CONTROVERSY
'Many youths hide their identity because they think Hindu children will be looked at differently.'

A Rae Bareilly-born professor is celebrating the California Board of Education's decision to uphold key changes to eight textbooks on ancient Indian history and culture intended for sixth grade students in the state. "This is a great victory, not something of a victory", says California State Northridge emeritus professor Shiva Bajpai who says the department has agreed to implement 70 per cent of the changes he has recommended for the books printed by respectable Western publishers.

The 72-year-old professor has played a key role in the increasingly bitter textbook war that started after Hindu groups picked up obvious errors of fact as well as what they considered unbalanced references to polytheism, caste and the inferior status of women in ancient India. One of the errors beyond dispute was contained in a statement that Hindi is written in the Arabic script; an illustration in another book misidentified a Muslim man at prayer as a Brahmin. Similarly, a man praying with the Taj Mahal in the background was described as a Hindu.

Controversy grew, however, when Hindu activists demanded more fundamental revisions, including deleting references to the caste system and asserting that Hinduism is fundamentally a monotheistic religion because all deities are incorporated in one god, Brahman. "The books in our opinion are in violation of the California education code, which says that religious teachings should be imparted in such a way that they instil pride in the student or the follower of that religion", says activist Janeshwari Devi of the Austin, Texas-based Vedic Foundation. "If the books do end up in the way they are now, they are very derogatory, they are full of inaccurate information, it's going to present a very confused picture of what Hinduism actually is to California students."

Her assessment was strongly supported by Khanderao Kand of the Hindu Education Fund who says the real issue is Hindu pride and the impact on children. A software engineer by training, he says Hindus are routinely discriminated against in the media and in textbooks. Many objections and recommendations from the Fund and the Foundation were about to be accepted by the State Board late last year when a group of 50 scholars led by Professor Michael Wichael Witzl launched a counter attack. He described the proposed changes as "unscholarly" and "religiously motivated" before denouncing the Fund as nothing more than a front for the RSS. Witzl's intellectual argument was supported by Sanskrit Professor Madhav Deshpande from the University of Michigan who asserts women were considered inferior in ancient India and that Hinduism is both polytheistic and connected to the caste system. Within a matter of weeks other interested parties joined the debate. The Dalit Freedom Network wrote to the Board saying the proposed changes of the Fund and Foundation depict "a view of Indian history that softens...the violent truth of caste-based discrimination in India.... Do not allow politically-minded revisionists to change Indian history."

The Dalits were supported by Women's Rights Activists who condemned the Fund and the Foundation for undermining women's struggle for recognition and equality. This is where Bajpai was brought into the picture. Invited by the Board to share his expert opinion, he found himself engaged in a five-and-a-half hour face-to-face debate with Witzl. The debate was conducted before three Board members, two attorneys, two members of the California Curriculum Commission and five others from the Department of Education. Although the debate took place last January the Board's final decision accepting a substantial segment of Bajpai's recommendations was not announced until earlier this month.

Witzl in America and Professor Romila Thapar in India have been the "arch leaders" against the changes, explains a gleeful Bajpai. "Neither one can write me off. I am like a thorn. Everybody knows who I am even though I did not publish much. These persons don't want to read the original sources. These people are Vedic scholars, but unless you read the historical sources, which are post-Vedic, you won't get the correct perspective on ancient Indian history." As Bajpai savours his victory, the real losers in the textbooks war may turn out to be the Board of Education which is being sued by Hindu parents who say their children's civil rights have been violated because of the inaccurate and derogatory picture of Hinduism as presented in the controversial sixth grade school textbooks.