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[Reproduced from the Sacramento Bee, Jan 26, 2006, from
http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/education/story/14116858p-14946146c.html
(Subscription Reqd)]
By Deepa Ranganathan -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PST Thursday, January 26, 2006
Story appeared on Page A1 of The Bee
For the first time, Hindu organizations are pushing to change the way
their religious history is taught in California schools.
While Jewish, Muslim and Christian groups have long spoken up during
the Department of Education's textbook revision process, Hindus are new
on the scene.
Their efforts to alter sixth-grade textbooks about ancient history have
inspired vitriolic, all-too-personal debates among scholars and
community groups vying to see their versions of history in print.
The debate is noteworthy not just for its contentiousness, but for its
far-reaching effects. Many states follow California's lead in textbook
adoptions, so any decision about what children learn here will likely
affect public schools across the country.
The state education board is now faced with questions that are difficult to answer:
Who gets to tell the story of a civilization? What happens when even the scholars don't agree?
"History is probably one of the most emotional and difficult subjects
to sort out," said Glee Johnson, president of the California Board of
Education. "People care about these issues. It's their blood. But it's
not always easy to tell what's factual in this arena, and when you're
trying to distill world history to sixth-graders you need to be really
careful."
California adopts new social studies textbooks every six years. The
state requires students to learn about ancient civilizations, including
the origins of Hinduism, in the sixth grade.
In September, several religious groups proposed hundreds of changes to
history textbooks the state board was considering adopting. The vast
majority of the proposals came from two Hindu groups: the state chapter
of the Hindu Education Foundation and the Vedic Foundation of Austin,
Texas.
Most of the proposed changes would erase or alter passages dealing with
caste and gender discrimination in ancient South Asia. The changes also
were aimed to dispute the notion that Aryan peoples from outside India
played a key role in the formation of Hinduism.
In one case, the original text read, "Men had many more rights than
women." The Hindu Education Foundation offered to replace that sentence
with, "Men had different rights and duties than women." The group
called for the deletion of another passage that said people in the
lowest tier of society "performed work other Indians thought was too
dirty, such as collecting trash, skinning animals or handling dead
bodies."
In November, Michael Witzel, a professor of Sanskrit at Harvard
University, entered the process with a letter signed by nearly 50 other
professors. The Hindu groups' proposals were "unscholarly," and
adopting them, he wrote, would "trigger an immediate international
scandal."
Armed with citations from scripture and academic texts, the two sides
went to war. Witzel and his supporters said the Hindu groups were
promoting a cultural nationalist agenda that had recently led to
controversial textbook rewrites in India. The Hindu groups termed
Witzel a racist with leftist leanings and demanded that Harvard shut
down his department.
Hindus who support the proposed changes say they have no agenda beyond
fair representation of their culture, pointing out that the textbooks
don't always mention discrimination in other ancient civilizations.
They also say that detailing a culture's failings may not be
appropriate in a textbook designed for children.
"We're talking about sixth-graders, who are very impressionable," said
Suhag Shukla, legal counsel for the Hindu American Foundation, which
has thrown its support behind the Hindu Education Foundation and the
Vedic Foundation. "There are so many positives to every world religion.
Sixth grade is not the right arena to pull out all the garbage."
Further, while the California guidelines state that content standards
should "instill in each child a sense of pride in his or her heritage,"
some Hindus say the current textbooks make their children ashamed. "My
son came home from school one day and told me he didn't want to be a
Hindu anymore," said Milpitas resident Madhulika Singh. "There were
comments in the playground about men beating up their wives and he was
very distraught."
On the other hand, opponents, including other Hindu groups, say the
textbook changes promote an inaccurate point of view and conceal
discrimination that persists today.
"They're completely whitewashing history and sanitizing Hinduism," said
Anu Mandavilli, a volunteer for the Bay Area-based group Friends of
South Asia. "It's like saying slavery is hurtful to white children, so
let's not talk about it. ...These are extreme ideologies. This is not
my Hinduism, it's not the way my parents brought me up."
In the face of conflicting information, the state board charged its
advisory panel on curriculum in November to evaluate each proposed
change on the basis of historical accuracy.
But the scholars don't always agree on what constitutes accuracy.
"The proposed edits come out of a very sectarian approach to history,"
said Witzel, the Harvard professor. "They view all of Hinduism through
one narrow lens. ... It's people on the very fringe who want to dispute
these points."
"I don't think you could find a single scholar of Indian history in the
entire United States who teaches at a research university who would
support (the Hindu groups') position," said Vinay Lal, a history
professor at UCLA. "Most people on their side are Indian engineers,
physicists, chemists, who think their opinion is just as good as those
who have spent a lifetime studying these subjects."
But Shiva Bajpai, a California State University, Northridge, historian
who was hired to evaluate the changes and recommended many of them,
said he's aiming to avoid viewing ancient cultures according to "modern
concerns."
"We should be judging people by the values they held at the time, not
the values we hold now. ... Inequality is a modern concept, whereas now
it's a burning issue for us," he said.
In December, an advisory panel to the state board recommended most of
the changes that Bajpai had endorsed, even though another state panel
of scholars that included Witzel suggested otherwise.
In a move that departs with standard procedure, members of the state
board then met with Witzel and Bajpai in a closed session earlier this
month to get information on each point of view. The two scholars
debated the changes for nearly five hours. Witzel found Bajpai to be
"religiously minded;" Bajpai found Witzel to be "close-minded."
Confronted by what then-board President Ruth Green called a "barrage"
of mail from every side, the state board voted on Jan. 12 to create yet
another panel, this one consisting of five board members, to conduct a
new analysis of the proposed changes. The board could vote on the
changes as early as March.
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