Sunset in Sacramento

[Guest guest]

Sunset in Sacramento

 

The apparently acceptable Indo-US nuclear deal may have caused

satisfaction to South Block and the State Department, but America's

Hindu community is feeling psychologically beleaguered as old Hindu-

baiters from both countries gang up to abort a necessary correction

of school textbooks in California. As the issue has a bearing on the

self-esteem of Hindu Americans, besides relating to the integrity of

Hindu civilisation and its correct depiction, I am surprised that the

BJP, which initiated the tilt towards Washington and also undertook

the revision of history textbooks while in power, did not so much as

whisper its concern to the visiting President George Bush.

 

 

 

Neither Prime Minister Manmohan Singh nor UPA supremo Sonia Gandhi

can be expected to be sympathetic to Hindu concerns in either

country. Ms Gandhi has overseen the placement of old party favourites

in educational and cultural institutions and the restitution of a

rendering of Indian history that fails to instill national pride in

the student. We are thus faced with the old colonial reconstruction

of Indian history, which diminishes the fabulous achievements of

Hindu civilisation and the unity of its social constituents, and

deconstructs it into a disparate mosaic whose different components do

not amount to a cultural coherence.

 

 

 

America's Hindu community has long borne the burden of a humiliating

and incorrect depiction of Hindu religion and culture; parents have

faced young children saying they are ashamed to be Hindus. This

motivated parents in Fairfax County to seek removal of distorted

passages in textbooks, and California Hindus followed suit when the

due process for revision of textbooks began last year.

 

 

 

Unfortunately, unlike Islam and Judaism, America's Hindus lack

political clout. Hence they were hopelessly out-manoeuvred by

professional Hindu-haters led by Prof Michael Witzel of the Harvard

Sanskrit Department. As Harvard University ignored protests that Herr

Witzel was misusing the varsity letterhead to pursue a political

agenda, Hindus should settle scores by forcing closure of the

Sanskrit Department by ensuring that the professor gets no students

for two successive terms. Hindus should also reconsider support to

Senators like Bobby Jindal, who have renounced and denounced the

faith in which they were born in order to pursue political ambitions,

but are insensitive to the concerns of those who elect them. Indian-

origin fundraisers for any politician should also be made to

understand that they cannot get something for nothing.

 

 

 

Like Jews and Muslims, Hindus only wanted the textbooks to portray

their religion and history fairly and accurately. They diligently

followed the due process and got several changes approved in this

manner. Sadly, the California school board allowed this process to be

hijacked by Herr Witzel, who claimed to be a religious scholar,

though he is a non-Hindu, a known Hindu-baiter, and proponent of the

discredited Aryan Invasion Theory. The Witzel intervention was both

illegal and untenable, and could not have been possible without

backroom manipulation of the state board of education (SBE); Hindus

owe it to future generations to bring out the truth through a good

courtroom battle.

 

 

 

The California SBE gave undue advantage to Herr Witzel when it should

not have entertained him at all, especially after he said he was

acting on an anonymous complaint from a non-existent Arun Vajpayee.

Yet Witzel and his collaborator Steve Farmer immediately launched a

high-decibel political campaign against the Hindu community's

proposed corrections, claiming these were motivated by "Hindu

nationalism" (whatever that means) and getting bodies like the

Federation of Indian Leftists (FOIL) to enter the fray. They alleged

that American Hindu families seeking textbook revisions had links

with the post-Godhra Gujarat mobs!

 

 

 

It is unforgivable that the school board deferred to such a shocking

defamation of the Hindu American community in California, and a good

attorney should be hired for a class action suit. Even more

astonishing is the fact that the SBE set up a curriculum review panel

(CRP) comprising Witzel, Stanley Wolpert (who signed Witzel's appeal

to SBE - so much for objectivity), and a hired Prof James Heitzman.

This CRP rejected 58 changes approved by CBE-appointed expert Prof

Shiva Bajpai, and labeled him a "Hindutva apologist;" Hindu Americans

learnt of the existence of the CRP much later. It is significant that

the changes sought by other religious groups were accepted in toto,

without being subjected to other-community review and endorsement,

and this reflects a religio-cultural bias against Hindus which the

dominant Christian monotheists of America need to admit.

 

 

 

Worse, the defamation and untruths do not end here. Last December, a

Kansas University Professor of Religious Studies, Paul Mirecki, who

enraged Christian bigots by lampooning the Biblical version of

Creation, was beaten up; he told police that the men who beat him

made references to his controversial statements in this regard. Yet

in an article in a leading magazine in India, Witzel and Romila

Thapar concealed the truth and insinuated that the professor was

beaten by so-called Hindu fundamentalists. They further alleged that

death threats were made to some of their gang.

 

 

 

Yet Witzel and Thapar erode their already dubious academic

credibility by claiming that NASA and ISRO satellite imagery of

ancient riverbeds along the famed route of the Saraswati do not prove

the existence of the river in Vedic times. More embarrassingly for

the California board, they admit the textbooks contain many passages

that are "very culturally biased and insensitive". Indeed, they

assert that the authors of the impugned textbooks lack the knowledge

and qualifications for the task, and suggest dumping both textbooks

and authors and hiring so-called international scholars from The

Academic Indology Advisory Council¸ which they have set up with

fellow travellers.

 

 

 

Surely the next step will be political lobbying on Capitol Hill to

ensure that these self-accredited anti-Hindu academics become the

sole contractors for writing Hindu religion and history! Witzel-

Thapar want to launch an academic license-permit raj in the Free

World, to teach the erstwhile natives their place.

 

 

 

In the circumstances, the Hindu Education Foundation (HEF) has done

well to continue the struggle. Besides violating due process, the SBE

failed to consider over 300 errors identified by the Vedic Foundation

(VF). Alleging bias, VF plans to pursue matters with an independent

panel of specialist Hindu scholars within US academia. It points out

that the interpretation of Hindu dharma in the impugned books is at

variance with the way Hindus understand and practice their faith, a

fact which cannot be treated lightly.

 

 

 

Why, for instance, should devout Hindus accept that their children be

taught that "Hindus worship talking monkeys and throw widows into

fires". Why should the primordial stories in Hindu scriptures be

branded as 'myths' when the scriptures of monotheistic traditions are

said to come from Only One (mutually exclusive) God(s)? Most

dishonest is the politically motivated attempt to project social

evils like untouchability and rigid caste divisions upon India's

ancient civilisation, when both are products of the medieval

encounter with Islam. Is there a link between these biases and the US

Administration's current interest in women and Dalit (mostly

Christian converts) rights?

 

 

 

Despite protests, the California SBE genuflected before antagonistic

scholars. Hindus in India and America would do well to ponder why

Islamic countries consistently stay aloof from the writing of Hindu

or Indian history, including that of the medieval period, and all

intellectual colonialism, whether of the capitalist or communist

variety, has back-linkages with the West.

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