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In this book, we examine the impact on Indian American children from school textbook narratives about Hinduism and ancient India, highlighting their alignment with colonial-racist discourse. This discourse causes psychological effects similar to those caused by racism: shame, inferiority, embarrassment, identity confusion, assimilation, and a detachment from their cultural heritage. The book represents four years of rigorous research and academic peer review, underscoring Hindupedia's dedication to challenging the portrayal of Hindu Dharma in academia.

Talk:Gyan Pandey

From Hindupedia, the Hindu Encyclopedia

By Anirudha patel


Gyanendra Pandey is a professor at Emory University. As per his CV [1], he engages in African-American history, Colonial and postcolonial history, Subaltern studies, South Asia.

In 2021, he along with Hibatullah Akhundzada, the supreme leader of the Taliban, co-signed a letter supporting "Dismantling Global Hindutva" Conference, as an academic and scholar and made the allegation

"the current government of India [in 2021] has instituted discriminatory policies including beef bans, restrictions on religious conversion and interfaith weddings, and the introduction of religious discrimination into India’s citizenship laws. The result has been a horrifying rise in religious and caste-based violence, including hate crimes, lynchings, and rapes directed against Muslims, non-conforming Dalits, Sikhs, Christians, adivasis and other dissident Hindus. Women of these communities are especially targeted. Meanwhile, the government has used every tool of harassment and intimidation to muzzle dissent. Dozens of student activists and human rights defenders are currently languishing in jail indefinitely without due process under repressive anti-terrorism laws."[2]

On November 5, 2017, he signed the letter submitted by the South Asia Faculty Group (SAFG) to the California State Board of Education[3] where he:

  • Misrepresented scholarship stating "Mythological terms substitute for historical ones for example the 'Indus Valley Civilization' (a fact-based geographic term) appears to be replaced with a religiously-motivated and ideologically charged term 'Indus-Saraswati/Sarasvati Civilization'. The Saraswati is a mythical river"[4][5][6]
  • Implied that Christians and Muslims existed in Ancient India, prior to the founding of these religions ​

In 2016, he signed a letter endorsing a letter submitted by the South Asia Faculty Group[7][8] where it addressed the State Board of Education, California Department of Education, dated May 17, 2016. In this letter they requested removing the word India from textbooks. In addition, they falsely[9] stated:

  1. "There is no established connection between Hinduism and the Indus Civilization."
  2. "It is inappropriate to remove mention of the connection of caste to Hinduism."


Publications[edit]

Books[edit]

  1. Pandey, Gyan. A History of Prejudice: Race, Caste, and Difference in India and the United States. Cambridge University Press, New York, 2013.
  2. Pandey, Gyan. The Construction of Communalism in Colonial North India. 3rd ed., Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2012. Re-issued by the American Council of Learned Societies History E-Book Project and the ACLS Humanities E-Book Handheld Editions Initiative, 2011, and as an ‘Oxford India Perennial’ to mark the centenary of Oxford University Press, 2012.
  3. Pandey, Gyan. The Gyanendra Pandey Omnibus. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2008. Reprinted 2009.
  4. Pandey, Gyan. Routine Violence: Nations, Fragments, Histories. Stanford University Press, series ‘Cultural Memory in the Present’, Stanford, 2006. Also published as first in the new series of ‘Subaltern Studies Monographs’ by Permanent Black, New Delhi, 2006.
  5. Pandey, Gyan. The Ascendancy of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh: Class, Community, and Nation in Northern India, 1920-1940. Revised and expanded edition, Anthem Press, London, 2002.
  6. Pandey, Gyan. Remembering Partition: Violence, Nationalism, and History in India. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2001.
  7. Pandey, Gyan. Memory, History, and the Question of Violence. K.P. Bagchi & Co., Calcutta, 1999.

Academic papers[edit]

  1. Pandey, Gyan. "Language of Democracy/States of Identity." The State of Indian Democracy, edited by Manas Ray, forthcoming, Primus, New Delhi, 2019.
  2. Pandey, Gyan. "Hindustani Aadmi Ghar Mein: Tab Aur Ab?" Pratimaan, vol. 6, no. 11, Jan.-June 2018, pp. 1-20,000.
  3. Pandey, Gyan. "Interview with Gyanendra Pandey." Summerhill: Indian Institute of Advance Studies Review, vol. XXII, no. 2, Winter 2016.
  4. Pandey, Gyan. "Drive for a Monolingual Order: Segregation and Democracy in Our Time." South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 25 Nov. 2016.
  5. Pandey, Gyan. "Dreaming in English: Challenges of Nationhood and Democracy." Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 51, no. 16, Apr. 2016,.
  6. Pandey, Gyan. "A People’s History of India, 1947-2014." Making Sense of Modi’s ‘New’ India, Harper Collins, London, 2016.
  7. Pandey, Gyan. "Racialization of Subaltern Populations: The Politics of Difference." Review of Black Political Economy, vol. 43, no. 2, June 2015.
  8. Pandey, Gyan. "The State and the Plantation: Writing Differently." How We Write: Scholarly Writing and the Power of Form, edited by Angelika Bammer and Ruth-Ellen Joeres, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2015.
  9. Pandey, Gyan. "Off-Centered States: An Appreciation." State Theory and Andean Politics: New Approaches to the Study of Rule, edited by Christopher Krupa and David Nugent, University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2015.
  10. Pandey, Gyan. "Politics and Democracy in Our Time: Terms of Analysis." Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 50, no. 20, May 2015,
  11. Pandey, Gyanendra. “Modes of History Writing: New Hindu History of Ayodhya.” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 29, no. 25, 1994, pp. 1523–28.
    Gyanendra Pandey’s critique of the new Hindu histories of Ayodhya uses selective evidence and fails to provide a comprehensive review of academic and scholarly work on the topic. He further disregards the context and audience of the materials he critiques.
    • Pandey dismisses the historical writings he reviews without considering their context or target audience. Paintings on walls or pamphlets provided to pilgrims are often simplified and not meant to be as nuanced as scholarly articles. By not acknowledging the intended purpose and audience of these materials, Pandey’s critique unfairly undermines their value. He beings his discussion by only acknowledging Tulsidas's Ramcharitmanas and Gandhi ignoring Valmiki Ramayana and the hundreds of other writings on this topic[10]
    • Pandey generalizes the Hindu historiography as "new," and "ahistorical" without surveying the diversity of perspectives within the published scholarly works or even doing a full survey of materials provided to pilgrims. He presents a monolithic view of Hindu historians as uniformly presenting an unchanging, fixed narrative. He further accuses them of not using rigorous historical methodologies without examining them.[11]. He overlooks the extensive scholarly material on the Ram Janmabhoomi, including reports from the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). In fact, he ignores all scholarship that doesn't suit his preconceived notions on the topic.
    • Pandey criticizes the Hindu historiographical approach for not adhering to Western standards of historical writing, labeling it as "ahistorical" and "mythical." He dismisses the possibility that these narratives might be following an alternative, equally valid epistemological framework rooted in Indian traditions or the fact that they are not scholarly but meant for common pilgrims.
    • Pandey undermines the role of faith and tradition in shaping historical narratives, treating them as less valid compared to empirical evidence. He implies that the certainty of faith undermines the factual basis of Hindu historical claims. For many cultures, faith and tradition play a significant role in historical consciousness. Dismissing these elements is an imposition of one cultural standard over another.
    • Pandey argues that recent Hindu historiography focuses more on the destruction of the Ram Janmabhoomi temple and less on its construction, suggesting a negative, conflict-oriented approach while ignoring the fact that highlighting instances of destruction for pilgrims is a way to emphasize resilience and the ongoing struggle for cultural preservation. He ignores the well documented attacks on Ayodhya by Muslims and belittles those wars and loss of life as riots, disease or convulsions.[12]

References[edit]

  1. ↑ Curriculum Vitae Gyanendra Pandey PDF accessed October 8, 2022
  2. ↑ "Letter of Support", Dismantling Global Hindutva Conference website, accessed August 7, 2022
  3. ↑ 2017 South Asia Faculty Group (SAFG) Letter to the California State Board of Education
  4. ↑ Chakrabarti, Dilip, and Sukhdev Saini. The Problem of the Sarasvati River and Notes on the Archaeological Geography of Haryana and Indian Punjab. Aryan Books International, 2009.
  5. ↑ Danino, Michel. The Lost River: On the Trail of the Sarasvati. Penguin Books, 2010.
  6. ↑ McIntosh, Jane R. A Peaceful Realm: The Rise and Fall of the Indus Civilization. Westview Press, 2002, p. 24. ​where she stated "Suddenly it became apparent that the “Indus” Civilization was a misnomer—although the Indus had played a major role in the development of the civilization, the “lost Saraswati” River, judging by the density of settlement along its banks, had contributed an equal or greater part to its prosperity. Many people today refer to this early state as the “Indus-Saraswati Civilization” and continuing references to the “Indus Civilization” should be an abbreviation in which the “Saraswati” is implied. There are some fifty sites known along the Indus whereas the Saraswati has almost 1,000. This is misleading figure because erosion and alluviation has between them destroyed or deeply buried the greater part of settlements in the Indus Valley itself, but there can be no doubt that the Saraswati system did yield a high proportion of the Indus people’s agricultural produce"
  7. ↑ 5-17 Prof. S. Shankar et al support letter
  8. ↑ 5-17 Kamala Visweswaran South Asian Faculty Group
  9. ↑ Gupta, S. P. 'The Dawn of Civilization.' In History of Science, Philosophy and Culture in Indian Civilization: Volume I: Part 1, edited by G. C. Pandey and D. P. Chattopadhyaya. New Delhi: Centre for Studies in Civilizations, 1999.
  10. ↑ “the distinguishing mark of an earlier Hindu account of this history was its metaphorical quality. Ayodhya was a metaphor, as Ram was a metaphor, that stood for much more than the literal truth of the existence of a particular man/god or the geographical location of his capital.”
  11. ↑ “The history that is claimed and portrayed in terms of Ayodhya is merely a claim as many historians are skeptical about the fact. The varieties of facts have been reinforced by the certainty of faith.”
  12. ↑ “What were riots, convulsions, symptoms of disease for colonialist writers, are wars for Hindu historians.”
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