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IN DEPTH:
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Letter to the California State
Board of Education
from Dr. Shefali Chandra, Assistant Professor, History and Women's Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Glee Johnson
State Board of Education
1430 N Street, Room 5111
Sacramento, CA 95814
Cc: Jack O’Connell, Superintendent
California Department of Education
Dr. Thomas Adams, Director
Curriculum Frameworks and Instructional
Resources Division
California Department of Education
SUBJECT:
Dismay over proposed, sectarian edits to California State textbooks
Dear Ms. Johnson and Members of the
Board of Education,
I write to you as a
professor of Indian and South Asian history in the United States,
with a specialization in the history of women and gender, especially
in the history of women’s education in India. Just as urgently, I
write to you as a woman, an Indian, and a Hindu. I would like to
place on record my deep opposition to the proposed, sectarian changes
being suggested by certain organizations to text-books in the state
of California.
The Curriculum
Commission’s decision to accept some recommendations made by
ideologues of the Vedic Foundation (VF) and the Hindu
Education Foundation (HEF), despite the timely interventions proposed
by established scholars from leading universities in the
United States, is of urgent concern. Most particularly pressing is
the issue of re-writing the history of gender relations in ancient
India. Allow me to discuss a few specific examples, and to
re-emphasize why these changes will be detrimental to the education
of young students in California.
The original
assertion in the Harcourt School Publishers text (p. 245) which
states that ‘men had many more rights than women. Unless there
were no sons in a family, only a man could inherit property. Only men
could go to school or become priests’ is being substituted by
the claim that ‘men had different rights… women’s education
was mostly done at home.’
This is an
appalling distortion of history. It discourages us from learning how
gender difference was deepened through the propagation of knowledge.
Indian society was certainly not the only one that used ideas of
gender difference to sanction male access to, and the restriction
over, forms of knowledge. This is one of those essential lessons of
history that every student - regardless of national or ethnic
affiliation – needs to know. In my own history classes I discuss
the differential access of men and women to education so my students
may better appreciate why certain forms of knowledge were especially
conducive in producing social difference; I also evoke this important
example so they may better comprehend the necessity of an equal
access to education today.
Similarly, the
assertion that ‘men had many more rights than women’ (in
the Glencoe/ McGraw –Hill textbook, p. 245) is being replaced with
the claim that ‘men had different duties … Many women were
among the sages to whom the Vedas were revealed.’ Once again,
this is a gross fabrication. The Vedas were a compendium of social
observations culled over time through debates between generations of
male scholars. Women were not allowed to learn Sanskrit, the
language in which the Vedas were later codified. That these texts
could be ‘revealed’ – to anyone, leave alone those prohibited
from learning Sanskrit - is an egregious misrepresentation. It
encourages a fanstastical view of history, and diverts our attention
away from learning about the mutually reinforcing connections between
language, social class and knowledge.
The textbooks under
review are not perfect, yet they permit some understanding of the
existence of gender difference throughout the world. The imbalance
between men and women in other cultures is presented by these
textbook series – the McGraw Hill/Glencoe publication (Discovering
Our Past. Ancient Civilizations (2006)) describes the differing
power between men and women throughout the world: “In ancient
Egypt, the father headed the family” (p. 164); among ancient
Israelites as, “Sons were especially valued because they carried
on the family name” (p. 218). In China it is represented as,
“Men were respected because they grew the crops. They went to
school, ran the government… Chinese women could not hold government
posts (p. 287); in Sparta, Greece as,“Wives lived at home
while their husbands lived in the barracks” (p. 346); and women
in Athens as “For Athenian women, life revolved around home and
family. Girls married early --at 14 or 15-- and were expected to have
children and take care of household duties. .... they could leave the
house only if a male relative went with them” (p. 362) and so
on.
Hindu and Indian
women have made tremendous contributions to the world, one of which
is to combat those inequalities originally sanctioned by the male
control over knowledge and language. Why then is the HEF and VF
invested in mystifying our knowledge of gender difference in ancient
India? Their agenda is propelled by a conviction in cultural
policing. Ultimately the effect will be to destroy our understanding
of the tremendous change in knowledge and power that our world has
witnessed over time.
Educators cannot
hide behind false history simply because it smoothes the cultural
embarrassment of a small section of the population. I trust that the
State Board will add my letter to the concerted outrage expressed by
established scholars of Indian and South Asian history on this
terrible misrepresentation of history.
I thank you for
your consideration.
Sincerely,
Shefali Chandra
Assistant Professor of Indian and South
Asian History; Gender and Women’s Studies
University of Illinois, Urbana
Champaign
309 Gregory Hall
810 S. Wright Street
Urbana IL 61801
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