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California Textbooks - 2 - Guest - 10-19-2006
Discussion in a another group.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Raju Rajagopal, Michael Witzel and Steve Farmer
support the following biblical theory:</b>
Statement of Aryan Invasion/Migration Theory - After the great flood described in the Bible that took place in 2048 BC, the descendents of Noah's son Japheth went to India and populated it. They took with them the language of the Tower of Babel that is described in the Bible. We all know that the whole world had one common language caled the Aryan language. How do we know this? Because the Bible says so!
Basis of this theory -
1) Tower of Babel story gave rise to the claim of one common language. In fact, the pseudo-science called philology was built to claim that the biblical events are true.
2) Belief that the whole world is descended from Noah made the advocates of the theory choose Japheth (one of Noah's sons) as the ancestor of Hindus.
3) Noah's blessing that Japheth will be enlarged made them come up with the idea of invasion. So the original inhabitants were supposed to be the descendents of Ham who were dark-skinned.
4) The choice of 1500 BC is based on the assertion that Hindus could not have existed before the flood described in the Bible.
5) The choice of Central Asia is based on the assertion that Noah ended up in Central Asia.
Raju Rajagopal also asserts that the following people and their research output are part of a vast conspiracy hatched by RSS and VHP.
1) Prof. Kenneth Kennedy of Cornell University who analyzed bones from Indus Valley and found no discontinuity in the type of people who lived there during the period of alleged invasion by the Japhetic race.
2) The discovery of horse bones by various scientists like KR Alur and teams from Archaeological Survey of India before the era of so-called invasions by the Japhetic race.
3) The mention of the horse in the Rig Veda that has 17 pairs of ribs unlike the Central Asian horse that has 18 pairs of ribs. Now, the authors of the Veda are also part of a conspiracy hatched by RSS and VHP!
4) All professors of logic and mathematics who point out that the burden of disproving is not on Hindus but the burden of proving AIT is on the bible-thumpers
like Rajagopal himself.
5) Scientists in various genetics departments around the world.
6) All editors and reviewers of Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.
7) All reviewers of American Journal of Human Genetics.
8) Toomas Kivisild who published the paper with genetic evidence. His partner Peter Underhill of Stanford University.
9) Indian Statistical Institute
10) Dr. Glenn Milne of the Department of Earth Sciences who concluded based on geological data that the excavations off the sea coast in India must be 7000 years old.
In other words, according to Raju Rajagopal, geology, genetics, fossil studies, radio carbon dating, archaeology, logic, science, mathematics, are all part of a vast Hindu conspiracy!
The only accurate field is the bible-based pseudo-science called philology. What does philology tell us? The Bible is correct and there must have been one common language for the whole earth. This must have of course come from the place where Noah landed with his travelling zoo, i.e., Central Asia. All of the earth's inhabitants must be descended from one of Noah's sons. India must have been originally inhabited by the descendents of Ham who was dark-skinned.
Do you think IITians are dumb morons to fall for your poppycock? Let me tell you the truth why you and Michael Witzel support Aryan Invasion Theory.
Just as in India, where the brightest people go to IITs and medicine and only LOSERS go into humanities, so it is in the West. The brightest become businessmen, investment bankers, scientists, etc. Only LOSERS go into humanities. So Witzel is clueless about scientific methods and is probably learning about the biblical origin of AIT from Hindus.
Steve Farmer is a Bible-thumper who insists that 2 is an evil number. There was someone who exposed him at Sacramento! So it is no surprise that he supports the
Bible. He is also a clueless and ignorant person who belongs to the humanities bunch of losers.
As for you, Raju, you seem to belong to the category of Indians who blindly accepts whatever White people tell you to believe. In fact, one person at Sacramento who supported Witzel and FOSA displayed this kind of inferiority complex when she pleaded to one of my friends, "Why do you oppose the Aryan Invasion Theory? We too want to identify ourselves with Whites and you are opposing this." As you can see, she suffers from inferiority complex and doesn't care about science. In the process, she too ends up thumping the Bible.
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California Textbooks - 2 - agnivayu - 10-19-2006
Science in general is a Hindu conspriracy. Only White pig racist or Abhrahamic fascist theories are correct. Hopefully, the Christo fascists will be 'raptured' and leave us alone.
California Textbooks - 2 - Guest - 10-25-2006
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IndianCivili...n/message/87541
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/24/opinion/l24lanka.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
To the Editor:
Re âMonitoring a Little-Noticed Warâ (editorial, Oct. 18):
We agree with your view on the need to âchoke off fundingâ from overseas Tamils to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam. <span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>The Tamil Rehabilitation Organization and the Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America are well documented as L.T.T.E. fund-raising fronts.</span>
Sri Lanka faces a terrorist problem, not a religious conflict. In 1997, the United States designated L.T.T.E. as a foreign terrorist organization and recently arrested 18 L.T.T.E. agents trying to buy weapons.
You refer to a âBuddhist-led governmentâ and a âHindu separatist group.â The government is democratically elected and consists of Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and
Christian cabinet ministers.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa established an all-party conference to evolve consensus for a negotiated settlement.
The government is equally concerned about human rights and has invited an international group of eminent persons as observers, including from the United
States.
International shame will not deter terrorists, but international pressure will. It is vital to persuade the L.T.T.E. to engage in meaningful negotiations and not walk away, as it has done on five occasions since 1985.
<b>Bernard Goonetilleke
Ambassador of Sri Lanka</b>
Washington, Oct. 18, 2006<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
California Textbooks - 2 - Guest - 10-28-2006
At SAJA: FOSA spin and Ms Shukla from HAF's interview
California Textbooks - 2 - acharya - 10-28-2006
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->
Comments
Anu Mandivali's interview confuses a lot of issues. First, as a south asian group that denies its Indian and Hindu identity, they have no right to judge chapters dealing with India or Hinduism. Anyone who sees these textbooks cannot fail to note that the issue is indeed teaching ancient Hinduism (and Buddhism and Jainism) and not just ancient India. There is a lot of whitewashing of roles of women in Islamic societies but FOSA has kept quiet on all this. Worse yet, they took the assistance of fetna and similar organizations who have a documented record of raising funds for terrorist organizations. Anu quibbles a lot about the deletion of Dalit from one textbook, ignoring that this word is used only by ex-Hindu activists and Hindu baiters, if we are to believe all studies appearing in scholarly journals (and not communist party organs). Yes, inter-religious participation is a reality in India. But then why do the textbooks have no picture showing Muslims praying in front of a temple, or Christians praying in front of mosques or temples? Anu claims that the books talk about male patriarchy in the context of Greece etc., but does not point out that the board officials actually deleted such sentences from the final versions, and that such demeaning statements are absent in chapters on christianity and islam. Yet, they retained such statements for Hinduism. Why? Also, her claim that Aryan migration was a historical fact is totally rubbish. There exists no proof for this. Anu claims that the 200 professors who signed FOSA petitions had read all the HEF and VF edits. But this is a lie. The edits were NOT available on the SBE website when the 47 academics led by Witzel sent their letter to the Board. They were not available even to the 140 Leftist South Asian professors who sent their letters in November. In any way, most of the leftist South Asian professors who sent these letters belonged to totally irrelevant areas such as telecommunications, english literature. Therefore, their signature is of no worth and is motivated by communist politics, hatred for Hinduism and blind grou-think. FOSA supporters called Hinduism a 'cancer that has to be eradicated' during Sacramento hearings. Their faculty supporters have written apologias for the Taliban in the past, and fetna's 'Director' has just been arrested by the department of justice (see website http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federation_of...f_North_America ) Why has FOSA not reacted so far to the fact that Michael Witzel who lead the charge used the acronymn 'hiina' meaning degraded, mean, inferior, for Hindus in north American? This shows that FOSA is a phony human rights group, and just hates Hindus. Plain and simple.
How come FOSA had the support of only fringe anti Hindu and communist groups and of no major Indian or Hindu organization? Why is it that to counter Hindu organizations, FOSA had no qualms in using support from Christian evangelist and Islamist organizations?
Anu's ignorance of Hinduism is evident from her statement that vegetarianism and non-violence were absent in ancient Hinduism. She just has to read the accounts of Greek and Chinese travellers to inform herself that these were indeed considered virtues although just as now, a large section of the Hindu population may not have adhered to them. Your readers may enlighten themselves further by seeing many relevant details that counter Mandivali's propaganda at http://letindiadevelop.org/irochtc/
The fact that Anu conveniently forgets to mention that the judge Patrick Marlette refused to consider their first amicus curiae and outrightly rejected the second one (even while Anu waxes eloquent on the judgment) shows that double speak and half truths are the halmarks of FOSA strategy.
Posted by: Namrata Bose | October 27, 2006 at 06:30 PM
I find it strange that FOSA should even be allowed to talk about the subject. Apparently the judge thought so, when he threw out the "amicus curiae" brief this amorphous group of nitwits presented - so why is SAJAForum seeking their persuasion? Will the "other side of the debate" not be the Board of Education itself?
Posted by: Robin | October 27, 2006 at 12:50 PM
It was an informative piece.
Both sides are right.Hinduism is the most liberal religion.We can have Naga sects and also dogmatic priests staying together..We can have different rituals in different langauges.This is what Dr.Radhakrishanan defined as,"Hindu way of Life"
However, does that mean any one misusing religious icons for commercial,sectarian and political purposes.If such things can happen in the most powerful nation what about other parts of the world.
However, I will request AHF to first stop many stupid things in Indian TV soaps.
You may watch mothers in law and daughters in law having a cat fight with religious hymns as back grounds.Even in movies, one find gross misuse of many sacred hymns.
May I appeal to both sides to plug these loop holes before having a next round of bickering!
Hope you will try to go to the roots
Posted by: ashishdimri | October 08, 2006 at 01:16 AM
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California Textbooks - 2 - Guest - 10-29-2006
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->http://news. indiainfo. com/columns/ guru/010306secul ar-us-secular- india.html
<b>'Secular' US kinder to Hindus than secular India! </b>
by 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 protests 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 or
'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 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 is obviously important to know, when the
epic Ramayana was written? And so, the writing of
Ramayana pre-dates Mahabharata, needs to be stated in
the text books.
Yes, the Hindus got almost all 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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California Textbooks - 2 - Guest - 11-10-2006
Harvard University makes breakthrough in logic research
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<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->
Researchers at Harvard University have now proved that the conventional system of logical analysis is erroneous, and that all mathematicians and scientists have used flawed ideas for centuries.
In this new finding that is expected to put scientists to shame, <b>Prof. Michael Witzel has proved that <i>circulus in demonstrando</i> or circular logic is not a flawed method, but a useful research tool to arrive at conclusions</b>. Under this new system, many ideas become self-evident as they no longer need a traditional proof, but can be proved using themselves!
"Asst. to the Professor" Steve Farmer condemned the field of genetics as an "iffy" field.
. . . such studies are based on modern genetic data back-projected into historical times using very iffy theoretical models of genetic drift.
Farmer and Witzel have used the new logic system to establish that use of "linguistics" (similarity between a few words in various languages) is a legitimate means to prove the Aryan Invasion Theory.
Thus we have:
<b>Conjecture:</b> The invasion of India by the descendents of Noah's son Japheth explains the similarity in few words in Indian languages and the languages in some parts of the world.
<b>Proof:</b> The similarity in few words in Indian languages and the languages in some parts of the world proves that the descendents of Noah's son Japheth invaded India and brought with them the language of the Tower of Babel described in the Bible.
Thus, Aryan invasion explains "linguistics" and "linguistics" proves that an Aryan invasion took place! To put it succinctly, the proof for Aryan invasion is the Aryan invasion!
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California Textbooks - 2 - Guest - 11-22-2006
<!--emo&:beer--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/cheers.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='cheers.gif' /><!--endemo--> Irfan report: Farmer in Hell
California Textbooks - 2 - Guest - 11-22-2006
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California Textbooks - 2 - acharya - 11-30-2006
SACRAMENTO
Groups seeking textbook revisions
Lessons on life in ancient India stir education hearing
Charles Burress, Chronicle Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
* Printable Version
* Email This Article
A kind of Hindu civil war that wasn't always civil erupted in a Sacramento hearing room Monday over what California middle school students should be taught about ancient India.
An emotional four-hour hearing ended with a few angry members of the overflow audience shouting at a subcommittee of the state Board of Education after it rejected changes they sought in six new social studies textbooks for California middle school students. A security guard eventually cleared the room and ordered the crowd of almost 200 out of the building. "Learning about Hinduism in my sixth-grade class left me feeling ashamed and angry," Sameera Mokkarala, a sophomore at Gunn High School in Palo Alto, one of several dozen speakers, said during the hearing. "All that was talked about was the caste system, polytheism and sati." (Sati is the long-banned burning of widows on a husband's funeral pyre.)
The Vedic Foundation and Hindu Education Foundation are seeking to remove or soften references to the untouchable caste and the subordinate status of women in India more than 2,000 years ago, among other elements that the groups view as demeaning to their religion and humiliating to Hindu schoolchildren in California.
They also object to the theory that Indian development was heavily influenced by an Aryan invasion and to portrayals of Hinduism as polytheistic.
"I am appalled by the selective amnesia and fake history that is being advocated," Laju Shah, who teaches sixth- and seventh-grade social studies in San Francisco Unified School District, said of the changes the foundations sought.
Indian American children need to know "the truth behind their history," in which women had no rights to education, livelihood and social authority, she said.
The subcommittee's decision, which goes before the 11-member Board of Education on March 8, followed several months of conflict that prompted a counterprotest by a group of about 50 scholars. The dispute has sharply divided the U.S. Hindu community and thrown a monkey wrench into California's textbook approval process.
Both the state's Board of Education and its Curriculum Commission appointed committees to sort out the issues, and the final approval of the six textbooks next fall has been delayed for several months.
The pressure from the foundations "is a spillover from the Hindu nationalist movement," Rucha Ambikar, a Hindu from India and a graduate student, said before the hearing.
One critic of the two Hindu foundations called them "sectarian fanatics" and "bigots," while one of their supporters labeled the critics "communist terrorists."
A disappointed Piyush Bindai, who drove from Irvine for the hearing, said he belongs to the Dalit, or untouchable class.
"I know that those things happened in the past, but when my daughter learns about history, I want her to hear the positive, and then hear the negative things later," he said.
This round of new textbooks prompted unusual controversy, with more than 900 specific changes sought by various groups, said Thomas Adams, director of curriculum and textbooks for the Department of Education.
About 400 came from reviewers engaged by the state, while more than 500 came from the public, including many from Islamic and Jewish groups, as well as the two Hindu organizations, he said. The Hindu foundations submitted further changes after an initial vote by the Board of Education in September.
Among the contending groups with Hindu members were the Friends of South Asia and the Coalition Against Communalism, which opposed the foundations.
The issue grew more heated after the state's Curriculum Commission accepted several of the controversial changes late last year. A protest letter from about four dozen scholars, including Harvard Sanskrit Professor Michael Witzel, prompted the Board of Education to balk at the commission's approval of several changes sought by the two Hindu foundations, Adams said.
Several of the amendments proposed by the two foundations have been accepted, he said. Deleted, for example, were the Oxford University Press textbook's use of "Where's the Beef?" as a section title and a description of Hindus worshiping a monkey king, he said.
The textbooks don't give Hinduism the same respect as other religions, Vedic Foundation projects director Janeshwari Devi said after the hearing. Hindu scriptures are called myths and legends while other religious texts such as the Bible are accorded more weight as historical documents, she said.
Veena Dubal, an Indian American doctoral and law student at UC Berkeley, said she was "painfully embarrassed to read about the injustices committed in my parents' homeland" but asked the subcommittee not "to erase past and contemporary histories of oppression" or "to trade knowledge for pride."
Middle school history and social studies textbooks are revised every six years in California. Controversy over textbooks, even those used in math and science, is not rare, Adams said, but he acknowledged that the volume of comments on this round has been unusually large.
E-mail Charles Burress at cburress@sfchronicle.com.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?...BAGM5HFU5I1.DTL
California Textbooks - 2 - acharya - 12-05-2006
Biggest Fake news and propaganda
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main16.asp?fi...ndutva_goes.asp
Hindutva goes to school
Yes, and that too in California where Sangh Parivar fanatics are hell-bent on replicating the saffronisation of the history project, despite strong protests by historians and scholars
By Shalini Gera & Girish Agrawal
Shalini Gera
Girish Agrawal
School textbooks are making news again. Indian history is again being hotly debated. The actors are strikingly familiar: Hindutva groups aggressively pushing their own version of âglorious Indiaâ, and historians, linguists, scholars, dalits and community groups outraged by this attempted revision of history. Only the scene has changed â from the corridors of ncert in Delhi to the offices of the California State Board of Education in the US.
California? Yes. Early last year, two groups, the Vedic Foundation and Hindu Educational Foundation, took it upon themselves to submit recommendations for revisions to the California textbooks and their treatment of ancient Indian history. At first, it did not seem like a bad idea â these textbooks were replete with stereotypes, misrepresentations, exoticised allusions to monkey-kings and howlers such as the one informing 12-year-olds that Hindi is written in the Arabic script with 18 letters. It soon became apparent that the two groups did not restrict themselves to deleting references to monkey-kings and correcting factual errors, they also inserted several inaccurate, ideological, and highly contentious changes. This is not surprising. The two groups have close connections to the global Sangh Parivar: the Hindu Education Foundation is a project of the Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh, and the Vedic Foundation has a long history of collaboration with the vhp of America.
When news leaked out, scholars of ancient Indian history, led by Michael Witzel, Wales Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard, including Romila Thapar, Indiaâs most respected historian, sent a letter to the state board cautioning them against accepting the proposed edits without a scholarly review. The letter was signed by a Whoâs-Who of Indologists from around the world. Another group of over 100 faculty, primarily of South Asian origin, who teach and do research about South Asia at universities in the US, requested that a panel of three Indologists be allowed to review the changes proposed by the Vedic Foundation and the Hindu Education Foundation.
The Curriculum Commission, an advisory body to the state board, came under intense pressure from the Hindutva groups as their supporters bombarded them with letters, phone calls and e-mails, and then, turned up in large numbers at the review meeting. As a result, the commission accepted many of the Hindutva changes, much to the horror of the scholars asking for careful review. However, the board, alerted to the political nature of the edits, has stalled giving these edits the final stamp of approval. In an unprecedented move, during its meeting on January 12, 2006, the board announced that it is investigating whether the commission took factual accuracy into account when making its recommendations. Thus raising the hopes of scholars and community groups that the Hindutva edits may not get accepted.
Dalits arguing against the sanitisation of casteism are vilified as anti-India terrorists. Others are harassed, abused, deluged with hate mail
<b>The contentious changes pushed by the Hindutva groups serve three purposes:
⢠Sanitise Indian history of its gross inequities. Talk about caste only in the past tense, remove anything suggesting that caste still determines the status of people in Indian society, and say that men did not have âmoreâ rights than women, they just had âdifferentâ rights.
⢠Portray Hinduism as very similar to Judaism and Christianity â the politically dominant religions in the US. Erase references to plurality in Hinduism by tricks such as replacing âHindu godsâ with âthe Hindu Godâ, and deleting text that says Hinduism comprises âmany beliefs, many forms of worship, and many godsâ.
⢠India as âPitribhumiâ only for Hindus. Delete references to a possible non-indigenous origin of the Indo-Aryans and move the origins of Hinduism back in time, making âforeignersâ of all non-Hindu Indians.</b>
Why did the Curriculum Commission accept these ridiculous changes? Largely because the US Sangh Parivar convinced it that to do otherwise would hurt the feelings of Hindus all over the world, and would be akin to the sins of slavery and colonialism. Scholars opposing these changes are being attacked through vicious smear campaigns and labelled as anti-Hindu and racist. Dalit groups arguing against the sanitisation of casteism are being vilified as anti-Indian terrorists. Community members working to educate the board are being harassed, deluged with hate mail, threatened, and put on Hindutva hit-lists. Hindutva opponents are being labelled as anti-India, anti-Hindu, âcommunistâ â the last a pathetic attempt to appeal to the supposedly communist-phobic mainstream America.
None of this is new, neither this attempt to saffronise textbooks, nor the creation of a brand new past consistent with their political project â not even the attacks on scholars and others opposing their agenda. But seeing this as a re-run of an old reel does injustice to the complexity of Indian-American politics. What gives this story its unique flavour is the context of immigrant politics. Where Hindutva proudly espouses majority fascism in India, in the US it hobbles along as a me-too junior partner of an arrogant Judaeo-Christian State. Where Hindutva in India menacingly brandishes its muscle to elicit fearful compliance from the minorities, in the US it uses the subdued vocabulary of plurality, multiculturalism and âhurt feelingsâ to plead for incorporation into the mainstream. <b>And it is in investigating these shades of difference between desi and yankee versions of Hindutva that we learn most about the insidious appeal of âHindu Nationalismâ being repackaged as âHindu Minority Rightsâ.</b>
Yankee Hindutva depends upon the subtext of everyday racism for its very existence. Every person of colour in the US has had some brush with marginalisation, alienation, some experience where power is wielded in racial terms. <b>Hindutva cynically manipulates the hurt and anger of marginalisation into narrow, chauvinistic community pride. Where the response to racism could act as the unifying glue between various communities of colour to question power structures, the quest for affirmation of a communityâs pride neatly chops up the minority landscape into distinct ethnicities, with each community jostling against the other to occupy a place of prominence in the national imagination.</b>
The California textbook controversy is a classic example of this pattern. The textbooks are terrible, but instead of engaging with the inherent racism and exoticisation of the âotherâ in the books, Hindutva groups are converting history books into cheery propaganda tracts as reassurance that Hindus are the same as white Christians and Jews and fully deserving of the most-favoured minority group status. And the changes come attractively wrapped in the language of rights and equality.
When challenged in public fora, Hindutva apologists insist that they are not denying the ills of caste and patriarchy, just questioning any need to talk about them. <b>A Hindutva activist stoutly defended the changes: âHindus are only asking for parity, which is in accordance with the guidelines of the California board. If the sins of Islam and Christianity are whitewashed, so must the sins of Hinduism.â Suhag Shukla, a lawyer for Hindu American Foundation, said: âIn terms of men and women, I think, first of all if you look at Christianity or Judaism or Islam, nowhere in the textbooks is there any discussion on womenâs rights. Then to pull it in for Hinduism is a different treatment of Hinduism.â </b>And the reason for insisting upon capital G for Hindu gods? Because that is the way it is written in the texts for other religions. No matter that other religions are adamantly monotheistic to polytheistic Hinduism.
âEqualityâ for Yankee Hindutva is a disembodied, decontextualised notion â independent of any connection to concepts of freedom or justice. <b>While mouthing the language of equality, Hindutva does not even pretend to challenge any underlying structural inequities â either in American society where it only seeks to rub shoulders with the rich and powerful, or in India with its deep-seated antagonism towards the lower castes. </b>âHindu Human Rightsâ are never invoked when Indians get thrown off airplanes for âlooking suspiciousâ, or when immigrant taxi drivers are harassed by the police. âHindu Human Rightsâ are apparently only violated when beer bottles have pictures of Lord Ganesha or when caste is talked about in classrooms.
Shalini Gera is with the Coalition Against Communalism, San Francisco Bay Area. Girish Agrawal is an engineer involved in South Asian causes, based in California
Feb 04 , 2006
California Textbooks - 2 - acharya - 12-05-2006
http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Jan06/Swamy19.htm
http://www.flonnet.com/fl2301/stories/20060127000807700.htm
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1596396,00050001.htm
http://www.sacw.net/DC/CommunalismCollecti...gana6Jan06.html
http://www.unesco.org/courier/2001_11/uk/education.htm
California Textbooks - 2 - agnivayu - 12-05-2006
These people are anti-Hindu working to destroy my identity and ancient civilization. I will make very attempt to be an obstacle in your path. I will tirelessly undermine your propaganda until we triumph.
I don't have any antagonism towards anybody. Maybe you stupid limousine liberals living in a palace in San Francisco shouldn't be lecturing people about equality. How about you get off your fat a$$ and help the poor instead of driving your gas guzzling SUV during the week, and acting like a hero on the weekends.
You criminals are in the paycheck of some rich and powerful organizations(both Abrahamic and White left wing), we Hindus are the one's breaking the chains of your evil oppression.
<!--QuoteBegin-acharya+Dec 5 2006, 10:55 PM-->QUOTE(acharya @ Dec 5 2006, 10:55 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->
Shalini Gera is with the Coalition Against Communalism, San Francisco Bay Area. Girish Agrawal is an engineer involved in South Asian causes, based in California
Feb 04 , 2006
[right][snapback]61730[/snapback][/right]
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California Textbooks - 2 - agnivayu - 12-05-2006
I am not embarrassed about Jack Sh*t. I didn't do anything. Maybe Veena Dubal you committed many bad acts and so you should rightfully be ashamed of yourself.
Infact, I am concerned about the the injustices of the present being committed against Hinduism, a religion of which I am a proud member. Tell me again why I shouldn't be proud of my ancestors or my culture, I guess other civilizations must have been really wonderful and near perfection and only Hindu civilization is evil.
<!--QuoteBegin-acharya+Nov 30 2006, 03:36 AM-->QUOTE(acharya @ Nov 30 2006, 03:36 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->Veena Dubal, an Indian American doctoral and law student at UC Berkeley, said she was "painfully embarrassed to read about the injustices committed in my parents' homeland" but asked the subcommittee not "to erase past and contemporary histories of oppression" or "to trade knowledge for pride."
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California Textbooks - 2 - Guest - 12-07-2006
x-post:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The following new paper has appeared, synthesizing all recent
publications on this subject--
Title: <b>Genetics and the Aryan Debate</b>
Author: Michel Danino
Publication: _Puratattva_ , Bulletin of the Indian Archaeolgical
Society, New Delhi, No.36, 2005-06,
Excerpt from 'Conclusion' section of the paper:
[QUOTE BEGINS] It is, of course, still possible to find genetic
studies trying to interpret differences between North and South
Indians or higher and lower castes within the invasionist framework,
but that is simply because they take it for granted in the first
place. None of the nine major studies quoted above lends any support
to it, and none proposes to define a demarcation line between tribe
and caste. The overall picture emerging from these studies is,
first, an unequivocal rejection of a 3500-BP arrival of
a 'Caucasoid' or Central Asian gene pool. Just as the imaginary
Aryan invasion / migration left no trace in Indian literature, in
the archaeological and the anthropological record, it is invisible
at the genetic level. The agreement between these different fields
is remarkable by any standard, and offers hope for a grand synthesis
in the near future, which will also integrate agriculture and
linguistics. [....] Genetics is a fast-evolving discipline, and the
studies quoted above are certainly not the last word; but they have
laid the basis for a wholly different perspective of Indian
populations, and it is most unlikely that we will have to abandon it
to return to the crude racial nineteenth-century fallacies of Aryan
invaders and Dravidian autochthons. Neither have any reality in
genetic terms, just as they have no reality in archaeological or
cultural terms. In this sense, genetics is joining other disciplines
in helping to clean the cobwebs of colonial historiography. If some
have a vested interest in patching together the said cobwebs so they
may keep cluttering our history textbooks, they are only delaying
the inevitable. [END QUOTE]
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California Textbooks - 2 - Guest - 12-12-2006
Guys, Gals,
Great news, Berlin Univ. had decided to close down Indology department.
Please send congratulatory emails to berlinindology@gmail.com.
This closer is causing Anti-Hindu brigade lot of heart ache, money ache and job loss. Our email will encourage other European countries to close down anti-Hindu departments.
NRI should not spend any money to these departments.
California Textbooks - 2 - Guest - 12-15-2006
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->A pile of pablum
by Lance T. Izumi
<b>Political correctness distorts too many California textbooks </b>
When "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno asks young people simple political or historical questions during his popular "Jay Walking" segment, the confused answers are every bit as sad as they are funny.
How is it that seemingly affluent twentysomethings in Los Angeles think that the New Deal refers to a hamburger commercial? One major factor may be the textbooks that teach more about multiculturalism than about our nation's history.
Though California has a strong set of academic content standards for core subjects, the textbooks are of varying quality. Especially in history, issues of political correctness often blur the objective presentation of facts. A major tool of the politically correct crowd is California's social-content guidelines, which require positive portrayals of racial and gender groups.
According to New York University education professor Diane Ravitch, because of these guidelines, "California's textbooks and other materials must instill a 'sense of pride' in students' heritages and may not include 'adverse reflection' on any group." Ravitch, who served on a California state panel in the 1980s that tried to improve the history curriculum, also notes that the state Legislature required equal gender portrayals in textbooks.
Foolish Gender Equity
"That means, among other things," she writes, "that an equal number of male and female characters must be depicted in 'roles in which they are mentally and physically active, being creative, solving problems.' " The ironic result of these rules is an unbalanced presentation of history.
A 2004 report on textbook adoption by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation found that "American history is trimmed and tucked to fit California's social-content guidelines." Thus, in the treatment of World War II, "as much space is devoted to events on the homefront, such as the employment of women in war industries" as to "the events on the battlefronts of the Pacific and Atlantic."
California textbooks include the popular "American Nation," published by Holt, Rinehart and Winston. In a companion study by the Fordham institute, based on historians' reviews of major textbooks, "American Nation" drew a dismal C-minus grade for a range of failings. One reviewer observed that in an effort to be inclusive of women and racial minorities, the textbook "lavishes attention on people of relatively minor consequence, like the woman who established the first tennis court, the Soviet cosmonaut who became the first woman in space and six female biologists who spent two weeks underwater without surfacing." The biography of Hawaiian Queen Liliuokalani in "American Nation" is longer than the bio of Abraham Lincoln.
Furthermore, the textbook's "insistent emphasis on multiculturalism" distorts history by leaving out any mention of the influence of ancient Roman and Greek culture on America, but does include discussion of Chinese and Meso-American culture. American democracy gets short shrift, as do Christianity and Judaism. Key events such as the Revolutionary War, World War I and the Cold War receive insufficient explanations.
Dishonest History
Education "experts" often scoff when average people say that schools taught more or better in the past. Yet, when multicultural regulations require that valuable textbook space be devoted to politically correct propagandizing, that leaves less room for explaining the seminal events that shaped our nation.
"Certainly, textbooks should accurately portray society in all its complexity," says Ravitch. "But to impose contemporary political requirements on how the events are portrayed only ensures that the history we teach our students is inaccurate and dishonest."
The sad bottom line is that our children not only know less than their grandparents, much of what they claim to know is not really so.
Just ask Jay Leno.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lance Izumi is director of education studies at the Pacific Research Institute. He can be reached at lizumi@pacificresearch.org.
http://www.pacificresearch.org/press/opd/2...06-11-14li.html
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California Textbooks - 2 - agnivayu - 12-15-2006
Apparently this does not include Hindus or Hinduism
<!--QuoteBegin-aruni+Dec 15 2006, 01:03 AM-->QUOTE(aruni @ Dec 15 2006, 01:03 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin-->
According to New York University education professor Diane Ravitch, because of these guidelines, "California's textbooks and other materials must instill a 'sense of pride' in students' heritages and may not include 'adverse reflection' on any group." Ravitch, who served on a California state panel in the 1980s that tried to improve the history curriculum, also notes that the state Legislature required equal gender portrayals in textbooks.
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California Textbooks - 2 - Guest - 12-20-2006
Indian political novices created history
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--> A partial victory for the community was when the Hindu American Foundation prevailed in its legal action on behalf of Hindu parents in California against the California School Board of Education (SBE).
In September, a California Superior Court Judge upheld HAFâs claim that the sixth grade textbooks were inappropriate in their presentation of Hinduism. Although the court did not grant a revision of the textbooks, it held that the textbook adoption process was flawed and illegal.
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California Textbooks - 2 - acharya - 12-23-2006
This is a very nice graphical depiction of the changes that have taken place in the Middle East over the last 5000 Years.
Who Has Controlled the Middle East over the last 5000 Years
This graphic shows the History of Religion over the last 5000 Years.
History of Religion