HATING HINDUS IN A ‘SCHOLARLY’ WAY

California Textbooks Controversy: Politicization of an Academic Issue by Hindu-Haters

By Vishal Agarwal
26 January 2006

PART IV: HATING HINDUS IN A ‘SCHOLARLY’ WAY

Part I of the article dealt with the uphill battle faced by Hindus.

I am jumping the gun and writing this Part IV before publishing parts II and III because a lot of academically unsound ideas are being propagated by Michael Witzel and following him, ‘Friends of South Asia’ (FOSA) against the Hindu edits.

It is surprising or perhaps not, that FOSA, which has demonstrable links with FOIL or Federation of Inquilabi (‘Revolutionary’) Leftists and AID (Association for India’s Development), has focused only on fighting the Hindu edits. They have not questioned the conflict of Islamic edits with historical facts. Why is FOSA singling out Hindus? What is the stance of FOSA on Leftist Inquilabs (Revolutions) leading to killings of hundreds of people in India and Nepal every year?

It is a fact that Hinduism and India are given an unfair treatment in history and other social science textbooks at all levels in the United States. Instead of playing a constructive role in correcting this situation, why is FOSA trying to FOIL this effort by Hindu groups?

This Q&A below attempts to present a Hindu perspective on major points of controversy and rebut the viewpoint of Indian American Communists and their academic supporters.

I. EDITS RELATED TO NATURE OF HINDUISM:

1. Why are Hindu edits insisting that Hindu scriptures are revealed? Is it not a specialty of Hinduism that unlike Abrahamic faiths, its scriptures are not revealed to Prophets?

• The textbooks refer to holy books of all other religions as Divinely revealed texts, whereas Hindu holy texts are referred to as ‘poems’, ‘stories’ and ‘myths’. The notion that Hindu scriptures have a Divine origin is found within the Vedas (notably in the Purusha Sukta where all Mantras are said to be the breath of Purusha) themselves although obviously the notion of Rishis’ Divine vision of the Mantras differs from the notions of Prophetic revelations in Abrahamic Faiths. In classical Hinduism, the Divine word itself is represented as Divinity (Devi Sarasvati, Devi Gayatri and so on).
• Later traditions (within the time frame of Ancient India) such as Pashupata, Pancharatra, Itihasas, Vaisheshika (Prashastapada Bhashya), Vedanta, Puranas all accord a Divine (Ishvara, Shiva, Vishnu, Brahman) origin to the Vedas.
• Hindu students in the past have been told by their Judeo-Christian classmates that their religion is inferior because Hindu scriptures are man-made whereas the Bible is given by God.

2. Are HEF/VF trying to inject Monotheism into descriptions of Hinduism in these textbooks?

• I believe that terms such as monotheism, panentheism, pantheism, henotheism etc., are all inadequate in explaining the Hindu notion of Divine. We are trying to describe an ancient religion using the modern vocabulary of a foreign language! Hinduism is also monotheistic (or monistic) although Hindu monotheism is different from Abrahamic monotheism. Michael Witzel, conditioned by his own Lutheran background, is looking for the latter in Hinduism and has therefore rejected the Hindu edit. Unlike Abrahamic monotheism (that seems to be the standard yardstick for comparison in the minds of Michael Witzel and FOSA-FOIL), the Hindu God is not just transcendent, but also immanent. God is not just a unit in Heaven, or just male. Rather, God is that in which the entire creation attains unity.
• Hindus do not see any contradiction in extolling many gods simultaneously while understanding that the underlying reality is one. Hindu philosophy explains that just as the same water is present invisibly, pervading in the atmosphere, and also as dew drops, ponds, rivers and the ocean, so also there is no contradiction in the Divinity manifesting in various forms, while being transcendent and immanent. Just as one praises the same water whether one praises the ocean or pond or dewdrops or atmospheric moisture collectively or individually, so also Hindus do not see any contradiction in worship the Supreme reality in one cherished form or in multiple forms or in a formless version.
• The highest Hindu traditions clearly ask us to recognize the Unity inherent in the diversity of Divine Forms, or approach the Supreme Being through their favorite Form (Ishta Devata), just as we can approach the same Ocean sticking to any particular river. The word ‘Devata’ (see last citation below) is used in many senses.

The earliest Vedic texts also emphasize the Unity of Divinity, the underlying reality behind all deities and creation (a small sample):

Rigveda 1.164.46
Rigveda 6.45.16
Rigveda 8.1.1
Rigveda 10.121.1-10 (‘kasmai’ in the first 9 verses is glossed as ‘ekasmai’ in the Paippalada Atharvaveda version)
Yajurveda (Madhyandina) 32.1
Atharvaveda (Shaunakiya) 10.7.32
Atharvaveda (Shaunakiya) 10.7.33
Atharvaveda (Shaunakiya) 10.7.34
Atharvaveda (Shaunakiya) 13.4.16-19

Some extracts: That (Supreme Being) is Agni; that is the sun; that is the wind; that is the moon; that is light; that is Brahman; and that is Prajapati. Madhyandina Yajurveda 32.1

They call Him Indra, Mitra, Varuna, Agni, and he is the Divine good winged bird (the sun with beautiful rays). The sages describe one and the same Divine Being in various ways and call it Agni, Yama and Matarisvan. Rigveda 1.164.46

He is our Father, Creator and Ordainer knows all the places and all creatures. He alone is the name giver of the gods. The other beings approach him to enquire about Him. Rigveda 10.82.3

There are, no doubt, two forms of Brahman- one having a form and the other formeless. The Mortal and the immortal. The stationary and the moving. The discernible and the indiscernible. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 2.3.1

That under which the year revolves with its days, the gods worship that as the light of lights and as life immortal, that in which the people of all the five regions of the Earth and space are established, that alone I regard as the Soul; known that immortal Brahman, I too am immortal. Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. 4.4.16-17

On account of superb excellence if the Divinity, one soul (i.e., the All-pervading Soul) is extolled in various ways. The other (manifest) gods are just like the limbs of the Great Soul, the secondary members of the body. The specialists in this branch of study observe that the Rishis praise the beings according to the plurality and Universality of their intrinsic nature. The gods are (figuratively described in the Veda as) born from each other (e.g., Rigveda 10.72.4). The gods are the primary source of each other. They owe their birth, i.e., coming into being, to their specific functions as well as to the (Universal) Soul. Soul alone is their chariot, horse, weapon and arrow, i.e., these things which are not different from the Soul are only figurative appellations in their descriptions. Nirukta 7.4

• Hundreds of such passages can be cited from Hindu texts in ancient India but the above should be sufficient. Everyday simple statements uttered by even illiterate Hindus like ‘this is all the Maayaa of Ishvara’ confirm their faith in the underlying Unity of Divinity.
• It is true that a few Hindu sectarians like to extol one Form over the other, but the Hindu masses are very comfortable using generic terms for God such as Ishvara, Brahman, Prabhu, Hari, Rama (which often denote Divinity as such, rather than specific deities, as in the works of Kabirdas). And this is the dominant and mainstream view that should be taught to sixth grade children rather than confusing them with non-mainstream views.

3. Why are Hindu edits trying to read late Bhakti ideologies into ancient Hinduism?

• HEF/VF have not made any such attempt. The ancient period which these textbooks cover stretches to 600 AD and therefore includes theistic major texts of Hinduism such as the Gita, Ramayana, Mahabharata and several Puranas, and a few Pancharatras, Tantras, Pashupata Agamas etc.
• It is erroneous on part of FOSA and Michael Witzel to suggest that devotional theistic paths are necessarily ‘later’. The following works gives ample evidence of Bhakti in Rigveda:

Jeanine Miller. Does Bhakti Appear in the Rigveda. Bharatiya Vidya Bhawan: Mumbai, 1996

• The following work collects hundreds of devotional passages in the four Vedas –

A C Bose. Hymns from the Vedas. Asia Publishing House: Bombay (1964)

• The word Bhakti itself occurs in the Gita, Shvetashvatara Upanishad, and in Vyasabhashya on Yogasutras which belong to the ancient Indian period. Words with similar meanings also occur abundantly in Mahabharata, Ramayana and the Gita.
• Certain Western as well as Indian scholars (e.g., R N Dandekar) have sought to find Abrahamic devotion in the Vedas, and when they did not find it (except in Varuna hymns), they declared that Bhakti is practically absent in the Vedas. However, when the Hindu notions of Bhakti are searched in the Vedas using Hindu notions of Bhakti, we find ample evidence as shown by competent scholars such as Dr Velankar.

4. Why are Hindu Edits denying that Sanskrit is no longer spoken in India?

• A few villages in India still speak Sanskrit, which is also one of the officially recognized languages. There are radio broadcasts in Sanskrit. Journals, dramas, epics, poems and books are still published in this language. Organizations such as Sanskrit Bharati have been popularizing conversational Sanskrit in India. Sanskrit scholars in Tirupati, Varanasi, Sringeri, Pune, Ujjain and many other cities are still composing Sanskrit texts, and even translating works of Shakespeare and Omar Khayyam into Sanskrit. Philosophical debates and discussions in Sanskrit still occur in public places.
• Even modern scholarship acknowledges Sanskrit speakers (although in small numbers) numbering hundreds in India. For instance;

Hans Heinrich Hock. ‘Spoken Sanskrit in Uttar Pradesh’. PP. 247-260 in ‘Dimensions of Sociolinguistics in South Asia’ ed. By Edward C Dimock et al

• There are also large Sanskrit knowing literati communities in Newari and Parbatia Nepal, in Kerala (India).

II. HINDU EDITS RELATED TO SOCIAL ISSUES:

5. Why are Hindu edits hesitant in admitting that women in ancient Hindu society had inferior rights to women?

• Equality of sexes is a modern is a modern ideal that is yet to be realized in our own times. How many Presidents of the United States of America have been women? None.
• Therefore, it goes without saying that all traditional and ancient societies, and all organized religions gave an unequal status to women and men. And yet, the proposed Ancient History textbooks for Grade VI for California students single out ancient India and Hinduism for its alleged unfair treatment, and for granting women ‘inferior rights’. All the books do not have a single positive statement on the contributions that women have made to Hindu heritage. In discussions of all other religions, these (and Grade VII textbooks on the medieval period covering Islam) either leave out this aspect, or carefully hedge negative statements with positive ones.
• The textbooks completely ignore other facets of women in ancient Hindu society such as the fact that Hinduism alone of all the current organized religions worships God in ‘His’ feminine aspect as well, that Hindus have a continuous tradition of women saints, seers, that Hindu texts speak of learned women with a profound knowledge of scriptures, that Hindu women philosophers are also known to have participated in debates (e.g., Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 3.3). Several examples of achievements of Hindu women in ancient and medieval times are listed at this website.
• The textbooks (especially the Glencoe textbook) also contain errors of fact regarding women in ancient India when they make unilateral statements saying that women could not study Hindu scriptures, they were harassed if they did not commit Sati and so on. So errors of fact, and bias prompted correctives from Hindu Americans.
• The singularly one-sided negative treatment of role of women in Hindu society in these textbooks is a part of a larger pattern covering all American textbooks.

6. Why are Hindu edits so apologetic about the Caste System?

Modern Hindus like myself are committed to the eradication of casteism, caste based discrimination and caste-system as such. We should object to the discussions on caste system in these textbooks because:

• The detailed description of Hindu caste-system in these textbooks is at the expense of other organizing principles and defining world views in the Hindu society such as the systems of Ashramas, Purusharthas, liberating yogas etc.
• The caste system was more of a normative concept with little basis in social reality according to prominent scholars such as Nicholas Dirks and M N Srinivas. The more relevant social organization was Jaati, which is hardly dealt with in most of the textbooks.
• The accounts in these textbooks ignore the movements of Jatis from one varna to the other via a process of Sanskritization etc. Textbooks ignore that many so-called Shudras actually gave rise to powerful ruling houses, served as warriors and soldiers. The accounts in the textbook are obsessively negative.
• Textbook account ends at 600 AD, whereas FOSA-Witzel want us to inject later versions of the social organization in the Hindu society and relate it forcibly with present day situation.
• Descriptions of other religions ignore exploitative institutions (slavery, dhimmitude, ill-treatment of Gypsies/Jew/Africans etc) in their respective societies, placing Hinduism at a disadvantage.
• The jaati system did have a few plus points (e.g., ensuring livelihood), but except for one textbook, all ignore them.
• The textbooks ignore the fundamental contributions that the ‘lower castes’ have made to Hinduism be it its scriptures (practically the entire cannon is recited or redacted by people of mixed or lower castes), religious practices (sects worshipping deities such as Jagannatha) and so on. They tend to portray the lower castes as passively tolerating upper-caste hegemony and deny the former any agency or intelligence.
• The textbooks also give undue importance to normative texts such as Manusmriti, while ignoring often more authoritative and more popular scriptures that contradict Manu by giving a more benign and flexible view of the Varna system.
• The Gita has 700 verses of which not more than 30 (or 4%) deal with caste system. The Rigveda has 10552 mantras but only 1 mentions all the four castes, and not more than 20 mantras (0.2%) mention the different castes individually. The Samaveda has even a lower percentage of its 1875 mantras dealing with caste. The Yajurveda in all its recensions has very few (less than 3-4%) portions dealing with caste. The Atharvaveda with almost 6000 mantras (or 8000 in another version) likewise has very few references to caste. The last two have prayers for the welfare of Shudras, together with all other castes. So let the reader decide for himself! In any case, the Hindu tradition has had an internal debate on this issue, so why do the textbooks reduce Hinduism to caste, and the present it in purely negative terms?

7. Why is HEF trying to white-wash history by insisting on exclusion of the word ‘Dalit’ from textbooks?

First, this word is found only in one textbook out of the eight reviewed. So how can Hindu edits ‘white-wash’ history when it is not present in the other textbooks? Its removal is desirable because of the following reasons (noting that Hindu edits have never asked for deletion of the word ‘Shudra’ from textbooks) –

1. The word Dalit is not used as a self-referential term by ‘untouchables’ per se except by a small section of the community largely restricted to parts of Maharashtra. Mahatma Gandhi called them ‘Harijans’.
2. ‘Dalit’ identity is constructed, and it is not yet a pan-India social reality. People in the entire Gangetic plains (containing 1/3 of India’s population) barely use it, and it is rare in other large areas of India.
3. It should be noted that according to many scholars, there is no cognate in any Indian language for the term ‘untouchable’ and all Indian equivalents have been recent translations of the English word.
   
   See: Robert Deliege. The Untouchables of India, translated from French by Nora Scott, Berg Publishers, 1999, pp. 10-12
   
   
4. The pre-eminent leader of the community, namely Dr B R Ambedkar, never himself used the word Dalit as a ‘Proper Noun’ though he used it as an adjective for the community. According to some scholars, it was coined as a proper noun in 1972 by a militant group called Dalit Panthers Party [Joshi, B.: Untouchables! Voices of the Dalit Liberation Movement, pp. 141-147].
5. It should be noted that the textbooks end their narrative at 550-600 AD, and before this period, untouchability was a very marginal phenomenon restricted to a few groups such as Chandalas and Pulkassas, who were despised due to their lifestyles by the society. These sections sometimes also included degraded Brahmins and other non-Shudra castes. It is more appropriate to use this word in High School textbooks that discuss later Indian history, and HEF/VF are not objecting to its retention there.
   
   See the following work (in passim) for this:
   R.S.Sharma Sudras in Ancient India. Motilal Banarsidass: New Delhi, 2002
   
   
6. Modern caste relations have much more to do with later developments in the subsequent medieval period. For this reason, it is more appropriate to refer to ‘Dalits’ in high schools books that cover later periods of Indian history.
7. The very few negative references to untouchables in ancient India are found uniformly in Hindu, Jain and Buddhist texts. But Hinduism seems to be singled out in these textbooks.
8. The most eminent political party representing depressed classes uses 'Bahujan' instead.
9. Indian tradition itself uses more dignified words such as Harijan, which was used for untouchables by Saints such as Ramanuja (‘Thirukula’) in 1200 AD, Saint Kabir in 15th century and most importantly by Mahatma Gandhi in our own times.
10. Government of India itself uses the term ‘scheduled castes and scheduled tribes’.
11. Dalit is a highly politicized terms used in very recent years by a small group of ideologues to refers to all members in India classified as untouchables.
12. By use of this word in the textbook by Prentice Hall, Hinduism is being singled out to relate contemporary social evils to ancient religion. Corresponding chapters on other religions do not relate modern social evils to their ancient religious roots. Thus, for instance, the chapter on Islam does not say that Saudi Arabia values life of an infidel at a fraction of the life of a believer. Nor does it say anything about the lower status of black Muslims in Arab societies.
    

III. HINDU EDITS RELATING TO THE ARYANIST THEORIES

8. What is wrong in saying that the Aryans came into India from outside?

• The Aryan migration is merely a theory, with no evidence to support it. Even Intelligent Design theories have more evidence than AIT or related Aryan theories. This theory assumes that different languages correlate to different races of people. While the membership of Indo-Aryan languages in the larger Indo-European family is undisputable, it is questionable if we can assert that Indo-Aryan people were a branch of Indo-European people. As an analogy, consider how erroneous it would be to call ‘Mexicans’ as a part of a larger group ‘Indo-Europeans’ just because Mexicans speak Spanish, which is an Indo-European language. Language is just one indicator of ethnic identity. Moreover, the Indo-Europeans themselves are a constructed identity with no basis in history, literature or archaeology.
• History is no longer an armchair discipline and must take into account evidence from Hydronomy, archaeology, astronomy, metallurgy, genetics etc., and all this data forces us to reject these theories.
• These migration and theories persist because of academic inertia in throwing off the yoke of colonial and missionary theories from the 19th century. Many scholars have spent decades retro-fitting data into these old paradigms and they cannot watch the entire work of their lives getting rejected. These theories prevent understanding India and Hinduism on their own terms by forcing untenable linkages of everything Indian with something to the north of Black Sea of Caspian Sea.
• The Aryan Invasion and Migration theory are rooted in racism, colonialism and other despicable ideologies and maintain links to these even today. These theories are highly political in nature, with little evidential basis.
• Textbooks under dispute use this baseless and etic (‘outsider’) theory to explain the genesis of Hinduism whereas the believer’s perspective us used to explain the origin of Christianity, Islam and Judaism.

9. But isn’t there Vedic evidence for the Aryan Migration Theory?

No, there is none. Dr. Witzel has claimed that a Vedic text Baudhayana Srautasutra 18.44 contains literary evidence that Indo-Aryans immigrated from Central Asia into India. However, it has been shown that Witzel’s translation is incorrect. Further, the following other (four) translations actually take the passage to mean that segments of Persians and Afghans actually emigrated from northern parts of India towards Central Asia:

CALAND, Willem. 1903. “Eene Nieuwe Versie van de Urvasi-Mythe”. In Album-Kern, Opstellen Geschreven Ter Eere van Dr. H. Kern. E. J. Brill: Leiden, pp. 57-60

Tushifumi Goto; “Pururavas und Urvasi” aus dem neuntdecktem Vadhula-Anvakhyana (Ed. Y. Ikari); pp. 79-110 in Tichy, Eva and Hintze, Almut; Anusantatyai; J. H. Roll; Germany; 2000

KASHIKAR, Chintamani Ganesh. 2003. Baudhayana Srautasutra (Ed., with an English translation). 3 vols. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass/IGNCA

TRIVEDA, D. S. 1938-39. “The Original Home of the Aryans”. In ABORI, vol. XX, pp. 49-68

The voluminous Vedic literature, 8 times the length of the Bible, is completely silent about any Aryan migrations. It pre-supposes an indigenous population. Ancient literatures from Tamil and other languages also do not say anything about any Aryan migration from Central Asia.

10. Is there any archaeological evidence for an Aryan Migration into India?

• There is no archaeological evidence for an Aryan Migration, contrary to assertions by Michael Witzel who claims that there is evidence.
• It is sometimes claimed that the site of Pirak in Baluchistan shows remains of Aryan migrants. However, the excavator of that site Jean-Francois Jarrige himself denies this interpretation.
• It is also claimed by Michael Witzel that the Cemetery-H culture in Harappa shows evidence of Aryan intrusion. However reputed archaeologists such as Rafique Mughal and Jonathan Mark Kenoyer see archaeological continuity between Cemetery-H underlying archaeological artifacts, and deny that there is an proof there of an Aryan Migration.
• Gandhara Grave culture is sometimes used to see evidence of an Aryan migration. However, Dr Stacul who wrote the excavation report actually starts with the assumption of an Aryan invasion. The culture has revealed a mere 2.5 skeletons of buried horses (and Vedic Aryans are not exactly known to bury horses) that show marks of bit wear indicating that they were ridden (whereas the evidence for horse-riding in Rigveda is very scant and questionable). Some potsherds are claimed to represent horse depictions, but if these are judged using the same stringent criteria that are applied to Harappan artifacts (‘stiff manes, not horses, therefore only general equids’), then there is no reason to assume that they do indeed represent horses. In any case several Harappan sites have now turned up horse bones, terracotta representations, potsherd drawings as stated by Indian, Japanese, Hungarian archaeologists with no political axes to grind even though a particular zoo-archaeologist working with the same linguist keeps denying the same.
• The archaeological record shows no breaks, but only continuity in the relevant period and therefore any significant invasions and migrations are ruled out.

11. But isn’t there Linguistic evidence for an Aryan Migration at 1500 BCE?

The exact process by which the Indo-Aryan languages arrived in India (even if assuming their foreign origin) is unknown. There is no archaeological, genetic or literary evidence to support the view that any significant numbers of ‘Aryans’ entered India from outside around 1500 BC. Languages must not be equated to people. Linguistic evidence constitutes soft evidence at best, and must not contradict other evidence. Much of this evidence cannot be dated as such, and relies on scientific disciplines such as archaeology to provide hard dates.

Which explains why Michael Witzel sometimes assigns a date of 1500 BCE to Rigveda, sometimes 1200 BCE and sometimes 1000 BCE depending on what suits his fancies.

12. But there is Genetic Evidence for the Aryan Invasion or migration?

No, there is no genetic evidence for this theory and on the whole the existing set of evidence rules out any significant migration into India after the Holocene period (last ice age). The genetic studies on ‘Aryan genes’ published so far seem to be in a phase where Harappan archaeological studies were in early 1960’s. Fifty years ago, the Aryan invasion theory was considered an axiomatic truth. It was still used to explain archaeological data for a decade till archaeologists began to realize that the data they dug up did not match an invasionist paradigm. Therefore, one starts seeing strained attempts to force-fit archaeological data into an Aryan invasionist paradigm, till the negative (or rather opposing) evidence became so overwhelming that archaeologists had no option but to throw off the yoke of the Invasionist theories. Thereafter, the Aryan invasion theory was replaced by Aryan migration theory, but in recent years, archaeologists have become very uncomfortable even with this and have started rejecting even this theory.

Similarly, genetic studies on Indian populations till very recently have been operating under the Aryan invasionist/migrationist paradigm. But as Y chromosomal and mtDNA studies are being fine tuned (with the possibility of estimating time-depth of mutations especially in the former) and sample sizes are becoming larger, we are seeing that attempts in studies dating back to 2001-2002 to force-fit the genetic data into an AIT/AMT paradigm are very strained.

The most recent, and more comprehensive studies being published every month negate the results of the above study of Bamshad et al. For instance, the following paper on Y Chromosomal evidence pointedly refers to Michael Witzel, and rejects his suggestion of recent (in the time frame of hypothetical AIT/AMT) influx of genes from Central Asia into India:

"If pastoralists arrived recently, based upon linguistic and religious evidence on a track from the north via Bactria, S. Tajikistan and N.Afghanistan and the Hindu Kush into the N. Pakistan plains (Witzel 2004) one would expect to see L3-M357 in India. Although this haplogroup occurs with an intermediate frequency in Pakistan (6.8%), it is very rare in India (0.4%)".

See -Sengupta et al. 2006. “Polarity and Temporality of High Resolution Y-Chromosome Distributions in India”, accepted for publication in American Journal of Human Genetics (vol 76).

Another paper printed in January 2006 also states the same thing, and argues that just as there is evidence for a very small gene flow into India, there is also evidence to support gene flow in the opposite direction.

See – Sahoo et al. A Prehistory of Indian Y Chromosomes, Evaluating demic diffusion scenarios. In Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (United States), Vol. 103, issue 4, pp. 843-848 (January 24, 2006)

Similar reports have appeared in genetic studies published in recent issues of National Geographic and so on.

However, it must be stated that genes do not have speak, and it may be fundamentally flawed to try to seek ‘Aryan’ genes. But at least these studies do show overall that the particular genes that may be associated with Central Asians/Europeans are present to a very small extent in Indian populations across the board, and Indians in general seem to form a genetic group distinct from other peoples.

Minor genetic differences are seen between ‘upper caste’ and ‘lower castes’ and between ‘caste’ and ‘tribal’ populations but these may be attributed to other factors (such as Scythians invading from Central Asia and settling down as Kshatriya castes).

13. But is there not a paper by Bamshad, Kivisild et al (2001) that argues that Upper Indian castes have more European genes than Lower castes?

This article has fundamental flaws because the data speaks contrary to the conclusions that the authors have drawn. For instance, the sample size is very small, and restricted to one district in coastal south India, to where migration of upper-castes from North India is attested even by Vedic texts No statistical justification is given by the authors for what is prima-facie an insufficient sample size. The authors do not take into account the mobility of caste and sub-caste groups in social hierarchy. They just assume that present day Ksatriyas were Ksatriyas in 1500 BCE as well. The European-ness of Ksatriyas, per the data in that paper, is greater than that of Brahmins, which is odd. If we adhere to invasionist scenarios, Brahmins should resemble the ‘Europeans’ most closely. The genetic distance tables actually show that the ‘genetic distance’ between Indians as a group, and East Europeans is LESS than that between East Europeans and South Europeans. This puts a question mark on the very basis of the ‘genetic’ category ‘European’ employed by Bamshad et al. The paper is silent on when these ‘Eurogenes’ entered the various castes of India. These genes could have well come during Shaka, Greek and Persian invasions and thus have nothing to do with the Aryans at all. The authors of the paper however assume that these genes were brought in by Aryans around 1500 BC.

To conclude, the study has several fundamental flaws and cannot be accepted as ‘proof’ of an Aryan invasion or immigration around 1500 BCE. In short, the authors have forcibly retrofitted their skimpy data into the invasionist hypothesis that ‘European’ Aryans invaded India around 1500 BC and formed the upper castes because of which these castes will have greater affinity to Europeans than lower-caste Indians. When a request was sent to the authors to clarify the term ‘European’, they responded by saying that the term merely meant populations west of Indus!

14. What does the record from Skeletal Anthropology say on Aryan Migrations?

Research of scholars such Drs Kennedy, Lucaks and Hemphill shows that there is no break in the skeletal record in NW India/Pakistan between 4500-800BC. In other words, Gujarati Harappans were similar to modern day Gujaratis, Punjabi Harappans were similar to modern day Punjabis. This would have been unlikely if a foreign group had intruded into the Indian subcontinent in significant numbers.

15. By denying the Aryan Migration theory, are the Hindu edits trying to deny the ‘Indian-ness’ of other religions such as Islam?

• This question smacks of a conspiracy theory and is prevalent in Indian Marxist and Communist circles as a polemical point of discussion. Why should one deny the Indian-ness of Islam or any other religion using the Aryan invasion theory? Moreover, Islam is irrelevant in the discussion of ancient Indian history because there were no Muslims in India before 600 AD. Political considerations should not influence simple facts of history or academic matters.
• Even assuming that precursor of Sanskrit entered India from outside, how does that make Hinduism a foreign religion? Does Islam become an Arabian religion because the Koran is in Arabic? Even according to invasionists such as F B J Kuiper (one of the teachers of Michael Witzel) Vedas seem to have been compiled in the Indian subcontinent long after any ‘migrating Aryans’ entered India. And then, Vedic traditions fused with other spiritual traditions in the Indian subcontinent leading to the genesis of Hinduism, a beautiful and comprehensive Dharma. Therefore, Hinduism is through and through a religion of Indic origin. Traditional Hindus of course believe that Hindu faith is from Brahman alone, and within this paradigm, the national origin of Hinduism becomes irrelevant.
• The same Marxists who argue that Hinduism was created in the 19th century are now suggestion that Hinduism was brought into India in 1500 BC. How are the two things possible simultaneously?
• Moreover, how are textbooks for Sixth Grade children in California related to politics in India?
• Muslims themselves do not argue that their faith is just Indian. According to them, it is given by Allah and is from Allah.

16. Did the Migrating Aryans subjugate Indian native populations into a Shudra status?

The entire Aryan migration and invasion theory is just a theory, and not a fact. There is no proof that the ‘native peoples’ were relegated to Shudra status. Contrary theories such as by Marxist historian D D Koshambi state that Brahmins were also derived from native priesthood.

Even scholars hostile to Hinduism (see reference below) and operating with the Aryan Invasion/Migration paradigms state that the Shudra caste was allied (originally) with the Indo Aryan stock (p. 39), and that large sections of both Indo-Aryans and ‘pre-Aryans’ were reduced to Sudra caste partly through internal and partly through external conflicts between different peoples (p. 45). See -

R. S. Sharma. 2002. The Sudras in Ancient India. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers.

Even Dr B R Ambedkar, a pre-eminent leader of lower castes, stated in his research that there is no proof of an Aryan invasion, and that the Shudras were derived from Kshatriyas (cited in Sharma 2002:40).

17. Why are Hindu edits objecting the statements that Mohenjodaro and Harappa were the first cities of India?

It is wrong to state that only Harappa and Mohenjodaro were ‘first settlements’, when in fact contemporary texts on Harappan culture speak of at least five major sites all of which are very old. The students should not be made to infer, as 50 year old outdated texts on archaeology stated, that there are only two major Harappan cities. Don’t we want the students to appreciate the entire geographic spread of the culture.

18. But is it not true, as Michael Witzel says, that the Aryans came from Central Asia into India with their horses, chariots and language as said by him according to his interview in the Christian Science Monitor article on 24 January 2006?

• This argument is just a regurgitation of Aryan fantasies straight out of 1800s! Now that archaeology and many other scientific disciplines have failed to produce any evidence corroborating the Aryan invasion theory or its migration variant, this romantic horse-chariot fantasy is the last fig leaf that is being used to defend untenable theories under the guise that it sustains the ‘Elite dominance’ scenarios for explaining the ‘Aryanization’ of India. When even in modern times American tanks cannot traverse the Afghani terrain easily, it is ridiculous to propose that Aryans could heroically ride their chariots from Steppes or Central Asia across Afghanistan (or the rivers of Punjab) into India.
• There is reason to believe that the technology to make chariots was not absent in Harappan Indian. Archaeologists B. K. Thapar and Rafique Mughal mention that a sherd depicting a canopied cart with spoked wheels was unearthed from pre-Harappan levels at Banawali. R.S. Bisht reports that at Banawali, a pot sherd depicting a canopied cart with spoked wheels was found at pre-Indus levels. Bisht is the excavator of the site. This shows that the Harappans apparently possessed the relevant technology to fashion light vehicles with spoked wheels. Chariots as such are not attested in the archaeological record of the Indian subcontinent till about the middle of first millennium BCE, and therefore their absence in Harappan contexts need not lead us to conclude that they were absent in that civilization. In any case, it should be noted that the introduction of the chariot and horse in other cultures such as ancient Egypt, ancient China, ancient Iraq etc., did not lead to a new civilization, language, religion and culture. So why should India be an exception?
• It is often argued that Harappans could not have employed chariots in warfare because they did not possess horses. However, the sum total of evidence attests to the presence of horse in Harappan contexts, and this is contested now only by very few zoo-archaeologists (e.g., Michael Witzel’s colleague Richard Meadow with vested interests in opposite theories that he has propagated for 3 decades). In summary, horse bones have been found in Harappan and pre-Harappan levels at Kuntasi, Surkotada, Lothal, Ropar, Kalibangan, Shikarpur, Malvan etc. Horse figurines have emerged in Rakhigarhi, Lothal, Nausharo and several other places, and painted horse on pottery sherds at Kunal.
• And horse remains have been unearthed not just in Harappan contexts, but also in non-Harappan chalcolithic sites in the interior of India from strata predating the supposed time of arrival or Aryans at or after 1500 BCE. For instance, in Kayatha, a site in Central India excavated in 1968, a part of a horse jaw was unearthed from a level dated to 2000-1800 BC and a few other bones from levels dated from 1800-1600 BCE. Likewise, Hallur in Karnataka has yielded horse bones at levels dated to 1500 BCE which is too early for the arrival of Aryans in this part of India.
• Numerous other reports on Kayatha, Malwa and other chalcolithic cultures in the interior of India attest the presence of horse between 2000-1500 BCE. So whether an Aryan migration took place or not, it is clear that the elite dominance model cannot explain the Aryanization of India because horse was already present in India and there is no proof for the arrival of the chariot or horse only after 1500 BCE.

IV Politics and Hindu Edits

19. Why are Hindu edits aimed at proposing the same changes that were rejected in India recently?

• This question is like asking “Did you beat your wife today?”. My conversations with HEF and VF volunteers show that they do not have copies of old or new NCERT textbooks. Michael Witzel and FOSA-FOIL have also not demonstrated any parallels between the edits proposed in CA and the textbooks in India and have merely indulged in reckless slander.
• Implicit in the suggestion of Witzel-FOSA group is the suggestion that the parallel textbook (recently reinstated NCERT textbook for Grade VI on Ancient India written by Romila Thapar) is somehow the standard against which CA textbooks should be judged. But as I have shown, this textbook by Romila Thapar was essentially written in 1966, and has been used in India for 40 years without any significant change. Does Michael Witzel want California in 2006 to use a forty year old Indian textbook riddled with errors?
• Moreover, this textbook that FOSA- Witzel want to use as a standard not only has errors, it also preaches a subtle hatred for Hindus, informed by the author’s own adherence to Indian Marxist political agenda.
• Their suggestion is also misleading due the fact that less than 5% students in India who attend CBSE schools use these NCERT textbooks. The other 95% or more students use textbooks recommended by the respective school Boards.
• Also, FOSA-Witzel are misleading others by hiding the fact that the reinstatement of antiquated textbooks by Leftist historians in India by the present UPA government was also influenced by politics. This does not of course absolve the previous NDA government of trying to thrust extremely shoddy textbooks on students as well.

20. Isn’t VF a Hindutva Organization because of the absurd chronologies they have proposed on their website?

• The chronologies listed on their website are traditional Hindu beliefs predating Hindutva by several centuries. At this rate, these people will start branding hundreds of Hindu saints and sages and commoners who adhered to these notions centuries ago also as Hindutva-vaadis!
• Numerous scientists have singled out the Hindu tradition for its cosmological views that envisage a Universe that is billions of years old, in contrast to other faiths that think in terms of a few thousand years. Are all these scientists also votaries of Hindutva?
• People are also ignoring the fact that the VF website reflects their personal beliefs, which they have not included in even one proposed edit/correction to their textbooks. Just as a Christian organization can believe in resurrection of Jesus Christ three days after his death, but cannot insist its inclusion as an objective, universal truth in school textbooks for secular public schools. So why are FOSA-Michael Witzel trying to single out Vedic Foundation? Why don’t they harp on the religious beliefs of other organizations that have proposed edits for Islam, Christianity and Judaism?

21. But VF is just a small sectarian organization and cannot speak for Hinduism per se.

Who is not sectarian? Doesn’t FOSA just represent a fringe of ultra-Leftists? Are not Michael Witzel’s views on Indus script revisionist and non-mainstream? If they can claim to speak for all ‘liberal Hindus’ (even though FOSA has no use for Hinduism except as a punching bag) and if Witzel who is just a linguist can claim to speak on matters related to archaeology, history, genetics, astronomy and what not, then why try to stifle the right of Vedic Foundation to speak on Hinduism? And which particular edit of VF contradicts any mainstream Hindu belief? FOSA has not pointed out any example till date.

22. But HEF is surely a Hindutva Organization. Is it not?

• My interviews with HEF indicate that their political links are less obvious that the Communist links of Witzel and Islamist-Evangelist links of FOSA/AID and FOIL.
• HEF has hundreds of volunteer members most of whom have no affiliation with the Sangh Parivar. In addition, hundreds of Hindu American parents like myself are working with them on this particular issue alone (due to CDE related procedural limitations which prevent intervention by us independently) even though we have no affiliation with the Sangh Parivar. Do you think we would allow them to inject any politics into a question that affects my child? In short, whereas some founding members and other members of HEF may have links with RSS, the organization philosophy or even the guiding philosophy of an overwhelming majority of its supporters is not related to RSS ideology.
• In any case, the issue here is the edits they have proposed to the CA textbooks and FOSA-Michael Witzel have failed to demonstrate that these edits have a Hindutva tinge. This is rather their own imagination, and a dispassionate academic analysis of these edits shows that it is Michael Witzel his team who are academically inaccurate and incorrect.

23. So how do we characterize people who are attributing political-Hindutva affiliations to California based Hindu-Americans?

They seem to be un-informed or prejudiced. This kind of witch hunt may also indicate these critics’ adherence to Nazism like ideologies, in which entire disciplines of study, books, scholars etc., were called ‘Jewish’ and then ostracized.

Members of FOSA and Michael Witzel and his assistant Steve Farmer are recklessly associating anyone who disagrees with them as followers of Hindutva in various degrees. This reminds one of Nazi Germany where people were incinerated to death not just being for 100% Jewish, but even when suspected of being 25% Jewish! In the past, Witzel has lumped a perfectly apolitical scholar Malati Shengde with Hindutva people just because “her frequent attacks on accepted Indological research - combined with her wholly fictional links between Harappan and Vedic cultures - puts her in very political company nonetheless”. This is even worse than Freudian free association.

It is precisely this kind of hate-speech in the early part of 20th century that eventually lead to the Jewish holocaust. The people who propagated reprehensible anti-Semitic Aryan theories often did not attack Jews directly, but rather pretended to be just anti-Zionist. But it became clear soon that the real target was not Zionism, but Jews themselves.

Likewise, it is clear to my mind that the target of these critics is not Hindutva, it is Hindus.

After all, Michael Witzel did not use ‘hiina’ (lowly, degraded, lost, abandoned, narrow minded) for ‘Hindutvavaadis in North America’. He used it for all ‘Hindus in North America’.

APPEAL

People should FAX letters stating the following:

1. They endorse changes proposed by HEF and VF to correct the prejudiced statements and errors in proposed textbooks.
2. They object to the discriminatory treatment of Hindus by the State Board of California in addressing community concerns.
3. They are alarmed by the fact that these textbooks project Hinduism as an inferior religion compared to Christianity, Islam, Judaism and Buddhism. They are appalled by the fact that these textbooks focus obsessively on negatives of Hinduism and whitewash the record of other religions.
4. They are concerned that the textbooks contain numerous errors of historical facts.
5. SBE should reject unwarranted intrusions from academics such as Michael Witzel who are not sympathetic to our traditions. Instead, sympathetic scholars and practitioners of Hinduism should be consulted.
6. They are concerned that these textbooks will have a negative impact on the minds of Hindu American students who read them.