[INDOLOGY] Another round in the California textbook story

[Nityanand Misra]

On 15 April 2016 at 23:54, Audrey Truschke <audrey.truschke at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Perhaps the controversy was over the word "untouchable" rather than
> "Dalit"? There are some rather eye-popping suggested emendations
> surrounding "untouchable" in the report.
>
>
>
Perhaps. It is still not the finest hour for journalism. The reporter takes
words from *activists* like Thenmozhi Soundararajan straight into the
sub-headline without any fact-checking.
Article body: “According to activists like Soundararajan, right-wing Hindu
groups want to gloss over Indian history and deny the reality of caste
discrimination by deleting the word ‘Dalit’ from the history textbooks of
the state.”
Sub-headline: “Right-wing Hindu groups are seeking to gloss over Indian
history and deny the reality of caste discrimination by deleting the word
‘Dalit’ from the history textbooks in California.”

Even if one concedes Soundararajan mistook references to
untouchables/untouchability as the word Dalit, most probably she still has
her facts wrong. Four comments in the summary table document (2514, 2516,
2517, and 2518) concern untouchables/untouchability. Of these, comments by
the Hindu groups (2514 by the Uberoi Foundation and 2518 by the Hindu
American Foundation) suggest replacing the term ‘Untouchables’ with
‘socially and economically disadvantaged communities’ and ‘socially
ostracized and economically disadvantaged communities’, respectively.
Comments 2516 and 2517 requesting for deleting references to
untouchables/untouchability are by *individuals* (Hemant Thobbi and Sandeep
Dedge respectively) and not Hindu groups. Of these, Hemant Thobbi requested
deletion of references to Untouchability on account of equal treatment to
all cultures (“lawfully omitting similar parallels for other cultures is
discriminatory”) while Sandeep Dedge suggested deleting this reference
without any reason.


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