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Swaveda - Articles - Biases in Hinduism Studies
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By Abhijit Bagal | May 13, 2005
The purpose of this essay is to highlight the growing dissatisfaction on the part of the Indian American Hindu Diaspora with the way Hinduism, Hindus, and India have been depicted and mis-portrayed in the American education system, and about the urgency to engage the system along the same lines as is already being done by other American minorities, such as the Native-Americans, African-Americans, Hispanics, Jews, Muslims, Chinese, Japanese, and K...
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| Comments | Narayanan Komerath Sep 11, 2004 - 06:49 AM (PT) [ 1 of 3 ]
I have a few comments about these. Thanks for bringing out these specific instances. I would encourage people to please document these and publicize them. Of course instructors with such malice and low standards of honesty and intelligence as the RISA, who fancy themselves to be "scholars", will also be mean and vindictive. Most people who teach in decent institutions take great pride in encouaging students to question conventional wisdom - and NEVER NEVER allow any feelings to affect grading. BUT - that implies some standards, and the institutions infested by the likes of Courtright, Wadley, Doniger, Nussbaum and the Stanford worthy are evidently lacking in standards. So I would ask students to wait until they have got their grades before publicizing the complaints.
The complaints must be factual and complete. No sense in saying "Stanford 2002" - the instructor had what they call "academic freedom" and hence it IS the instructor who should be named. Stanford would probably be happier if the course drew more people to pay their fees, regardless of what was taught there.
The solution to these things, also rests with students and recent alumni more than with outsiders, or even with faculty colleagues. Were the above incidents related to the teaching of Judaism or Islam, you can bet that there would be huge outcries. In the former case, the instructor would now no longer be instructing, and the university President would be genuflecting and posterior-osculating to keep his/her job. That may be because of the financial power of the community, but it is in fact due to the fact that they have absorbed the lesson of "Never Again".
The solution for a campus atrocity such as labeling a student a "BJP supporter" or any other political supporter for expressing an opinion in class, is for the student to make a very specific, well-documented complaint. I've seen it happen - and the Administration squirm.
While universities proudly moon "outside interference", the effect of a student grievance is something else entirely - every faculty colleague of the target of the grievance will immediately have an opinion - and if the grievance is honest and well-documented, those opinions rapidly swing to an "I wouldn't have done THAT in MY class!" condemnation of the target. The Administrators are then under pressure to fall all over themselves painting themselves as "some of my best friends are Yindoos!" etc.
SO - my request to students and recent alumni who read this, is for them to please come forward, and at least provide specific stories. If the story is true, there is not a damn thing anyone can do to you for speaking out. RISA-type bullies, like all bullies, are cowards.
You'll note that RISA has now crawled under their stones because when the light was shone upon their corners, they could not stand it.
Shreekumar Vinekar Jun 23, 2005 - 01:06 AM (PT) [ 2 of 3 ]
HARVARD, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, EMORY, MICROSOFT ENCARTA, THE US PUBLIC SCHOOLS, AND MANY OTHER EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTES IN THE U.S. (AND EVEN OXFORD) ARE NOT TO TEACH THEIR SKEWED BIASED PORNOGRAPHIC PROCTOSCOPIC VISION OF OTHER CULTURES AND SPECIFICALLY HINDU CULTURE UNDER THE NAME OF SCHOLARSHIP AND ACADEMIC FREEDOM USING OUR HARD EARNED TAX MONEY, WITH FEDERAL SUPPORT, IN THIS COUNTRY, WITH ALL DUE RESPECT TO ITS CONSTITUTION AND ALL OF ITS AMMENDMENTS, IS A MESSAGE OF THIS ARTICLE.
Excellent article. Narayan Koemrath's comments are very important for the Hindu students who need to survive in the hostile academic environment.
It is a major cultural mis-education undertaken by the Western Christian Missionary financed "scholarship" with conscious and unconscious design to discredit and denigrate a distant culture to raise large stream of funds in the U.S. and Europe over a century or more for its nefarious proselytization activity. Cultural miseducation and cross-cultural vandalism are relatively new concepts and could define such aggressive psychological war-fare undertaken by the Departments of Religious Studies. Usually the same cadre are interspersed in the South Asian Studies, Cultural Anthropology, Sociology, and Women's Studies Departments,etc., with many adulating short-sited illinformed Indian Sepoys even backing them, and are closely linked with the Governmental funding agencies with like-minded people in such agencies, and Endowment for Humanities, etc. It is a sub-culture of thousands of "Christian" proselytizing sympathisers and supporters, their readers, and brain-washed populations who innocently believe in the accuracy of their world-view and authenticity of their scholarship, and the results of their "research" although these are deeply flawed by mega-errors in translations, "etic" interpretations, and expositions of a foreign culture and even outright academic fraud. The global "shrinking" and respect for diversity are also relatively recent phenomena and likewise muticultural schools, multilingual neighborhoods, and work-places that are slowly exposing the fraud perpetuated by RISA and its predicessors for the last century or more. A super enlarged "proctoscopic view and depiction" of the Christian and Islamic history, religion and societal practices that are decidely wierd, evil, and perpetuated with impunity for centuries, under "Eastern" scholarship and media support, over even the next century or more may not completely balance the damage done by these mischievous mean spirited scholars.
The antidote for such large-scale unopposed mis-education is most definitely a broader, humanistic, accurate, and more balanced education of the next generation of well educated "Hindus" who will be proud future opinion leaders in this (U.S.)and other societies. The people in India who are currently blinded to this systematic anti-propoganda against their culture and religion need to be aroused to action to denounce such negative and destructive bigoted depictions of their culture and religion and vociferously protest and counter them with logical and scholarly intellectual dialogue at a visible level nationally and internationally. Days to play with the pride of the "other" cultures and constantly and perpetually, pervertedly denigrating them are coming to an end in the age of the Cyberspace and "IT" age, with rapid, almost instantaneous, communication with the large populations. Corrective information needs to be disseminated by our proud Hindu scholars as rapidly and as widely as the damaging material is distributed by the proselytizing blocks to raise money for their ignoble ventures. Unfortunately. there are many good-natured misinformed innocent wealthy Christians in the U.S. who are gullible and contribute their hard earned money for these overt and covert parasites and rogues that are committing such intellectual fraud masquerading under the cloak of "scholarship" of "other cultures." The most transparent fallacy is that they justify such fraud as "academic freedom" and their mischievious conduct as visible only to the "F" Hindus (Fanatics, Fascists, Fundamentalists, etc.) The fact that they can make a living and prosper, engaged full-time in such non-productive value destroying,
"anal sadistic" activities designed to destroy and denigrate other cultures and make a life-time career (academic or religious) in these "subjects" should arouse deep interest in researching the funding sources and their connections and leanings. A good journalist like Sandhya Jain could possibly take on such a project but it appears that authors like Shri Bagal and Sankrant Sanu may also be quite well equipped to take on this stupendous task.
Again, my thanks to Swaveda, Sulekha and authors like Bagal, Malhotra, and Sanu, etc. for this major expose'.-Shree Vinekar(also see: "Emory Phallic Fixation" on Google)
kedarnath sharmaH Oct 30, 2005 - 20:47 PM (PT) [ 3 of 3 ]
What has been happening for thousands of years and even now is my country, my people, my religion, my forefathers language is the object of lurid investigation by many across the planet. And also this is like Draupadi mayya's situation in open courts of the world - "cheer khiche ja rahen hai" And she maintains her dignity with Sri Krishna ji's endless provision. Her cry for help remember was to Sri.Krishna knowing fully well the vivashtha of onlookers that day... and this day. We all are being used by Shri.Krishna to maintain the dignity of Bhaarath. And in that process we are being mainteained too goddamned well.
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