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CAPEEM Fights Discrimination Against Hindu Children with a Lawsuit

California Parents for the Equalization of Educational Materials (CAPEEM) has filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of California against the California State Board of Education and the California Department of Education. The complaint is about Hindus and children's civil rights, derogatory portrayal of Hinduism & Ancient Indian Civilization and violation of Federal and State laws and statutes, as well as the California Department of Education (CDE)  and State Board of Education (SBE) guidelines. The complaint was filed with the Federal Court on Tuesday, March 14th, 2006.

The civil rights of Hindu schoolchildren are violated by advancing an inaccurate and derogatory picture of Hinduism in sixth grade school textbooks. California Department of Education and State Board of Education meetings on the matter failed to address Hindu concerns. Hindus are being discriminated.

Various Hindu groups and parents participated in this process since the Sixth grade History-Social Sciences textbooks came up for adoption last year. After being let down by the CDE and SBE, the parents decided to move the court and restore civil rights and forbid discriminatory practice against Hindus. Most importantly, the school children are the ones who will be suffering damage due to derogatory presentation in the textbook. Many students, from past and present, have spoken to CDE and SBE about their experience in the classroom and that what is taught in the school has nothing to do with what they know and practice at home.

Venkat Balasubramani filed the complaint on CAPEEM’s behalf. Balasubramani is an attorney who has worked in the past with public interest groups including the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on civil rights matters.

(source: Federal Lawsuit Claims California Textbooks Violate Hindu Civil Rights - hinduismtoday.com).

Please make a Donation -  Hindu American Foundation Launches Defense and Education fund Drive

A Textbook Debate Over Hinduism

When Abhijit Kurup began learning about Hinduism at his Claremont middle school, he could barely recognize his own religion.

Textbooks portrayed the 6,000-year-old tradition as a religion of monkey and elephant gods, rigid caste discrimination and oppression of women, he said. 

"It degraded my religion," said Kurup, now a UC Riverside freshman. "I felt a mixture of anger, embarrassment and humiliation."

(source:
A Textbook Debate Over Hinduism - By Teresa Watanabe,  LA Times Staff Writer February 27 2006).

Fraudulent Distorians?

Refer to Creationism By Any Other Name… - By Romilla Thapar and Michael Witzel - outlookindia.com

Hindutva groups would like Hinduism - one of the world’s oldest major religions, with approximately 800 million adherents worldwide, to be treated with the same consideration and respect as Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Buddhism.

(Note: Anything wrong with that? Ms. Thapar? California’s official educational standards contain specific policies on this, which assert, CA State Law [Education Code 60044(a) and Subsection (b)], and the Standards for Evaluating Instructional Materials for Social Content (2000 Edition) clearly state the following guidelines for textbooks:

'1. Adverse Reflection. No religious belief or practice may be held up to ridicule and no religious group may be portrayed as inferior.'

'2. Indoctrination. Any explanation or description of a religious belief or practice should be present in a manner that does not encourage or discourage belief or indoctrinate the student in any particular religious belief.').

Refer to Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud is a book by Arun Shourie. - The book explains how a group of academic historians, of Marxist persuasion, has been tweaking Indian history and also lining its own pockets in the process.  Note: Last December, a Kansas University Professor of Religious Studies, Paul Mirecki, who enraged Christian bigots by lampooning the Biblical version of Creation, was beaten up; he told police that the men who beat him made references to his controversial statements in this regard.

Watch Sex crimes and the Vatican - videogoogle.com.  Refer to Columbus, The Indians, and Human Progress - By Howard Zinn

Hindu-baiters
"Hindus worship talking monkeys and throw widows into fires" ?

Sandhya Jain author of Adi Deo Arya Devata. A Panoramic View of Tribal-Hindu Cultural Interface and eminent columnist in the mainstream English Media of India, she has written eloquently about Hinduism and has remarked on this issue:

"Old Hindu-baiters from both countries (USA and India) gang up to abort a necessary correction of school textbooks in California.

We are thus faced with the old colonial reconstruction of Indian history, which diminishes the fabulous achievements of Hindu civilisation and the unity of its social constituents, and deconstructs it into a disparate mosaic whose different components do not amount to a cultural coherence. 

America's Hindu community has long borne the burden of a humiliating and incorrect depiction of Hindu religion and culture; parents have faced young children saying they are ashamed to be Hindus.

Why, for instance, should devout Hindus accept that their children be taught that "Hindus worship talking monkeys and throw widows into fires". Why should the primordial stories in Hindu scriptures be branded as 'myths' when the scriptures of monotheistic traditions are said to come from Only One (mutually exclusive) God(s)?

Unfortunately, unlike Islam and Judaism, America's Hindus lack political clout. Hence they were hopelessly out-manoeuvred by professional Hindu-haters led by Prof Michael Witzel of the Harvard Sanskrit Department. As Harvard University ignored protests that Herr Witzel was misusing the varsity letterhead to pursue a political agenda, Hindus should settle scores by forcing closure of the Sanskrit Department by ensuring that the professor gets no students for two successive terms.

Sadly, the California school board allowed this process to be hijacked by Herr Witzel, who claimed to be a religious scholar, though he is a non-Hindu, a known Hindu-baiter, and proponent of the discredited Aryan Invasion Theory. Yet Witzel and Thapar erode their already dubious academic credibility by claiming that NASA and ISRO satellite imagery of ancient riverbeds along the famed route of the Saraswati do not prove the existence of the river in Vedic times. "

(source: Sunset in Sacramento - By Sandhya Jain March 7 2006 Edit Page dailypioneer.com). Please refer to chapters on Hindu Culture, Quotes, Sanskrit, Yoga and Hindu Philosophy. Refer to Bigotry and Prejudice: the Depiction of Hinduism in the West - By Rajeev Srinivasan - rediff.com.

Selectively harp on Hinduism
How are other faiths represented in American textbooks?

Why don't our (Indian) pseudo secular journalists and scholars (eg. Now, Multicultural Hindutva - By Raja Rajagopal and 'Palpable Falsehoods' - By Vinay Lal) give no consideration to how other faiths are represented in these textbooks. 

They just selectively harp on Hinduism and seek to scrutinize this faith in a manner that no other religion, least of all Christianity, is subjected. What does the Bible say about Slavery and Women?  For more on Prof. Vinay Lal refer to http://www.uclaprofs.com/profs/lal.html 

Refer to California School Text Issues: Students Debate With Prof. Michael Witzel At Harvard University - Lokvani.com.   Refer to South Asian Bleeding Hearts Association.  

Watch Sex crimes and the Vatican - videogoogle.com.  Refer to QuickTime trailer and Part One of the film The God Awful Truth. Refer to World Conquering Creeds - By Dr. Koenraad Elst - chapter on Glimpses XVI

Refer to Swamy's wake-up call to Hindus - newstodaynet.com.

 

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