Author: Sandhya Jain
Publication: Organiser
Date: September 17, 2006
URL: http://www.organiser.org/dynamic/modules.php?name=Content&pa=showpage&pid=148&page=8
Hindus received unfair and unequal treatment
in the matter of how sixth grade students in the public education system would
be taught about the Hindu religion. Why should Hindu children be taught that
"Hindus worship talking monkeys and throw widows into fires?" Why
should the primordial stories in Hindu scriptures be branded as 'myths' when
the scriptures of monotheistic traditions are said to come from Only One (mutually
exclusive) God(s)?
It is a sad and undeniable truth that the
California Hindu community has failed to win a substantive victory in the
US courts in the matter of the shoddy depiction of Hindu faith and culture
in school textbooks. The substance of the so-called success boils down to
the judge accepting that rape was committed, but refusing to redress the victim's
grievance. Injustice has thus been perpetuated against the Hindu community
and it is a measure of the moral weakness of the Hindu American Foundation
(HAF) that its leaders are claiming legal triumph over the California School
Board of Education (SBE).
HAF won its legal point that SBE revised the
sixth grade textbooks in violation of approved procedures, but its principal
demand that the SBE be directed to drop the currently approved textbooks and
revisit the entire textbook adoption process was denied. Judge Patrick Marlette
of the California Superior Court accepted that SBE revisions on the presentation
of Hindu dharma did not conform to the California Administrative Procedures
Act and the Bagley-Keene Open Meeting Act.
This is because the school board allowed diligently
approved changes with California Hindu parents to be hijacked by a group of
known Hindu-baiters, including proponents of the discredited Aryan Invasion
Theory. Embarrassingly for the SBE, even Profs Michael Witzel and Romila Thapar
admitted the textbooks contained passages that are "very culturally biased
and insensitive." They said the authors of the impugned textbooks lacked
the knowledge and qualifications for the task and suggested dumping the textbooks
and authors and hiring international (sic) scholars from The Academic Indology
Advisory Council set up by them!
Judge Marlette therefore had no difficulty
in upholding the HAF claim that the textbook adoption process was flawed and
illegal and that California SBE had conducted the textbook approval process
under invalid "underground regulations." It is therefore quite untenable
that the Judge denied HAF the desired relief in the form of rejecting the
textbooks adopted under this illegal process (when even Witzel felt they should
go), saying this would disrupt every California public school student using
any and every textbook adopted under SBE's unlawful policies. The judge said
SBE be permitted a reasonable opportunity to correct the deficiencies in its
regulatory framework governing the textbook approval process while maintaining
the current system in the interim.
De facto, this means California SBE can improve
its procedures while continuing to maintain incorrect and offensive material
in the textbooks. The devastating impact of this judgment will now be felt
in educational contests in each and every American county and state, if not
combated vigorously at this stage itself. HAF counsel Suhag Shukla's contention
that merely the adoption process for the textbooks must be repeated misses
the point entirely. What is at stake is the content of the books; the flawed
and biased adoption process only underlines this mischief.
When the process of textbook revision began
last year, the Curriculum Commission accepted the changes mooted by representatives
of Christian, Jewish and Muslim groups, but posted changes desired by Hindus
for re-review by Hindu-baiting academics! The Jews, for instance, sought removal
of references portraying Christianity as an "improvement" upon Judaism.
Many changes desired by Hindus simply rectified obvious errors, such as the
claim that "Hindi is written with the Arabic alphabet, which uses 18
letters that stand for sounds," when Hindi is written in the Devanagari
script and has 52 characters.
Hindus received unfair and unequal treatment
in the matter of how sixth grade students in the public education system would
be taught about the Hindu religion. Why should Hindu children be taught that
"Hindus worship talking monkeys and throw widows into fires?" Why
should the primordial stories in Hindu scriptures be branded as 'myths' when
the scriptures of monotheistic traditions are said to come from Only One (mutually
exclusive) God(s)? Why should later-day social evils like untouchability and
rigid caste divisions be linked falsely with India's ancient civilisation,
when they are products of the medieval encounter with Islam?
The judge's refusal to order revisions in
the textbooks has had the effect of officially promoting a negative projection
of the Hindu faith as compared to other religions. This deprives Hindu students
of an educational experience at par with that of their peers, and thus violates
their rights under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
to the US Constitution.
The judgement also tacitly ignores the violation
of the constitutional requirement of State neutrality towards religion in
general, especially towards different religions. The California Department
of Education indirectly endorsed the monotheistic faiths by accepting the
changes they wanted, while denigrating Hindu dharma by portraying it incorrectly.
It remains to be ensured, therefore, that the textbooks eventually incorporate
a fair representation of Hindu faith and culture, rather than fashion cosmetic
legal standards for judging textbooks. California needs to respect and enforce
the guideline which states that a child should feel proud of his/her heritage.
This is an issue of Hindu Civil Rights.
The ball now lies in the court of the California
Parents for the Equalization of Educational Materials (CAPEEM), which is pursuing
the matter of substance in the Federal Court. Meanwhile, HAF should continue
to fight for supplementary educational materials (correctives) being issued
by the SBE to rectify the distortions and biases in specific chapters of the
textbooks.
