I am skeptical of all reports provided by partisan political and ideological organizations. There is a concerted campaign by Marxists, Maoists and other types of political activists to malign Hindu religious education, just as there is a vehement effort by the Hindu extremists to malign Christian religious conversions and Muslims madarasas. Consequently, they misrepresent and distort information, blow isolated incidents and anecdotal evidence out of proportion and tarnish the image of a charitable organization, or an entire ethnic or religious community. In a secular pluralist democracy, religious education supported by private money is not illegal, and should never be so. Religious conversions are constitutional. As a secular pluralist, I have repeatedly stated that I have no objections to them.
I provide below my skeptical comments on the report copied and pasted by Marshall from a partisan fringe website: -- On Sat, 3/28/09, Marshall Mendonza <mmendonz...@gmail.com> wrote: > >For example, English booklet in Jharkhand teach the Class-II primary >students thus: A for Arjun, B for Brahma, C for Cow, D for Dhruva,…G for >Ganesh, H…for Hanuman,…J for Jambavan,…M for Mahadev,…O for Om,…R for >Ram,…T >for Temple, U for Uma. > Please note above the mention of "C for Cow" and "T for Temple". Both cow and temple are English words. They are not the names of Hindu gods. But more importantly, there is nothing wrong with imparting knowledge about a native religion and culture through the English alphabet. It is very likely that tribal schools belonging to other religious schools (i.e. Christian, Muslim, Jain etc) also do something similar. > >Ironically, the letters ‘E’, ‘F’, ‘Q’, ‘W’, ‘X’ and ‘Z’ simply does not >exist in this booklet. For the FTS champions, these letters are not worthy >enough for the tribal students to learn. Reason? No names of Hindu Gods >beginning with these letters are readily available! > This statement is of dubious credibility because of two reasons: 1. There are plenty of Hindu god names starting with E, F and W. 2. They could have easily used English words for native cultural icons, as in the case of C for Cow and T for Temple. > >Daily school-prayers are devoted each day to different Hindu Gods like >Lord >Shiva, Hanuman etc.: Aaj Somwar Hai, Shivji ka var hai; sache man se >bhajan >karenge, sabka bera par hai; aaj mangalwar hai, Hanumanji ka var >hai.... > This is funny. Are the political activists who are parading this report also against Christian, Muslim and Jain prayer in their respective religious schools? As far as the rest is concerned, we see offenses and crimes committed by individuals being used to smear a charitable organization and an overseas religious community. We also see the now all too familiar guilt by association being used to tarnish the image of an innocent person who has not committed any crime, using unreliable reports from political websites. Cheers, Santosh
