California Textbooks - 2

[acharya]

Steve wrote:

> Story in today's Telegraph (Calcutta) on the deepened Hindutva
> cleansing being undertaken by the UPA government, now that they
> handily trounced the rightwing in the recent Indian elections.
>
> We like the concluding lines of the story:

http://tinyurl.com/ommwuq
"Sources said with a renewed mandate, the UPA government was expected to look at
the way NDA appointees [the coalition headed by the BJP] to cultural
institutions allegedly tweaked evidence to suit the RSS's version of history.
For example, in 2000, the National Museum in its catalogue for a new Harappan
gallery, had endorsed the Sangh's claim that the Harappan and Vedic
civilisations were one and the same. The idea, sources said, was to demonstrate
the 'indigenity' of Hinduism vis-a-vis Islam and Christianity. The claim was
based on a letter written by N.S. Rajaram who had co-authored a book, _The
Deciphered Indus Script_."

For the background of this story, see the articles from, respectively,
_Frontline_ and the _Times of India_ linked to at

http://www.flonnet.com/fl1723/17231180.htm

and

http://indus.usask.ca/~jamali/sindh/sindh-...r/msg00411.html

The two articles analyse the role played by some well-known
"Vedic-Harappa-Theory"-oriented Indian archaeogists such as R.S. Bisht (one of
the co-authors of the introductory textual panel of the above mentioned gallery
on the Harappan civilisation at the National Museum in Delhi), S.P. Gupta (then
exerting authority over National Museum publications), and B.B. Lal (who,
acccording to National Museum sources, had reportedly suggested that the gallery
be called by the politically-charged term "The Indus-Saraswati Civilization").
The _Times of India_ article also gives an account of the letter written by N.S.
Rajaram (see above).

The controversial catalogue of this National Museum gallery published in 2000
surreptitiously endorsed the claim that the Harappan civilisation and Vedic
culture were one and the same, for instance, by designating one of the recovered
Harappan stone objects as a "Shiva-linga", by labelling various Harappan human
figurines as "Yoga practitioners", or by describing the remnants of certain
Harappan clay ovens and pits that have been unearthed as (Vedic-like) "fire
altars".

Regards,
Francesco

Thanks for helping us out in India, Steve....
Prem

--- On Fri, 6/5/09, Steve Farmer <saf@...> wrote:


From: Steve Farmer <saf@...>
Subject: Re: [Indo-Eurasia] The Indian government continues its Hindutva
cleansing
To: Indo-Eurasian_research@yahoogroups.com
Cc: "Steve Farmer" <saf@...>
Date: Friday, June 5, 2009, 11:06 PM
Sorry -- I forgot to put in the link to the front-page story in the
Telegraph:

http://www.telegrap hindia.com/ 1090605/jsp/ frontpage/ story_11066538. jsp
tinyurl:
http://tinyurl. com/ommwuq

Steve

On Jun 5, 2009, at 2:54 PM, Steve Farmer wrote:

> Story in today's Telegraph (Calcutta) on the deepened Hindutva
> cleansing being undertaken by the UPA government, now that they
> handily trounced the rightwing in the recent Indian elections.
>
> We like the concluding lines of the story -- especially gratifying
> coming
> the day after the CAPEEM lawsuit was "dismissed with prejudice" in the
> US -- ending the California textbook case for all time. A lot of us on
> the List spent a lot of time on that case.
>
> It's nice, in any event, to see Hindutva on the wane simultaneously in
> India *and* the West. :^)
>
>> Sources said with a renewed mandate, the UPA government was
>> expected to look at the way NDA appointees [the coalition headed by
>> the BJP] to cultural institutions allegedly tweaked evidence to
>> suit the RSS’s version of history.
>>
>> For example, in 2000, the National Museum in its catalogue for a
>> new Harappan gallery, had endorsed the Sangh’s claim that the
>> Harappan and Vedic civilisations were one and the same. The idea,
>> sources said, was to demonstrate the “indigenity” of Hinduism vis-à -
>> vis Islam and Christianity.
>>
>> The claim was based on a letter written by N.S. Rajaram who had co-
>> authored a book, The Deciphered Indus Script. The book was debunked
>> by well-known Indologist Michael Witzel and comparative historian
>> Steve Farmer.