[Abhinavagupta] California History textbook Controversy

March 28, 2009

Dr. Elst,You wroteQuoteYou established for a long time to come the impression that Hindus are

untrustworthy, wily schemers with a reactionary and obscurantist agenda.UnquotePlease desist from ranting without citing instances. Your very mail on the California issue shows how you demean the Hindus. In fact what you have written in the above-quoted lines apply to you and not to me. In one of your earlier mails you wrote that the Witzel group considers Dr. Rajaramji and Shri Kalyanaramanji as Buffoons. What sadistic pleasure do you get by demeaning others and that too without any facts and figures?You wroteQuote

So I stand by my diagnosis. On all substantive points, the Hindu

position was soundly defeated, the Witzel side totally victorious.UnquoteNo problem if you do not see the truth or want to ignore the truth. Your attempt to depreciate the efforts of the Hindus will also be likewise ignored by the Hindus. I just gave three examples out of seventy odd corrections made.As regards the Hindu gods and goddesses you do not have much knowledge of Hinduism. The poet Iqbal realised it long ago when he said that Hindu gods are the farishtas (angels) of Islam and in fact the Semitic religions do believe in the angels. In the Quran Prophet Muhammad complained to Gabriel for his late-coming. Seeking favour from the angels is not forbidden in the Quran. Further you do not understand that when we Hindus say that the Vedas are not of human origin we mean that these are not invented by man and these are the Eternal Truths only seen by the Vedic seers.Further you said:QuoteI'd have to see

the new crop of textbooks to verify,-- and I note you don't quote those, only a non-committal oral statement.UnquoteNow you admitted that you are yet to verify what is in the textbooks. Please verify and revert to us to admit that you made a hasty comment earlier without ascertaining the facts. You are also casting aspersions on the President of California SBE, Mr. Glee Johnson by expressing doubt on the reliability of his statement.Regards,Sunil K. Bhattacharjya--- On Sat, 3/28/09, Koenraad <Koenraad wrote:Koenraad <Koenraad[Abhinavagupta] Re: California History textbook ControversyAbhinavagupta Date: Saturday, March 28, 2009, 4:09 AM

Abhinavagupta, Sunil Bhattacharjya wrote:

>

> Dear Dr. Elst,

>

> This is further to my earliest post on a connected topic. You considered the outcome of the Hindu protests in the above controversy as complete failure. But I wish to make the record straight as it is better to give the facts rather than making sweeping statements like you have done. We have been successful in correcting some of the horrendous mistakes. Instead of continuing the AIT as it is the Witzel-group was made to accept that the there are two points of view : the foreign origin of the Aryans and the indigenous origin of the Aryans.<

There is no indication that the Witzel-group ever doubted the existence of the indigenist theory.

> Though we could not get the AIT / AMT deleted the SBE president Glee Johnson announced that all text books will mention the contested nature of the AIT /AMT.<

Was that during the mass meeting where all Hindu parents could come and utter their complaint, only to see it all disregarded in the SBE's final decision? What you cite may have been a diplomatic statement for appeasement purposes, that was never materialized in the actual textbooks. I'd have to see the new crop of textbooks to verify,-- and I note you don't quote those, only a non-committal oral statement.

> Further the Vedas will mentioned as Sacred texts instead of calling them as poems inspite of the opposition from Witzel group. The gods an goddesses will be mentioned as deities. I hope these three points alone will show that the Hindu protest was not in vain like you wanted to project it.<

Those two points are non-issues. Whereas Hindus apparently can be made to believe that there is a huge difference between "gods and goddesses" and "deities", as big as that between victory and defeat, Witzel c.s. are perfectly aware that these are simply synonyms. If Hindus are silly enough to treat as victory the replacement of one term by another that is synonymous with it, all the better will they swallow real defeats, much to their enemies' glee. As for the Vedas, they are both poems and sacred, in the sense that there are people who revere them. Again, no controversy there, so no victory.

As the anti-Hindu group Friends Of South Asia observed in its comments on the proposed edits, they show a replacement of philosophical with religious views. If there is any victory in there, it is that of a sentimental anti-intellectual kind of medieval-to- modern Hinduism over the more mature (though more ancient) and more skeptical Vedic philosophies. Again to your enemies' glee, the edits, while totally impotent in their pretence at replacing the established anti-Hindu views, were successful in settling some intra-Hindu scores. The most demeaning trends in modern Hinduism joined hands, esp. the Arya Samaj cum ISKCON adoption of quasi-Protestant monotheism, hence several replacements of "gods" with "God" or "various manifestations of God"; or here that of "gods" with "deities", obviously stemming from an aversion to or embarrassment with the polytheistic term "gods". Apart from being untruthful, such attempts at covering up Vedic polytheism are also

downright silly for being hopelessly transparent and unconvincing. Any Christian or Muslim seeing a Diwali display (Saraswati, Lakshmi, Ganesha, with elephants and swans and a rat and gold coins) will recognize Hinduism as polytheistic and idolatrous par excellence, and any denial of it in Hindu-dictated textbooks will only add the extra impression that Hindus are liars.

The elevation of the Vedic poems to the status of "sacred texts", while descriptively alright, is not that innocent either in the present context. What is meant here, as I know from explicit confirmations by numerous Hindus including some involved with textbook controversies, is that the Vedas are not of human origin but are a kind of Quran written by God Himself. In fact, the Vedic hymns are explicitly in the form of human poets addressing the gods (plural), contrary to the Quran where the imagined Allah is addressing His prophet or, through him, mankind. The Vedic poets' names are given in the Anukramanis and sometimes even mentioned or cross-referred in the hymns themselves. Composing poetry and chanting it was a profession that required payment, so we even have Danastutis in which poets by way of thanks praise their sponsors. Allah never did such a thing. But modern Hindus don't want to stand upright next to the Vedic poets, freethinkers who never

crawled before ancient texts but composed their own. They want to crawl, to turn off their own thinking faculty and rely on texts, exactly like Christian creationists. The great thing about Hinduism, at its best, is that it does not ultimately idolize a text but reveres a multiplicity of seers, a type of people that can be born anywhere and at any time. You could be seers, but instead you choose to be scripture quoters, or even just scripture worshipers. At any rate, your enemies do not feel defeated by your denial that the Vedas were composed by poets.

So I stand by my diagnosis. On all substantive points, the Hindu position was soundly defeated, the Witzel side totally victorious. But by messing up this unique chance at improving the textbooks within the limits of what was possible and at establishing the Hindu community as a trustworthy partner of the education authorities, you achieved more than just a defeat. You established for a long time to come the impression that Hindus are untrustworthy, wily schemers with a reactionary and obscurantist agenda.

Best regards,

Koenraad Elst

[Response to Sunil's post (26 March 2009) at

http://groups. / group/Abhinavagu pta/message/ 4922]