Wednesday, December 28, 2005

from the mailbox: ISI-funded "Friends of South Asia" on the warpath

dec 27th

the usual people suspects afflicted by 'southasianitis'.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: ag
Date: Dec 25, 2005 1:30 PM
Subject: Pakistan ISI-funded "Friends of South Asia
To: Rajeev Srinivasan <rajeev.srinivasan@gmail.com >

 
FOIL/FOSA WAKES UP. NEED TO WRITE LETTERS TO NEWSPAPERS!
Subject: FOIL/FOSA WAKES UP. NEED TO WRITE LETTERS TO NEWSPAPERS!

Time to get people to write a few letters to Editors. The following is from our Pakistan ISI-funded "Friends of South Asia" (Akhila Rahman, main Noise) message server in California: Non-essential headers deleted .

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READ BELOW E mail INTERCEPTS
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"From FOSA - PLEASE ACT! (for info: mail@friendsofsouthasia.org)

Dear all,

As many of you already know, we in California are facing a Hindutva assault on school textbooks of the kind that went on a few years ago in India. This is an issue of rising concern in the Californian community, and something that progressive South Asian organizations have been very quiet on, so far. This email has TWO parts—a brief background, followed by an ALERT

Background: Very briefly, this is the story so far:

* CA state textbooks come up for review every six years. This year, the sixth class texts relating to Ancient Indian history are under review. We recognize that most of these textbooks are inadequate for a number of reasons and have many errors on Indian history.

Taking advantage of this inadequacy, two groups --Vedic Foundation and Hindu Education Foundation (VF and HEF), backed by the Hindu American Foundation (HAF)—all with demonstrable links to Hindu rightwing organizations have managed a strong mobilization in order to insert some changes in the depiction of ancient Indian history and Hinduism in CA text books. But instead of just making corrections to erroneous texts, their proposed changes also reflect their supremacist political agendas. For instance, a large number of their changes are about Aryans being native to India and not migrating from central Asia, and thus the depiction of Hinduism as a religion *truly* indigenous to India—as opposed to all the other foreign religions (for those of you familiar with the issue—this is the whole manufactured debate about the Aryan Migration theory versus the Indigenous Aryan theory), and also a complete white-washing of Hinduism especially concerning caste and gender issues.

* As things stand now, these groups have managed to get the Curriculum Commission to agree to most of their changes. The only opposition they faced was a last minute organizing by the Indologists (M. Witzel from Harvard, S. Wolpert from UCLA and J. Heitzman from UCDavis with around 50 other indologists supporting them,
http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~witzel/witzelletter.pdf ) and a faculty letter from over 100 South Asianists and South Asian profs at universities. However, both these interventions were less than successful, and many of the really problematic Hindutva changes got accepted by the Curriculum Commission on Dec 2.

Some examples of ridiculous edits that got accepted by the CC are:

1. According to HEF, Sudras did not "perform services for members of the three higher castes" but merely "performed services for all classes and did more labor-intensive work."

2. The word "Dalit" has been removed from the text and the students are merely told that treating someone as untouchable is against the law in modern India. Sentences such as "The caste system is just one example of how Hinduism was woven into the fabric of daily life in India" and "Hinduism…has affected how people worship, what jobs they do,… And it has helped to determine the status of people in Indian society" have been deleted. At one point, the Vedic Foundation insists that caste only be spoken of in the past tense since it is no longer a reality and "According to the Indian Constitution, under the section, Fundamental Rights, the Right to Equality is guaranteed to all citizens." This edit was also accepted.

3. References to patriarchy within Hinduism have been deleted. Sentences such as "However, Hinduism also taught that women were inferior to men." have been completely removed, while another, "Men had many more rights than women" has been replaced with, "Men had different duties (dharma) as well as rights than women. Many women were among the sages to whom the Vedas were revealed." Not only does "unequal" become "different", but note that Vedas are now *revealed* texts. Hinduism-- like all other major religions of the world --has a patriarchal basis, that must first be acknowledged in order to be corrected. Also, Hinduism, unlike other major religions of the world, has NO revealed text and one wonders at the intent of these groups in removing this point of uniqueness.

4. Again, in their zeal to make Hinduism like another monotheistic, revealed religion, the sentence,"Modern day Hinduism is very complex. Many beliefs, many forms of worship, and many gods exist side by side" was removed.

5.The sentence "Sanskrit is no longer spoken today" has been replaced with "Sanskrit is no longer widely spoken today". The RSS shakhas still propagate Sanskrit, we suppose? In another place, the edits that got approved suggest that Sanskrit "to some extent" is the language of India "even today".

6. That chariots and other similar technology was developed in India (as opposed to being brought in from Central Asia). "People speaking Indo-Aryan language" has been replaced merely by "Indians", so that the differentiation between Harappans and those who spoke the Indo-Aryan language has been reduced to that between Indians from Harappa and "Indians from elsewhere or from the countryside." The construct of India predates history itself!

* A more complete list of edits can be obtained from
http://friendsofsouthasia.org/textbook/CommissionAction12_2_05.doc .
We must also point out that similar changes to history texts were tried in India by the nationalist BJP government, which are now being undone. Read more about it at
http://friendsofsouthasia.org/textbook/NCERTdocs.doc

* While the acceptance of these "edits" by the Curriculum Commission is really tragic, the State Board has yet to accept these change s. What is equally alarming is the way in which the Indian-American press has been covering this issue in its usual wishy-washy style, presenting this as a debate between the faculty (some of them white, all of them "anti-Hindu") and a monolithic, aggrieved Hindu community. India Post, India West and India Abroad have given a whole lot of play to this debate, but "our" side (secular Hindus/ Indians/ South Asians) has been very poorly represented.

***ALERT***

India Abroad has run 3 stories on this in the recent issue:

(a) India Abroad, Dec 16 Cover story, giving an overview: California
Textbooks Spark Hinduism Row
http://www.friendsofsouthasia.org/Press_Coverage/IndiaAbroad1.pdf
http://www.friendsofsouthasia.org/Press_Coverage/IndiaAbroad1a.pdf

(b) India Abroad, Dec 16, Interview with Michael Witzel:
http://www.friendsofsouthasia.org/Press_Coverage/IndiaAbroad_MW_a.pdf
http://www.friendsofsouthasia.org/Press_Coverage/IndiaAbroad_MW_b.pdf

(c) India Abroad, Dec 16, Interview with Suhag Shukla, legal counsel
of the Hindu American Foundation:
http://www.friendsofsouthasia.org/Press_Coverage/IndiaAbroad_SS_a.pdf
http://www.friendsofsouthasia.org/Press_Coverage/IndiaAbroad_SS_b.pdf

India West ran 2 stories on this issue and one letter:

(d) India West, Dec 2 story: Hindus and Sikhs Protest Curriculum
Changes in Calif. Textbooks
http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=1b63d3d5a0a0b090f2681949b840f93f

(e) India West, Dec 9 story: Calif. state panel Agrees to make changes
in history course.
http://www.friendsofsouthasia.org/Press_Coverage/Textbook%20Row--India%20west.doc

(f) India West: Dec 22nd (?) Yvette Rosser's letter to the Editor:
Stereotypes, Errors In Calif. Textbooks
http://www.friendsofsouthasia.org/Press_Coverage/Indiawest_YRletter.htm

PLEASE WRITE TO THESE NEWSPAPERS EXPRESSING YOUR VIEWS ON THIS ISSUE:
We really need to make diverse voices heard on this issue.

The letters should be addressed to:
India Abroad: editorial@indiaabroad.com, Fax: 212-727-9730
India West: news@indiawest.com , Fax: (510) 383-1155 24

Please copy mail@friendsofsouthasia.org on these letters and also
write us if you have any questions or need more info.

Thanks,
-Friends of South Asia"

 

1 comment:

daisies said...

I do not understand why people are
so upset about "revealed".
The Vedas came from seers, who
"saw" the truth directly. Revealed
is another word for the same thing.
The highest truths about God and
nature do not come about through
analysis. They came about through
"perception" or "seeing" directly.

J Krishnamurti also has stressed
"seeing" so much.

I think "revealed" is great.