Critics say government's religious agenda shows through in books' treatment of beef-eating, caste, non-Hindus, history & more
A top Indian minister recently said the country's scientific community should shed its skepticism and use astrology to predict earthquakes and other natural disasters.
"It ... (is) scientific fundamentalism to dismiss warnings from Indian astrologers," said Murli Manohar Joshi, India's Human Resources and Development minister. He was inaugurating a workshop on "Predicting Earthquakes and Calamities" in New Delhi. "Scientists with advanced computers sometimes fail to predict major earthquakes," he said. "Ancient Indian astrology does have the tools to roughly foretell the time and sometimes even the exact date and time of an earthquake."
Last year, Joshi proposed that astrology be introduced in schools, and at least one state government has begun offering the subject. The trend, critics say, is an attempt by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party to impose its Hindu nationalist agenda on the country.
Last year, the Indian government made a series of changes to high school history textbooks, prompting criticism from opponents who said the amendments reflected the ruling BJP's pro-Hindu policies.
The BJP, however, denies this. The textbooks, it says, offended religious sentiment and were written by left-leaning academics. The changes, it says, represent a more nationalistic portrayal of events. It also labeled previous history texts as having a Western bias.
Under the Constitution, India is a secular state and, like the United States, endorses no one religion. The country, however, is overwhelmingly Hindu. The Indian government's 2001 census, the most-recent data available, shows Hindus make up 82 percent of the country's population; Muslims follow with 12.12 percent; and Christians with 2.34 percent. The numbers--even relatively small percentages--are significant because of India's population--1 billion people.
The country is ruled by the National Democratic Alliance -- a coalition of more than two dozen parties, not all of them religion-oriented, that is headed by the BJP. The BJP has ties to militant Hindu groups and some of its leaders have been accused of crimes against religious minorities.
Human-rights groups have noted that militant Hindu groups have stepped up attacks on minorities since the BJP took office at the federal level in 1998.
There have been sporadic attacks against Christian missionaries and the southern state of Tamil Nadu, ruled by a BJP ally, passed a law that bans what it calls "forced conversions." Religious riots in the western state of Gujarat last year killed more than 1,000 people, the vast majority of them Muslim.
Critics--mostly left-leaning academics, the country's opposition parties and non-governmental organizations--say the new religious agenda can be seen most clearly in education.
Last year's changes in textbooks prescribed by the National Council for Educational Research and Training, the federal-level body that controls education in thousands of schools across the country, are a case in point.
References to beef eating, which is prohibited by Hinduism, and cattle sacrifices were deleted. Also cut were a critical evaluation of ancient Hindu religious texts and epics on the basis of archaeological and epigraphic testimony; the opposition of Brahmans, the priestly class in the four-fold caste system, to the Buddhist King Ashoka, who is regarded as one of India's greatest rulers; and references to the exploitative aspects of the caste system. References to the early life of the founder of the Jain religion were also removed
Details of the execution of Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur by Muslim rulers were deleted. Another reference to the plundering by the Jat community rulers of the area Bharatpur was also taken out.
The government officially said nothing. But NCERT on its Web site listed praise from some of those communities that deemed the passages offensive.
NCERT said the passages offended the Sikhs, Jain and Jat sentiments. Hindus were also offended, it says, by the references to cow sacrifice and beef eating, and by the passages on archeological and epigraphic evidence.
The deletion of passages referring to Brahmin hostility and the caste system were not explained.
The issue remains controversial but is unlikely to change. Last December, the country's Supreme Court ruled that the changes were legitimate.
Criticism against the BJP and its education policy is not new. In the early 1990s, when the party first came into prominence and took over a number of state governments, its history and social studies curriculum was condemned.
In the BJP-ruled Gujarat state, for instance, high school textbooks praised Hindu culture to the detriment of others. The social studies textbook for the ninth-grade equivalent class all but lauded the much-derided caste system. "The Varna system was a precious gift of the Aryans to the mankind," it said, referring to the four-tier caste hierarchy. " ... The importance of the 'Varna' system as an ideal system of building the social and economic structure of a society cannot be overlooked."
The book was also not very flattering to the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, the term used to refer to the lowest tier of the caste system and the so-called untouchables. In a section titled "Problems of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes," the authors say: "Of course, their ignorance, illiteracy and blind faith are to be blamed for lack of progress because they fail to realize the importance of education in life."
Whether the book was biased is debatable, but the factual errors in it are not. In its chapter, "Problems of the Country and Their Solutions," the book has a subheading that reads "Minority Community." In it, Muslims, Christians and Parsees -- members of a Zoroastrian sect -- are all labeled "foreigners." " ... (A)part from the Muslims, even the Christians, Parsees and other foreigners are also recognized as the minority communities," the book says. "In most states, the Hindus are in a minority and Muslims, Christians and Sikhs are in majority."
The last statement is incorrect because as per the 1991 census Hindus were the majority by a substantial margin in 21 of 26 states.
In the 10th-grade equivalent history textbook, the issue of the Holocaust is completely glossed over and Nazism is referred to with veiled admiration. "Hitler lent dignity and prestige to the German government within a short time by establishing a strong administrative set up ... He adopted the policy of opposition towards the Jewish people," it says. " ... He adopted a new economic policy and brought prosperity to Germany ... He made untiring efforts to make Germany self-reliant within one decade ... He instilled the spirit of adventure in the common people."
In the western state of Maharashtra, south of Gujarat, a college-level history text refers to India's largest minority, the Muslims, thus: "The advent of Islam might have been a boon to the Arabs who got united under its banner ... but it has been a curse for the people outside Arab world because wherever the Islamic hordes went, they not only conquered the countries, but killed millions of people and plundered their homes and places of worship and destroyed their homes, places of worship and above all their artworks," it says. It adds: "Why these atrocities? Because Islam teaches only atrocities." After Indonesia, India has the second-largest Muslim population in the world. Despite the criticism, the BJP is strong and is seen to have a reasonable chance to retain power in the general election, dates for which are expected soon.
Whether the BJP wins, however, the fight over textbooks is likely to stay.