Hindutva Abroad: The California Textbook Controversy

Abstract

This essay traces the ideological transformations that accompany Hinduism’s passage to the United States. Specifically, the essay analyzes the 2005-2006 California textbook controversy in which some members of two diasporic groups, the Vedic Foundation and the Hindu Educational Foundation, lobbied to change the content of the sections on Hinduism and ancient Indian in sixth-grade history-social science textbooks. Their intervention in the textbook certification process was challenged by secular Hindus, South Asian progressives, and academics specializing in South Asian studies. In addition to outlining the relationship between these groups and militant Hindu groups in India, the essay considers how the arguments in favor of changing textbook content draw simultaneously on forms of cultural nationalism associated with the Civil Rights movement and with the dominant forms of religiosity in the United States. The HEF’s and VF’s attempts to alter textbook content reveal deep ideological fissures over historical knowledge in the Indian American diaspora between, on the one hand, those Hindus purporting to speak on behalf of the larger community, and, on the other hand, secular Hindus, South Asian progressives, and academics with a South Asia focus. At the same time, however, the ensuing debates underscore the importance of religion in staking epistemological claims about ancient history, the status of memory, and the construction of a collective diasporic identity.

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