Now, Multicultural Hindutva

The State of California reviews its textbooks every six years, but does notpublish its own books, which is left to private publishers. The State Board ofEducation (Board), however, provides the overall curriculum framework, with theCurriculum Commission as its public advisory body. The review process is guidedby the California Education Code, which, among other things, specifies that

"no instructional materials shall be adopted… which…contains:

(a) Any matter reflecting adversely upon persons because of their race, color, creed, national origin, ancestry, gender, age, or occupation," and

"(b) Any sectarian or denomination doctrine or propaganda contrary to law."

The public may suggest corrections to the texts during the review process,but not rewrites. This year, it was the turn of the History-Social Sciencebooks, which contain passages on ancient India and Hinduism and were put up forpublic comments starting April 2005.

Two Hindutva organizations, the Vedic Foundation of Austin, Texas (VF), whichis closely linked to VHP, and the Hindu Education Foundation of California (HEF),a project of Hindu Swayamsevak Sangh (U.S. version of RSS), immediately seizedthe opportunity to suggest extensive rewrites of the text dealing with India,invoking part (a) of the code section cited above to argue that any negativeportrayal of Hinduism reflects adversely on Hindu children’s pride in anAmerican classroom.

Supporting their argument were a few egregious passages from the texts, whichwere widely circulated among Indian-Americans: e.g. "The Brahmins sometimesmade fun of the Dasa and said that they spoke as if they had no noses. (Pinchyour nose and see what you would sound like.)" Many parents wereunderstandably upset about such inanity and supported the initiative to cleanseschoolbooks of stereotypes.

Most parents were not told, however, that instances of such offensiveportrayals and inaccuracies (e.g. "Hindi is written with the Arabic alphabet")constituted only a tiny part of the changes sought by VF and HEF (5 to 7 out of153 edits), and that the most offensive ones involved just one publisher.

VF and HEF’s hidden agenda, as is now clear, was to seek legitimacy fortheir benign view of the caste system and to breathe new life into their claimsequating Harappan civilization with Vedic Aryans, with the ultimate politicalobjective of labeling all non-Hindus as outsiders. Accordingly, they replacedmost references to caste with Varna, to support the thesis that castestatus was not meant to be hereditary and was instead based on "capacity toundertake a particular profession." They deleted references to the word "Dalits"as somehow irrelevant. The status of Hindu women in ancient India was cleverlywordsmithed from "men enjoyed more rights than women" to "enjoyeddifferent rights"! Previously discredited theories that Aryans did not comefrom Central Asia were quickly resurrected, with the spurious claim that recentgenetic research proves that Aryans are indigenous to India.

Orchestrating the VF and HEF’s campaign from behind the scenes wereself-styled Hindutva historians like Dr. N.S. Rajaram, Dr. David Frawley, andDr. S. Kalyanaraman -- none of whom, incidentally, lives in California -- whosefanciful theories and questionable research methods had found no takers amongscholars of South Asia. As Prof. Vinay Lal, Associate Professor ofHistory at UCLA recently wrote to the Board,

"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."

And, who is Prof. Shiva G. Bajpai? Listed as a Professor of History and aDirector of The Center for Sex Research at California State University,Northridge, he was appointed sometime in September 2005 as an advisor to theAd-Hoc Committee formed by the Curriculum Commission to review the editsproposed by VF and HEF. He had apparently been recommended by VF as a "renownedIndologist" and was brought on board as an independent scholar. But, as itturns out, he is a founder-member of World Association for Vedic Studies(WAVES), which subscribes to many of the same views as VF and HEF and evenshares some of the same advisors. Not surprisingly, he uncritically acceptedmost of their suggestions, despite the fact that some of them may be inviolation of part (b) of the code section cited above against the introductionof sectarian doctrines and propaganda.

News of the imminent acceptance of Hindutva edits by the CurriculumCommission first reached academic circles and the broader Indian Diasporathrough Prof. Michael Witzel, Wales Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University,who had previously earned the wrath of Dr. N.S. Rajaram for exposinghis tall claims that he had deciphered the Indus valley inscriptions andhad discovered Vedic links to the Harappan Civilization.

In an urgent letter to the Board, dated November 8, 2005, endorsed byforty-six Indologists from around the world, Prof. Witzel warned that the "proposedrevisions are not of a scholarly but of a religious-political nature and areprimarily promoted by Hindutva supporters and non-specialist academics writingabout issues far outside their area of expertise." His position wassubsequently supported by over one hundred and forty academics, many of themSouth Asians who had personally witnessed the NCERT fiasco in India.

In reaction to Prof. Witzel’s letter, the Board appointed a three memberContent Review Panel (CRP) consisting of Prof. Witzel, Prof. James Heitzman (UCDavis), and Prof. Stanley Wolpert (UCLA) to review the edits approved by Prof.Bajpai. The CRP readily agreed that the few instances of offensive passagesought to be dropped, but, for the most part, they strongly objected to attemptsby VF and HEF to distort the caste system, women’s status, and the origin ofthe Aryans.

Notwithstanding the CRP’s intervention, the full Curriculum Commission,under intense pressure from Hindutva supporters, voted on December 2, 2005 toaccept most of the edits passed by Prof. Bajpai. The matter is now back in thehands of the Board, which has the ultimate authority to decide what goes intothe textbooks, and which has appointed a five-member sub-committee to bringclosure to the matter. No firm timeline has been announced.

In the mean time, following the December 2 meeting of the CurriculumCommission, many broad-based, secular groups of Indians and South Asiansmobilized in support of accuracy and a scholarly approach to teaching history,and called on the Board to reject Hindutva’s narrow, sectarian vision ofHinduism and Indian history. Organizations such as Friends of South Asia (FOSA),Coalition Against Communalism (CAC), Federation of Tamil Sangams of NorthAmerica (FeTNA), and numerous Dalit groups from India and the U.S. (e.g.National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights, Dalit Shakthi Kendra, The DalitSolidarity Forum, Dalit Sikh community from the Sacramento area, etc.) joined inan unprecedented effort to expose the Sangh Parivar’s "Trojan Horse" inCalifornia -- which they felt was using the genuine concerns of Hindu parentsabout stereotyping as a cover for its political/religious agenda -- and toeducate Americans and Indians alike about VF and HEF’s links to extremistideologies in India.

Since the Board meeting of January 12th, 2006, thesegroups have been challenging VF and HEF’s key assertion that teaching basicfacts about caste and women’s status in ancient India is somehow inimical toHindu pride. They point out that California curriculum requires coverage of theHolocaust, slavery, genocides and human rights, and that no one has argued thatthese topics impinge on the pride of German, White, or Turkish children in aclass room. Dalits groups argue that erasing all references to them, andsuggesting that caste status was based on people’s capacity, is an affront totheir self respect, and must not be allowed to stand. They are particularlyincensed by the assertion that they were called "untouchables" becausethey did dirty work, rather than the other way around, as copiouslydocumented in the scriptures.

Until Prof. Witzel’s eleventh hour intervention, everything seemed to begoing the VF and HEF way. Understandably, wide-spread mobilization by scholarsand secular South Asians in the last few weeks against the Sangh Parivar’scarefully choreographed plan has caught them by surprise. And, to those who arefamiliar with their tactics in India, their reactions were predictable: denyingoutright or trying to minimize their links to RSS and VHP; labeling anyone whodares to challenge them as "Communists" and "Nazis"; and initiatingvicious smear campaigns against their better-known opponents, for example,reckless attacks against Prof. Madhav Deshpande, Professor of History atUniversity of Michigan, who had challenged them in a recent Wall Street Journalarticle.

A slanderous petition against Prof. Witzel, lead by Hindtuva "scholars"like Dr. N.S. Rajaram, calling on Harvard University to dismantle the SanskritDepartment, has been making the cyber rounds. In addition to numerousmisstatements, the petition also includes outright fabrications, for e.g., aclaim that Prof Witzel had denigrated Hindus by writing that "IndianCivilization would be a good idea." His actual post on the Indo-Eurasian research yahoogroup, which he moderates, had said: "It was forwarded to usfrom a Yahoo list, called ‘Indian Civilization’, which to quote Gandhi,would indeed be a good idea! Only, that little civilization but endlesschauvinistic ranting is found on that Yahoo group."

The unexpected entry of Dalit groups into the debate since the January 12thBoard meeting has especially rattled VF and HEF, leading to wild accusationsagainst Dalit activists and even mockery of the very word "Dalits" by whichthe community chooses to call itself (similar to the self-chosen identity ofAfrican-Americans). Dr. Kalyanaraman, a key advisor to HEF, labeled attempts tocreate a Dalit solidarity network as a "mullah-missionary-marxist axis."Another key supporter, and a past moderator of the Indian Civilizationyahoogroup, Kalavai Venkat (who chooses to call himself an "orthodox,practicing, agnostic Hindu") vented, "Is it not surprising that we are evenready to imagine merits in neo-Nazi 'Dalit' traitors but crucify honorableHindus at the slightest pretext?" And, to top it all, supporters of VF and HEFmanufactured a phony website called www.dalithumanrights.com, immediatelyfollowing the January 12th Board meeting at which Dalit groups had testified,purporting to defend the Dalit viewpoint.It was, in fact, yet another Hindutva site, among many virulently anti-Christianand anti-Muslim sites maintained by the same person in Texas. Since the outingof this "Trojan Horse," the site has been cleansed of its many linksto Hindutva groups.

As the fight against "saffronization" of history shifts to the diaspora,the enormous implications of the California Board’s decision upon schoolbooksin other states, as well as upon the future of History curriculum in India, isjust beginning to dawn on concerned historians and teachers. But no one iswilling at this point to predict what the Board might do. Regardless of thefinal outcome, however, one thing seems clear: the Sangh Parivar may havecommitted a strategic blunder in giving its opponents a major opening to alertmainstream America about its dangerous ideology -- something that even the 2002Gujarat pogroms had failed to accomplish.

Raju Rajagopal is with the Coalition Against Communalism (CAC)