California Textbooks and the Aryan Invasion Theory!

December 21, 2005

I haven't been looking at archives for a few months. I hope you had enough

fireworks for entertainment in my absence :-))

Here is something new to discuss:

The State of California in the United States adopts new textbooks

every six years. The adoption of these textbooks if preceded by a well

laid out and a lengthy process of review in which members of different

resident communities in the state also get a chance to participate and

offer their comments on the contents of these textbooks. California

is currently undergoing closure of one such cycle of textbook reviews.

The textbooks that will be adopted in the next month will be then used

in public schools for the next six years. Grade VI textbooks on

history contain a long section on Ancient India, together with

descriptions of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.

For several decades, Hindu Americans and Indian Americans have been dismayed at

the slanted, erroneous and prejudiced descriptions of their heritage in these

textbooks. This time however, they organized themselves and approached the State

Board of Education in California to rectify these errors, before the textbooks

were formally adopted and the text was frozen. These groups of Hindu Americans

meticulously followed the procedures of the State Board in offering their

comments, suggestions and edits to the texts that were submitted to the Board

for reviews.

However, just when these corrections were about to be accepted, a group of

traditional India-bashers [...] wrote an arrogant and pompous letter on Harvard

University letterhead [...] alleg[ing] that all these Hindu groups proposing

edits in the textbooks under review were dangerous Hindu nationalists who were

somehow connected with the slaughter of 1000 people in Gujarat, and whose

friends in India routinely discriminate against millions of Indian minority

members and Dalits!

For full story, see:

n-Theory%21

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