Yes, ‘secular’ US seems kinder to Hindus than ‘secular’ India

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Yes, `secular' US seems kinder to Hindus than `secular' India

Thursday December 29 2005 10:25 IST

 

S Gurumurthy

 

The headlines of this short story, factually told, run like this.

`Hindus worship `statues', not `deities'.' `Hindu God cannot have

capital `G' and have to be content with the ordinary letter `g' as,

unlike the Gods in Abrahamic faiths, there is no one God for Hindus'.

`Who in sixth standard cares whether Ramayana was written before or

after the Mahabharata'.

 

This scandalous depiction of Hindus, their faith and history is not

the tirade of evangelicals luring Hindus to their faith. But, this is

how some US scholars who supported the demeaning descriptions of

Hindus and India in textbooks proposed by the California Department of

Education (CDE) defended their contents when Hindus protested and

sought corrections. Since the US scholars were not Hindus, their

defence of the books lacked credibility. To fill the credibility gap,

Indian seculars stepped in, led by Romila Thapar; they jointly

petitioned the CDE that the Hindu protest against the textbooks was

actually the protest of the `Hindutva forces'. Hence, the corrections

suggested by them should be disregarded.

 

The issue is whether what Hindus say is true or not. Does the truth

lose its value because Hindus bring it out? Fortunately the CDE, after

giving some anxious moments to Hindus, dismissed the seculars'

petition and accepted the corrections that Hindus had sought, almost

entirely. Now, some further detail.

 

The controversy was about the proposed textbooks on India and Hinduism

for 6th standard school children. After the book publishers had

submitted preliminary editions of the books, according to procedure

the CDE called for comments and corrections from those concerned. The

Hindu community in California, after months of work, submitted some

170 corrections - ``edits'' as the CDE would call them - for improving

eight of the 10 textbooks. This is where the secular megaphones

stepped in to exert to perpetuate the demeaning references to Hindus

in the textbooks.

 

Dr Michael Witzel, a Harvard University professor who is undeniably

anti-Hindu and thus an icon of Indian seculars, charged that the Hindu

community's corrections were motivated by `Hindutva forces'. He warned

the CDE that it `would lead without fail to an international

educational scandal' if accepted. Romila Thapars of secular India

joined as co-petitioners of Witzel, making it a kind of `confession'

on behalf of Hindus. This forced the CDE to appoint a last minute

`Content Review Panel' which comprised three scholars including Witzel

himself. The panel rejected 58 of the Hindu edits.

 

But the Californian Curriculum Commission decided to accept all the

corrections of the Hindus adding a rider that the Witzel panel's 58

rejections be reviewed one by one. In the commission an evangelist

member supported Witzel, but two others abstained on grounds of lack

of expertise.

 

While discussing the Witzel objections, the Curriculum Commissioner

took the position that the Hindus should be able to recognise their

religion when they read the textbooks. On the much insisted and the

equally contested Aryan invasion issue, a compromise was suggested

that instead of the word `invasion' the word `migration' could be

substituted as there was no evidence of violent invasion. But the

commissioner said that hard evidence from DNA research, which is more

reliable than the study of historians, proved there was no `migration'

also. Finally, the commission agreed to allow this much to be said,

namely, `that some historians believe there was an Aryan invasion'.

 

The commission accepted that the Hindus worship `deities', the

equivalent of `murti' in Sanskrit, not `statues' and also allowed the

use capital `G' for the Hindu God saying that the same Hindu God has

several forms. It agreed that the Hindus go to temples to `worship'.

It said that when the epic Ramayana was written is obviously important

to the Hindus and so, that the writing of Ramayana pre-dated

Mahabharata needs to be stated in the text books.

 

Yes, the Hindus got almost all that they wanted. But was it a favour

done by the CDE to Hindus? No. The CDE merely applied the rules it had

made for evaluating textbooks of different religious or national

groups. This is what the CDE rules mandate: the evaluation is to

enable all students to `become aware and accept religious diversity',

while remaining `secure' in their own `religious belief'.

 

To achieve this `the diversity of religious beliefs held' in US and

elsewhere should be depicted `without displaying bias toward or

prejudice against any of those beliefs'. No religious belief or

practice `may be held to ridicule'; no religious group be `portrayed

as inferior'. `Beliefs or practices' should `not be presented' `to

encourage or discourage disbelief', nor indoctrinate. The rules are

common for all, the majority Protestants and the Rest, the minorities.

 

While CDE commission has concluded that there is no evidence of Aryan

invasion, it is still ridiculed as a `saffron' view to deny Aryan

invasion here in India. In secular India, the views of scholars who

are known as secular, not the facts, are decisive. That is why Aryan

invasion is still the official view of history despite total absence

of any evidence whatsoever. The secular US has thus overruled the

anti-Hindu views of secular Indians. Paradoxically, the `secular' US

seems kinder to Hindus than `secular' India.

 

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