[Buddha-l] Hindutva california textbook controversy #2

[Dan Lusthaus]

(Continued from preceding message)
(This was originally posted on the Indo-Eurasia list -- Dan L)

4. It is important to recognize one other key point about the January
6th review of the edits. There were many cases reviewed that day or
earlier that involved little more than linguistic quibbles. In almost
all cases of this sort, Michael (or earlier Michael and his fellow CRP
members) offered no objections to Hindutva-proposed and/or
Bajpai-vetted edits. This has allowed writers in the Hindutva press to
claim, based on counts of trivial edits, that the January 6th meeting
ended in a victory of some sort for their side.

The reality is quite different, and the people in India and the US
coordinating the California Hindutva campaign are well aware of it.

I'll only give here one comic example that illustrates the absurdity
these claims. One of the original Vedic Foundation edits objected with
great vehemence -- quite an odd objection at first sight -- to the
statement in the textbooks that Harappa and Mohenjo-daro were the
"first" cities in India. The Hindutva "victory" claimed in the
rightwing press in this case lies in the fact that in the original
Bajpai edits the word "first" was replaced with the word "early" -- an
edit that no one (including Michael) ever bothered to challenge. What
6th grader would possibly notice the change in language? Michael and
his fellow CPR members let the Bajpai edit here (and in many similar
instances) stand since the change in language was inconsequential.

The humor -- which wasn't recognized by the Board of Education or the
Department of Education staff until Michael pointed it out to them on
January 6th, where he appeared with the VF "Bible" in hand -- comes in
*why* the Vedic Foundation felt so strongly about this odd edit. The
reason becomes clear when you recall the fact (which the VF of course
never revealed to the California Board of Education) that in the VF's
fantasy view of "history" Indian civilization can be traced back an
unbroken 1.972 billion years. See again:

http://tinyurl.com/du4kq

In this "historical" context, with ancient Indian civilization fully in
place over 1.7 billion years before the dinosaurs, how could Harappa
and Mohenjo-daro (which originated a mere 4500 years ago or so)
*possibly* be the "first" Indian cities? (Well, I guess they wouldn't
be all that "early" either, but who wants to argue with Hindutva
experts on history about trivialities of less than two billion years?)

So much for the claimed January 6th Hindutva victory. The 'victories'
were cases like this, while all the important claims about imaginary
Vedic monotheism, indigenous 'Aryans', a harmonious caste world, no
Dalits, a fictional Hindu homogeneity, and women with "different" but
not "fewer" rights than men went down the tubes.

**************

3. Only a little has to be added here to what I said last night about
the Board of Education meeting in Sacramento on January 12th
(yesterday). See here (again, you must be signed into the
Indo-Eurasian_Research List to read this):

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Indo-Eurasian_research/message/2805

The textbook business wasn't on the agenda, but the Board Meeting
nevertheless opened with a quick motion naming an internal subcommittee
to determine officially what everyone already knows -- whether or not
the Curriculum Commission on December 2nd followed the Board's
instructions given on November 9th. It was also noted that the
subcommittee will work with the Dept. of Education staff to resolve the
edit issue as quickly as possible.  Assurances were also given to the
publishers on this point.

After the announcement, public discussion began. One lone lawyer read a
statement from the HAF, ending with a complaint -- repeated with ever
decreasing conviction for months -- that hundreds of further edits (in
fact, massive rewrites) of the textbooks proposed by the Vedic
Foundation were never reviewed by the Board.  The lawyer also
suggested, with even less conviction in his voice, if that was
possible, that maybe the whole editing and vetting process should start
all over again.

That was one of the meeting's only comic moments.

When the lawyer trudged away, a long troop of mainstream Hindus,
Dalits, and Tamils told their stories to the Board for the first time.
Any lingering doubts that anyone on the Board had by then that the VF,
HEF, or HAF spoke for a fictionally homogenous Hindu-American community
was gone by the end of the session. We have good reasons to think that
the message was heard and had its effect.

There is more good news to report, but for now let's let this publicly
suffice.

It was very moving to see the Dalits and other non-Hindutva Indians in
action in Sacramento. I have no doubts that now that their groups are
fully awakened and the Board and Department of Education knows who they
are that things will work out well.

Truth can only be defeated by political fiction when people keep
selfishly silent or are bullied into not speaking by the kinds of smear
campaigns that we've seen in the last month. Despite those campaigns,
enough people are standing up now to ensure that the right thing
happens, and that makes the effort worth it.

We were almost blindsided in this case, and if we had learned about the
California situation even a few days later than we did (on November
5th), things would be quite different today. But now that the Dalit
groups, mainstream Hindus, and other Indian-American community groups
are now hard at work together, we are confident that with a little help
from the research community they will be able to shut down this kind of
thing quickly if and when it occurs next time in another US state. And
this should help as well in the battles in India and elsewhere (e.g.,
in Britain) against these extemist groups.

Truth is a powerful weapon, as long as you use it. We'll let everyone
know when new developments in California occur in the upcoming weeks.

Best,
Steve