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163 Ethnic groups try to construct themselves as natural, ancient, and unchanging sociocultural units that individual members owe loyalty to and have an obligation to uphold. The invoking of an idealized and generally sacralized past has thus been central in attempts to create a new or redefined ethnic identity (see, e.g., Marty and Appleby 1991, 835). History becomes the anchor that grounds conceptions of a primordial peoplehood and an authentic culture. The resuscitation of ancient grievances also justifies current negative treatment of other groups. History therefore is seen as much more than an academic matter—it becomes central in defining the“essence”of a culture, in legitimizing current policies, and in providing a blueprint for the future. Thus one consequence of the Hindu nationalist movement has been the development of “history wars” between proponents of rival versions of Indian history (Darymple 2005). Hindu American scholars have played a significant part in these battles over history, because they are often cited as experts by Hindutva supporters and politicians (see Habib 2001, 15–17). In India, these history wars have resulted in political rallies, mob riots, and a even a threat by the then BJP prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, warning “all foreign scholars that they must not play with our national pride”(cited in Darymple 2005, 3)1 . Successive political administrations in India have also attempted radical revisions of school textbooks. In the United States many Hindu leaders have launched organized campaigns against scholars and textbooks that contain what are characterized as “anti-Hindu” points of view. A central plank of official Hinduism in the United States consists of articulating and disseminating an alternative version of Indian history from that accepted by most professional historians. The revisionist history of Hindu nationalists has focused on two primary issues. First, they argue that Hinduism is the indigenous religion of India and is several thousand years older than conventional historical accounts have acknowledged, making it the oldest culture known to mankind. Hindutva scholars therefore claim that India is the“cradle of civilization”and the homeland of the Aryans, the group from which Europeans are believed to have descended (see Feuerstein, Kak, and Frawley Re-visioning Indian History internet hinduism c h a p t e r 8  Chap-08.qxd 4/20/07 12:28 PM Page 163 1995; Rajaram and Frawley 1995).Many Hindus also claim that Hinduism is the original religion (which at one time existed in most major regions of the world) from which all other religions subsequently developed (e.g., Knapp 2000). Hinducentric scholars also dwell on the sophistication of the Vedic culture. The second issue that Hindu scholars have focused on is a reexamination of the period of Muslim domination in India. Here the goal is to show that many of the negative features of Hinduism (such as the change in the position of women from the Vedic period) came about as a result of Muslim invasions and that the period of Muslim domination was far more brutal than conventionally acknowledged. According to this perspective, it was due to the “tolerance” of Hinduism and the lack of unity of Hindus that the “genocide” of Hindus by Muslims and the subsequent colonization of the country by the British took place. The Textbook Controversy in India From the mid-1980s, as the BJP rose to power in states around India, they began to issue new textbooks that presented the Hindu nationalist version of history.Soon after taking office in 1998, the BJP’s minister of human resource development, Murli Manohar Joshi, began appointing scholars sympathetic to the BJP’s view of history to key national academic bodies such as the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR), the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), and the University Grants Commission. The hostility of the Hinducentric scholars and their supporters was directed particularly against the leftist school of historians who had dominated the Indian historical scene in the postcolonial period. Calling them anti-Hindu and antinational and branding their work as “intellectual terrorism unleashed by the left”and“more dangerous than cross border terrorism,” Murli Manohar Joshi’s first task was to purge the educational bodies of such scholars and to remove or “revise” the books written by them.2 In 2000, the BJP-appointed president of the ICHR recalled two volumes of the “Towards Freedom”series, which were already in...

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