaced
with, 'In modern India, treating someone as an untouchable is a crime
against the law.' This deletion silences the crucial mention of Dalits,
and the staggering injustices and crimes committed against them, from
Indian history.
The Ad Hoc Committee also proposed, and the Curriculum Commission
accepted, that the current text, 'Men had many more rights than women',
be replaced with: 'Men had different duties (dharma) as well as rights
than women. Many women were among the sages to whom the Vedas were
revealed.' In this revision, the inequity of women's rights is
legitimated and characterized as 'different rights', rendering
invisible women's subordinated role in a patriarchal society. Moreover,
this further over emphasizes the importance of the Vedas in Hinduism by
legitimizing these texts as 'revealed' doctrines. Another example of
the Ad Hoc Committee’s attempt to obscure discrimination against
women and their subjugation is evidenced in their recommendation that
the following sentence be deleted: 'However, Hinduism also taught
that women were inferior to men. As a result, Hindu women were not
allowed to read the Vedas or other sacred texts.'
These revisions justify patriarchal dominance and cultural nationalism
in Indian history. Hindu sectarian groups in present-day India
construct a revisionist and supremacist history that condones and
glorifies a militant and misogynistic society. They dismiss the deep
social, economic, and political disenfranchisement of women, Dalits,
adivasis, and religious minorities, along with the ongoing struggles
for justice and self-determination of these communities, under
centuries of Hindu ascendancy in what is today India. To teach this
narrow Hindu sectarian understanding of history to 500,000 sixth
graders in California cultivates the notion that supremacism within any
nation is acceptable. The intervention of the HEF and VF also
undermines academic freedom. It violates principles of free inquiry,
interpretation and debate, and all the rigorous methods of scholarship
that distinguish truth-claims, by insisting that their Hindu sectarian
mythology (as history) is 'true' and all else is a 'lie'.
I am a cultural anthropologist, and my work explicitly looks at
gendered, religious, and caste violence, and indigenous land rights in
India in the present. Since June 2002, I have been conducting research
in 62 villages in eastern India, recording the sectarian and violent
activism of Hindu extremist-nationalist organizations, examining their
impact across issues of caste, religion, and gender. As recently as
January 2006, in my capacity as a convener of the Indian People's
Tribunal, I was reminded that violence against women and
disenfranchised caste and tribal peoples in India is systematically
instigated by sectarian Hindu organizations, and that such violence is
aided by affiliated diasporic groups in the United States.
It is imperative to note that the VF and HEF and their supporters are
closely connected to these Hindu extremist organizations. The HEF, its
coordinators and advisors, for example, include members of the Hindu
Swayamsevak Sangh (HSS) and Vishwa Hindu Parishad of America (VHP-A).
The HSS is the US counterpart of the militant Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh in India, National Volunteer Corps, RSS, while the VHP-A
corresponds to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, World Hindu Council, VHP, the
ideological nerve of Hindu supremacists in India. The Hindu American
Foundation has threatened legal action against the California Board of
Education in regard to the textbook changes. Its president, Dr. Mihir
Meghani, has been a member of both the HSS and VHP-A.
The RSS have sought to enlist women in right-wing movements, even as
the VHP have tried to revive the horrific practice of sati (widow
immolation, banned since 1829), while the Shiv Sena (Mumbai-based, Army
of Shiva) has extended its support for a dowry-based marriage system.
The role of the RSS and VHP in the Gujarat genocide of Muslims in 2002,
and their participation in ongoing violence against Christians and
other minority groups, and Dalits and adivasis, has been well
documented by human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch and
Amnesty International (these organizations will resonate with an
American audience). The HEF, as per its own admission, is an
'educational project' of the RSS in India, while the VF has
demonstrable ties to the VHP (see 'RSS Abroad: We are striving to keep
our culture alive', Times of India, 31 December 2005).
The HEF and VF’s positions are consistent with the attempts of
Hindu extremist groups to rewrite history in India to validate the
paramountcy of a 'Hindu worldview' in their larger agenda to transform
India from being a secular democracy to becoming a Hindu homeland. By
accepting the HEF and VF's version of history in California, we will
accept the mandate of Hindu supremacists. I can not emphasize enough
that their success in falsifying California textbooks might well be
their inroad into the American educational system and a beginning of an
intense campaign to rewrite textbooks in other states.
I teach at a progressive graduate college in San Francisco, where
issues of sexism, racism, and ethnocentrism that diasporic communities
confront within the United States are of critical concern in my
classroom. In voicing my concerns over curricular changes to California
textbooks, I would contend that 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, for whom
engagement with the past must facilitate a deep questioning of how
things come to be, of what constitutes knowledge, and how knowledge is
contested to enable the study of history to inform the work of
citizenship.
Sincerely,
Angana Chatterji
Associate Professor
Gender, Ecology, and Society Emphasis, Graduate Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology
California Institute of Integral Studies
1453 Mission Street, San Francisco, California 94103
|
