Indology Survey for Witzelites

july 20th, 2006

for your entertainment.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Indology Fan Club < irrfanclub@gmail.com>
Date: Jul 20, 2006 4:05 AM
Subject: Indology Survey for Witzelites
To: irrfanclub@gmail.com

Dear friend,

 

This survey was emailed to all academics who signed the famous Witzel petition. Any help on follow-up via the Indian (or Hindu) NRI community on this will be highly appreciated.

Thanks in advance.

- Indology Fan Club

====================================================================

 

 

Dear Sir/Madam,

You are one of a group of people who have been listed as scholars of international repute in petition filed with California Board of Education.
 
I am compiling and publishing the facts surrounding the California middle school textbook corrections which you opposed. As you may recall, you signed your name, and your institutional affiliation, to lend credibility to a letter written by the Friends of South Asia / Mr. Michael Witzel addressed to the California State Board of Education (See http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/%7Ewitzel/witzelletter.pdf ), alleging various intents and ascribing various motives to the parents who were trying to get the texts corrected.

 
I would like to try to be accurate in describing your actions. So please provide answers to the following questions.

1. Before you signed that letter, did you read the complete set of edits approved by the Ad Hoc Content Review Panel appointed by the CSBE, on Hinduism and India?

2. If you answered Yes to #1, please attach a copy of an email that you wrote after reading them, but before you signed that letter, indicating that you had read them. Obviously this is a critical issue, since you signed to the effect that you had familiarized yourself with the edits - and were described as a "world expert" on the matters where the letter claimed competence.

3. If you answered Yes to #1, did you compare the scope, extent, and sources of the edits proposed on Hinduism and India, to those on Islam, Judaism, Buddhism and Christianity? Please provide evidence of this comparison done before you endorsed the letter.

In the following, please describe your expertise in the matter of middle-school textbook content on India, Hinduism, and ancient Indian civilization. Please list subject areas, year and institution where you achieved degrees in related subject areas, and your work since then which supports the claim of expertise.

4. Have you been outside an airplane/airport in India in the past 10 years? (Please note: Nepal is NOT in India)

5. Please list the Indian languages you can read/write at least at a tenth-grade Indian state curriculum level.

 

6. Have you actually passed Sanskrit at the 6th-grade Indian Central Schools Curriculum (or equivalent, please specify) level?
 

7. Have you read any of Kalidasa's major works (can you name 4?)in the following in the original Sanskit?

8. Have you read the textbooks used in California's middle schools today, including the parts discussing India? Please name the books with which you are familiar.

9. Do you endorse Mr. Witzel's assertion that the Mahabharatha was written before the Ramayana?

10. Do you believe U. Chicago Pornographer Wendy Doniger's assertion that the Mahabharatha was written by Vyasa per dictation from Shri Ganesha?

11. If "no" to the above, do you believe the Mahabharatha was written by
a) Valmiki per dictation from Krishna
b) no one, since Dr. S.A. Farmer claims that the early Indians did not have any written script until they were educated by Alexander the Great, who learned Sanskrit from the 900 Theses of Pico in Rome.

The next questions relate to the logic you used.

12. What was Valmiki's caste?

13. How did Valmiki learn to write, given that you believe that several castes were kept illiterate in ancient India?

14. What was the caste of Thunjath Ezhuttassan (what work is he famous for?) What does the "caste" name "Ezhuthassan" mean?

15. In the Ramayana, who was Mr. Seeth to Ms. Rama?

16. What is "Marumakattaayam"?
a. A South Indian dessert
b. A system of inheritance
c. A form of gay marriage among the fascist right-wing Hindutva

17. Please describe your acquaintance / working relationship with Mr. Witzel, Mr. S. Farmer, and other entities involved in this matter. Specify how Mr. Witzel is acquainted with your expertise in order to have described it in the letter.

18. Do you deny that you are a member of the Yahoo Group, "IndoEurasian Research", run by Mr. Witzel from Harvard, and Mr. Farmer, that has been widely and repeatedly quoted as making racist hate speech ?

19. Do you deny that you are a member of the Friends of South Asia (a.ka. Pakistan-American Alliance, a.k.a. Inter Services Intelligence, a.k.a. Lashkar-e-Toiba)? The Forum of Inquilabi/ Indian Leftists, a.k.a. Communist Party of India (Marxist - Liberation)? Babbar Khalsa a.k.a. Khalistan? Liberation Tamil Tigers of Eelam, a.k.a. Federation of Tamils in America?

20. Are you acquainted with Mr. Arun B. Vajpayee, the brave graduate student in California whom Mr. Witzel described as having alerted him to the impending dangers of the textbooks being corrected? If so, please state how you are acquainted with him.

The following relate to your positions on the textbooks:

21. Are you a practising believer in the Hindu faith?

22. Do you agree with the Harvard PhD and UC Berkeley faculty member who claims that one has to be born a Hindu to be a practising Hindu?

23. Can you name 5 Hindu religious holidays?

24. Do you agree that these holidays should be given equal importance to Jewish, Christian and Islamic holidays?

25. Your letter specifically threatened CSBE's Ruth Green with an "international scandal" unless she stopped the textbook process and inserted Mr. Witzel and his consulting pals into the process. Could you explain this threat?

26. Were you perhaps threatening to expose Commissioner Alan Bersin's financial dealings in his former job, or his current conflict of interest?

27. Do you deny knowing that Mr. Bersin is a Harvard Overseer / Trustee charged with fundraising for Harvard, while hiring a Harvard professor as a consultant to a position where he can direct the multi-hundred-million-dollar California textbook budget to Harvard?

28. Did you disagree with Mr. Witzel's and Mr. Farmer's attempts to put pictures of latrine-cleaning in middle school textbooks to humiliate Indian-American children?

29. Did you object to Mr. Witzel's declaration that Indian-American Hindus are "HIINAs" and that their daughters study Indian dance because of poor morals?

30. Do you think it is uacceptable ethics at your university for a professor to go and change his /her teaching evaluations on a website to read all glowing and identical?

Thank you for your answers in advance.

 

Yours truly,

- Indology Club