What should we call this, Academic Fascism or illiteracy?

What should we call this, Academic Fascism or illiteracy?

Admirable facts:

• Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated on October 30, 1948. (Factual error)
•  Japan mounted a nuclear attack on the United States during World War II. (Factual error)

• After Partition, a new country called ‘Islamic Islamabad’ came into being with its capital Khyber Ghat in the Hindukush mountains. (Communal Comment)

• All south Indians are “Madrasis.” ( Racist  Comment)

•   The class 7 book clubs the Rath Yatra of Puri among south Indian festivals. In the same breath, it has been included with Onam and Diwali in Kerala, Bharatanatyam of Tamil Nadu and Kuchipudi of Andhra Pradesh. ( Savarna-Brahmanical history making & Cultural Fascism)

• “People in east India wear clothes above ankle as there is more rainfall. Ladies wear sari in a peculiar manner.” (Cultural Fascism)

•   Most people in eastern India reside in “houses made of wood and bamboo.” (Cultural Fascism)

• GCERT books have only a paragraph on 350 years of Mughal rule in India, while they wax eloquent on the Solanki and Vaghela dynasties in Gujarat. (Savarna-Brahmanical history making)

• The first semester textbook of class seven has a chapter on the medieval age but only one paragraph on Mughal rule. And that too speaks of how Mahmud of Ghazni plundered “India and Saurashtra.” His name has been spelt as Mohammad. (Communal comment)

(These are among factual mistakes and historical half-truths galore in the Social Science textbooks for classes 8, 7 and 6 produced by the Gujarat government.)

These are not just mistakes, it’s a way of institutionalising History making or Academic Fascism. We can find a clear cut political bias while looking at GCERT. From Brahmanical history making to Discrimination on North east imbibed by cultural superiority and racial superiority along with Sang Parivar communal politics that is often expressed while describing Mughal history.

It is more or less coincidence that these mistakes are complementary to sang-parivar ideology. For me it is hard to consider these mistakes as illiteracy.

One classic example for Academic and cultural Fascism at present times can be visualised from the making of Sardar Vallabai Patels statue (named as Statue of unity). The world’s largest statue is expected to be spent on Rs 25,000 crores.

The ludicrous aspect in the making of Patel statue is, Patel until his death was a pure congressman and the Gujarat government in 2006 has reject making Patel’s memorial on the school which he studied from First standard to Third standard only at cost of Rs25 lacks.

But, why a pillar of Rs 25,000 crores being made by Narendra Modi or RSS in the name of Patel instead of RSS founder Keshav Baliram Hedgewar?

This 182meter tall pillar is made only to celebrate Patel’s conservatism and not for his nationalism or anti-colonial stand.

He made Hyderabad and Manipur massacre possible for constructing pseudo nationalist unity scripted by upper-class savarna nationalists. Operation Polo, the code name of the Hyderabad Police Action was a military operation in September 1948 in which the Indian Armed Forces invaded the State of Hyderabad and overthrew its Nizam, annexing the state into the Indian Union, under the instruction of then Deputy Prime Minister Sardar Patel. Around 40,000 civilians were killed and majority of them were Muslims. Similar was the case of Manipur too. This enormous violence makes Patel the Iron Man of India. For RSS, Hyderabad Massacre was a communal fulfilment and Manipur Massacre a racial fulfilment. Patel’s typical conservative Hinduism is being celebrated in the name of statue of unity. In future this Congress Deputy prime minister might be counted as a BJP minister!!

looking at the pulping of Wendy Doniger’s book ‘’The Hindus-an alternative history’’ which was due to Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti (SBAS), a RSS outfit’s civil sue against the book. Even before Additional District Magistrate on Saket pronounced a judgment on the matter, Penguin publishers entered into an “amicable settlement” with SBAS and agreed to withdraw all copies of Wendy Doniger’s book. The Plaintiff Dinanath Batra was also instrumental in getting A.K Ramanujan’s essay “300 Ramayanas” withdrawn from Delhi University History Syllabus In 2008.

 

This collaboration between capitalist and communal forces was due to the advocacy of “hurting religious sentiments”. This constructed stinging is a way to control liberal voices or freedom of expression.

 

 

What was Wendy Doniger’s real crime?

 

She tried to narrate the history of myths and showing us the way in which myth is constructed through history. SBAS and Right wing forces were stopping us from hearing substitute history of myths.

This act of controlling knowledge production, from A.K Ramanujan’s essay “300 Ramayanas to pulping of Wendy Doniger’s is a method of institutionalizing frameworks for History making and an Authoritarian remark of India’s democracy.  This should be called- Academic Fascism.

 

-Ashique Ali T

 

An open letter to Mr. K Kasturirangan by Prof. Madhav Gadgil on the Western Ghats report

(Prof. Madhav Gadgil is an eminent Indian Ecologist. His research interests include population biology, conservation biology, human ecology and ecological history and he has published over 215 research papers and 6 books.
He was the head of a team of ecologists who developed a report named the “Western Ghats Ecology Report” which suggested that almost 75% of the ghats should be put under various levels of restrictions much to the opposition of the states and other interest groups alike.

Dr. Krishnaswamy Kasturirangan is an Indian space scientist, who headed the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) for more than 9 years until 2003. He is a Member of the Planning Commission of Government of India, the Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University and is the Chairman of Karnataka Knowledge Commission.

The earlier report developed by Gadgil committee was opposed by all the states in the name of development and a second commission was formed under the chairmanship of Dr. K Kasturirangan that suggests only less than 50% of Western ghats as no-go areas for mining and other polluting industries. But it does not recommended a ban on hydroelectric projects , dams and other such projects which are one of the biggest threat to the ecology of the region and all such projects will require prior-informed consent and no-objection from the Gram Sabha (village council) of these villages which we suspect would not be very difficult to get.

In this context, Prof. Gadgil wrote an open letter to Dr. Kasturirangan opposing the decision of the committee. The letter goes as follows:)

Dear Dr. Kasturirangan,
JBS Haldane, the celebrated 19h century scientist and humanist who quit England protesting its imperialistic invasion of Suez to become an Indian citizen has said: Reality is not only stranger than we suppose, but stranger than we CAN suppose! I could never have imagined that you would be party to a report such as that of the High Level Working Group on Western Ghats, but, then, reality is indeed stranger than we can suppose!
In our report to the Ministry of Environment & Forests, based on our extensive discussions and field visits, we had advocated a graded approach with a major role for grass-roots level inputs for safeguarding the ecologically sensitive Western Ghats. You have rejected this framework and in its place, you advocate a partitioning amongst roughly one-third of what you term natural landscapes, to be safeguarded by guns and guards, and two-third of so-called cultural landscapes, to be thrown open to development, such as what has spawned the 35,000 crore rupees illegal mining scam of Goa. This amounts to attempts to maintain oases of diversity in a desert of ecological devastation. Ecology teaches us that such fragmentation would lead, sooner, rather than later, to the desert overwhelming the oases. It is vital to think of maintenance of habitat continuity, and of an ecologically and socially friendly matrix to ensure long term conservation of biodiversity rich areas, and this is what we had proposed.
Moreover, freshwater biodiversity is far more threatened than forest biodiversity and lies largely in what you term cultural landscapes. Freshwater biodiversity is also vital to livelihoods and nutrition of large sections of our people. That is why we had provided a detailed case study of Lote Chemical Industry complex in Ratnagiri district of Maharashtra, where pollution exceeding all legal limits has devastated fisheries so that 20,000 people have been rendered jobless, while only 11,000 have obtained industrial employment. Yet the Government wants to set up further polluting industries in the same area, and has therefore deliberately suppressed its own Zonal Atlas for Siting of Industries.
Your report shockingly dismisses our constitutionally guaranteed democratic devolution of decision making powers, remarking that local communities can have no role in economic decisions. Not surprisingly, your report completely glosses over the fact reported by us that while the Government takes absolutely no action against illegal pollution of Lote, it had invoked police powers to suppress perfectly legitimate and peaceful protests against pollution on as many as 180 out of 600 days in 2007-09.
India’s cultural landscape harbours many valuable elements of biodiversity. Fully 75% of the population of Lion-tailed Macaque, a monkey species confined to the Western Ghats, thrives in the cultural landscape of tea gardens. I live in the city of Pune and scattered in my locality are a large number of Banyan, Peepal and Gular trees; trees that belong to genus Ficus, celebrated in modern ecology as a keystone resource that sustains a wide variety of other species. Through the night I hear peacocks calling, and when I get up and go to the terrace I see them dancing. It is our people, rooted in India’s strong cultural traditions of respect for nature, who have venerated and protected the sacred groves, the Ficus trees, the monkeys and the peafowl.
Apparently all this is to be snuffed out. It reminds me of Francis Buchanan, an avowed agent of British imperialism, who wrote in 1801 that India’s sacred groves were merely a contrivance to prevent the East India Company from claiming its rightful property.
It would appear that we are now more British than the British and are asserting that a nature friendly approach in the cultural landscape is merely a contrivance to prevent the rich and powerful of the country and of the globalized world from taking over all lands and waters to exploit and pollute as they wish while pursuing lawless, jobless economic growth. It is astonishing that your report strongly endorses such an approach. Reality is indeed stranger than we can suppose!
With warm personal regards,
I remain,
Yours sincerely,
Madhav