Saffronisation of Education (December, 2014)
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Reporting in Chennai, India: Selected Articles by Rajeev Ravisankar
The Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race & Ethnicity 433 Mendenhall Laboratory 125 South Oval Mall Columbus, OH 43210 www.kirwaninstitute.org Reporting in Chennai, India: Selected Articles by Rajeev Ravisankar Recently, I returned to Columbus, Ohio after completing a 10-month post-graduate diploma course at the Asian College of Journalism in Chennai (Madras), India. It began on July 14, 2007 and finished on May 3, 2008. The program was divided into three semesters, the first devoted mainly to lectures covering the fundamentals of journalism, political and social issues in India, as well as historical and legal aspects of media and core courses aimed at honing our media skills. As the year progressed, we focused more on our particular streams, in my case print journalism, which involved producing a student publication. This included a 24 page issue with content from the ‘covering deprivation’ component of the course. In the last semester we continued taking elective courses, produced a 24 page magazine and also worked on research papers and investigative projects. The space and choice provided by the college with regard to covering stories allowed me to engage with issues such as class, gender, caste, development, and more broadly the role of the state in communities, specifically those that are disadvantaged. Below, I have included some articles and project work that address these issues. Naxalism through the media lens page 2 Alcoholism in indigenous communities page 4 Saffronising schools: Right-wing incursions into education page -
Communalisation of Education Delhi Historians' Group
Communalisation of Education The History Textbooks Controversy Delhi Historians’ Group CONTENTS Section 1 An Overview Communalisation of Education, The History Textbooks Controversy: An Overview Mridula Mukherjee and Aditya Mukherjee Section 2 What Historians Say 1. Propaganda as History won’t sell Romila Thapar 2. Historical Blunders Bipan Chandra 3. The Rewriting of History by the Sangh Parivar Irfan Habib 4. Communalism and History Textbooks R. S. Sharma 5. Guru Tegh Bahadur’s Martyrdom Satish Chandra 6. NCERT, ‘National Curriculum’ and ‘Destruction of History’ Arjun Dev 7. Does Indian History need to be re-written Sumit Sarkar Section 3 What other Commentators Say 1. Talibanasing Our Education Vir Sanghvi 2. Udder Complexity Dileep Padgaonkar 3. Textbooks and Communalism Rajeev Dhavan 4. Consensus be Damned Anil Bordia 5. What is History Subir Roy 6. History as Told by Non-Historians Anjali Modi 7. History,Vaccum-Cleaned Saba Naqvi Bhaumik 8. Joshi’s History Editorial in Indian Express 9. History as Nonsense Editorial in Indian Express Section 4 Text of the Deletions made from the NCERT books Section 1: An Overview COMMUNALISATION OF EDUCATION THE HISTORY TEXTBOOK CONTROVERSY: AN OVERVIEW Mridula Mukherjee and Aditya Mukherjee Professors of History Centre for Historical Studies Jawaharlal Nehru University The current controversy over the nature of history textbooks to be prescribed in schools reflects two completely divergent views of the Indian nation. One of the most important achievements of the Indian national movement, perhaps the greatest mass movement in world history, was the creation of the vision of an open, democratic, secular and civil libertarian state which was to promote a modern scientific outlook in civil society in independent India. -
Asian Affairs
Georgetown Journal of ASIAN AFFAIRS POLICY FORUM The Civil Society Roots of BJP’s Ethnoreligious Nationalism and Majoritarian Nationalism Majoritarianism in Asia Soundarya Chidambaram Jeff Kingston Reactionary Nationalism and Democratic Far-Right Politics and Indigenous Ainu Development in Myanmar and Japan Activism in Japan Apichai W. Shipper Thisanka Siripala Japan’s Right-Wing Women and the “Comfort Women” Issue Tomomi Yamaguchi Identity Struggles in Asia Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Interstate Rivalry with an introduction by Sheila A. Smith Published by the Asian Studies Program in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service Georgetown Journal of ASIAN AFFAIRS Volume 6 | 2020 The Georgetown Journal of Asian Affairs is the flagship scholarly publication of the Asian Studies Program housed within the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. Established in 2014, the Journal aims to provide a forum for schol- ars and practitioners in the field of Asian affairs to exchange ideas and publish research that further the understanding of the world’s largest and most populous continent. The views expressed in this issue do not necessarily reflect those of the Journal ’s editors and advisors, the Asian Studies Program, the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, or Georgetown University. editorial board Editor-in-Chief Seojung Kim Senior Editor Managing Editor Publishers Kelly Liu Ju Young Lee Stephanie Gage Caroline Yarber Associate Editors Assistant Editors Molly Henry Fan (Pauline) Bu James O'Brien Sue Kim Sirui -
Proposed Ban on Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd's Books in DU Raises
ISSN (Online) - 2349-8846 Proposed Ban on Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd’s Books in DU Raises Questions about the Future of Critical Thought ANNA JACOB Anna Jacob ([email protected]) is a PhD scholar at the Department of History, University of Delhi. Vol. 53, Issue No. 47, 01 Dec, 2018 Scholars of social sciences write and teach from particular ideological and political frameworks, and to expect them to be “objective” or “non-partisan,” without any sensitivity to questions of power, takes away much needed perspectives of the marginalised sections of society in academia. Any critique of an academic work should stem not from unwillingness to deal with complex or discomfiting ideas, but from close reading and engagement. This article discusses these aspects in light of the recent call to ban Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd’s books from the University of Delhi’s MA Political Science reading list, as well as other instances of such interference in university curriculum in recent years. On 24 October 2018, the Standing Committee on Academic Affairs of the University of Delhi (DU) proposed a ban on three books authored by Kancha Ilaiah Shepherd—Why I Am Not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Political Economy; God as Political Philosopher: Buddha’s Challenge to Brahmanism; and Post Hindu India—from the MA syllabus of the Department of Political Science. These texts are part of two courses titled “Dalit Bahujan Political Thought” and “Social Exclusion: Theory and Practice” (Roy Chowdhury 2018). The academic council is yet to take a final decision on the issue, but the department has decided to continue teaching the course. -
The Story of My Sanskrit - the Hindu 16/08/14 7:58 Am
The story of my Sanskrit - The Hindu 16/08/14 7:58 am Opinion » Lead The story of my Sanskrit Ananya Vajpeyi Sanskrit must be taken back from the clutches of Hindu supremacists, bigots, believers in brahmin exclusivity, misogynists, Islamophobes and a variety of other wrong-headed characters on the right, whose colossal ambition to control India’s vast intellectual legacy is only matched by their abysmal ignorance of what it means and how it works An article in this paper on July 30 revealed that Dina Nath Batra, head of the Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, had formed a “Non-Governmental Education Commission” (NGEC) to recommend ways to “Indianise” education. I had encountered Mr. Batra’s notions about education during a campaign I was involved with in February and March this year, to keep the American scholar Wendy Doniger’s books about Hindus and Hinduism in print. His litigious threats had forced Penguin India to withdraw and destroy a volume by Prof. Doniger, and this was even before the national election installed the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as the ruling party in Delhi. Ever since Mr. Narendra Modi’s government has come to power, Mr. Batra has become more active, zealous and confrontational in stating his views about Indian history, Hindu religion, and what ought to qualify as appropriate content in schoolbooks and syllabi not only in his native Gujarat but in educational institutions all over the country. He is backed up by a vast governmental machinery, by the fact that Mr. Modi himself has penned prefatory materials to his various books, and of course by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), of which he has been a member and an ideologue for over several decades. -
Infringement of Academic Freedom in India
H-Asia Infringement of Academic Freedom in India Discussion published by PROJIT B MUKHARJI on Wednesday, June 18, 2014 Dear Colleagues, I am writing to draw your attention to a new attack upon academic freedom in India. Dinanath Batra, an RSS activist, fresh from his success at getting Wendy Doniger’s book removed from Indian bookshops, has now turned his attention to Sekhar Bandyopadhyay’s excellent textbook on modern South Asian history, From Plassey to Partition. You can follow the developments at any of the following links:- http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/another-publisher-forced-to-censor-textbooks/article6075864 .ece?homepage=true http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/36024216.cms?intenttarget=no http://www.firstpost.com/living/children-of-marx-macaulay-are-defaming-hinduism-dinanath-batra-155 9083.html Besides issuing legal notices and initiating “civil and criminal proceedings”, an editorial in the RSS mouthpiece, The Organizer, also mentioned that Mr Batra would begin “an agitation against the book” unless the passages he objected to were removed from the BA 3rd Year History syllabus. Here is the link to the piece in The Organizer:- http://organiser.org/Encyc/2014/4/19/Legal-notice-to-Orient-Black-Swan-for-spreading-canard-against -RSS.aspx?NB&lang=3&m1&m2&p1&p2&p3&p4 In this regard, its worth pointing out that whilst Mr Batra's supporters insist that by following legal options of dissent he is himself excercising his democratic rights, the threat of 'agitation', irrespective of the legal outcome, makes such claims ring hollow. Moreover, what we are seeing in each case is that publishers--fearing perhaps both the 'agitation' and the protracted legal costs--are choosing to settle out of court. -
THURSDAY,THE 08Th NOVEMBER,2012
HIGH COURT OF DELHI ADVANCE CAUSE LIST LIST OF BUSINESS FOR THURSDAY,THE 08th NOVEMBER,2012 INDEX PAGES 1. APPELLATE JURISDICTION 1 TO 48 2. COMPANY JURISDICTION 49 TO 50 3. ORIGINAL JURISDICTION 51 TO 60 4. REGISTRAR GENERAL/ 61 TO 82 REGISTRAR(ORGL.)/ REGISTRAR (ADMN.)/ JOINT REGISTRARS(ORGL). 08.11.2012 1 (APPELLATE JURISDICTION) 08.11.2012 [Note : Unless otherwise specified, before all appellate side courts, fresh matters shown in the supplementary lists will be taken up first.] COURT NO. 1 (DIVISION BENCH-1) HON'BLE THE CHIEF JUSTICE HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE RAJIV SAHAI ENDLAW [NOTE-I COUNSELS ARE REQUESTED TO PAGINATE THEIR FILES IN CONFIRMITY WITH THE COURT FILE IN ADVANCE.] [NOTE-II COUNSELS ARE REQUESTED TO PROVIDE LIST OF BOOKS / ACTS ON WHICH THEY ARE RELYING IN ADVANCE.] AFTER NOTICE MISC. MATTERS 1. LPA 337/2010 VIJAY KUMAR SANJEEV MAHAJAN,MANOJ K CM APPL. 18344/2012 Vs. NEW DELHI MUNICIPAL SINGH,MANU NAYAR COUNCIL 2. W.P.(C) 195/2010 RAHUL MEHRA RAHUL MEHRA,DEVVRAT,PRASHANT CM APPL. 374/2010 Vs. UNION OF INDIA AND ORS BHUSHAN,SD SALWAN,DEVVRAT CM APPL. 972/2010 LOVKESH SAWHNEY,KK CM APPL. 2134/2011 KHURANA,NEERAJ CM APPL. 5253/2012 CHOUDHARY,ADITYA GARG,MANISH CM APPL. 8791/2012 RAGHAV,SHYEL TREHAN,SUSHIL CM APPL. 16396/2012 DUTT SALWAN 3. W.P.(C) 651/2012 DINANATH BATRA AND ORS MONIKA ARORA,NARESH KAUSHIK Vs. UOI AND ANR 4. W.P.(C) 2310/2012 INDIAN OLYMPIC ASSOCIATION LOVKESH SAWHNEY,RAHUL MEHRA CM APPL. 4946/2012 Vs. UNION OF INDIA CM APPL. -
Indian Dalits and Hindutva Strategies Seth Schoenhaus Denison University
Denison Journal of Religion Volume 16 Article 1 2017 Indian Dalits and Hindutva Strategies Seth Schoenhaus Denison University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.denison.edu/religion Part of the Ethics in Religion Commons, and the Sociology of Religion Commons Recommended Citation Schoenhaus, Seth (2017) "Indian Dalits and Hindutva Strategies," Denison Journal of Religion: Vol. 16 , Article 1. Available at: https://digitalcommons.denison.edu/religion/vol16/iss1/1 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Religion at Denison Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Denison Journal of Religion by an authorized editor of Denison Digital Commons. Schoenhaus: Indian Dalits and <i>Hindutva</i> Strategies INDIAN DALITS AND HINDUTVA STRATEGIES Indian Dalits and Hindutva Strategies Seth Schoenhaus The Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, is a right-wing nationalist political party charged by its parent organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Singh (RSS), to spread its ideology of Hindutva (Hindu nationalism) through the political process.1 In doing this, the BJP has gained national prominence, as seen most recently in its resounding 2014 victory in which Narendra Modi shot to power as Prime Minister of India.2 However, the party has made itself into the stalwart political arm of In- dia’s burgeoning middle class: conservative, fairly wealthy voters who tend to see themselves as the backbone of India’s emerging global might and economic prow- ess.3 In order to increase its share of power, the BJP and other Hindutva organiza- tions have increasingly realized the need to reach out to Scheduled Caste voters, specifically Dalits: those who have largely existed at the bottom of the Indian caste system, below even those considered “untouchable.”4 Dalits often find themselves on the fringe of acceptable Indian society due to their historically low caste posi- tion, so their receptiveness to Hindutva politics is quite curious. -
Decolonizing Education: Re-Schooling in India
Decolonizing education: Re-schooling in India Educación descolonizadora: reescolarización en la India * ** ISSN: 2007-7033 Navneet Sharma ShowkatThe industrialization Ahmad Mir and its consequential imperialism and colonialism Keywords: have impacted this world for three centuries. India has been a colony of the British Empire for two centuries. These eventful two centuries of Indian his- decolonization, re-schooling, indoctrination, - education, digenoustory did see education the influence system of was not graduallyonly the political displaced and and economical the colonial might model of saffronisation ofthe education “great” Britain, pervaded but underits influence the patronage on every from milieu the of colonial-state. Indian life. India’s The lan in- guage, pedagogy, evaluation and knowledge of the colonizer became natura- lis obligato for the population of the colony. India got independence in 1947 and took to the task of decolonizing education immediately. The attempts to decolonize education from various standpoints of political activism, univer- salism and religious nationalism are charted in this article. What decoloni- zing education should entail and how India has responded to this question in the last century and how the neo-liberal order has supported a particular ideology to have a dominant say in this process are concerns of this article. We analyse how re-schooling and indoctrination are projected as the most nationalist response for methodical decolonizing of education. La industrialización, y el imperialismo y colonialismo que trajo consigo, ha Palabras clave: tenido impacto en el mundo. En el caso de la India, esta se convirtió en una co- lonia del imperio británico durante dos siglos, periodo en el cual no solo pre- decolonización, dominó la fuerza política y económica de la “Gran” Bretaña, sino su influencia reescolarización, en cada espacio de la vida indígena. -
Hindu 'Modi-Fication'
INTERNATIONAL SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2014 Hindu ‘Modi-fication’ of education raises concern Head of India’s research body comes under fire NEW DELHI: Indians were flying aeroplanes, carrying out stem Two Indian states run by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party cell research and may even have been using cosmic weapons have recruited controversial Hindu nationalist Dinanath Batra Police search 5,000 years ago, according to the chairman of India’s leading to advise on writing textbooks. In June, thousands of schools historical organization. in Gujarat were given textbooks by Batra that claimed cars Indian guru’s Professor Y Sudershan Rao, the head of the Indian Council were invented in ancient India and told children to draw an of Historical Research, has been criticized by fellow historians enlarged nation to include countries including Pakistan, ashram after arrest for comments that Hindu epics are adequate to understand Bangladesh and Afghanistan. the ancient world, rather than relying on evidence or research. Teachers at Batra’s organization say they want the books to NEW DELHI: Indian police yesterday searched the sprawling The Hindu nationalist government appointed Rao to the pres- be in every school. “The lessons from today’s history books are ashram of a holy man who was arrested on suspicion of murder tigious academic post soon after winning the biggest land- that Indians are nothing and good for nothing,” said Atul and criminal conspiracy after a deadly siege at his fortress-like slide in three decades, fuelling concerns of a push to teach the Kothari, secretary of Batra’s Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, or compound. -
National Identity and Sovereignty: Debates Around the South African Nation-State from 1990 to 2010
Name of Candidate: Abba Omar, Yacoob Student Number: 0501212X Degree: Doctor of Philosophy, University of Witwatersrand September 2017 Title: An examination of the relationship between national identity and sovereignty: debates around the South African nation-state from 1990 to 2010. Supervisor: Prof Ran Greenstein 1 DECLARATION I declare that this Thesis is my own, unaided work. It is being submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. It has not been submitted before for any degree or examination at any other University. _______________________________________ (Signature of candidate) 13 September 2017 in Johannesburg 2 Abstract: The study attempts to examine the relationship between national identity and political sovereignty and their impact on the emergence of nations, with a special focus on debates around the South African nation-state from 1990 to 2004. Located within the postcolonialism approach, the study looks at national identity through the prism of ethnicity, language, religion and race, while sovereignty is considered through its two component parts, the state and citizenry. By examining two postcolonial contexts, the Arab world and India, the study has developed a framework which is applied to the study of the South African state. This framework identifies nationalism as a glue which holds sovereignty and identity together in the nation-state. The two cases reveal that there is always more than one nationalist narrative, often competing against each other. In the case of the Arab world the study looks at the tensions between pan-Arabism, Arab nationalism and Islamism. In the case of India a secular Indian nationalism has had to compete against a Hindu nationalism. -
The Local Enactment of Hindutva Writing Stories on Local Gods in Himachal Pradesh Daniela Berti
The local enactment of Hindutva Writing stories on local gods in Himachal Pradesh Daniela Berti To cite this version: Daniela Berti. The local enactment of Hindutva Writing stories on local gods in Himachal Pradesh. Cultural Entrenchment of Hindutva. Local Mediations and Forms of Resistance, Routledge, pp.64-90, 2011, 978-0-415-67799-8. halshs-02173325 HAL Id: halshs-02173325 https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-02173325 Submitted on 4 Jul 2019 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. [Published in D. Berti, N. Jaoul, P. Kanungo (eds.) Cultural Entrenchment of Hindutva. Local Mediations and Forms of Resistance, Delhi, Manohar, 2011] pp.64-9 The local enactment of Hindutva Writing stories on local gods in Himachal Pradesh Daniela Berti This article sets out to examine how an RSS-affiliated organisation aimed at rewriting Indian history implements its cultural programme at a local level through the participation of people who do not necessarily have any connection with the Hindutva ideology. Though the capacity of the Hindutva programmes to penetrate different milieus is often evoked in Hindutva studies, the reasons behind this process are rarely explored.