Compromise Reached on California Textbook Controversy About Hinduism
India West , News Report, Ashfaque Swapan, Posted: Mar 03, 2006
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - Following an impassioned, emotionally charged meeting here Feb. 27 at the California Department of Education, where hundreds of Indian Americans presented their views in front of a Board of Education subcommittee, the five-member panel unanimously voted to recommend adoption of staff recommendations for edits and corrections proposed by the Hindu Education Foundation and Austin, Texas-based Vedic Foundation for its sixth-grade textbooks.
The controversy had erupted about the depiction of Hindu religion and culture in sixth-grade textbooks. Some parents, as well as Hindu organizations objected to what they claimed were biased misrepresentations and inaccuracies. Other South Asian groups, as well as some prominent academics, then accused the groups objecting of a Hindu fundamentalist agenda.
The staff recommendations reflect a compromise on a substantial part of the proposed edits following a meeting Jan. 6 between Harvard Sanskrit expert and philologist Prof. Michael Witzel and Cal State Northridge emeritus Prof. Shiva Bajpai; on issues where they couldn't agree, the edits were rejected in favor of the original text.
The compromise appears to have worked in some measure: Groups that have been bitterly arguing on the issue have all expressed satisfaction, albeit qualified, at the acceptance of the staff recommendations.
Although quite a few disgruntled HEF supporters appeared irate following the announcement at the end of an over three-hour-long session of public comments, several crying "Shame!" HEF organizers told India-West they were pleased that 70 percent of their changes had been accepted.
"On behalf of the Hindu community, we have done significant progress to correct the biases and distortions in the textbooks," HEF spokesperson Khanderao Kand told India-West. "We need to work further. There are gross inaccuracies."
Some of the recommendations in the list are inconsistent, haphazard and leave factual errors intact, he added.
He added that HEF will continue to participate in other meetings. "Definitely we will participate, and we will definitely present our case again and again (for the panel) to reflect; hopefully they will realize
there are some inaccuracies."
Meanwhile, Friends of South Asia, an activist group that has opposed the HEF and VF campaign, welcomed the decision as well. "This decision is a victory for community organizations such as Friends of South Asia, the Ambedkar Center for Peace and Justice, the Federation of Tamils on North America, and the Coalition Against Communalism, who have worked diligently to ensure that ahistorical and sectarian content proposed by Hindu right-wing groups is removed from California textbooks."
Raka Ray, a professor of sociology at the University of California at Berkeley and chair of the university's Center for South Asia Studies, who spoke on behalf of a number of South Asia scholars opposed to the HEF campaign, also welcomed the recommendations.
"I think that it's crystal clear that all or the most pernicious material is gone," she told India-West.
The public meeting Feb. 27 at the California Department of Education drew an overflow audience of mostly Indian American supporters and opponents of HEF, well over a few hundred, including anguished parents, activists, and a slew of university faculty South Asia experts who were virtually unanimously critical of the HEF campaign. They were joined by several dalit immigrants who made an emotional appeal to reject what they saw as an HEF attempt to deny the history of dalit oppression.
HEF supporters, who came from as far as Orange County and San Fernando Valley, included parents who spoke about how children went through traumatic experiences at school due to negative portrayal of Hinduism and Indian history; individuals who questioned whether it was appropriate to provide sixth-grade students with a negative and in their view inaccurate idea of Hindus and Indian history; some questioned why Hinduism was singled out for negative portrayal when other religions like Judaism, Christianity and Islam were treated with more sensitivity. One HEF supporter said if dalits were so oppressed, how come they had come to the U.S.?
HEF critics included university faculty, many of Indian descent, who questioned the claim of HEF to represent all Hindus; several speakers who were raised in the U.S. acknowledged that it was difficult for them as Hindus to learn about past history of oppression but passionately defended teaching factual history, warts and all, for a proper appreciation of historical and social reality. Critics dismissed the HEF campaign as one driven by the sectarian agenda of the Sangh Parivar, a term commonly used to describe the Hindu nationalist triumvirate of India's Bharatiya Janata Party, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad. (The HEF is affiliated with the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh, a sister organization of the RSS.)
Ruth Green, a member of the panel who conducted the meeting, was diplomatic but firm. "I appreciate the diversity of opinion," she told the audience. However, she stressed that what the panel took into consideration was the difference in scholarly opinion.
South Asia scholars present at the meeting, though, were uniformly opposed to the HEF campaign, and HEF critics say this is true for academia in the U.S. In a letter to the Board of Education, Vinay Lal, a history professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, wrote: "As far as I am aware, the Hindu Education Foundation and Vedic Foundation and their supporters do not number among their ranks any academic specialists in Indian history or religion other than Professor Bajpai himself. It is a remarkable fact that, in a state which has perhaps the leading public research university system in the United States, these two foundations could not find a single professor of Indian history or religion within the UC system (with its ten campuses) to support their views. Indeed, it would be no exaggeration to say that they would be hard pressed to find a single scholar at any research university in the United States who would support their views."
HEF, on the other hand, is "unhappy about process violations and a suppression of a pending list of changes from Vedic Foundation," it said in a press release. "A better approach to deal with the issues related to Hinduism would have been to form an independent committee of recognized Hindu scholars representing the faith."
It particularly questioned the appointment of Witzel on an expert panel to make recommendations. It was a letter from HEF critic Witzel, supported by over 40 South Asian experts, that caused the state board to revisit an earlier decision to accept the bulk of HEF recommendations. "It's like appointing the accuser as the prosecutor, judge and jury," HEF's Kand told India-West.
In its press release, HEF also said that "the subcommittee responded in a very farcical manner to this lengthy debate. After the public hearing, without any deliberations, within a few minutes, the subcommittee confirmed all the staff recommendations."
Witzel, however, said that the issue was one of historical accuracy. "Rationality has triumphed," he told India-West. "All the ahistorical foundations of the two foundations have been taken out. Historical accuracy has prevailed over mythological ideas of history."
He pointed to several areas of concern: The position of women, the caste system, the political conditions of dalits, god with a capital G, the question of monotheism and polytheism, and the issue of Aryan migration.
"If you would really go around the world, not just the country, and see what scholars think, then they would strongly come down on the unequal position of men and women, also other cultures, by the way-a description of Rome, almost word by word, (in a textbook) is very similar to India."
On the Aryan migration theory, a bitter bone of contention between HEF supporters and critics, the staff recommendations appear to walk a middle path. While it refused to concur with the outright rejection of the theory by HEF supporters, it leaves references to Aryan arrival somewhat vague.
For example, HEF had suggested substituting the following text: "In the years that followed, a group of people called the Aryans began settling in the region. Soon a new civilization emerged."
It suggested the following text: "In the years that followed, a group of people called the Aryans from other regions in India began settling in the region, enriching the Harappan civilization."
The staff accepted the HEF edit, but removed "in India" from the revised text.
UC Berkeley's Raka Ray said she understood "the concern the parents naturally have when your child is minority, about the child being made fun of. I have considerable sympathy for that position. I just think that historical accuracy ultimately has to count for more."
The State Board of Education is slated to make its final decisions regarding the textbook adoption at its meeting on March 8-10.
The panel considered 126 pages of edits and corrections, nine proposed textbook submissions, and between 1,500-2,000 pages of letters and e-mails, Glee Johnson, president of the State Board of Education, told India-West. The debate on Indian history was a part of these deliberations. "Religious neutrality, historical accuracy, and that represents the plurality of interests that have come to the table" were the guiding principles for the panel, she added.
The complete PDF document listing the HEF edits and staff recommendations is available at this Web link (HEF and VF discussion begins on Page 93)
http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/ag/ag/documents/hssnotice022706a1.pdf.
More information is available at the following Web sites: Hindu Education Foundation (www.hindueducation.org), Friends of South Asia (www.friendsofsouthasia.org),
South Asia Faculty Network (http://southasiafaculty.net).
Related Stories:
Textbooks And Hinduism -- Why Accuracy Matters
Indian Groups Contest California Textbook Content
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