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Some nice descriptions of Hinduism and Hindu practises found in the textbooks of the Textbooks Board of the State of California. Found them online.
Textbook I:
The Oxford University Press text titled ‘The Ancient South Asian World’
Page 81: “The Vedic peoples discriminated against the Dasa, a group of people who spoke a different language that did not sound at all like Sanskrit. The Brahmins sometimes made fun of the Dasa and said that they spoke as if they had no noses. (Pinch your nose and see what you would sound like.) The Dasa had wide flat noses and long curly black hair, and the Brahmins claimed that they had darker skin and called them uncivilized barbarians, who didn’t know how to behave.”
This is untrue. The correct word is "without a mouth", which is a euphemism for unrefined of speech. Also, no later commentator has picked up on this. This also vilifies an entire caste group. Nobody should speak in terms of groups.
Page 81: “The Dasa had, in reality lived in the region for hundreds of years. Their ancestors in the Indus Valley were the Harappans who had named the rivers and mountains, and had built the cities that now lay abandoned.”
Not a single record has been found of any so-called "Dasyu" names. This is either a fabrication or plain false.
Page 87: “The monkey king Hanuman loved Rama so much that it is said that he is present every time the Ramayana is told. So look around—see any monkeys?”
I don't think I need to comment on this, except to point out that the Vanara (not monkey) king who was Rama's ally is not Hanuman, but Sugriva.
Page 155: “…most Nepalese are Buddhist”
In reality almost 80% people of Nepal are Hindus.
The festival of Onam is confused with Diwali in the following description
Page 157: - “But in southern India, Divali is the time for worshipping a demon king. According to local traditions, Vishnu conquered the local demon king Bali, and then banished him from his kingdom forever in the netherworld. Bali begged Vishnu.……especially new clothes.”
Again, this is a total fabrication and misrepresentation. Vishnu did not "conquer" anybody, as anyone conversant with the story will tell you. And Bali was not a demon, he was a danava or a asura or a rakshasa.
TEXTBOOK II:
‘Ancient Civilization’, published by Holt.
“However, Hinduism also taught that women were inferior to men. As a result, Hindu women were not allowed to read the Vedas or other sacred texts”.
This is blatantly untrue. The restriction applied to one specific portion of the Vedas (the ritualist bit, not the philosophical bit) - the entire corpus of all other religious literature was wide open for anyone to read. In fact, a large amount of religious literature was written in order to overcome this restriction. For instance, in the Mahabharat, one of the reasons for its authorship was that women and lower castes should not be excluded from religious life.
Also, many verses in the Rig Veda have women as authors. An entire book of the Atharva Veda is attributed to a woman sage.
Also, Hinduism is the only religion so singled out for criticism.
“The Ramayana, written later than the Mahabharata,…”
Again, plainly just false.
TEXTBOOK III:
‘Ancient Civilization’ by Harcourt School Publishers.
Page 364: “Hindi is written with the Arabic alphabet, which uses 18 letters that stand for sounds”
This falsehood borders on the bizarre. Hindi uses the Devanagari alphabet.
Page 387: “….a discussion between a god and a Vedic warrior”
The above is with reference to the Bhagwat Gita. This is false on three counts:
a) Krishna is not a God, he is an avatar
b) Arjuna is not a Vedic warrior
c) It wasn't a discussion
So basically it's all false.
On page 403, an illustration depicting a 19th century or early 20th century Maharaja is given as a depiction of the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka.
TEXTBOOK IV:
“California Visa- Ancient Civilization’, published by McGraw Hill McMillan.
Page 267: “may have lead to the first Indian empire”
With reference to Alexander's invasion, and its impact on India.
Textbook VI:
Let us move on to another textbook “Discovering Our Past: Ancient Civilization” published by Glencoe. On page 244, the text has a picture of a bearded and turbaned man praying in a typical Muslim gesture (the two palms facing up and abutting each other) and the caption says ‘A Brahman’.
Textbook VII:
“History Alive” published by Teachers’ Curriculum Institute.
Page 148: “To recite them orally, the Brahmins had to memorize more than 100,000 verses!”
The Vedas, combined, have only about 30,000 verses.
Quoting the article from which I got this:
General Remarks:
The textbooks are richly illustrated but the images are often anachronistic or inappropriate, and captions are often incorrect. Some examples have been stated above, but it may be worthwhile to mention that the same erroneous picture is often reproduced in more than 1 text. For instance, the funny picture of emperor Ashoka (looking like a modern Maharaja) is found in at least 2 textbooks that I saw. Likewise, one textbook shows a scene from presumably Western or Central India with some priests reciting a text, a sacred fire, some villagers. The caption below it indicates that the Vedas are being recited to the villagers. This is very unlikely the case because the Vedas are not recited this way in public, reading out from printed texts. Curiously, another textbook gives the same picture, but with a different caption indicating that some Purana or Itihasa text is being recited for the public. So what exactly is going on? Are all the textbooks drawing from a common stock of illustrations?
A typical lacuna in most textbooks is inadequate discussion of the tenets of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism (whereas considerable space is given to the theology of Abrahamic faiths). In the discussion of Hinduism, most texts leave out the system of purusharthas (goals of human life), ashramas (stages of human life, or modes of living), liberating yogas (Bhaktiyoga, Karmayoga, Jnanayoga, Rajayoga) and other schools of Hindu philosophy. Many texts enumerate even the four noble truths and the eightfold-path of Buddha incorrectly. Jainism is typically dismissed with a brief description – one text actually devotes just 1 sentence to this religion.
Buddhism is typically represented as an advance or an improvement over Hinduism even though the California State education policy guidelines clearly mention that one tradition cannot be privileged over another. As an example, the textbooks do not present Islam as an improvement over Christianity, nor do they describe Christianity as an advance over Judaism.
There is an incessant and even anachronistic dwelling on the negatives of Hinduism, which seems to have been singled out as a religion for unfair treatment, when one reads the contrasting more balanced, even glowing narratives about Abrahamic faiths (Islam, Christianity and Judaism) in these and corresponding texts from other grades. Hindu sacred narratives are referred to as stories or myths, whereas Biblical and Koranic narratives are presented as historical facts. Most textbooks also describe the subtle Karma and rebirth related principles of Indic faiths in a minimal and essentially caricaturist manner (“according to this theory, if you do bad deeds, you will be reborn as an insect”). Although it would be anachronistic to mention and discuss Sikhism in the discussion of ancient India (although Kenoyer’s text on ancient South Asia reviewed above does not hesitate to discuss Islam!), one would expect that some space would be given to Sikh heritage in textbooks on medieval and modern periods. Unfortunately, this is not the case even though California is home to perhaps 200,000 or more Sikhs. Whereas the Abrahamic religions are predominantly described from an ‘insider’s’ (emic) perspective, Hinduism is described from an outsider’s (etic) perspective. The misuse of AIT and its euphemistic versions to discuss the origins of Hinduism is a case in the point.
Muddying the Waters:
It is precisely these kinds of errors, slanted descriptions, prejudiced discussions and outdated information in the textbooks (as mentioned above by me) that alarmed the parents of the Indian American and Hindu American communities in California. And yet, Michael Witzel, Romila Thapar and other prejudiced ‘scholars’ launched a Goebbelsian blitzkrieg, labeling these California residents, apolitical parents who pay their taxes regularly and contribute to the US society immensely, as dangerous Hindu fundamentalists linked to murderers and what not.
Even at the time of writing this piece, Witzel and his cohorts are trying to pressurize the publishers and the State Board of Education into rejecting these very reasonable changes proposed by concerned Hindu American groups.
A pained Hindu resident of California asks if it is unfair to ask that Hindus expect the same treatment of their heritage in textbooks as members of other religions?[7] Perhaps according to these self-professed ‘world class specialists’ such as Thapar, Witzel et al, Hindus do not deserve parity with others.
Numerous instances are known where students of Hindu and Indian origins have faced humiliation at the hands of their fellow classmates in the past because of selective negative presentation of their heritage in the textbooks. I have actually heard of an instance where an Indian student hid beneath her table out of shame at the end of a lecture dealing with India.
Another interesting article which I came across on this issue: http://koenraadelst.bharatvani.org/reviews/hock.html
Textbook I:
The Oxford University Press text titled ‘The Ancient South Asian World’
Page 81: “The Vedic peoples discriminated against the Dasa, a group of people who spoke a different language that did not sound at all like Sanskrit. The Brahmins sometimes made fun of the Dasa and said that they spoke as if they had no noses. (Pinch your nose and see what you would sound like.) The Dasa had wide flat noses and long curly black hair, and the Brahmins claimed that they had darker skin and called them uncivilized barbarians, who didn’t know how to behave.”
Page 81: “The Dasa had, in reality lived in the region for hundreds of years. Their ancestors in the Indus Valley were the Harappans who had named the rivers and mountains, and had built the cities that now lay abandoned.”
Page 87: “The monkey king Hanuman loved Rama so much that it is said that he is present every time the Ramayana is told. So look around—see any monkeys?”
Page 155: “…most Nepalese are Buddhist”
The festival of Onam is confused with Diwali in the following description
Page 157: - “But in southern India, Divali is the time for worshipping a demon king. According to local traditions, Vishnu conquered the local demon king Bali, and then banished him from his kingdom forever in the netherworld. Bali begged Vishnu.……especially new clothes.”
TEXTBOOK II:
‘Ancient Civilization’, published by Holt.
“However, Hinduism also taught that women were inferior to men. As a result, Hindu women were not allowed to read the Vedas or other sacred texts”.
Also, many verses in the Rig Veda have women as authors. An entire book of the Atharva Veda is attributed to a woman sage.
Also, Hinduism is the only religion so singled out for criticism.
“The Ramayana, written later than the Mahabharata,…”
TEXTBOOK III:
‘Ancient Civilization’ by Harcourt School Publishers.
Page 364: “Hindi is written with the Arabic alphabet, which uses 18 letters that stand for sounds”
Page 387: “….a discussion between a god and a Vedic warrior”
a) Krishna is not a God, he is an avatar
b) Arjuna is not a Vedic warrior
c) It wasn't a discussion
So basically it's all false.
On page 403, an illustration depicting a 19th century or early 20th century Maharaja is given as a depiction of the Mauryan Emperor Ashoka.
TEXTBOOK IV:
“California Visa- Ancient Civilization’, published by McGraw Hill McMillan.
Page 267: “may have lead to the first Indian empire”
Textbook VI:
Let us move on to another textbook “Discovering Our Past: Ancient Civilization” published by Glencoe. On page 244, the text has a picture of a bearded and turbaned man praying in a typical Muslim gesture (the two palms facing up and abutting each other) and the caption says ‘A Brahman’.
Textbook VII:
“History Alive” published by Teachers’ Curriculum Institute.
Page 148: “To recite them orally, the Brahmins had to memorize more than 100,000 verses!”
Quoting the article from which I got this:
General Remarks:
The textbooks are richly illustrated but the images are often anachronistic or inappropriate, and captions are often incorrect. Some examples have been stated above, but it may be worthwhile to mention that the same erroneous picture is often reproduced in more than 1 text. For instance, the funny picture of emperor Ashoka (looking like a modern Maharaja) is found in at least 2 textbooks that I saw. Likewise, one textbook shows a scene from presumably Western or Central India with some priests reciting a text, a sacred fire, some villagers. The caption below it indicates that the Vedas are being recited to the villagers. This is very unlikely the case because the Vedas are not recited this way in public, reading out from printed texts. Curiously, another textbook gives the same picture, but with a different caption indicating that some Purana or Itihasa text is being recited for the public. So what exactly is going on? Are all the textbooks drawing from a common stock of illustrations?
A typical lacuna in most textbooks is inadequate discussion of the tenets of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism (whereas considerable space is given to the theology of Abrahamic faiths). In the discussion of Hinduism, most texts leave out the system of purusharthas (goals of human life), ashramas (stages of human life, or modes of living), liberating yogas (Bhaktiyoga, Karmayoga, Jnanayoga, Rajayoga) and other schools of Hindu philosophy. Many texts enumerate even the four noble truths and the eightfold-path of Buddha incorrectly. Jainism is typically dismissed with a brief description – one text actually devotes just 1 sentence to this religion.
Buddhism is typically represented as an advance or an improvement over Hinduism even though the California State education policy guidelines clearly mention that one tradition cannot be privileged over another. As an example, the textbooks do not present Islam as an improvement over Christianity, nor do they describe Christianity as an advance over Judaism.
There is an incessant and even anachronistic dwelling on the negatives of Hinduism, which seems to have been singled out as a religion for unfair treatment, when one reads the contrasting more balanced, even glowing narratives about Abrahamic faiths (Islam, Christianity and Judaism) in these and corresponding texts from other grades. Hindu sacred narratives are referred to as stories or myths, whereas Biblical and Koranic narratives are presented as historical facts. Most textbooks also describe the subtle Karma and rebirth related principles of Indic faiths in a minimal and essentially caricaturist manner (“according to this theory, if you do bad deeds, you will be reborn as an insect”). Although it would be anachronistic to mention and discuss Sikhism in the discussion of ancient India (although Kenoyer’s text on ancient South Asia reviewed above does not hesitate to discuss Islam!), one would expect that some space would be given to Sikh heritage in textbooks on medieval and modern periods. Unfortunately, this is not the case even though California is home to perhaps 200,000 or more Sikhs. Whereas the Abrahamic religions are predominantly described from an ‘insider’s’ (emic) perspective, Hinduism is described from an outsider’s (etic) perspective. The misuse of AIT and its euphemistic versions to discuss the origins of Hinduism is a case in the point.
Muddying the Waters:
It is precisely these kinds of errors, slanted descriptions, prejudiced discussions and outdated information in the textbooks (as mentioned above by me) that alarmed the parents of the Indian American and Hindu American communities in California. And yet, Michael Witzel, Romila Thapar and other prejudiced ‘scholars’ launched a Goebbelsian blitzkrieg, labeling these California residents, apolitical parents who pay their taxes regularly and contribute to the US society immensely, as dangerous Hindu fundamentalists linked to murderers and what not.
Even at the time of writing this piece, Witzel and his cohorts are trying to pressurize the publishers and the State Board of Education into rejecting these very reasonable changes proposed by concerned Hindu American groups.
A pained Hindu resident of California asks if it is unfair to ask that Hindus expect the same treatment of their heritage in textbooks as members of other religions?[7] Perhaps according to these self-professed ‘world class specialists’ such as Thapar, Witzel et al, Hindus do not deserve parity with others.
Numerous instances are known where students of Hindu and Indian origins have faced humiliation at the hands of their fellow classmates in the past because of selective negative presentation of their heritage in the textbooks. I have actually heard of an instance where an Indian student hid beneath her table out of shame at the end of a lecture dealing with India.
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