A recent spate of news articles and media coverage on a book recommended for state libraries gave me some food for thought. A few sample links below :
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article3664275.ece
http://thecanaratimes.com/epaper/index.php/archives/17589
http://thecanaratimes.com/epaper/index.php/archives/17622
To cut a long story short, a book on 'Bharateeyara habba haridinagalu' , loosely translated as 'Indic festivals' was prescribed for school libraries by the government. Promptly several objections and protests have been organised. Media has been baying for blood. Calls for the arrest of the author have been made. Reason ? The book does not mention Christmas, Ramzan or Id. There are two issues to this controversy.
Firstly, should such a book on 'Indic festivals' have left out Ramzan and Christmas?
Secondly, should such a book be in school libraries?
Regarding the first objection.. Sounds valid? Well it did seem so to me for a moment. Until I googled for articles on 'Roman festivals' and 'greek festivals'. Neither of them mention Id, nor Christmas although Rome is home to the Pope. Sounds shocking? These are not isolated instances, as a search of the web would show. But not many take umbrage at these things. Quite naturally, these are articles on festivals that are typically associated with the native civilisations of Rome and Greece. Those festivals and the civilizations have since ceased to exist. Cut to the present, the case in point is not very different. A book on Indic festivals dealt with topics from the Indic civilisation. The only difference being that this civilisation, unlike the Greeks and Romans is a living tradition to this day, associated with a large population. And therein lies the genesis of this controversy and motivation for this attack. All that ensued was politics and personally I see no merit in discussing that game.
Regarding the second.. Should such a book be in a library? Is a physics book castigated for not mentioning biology? Or a Math book for not teaching Psychology? At this rate libraries should be stocked with nothing but encyclopedias. And as the internet age has shown the good old shiny books called encyclopedias were anything but complete. A fundamental tenet of academia is that experts talk on subjects of their expertise and may give an opinion or two on others topics but never pretend to be an authority on other topics. A library should have books written by subject experts rather than books that claim to cover everything under the sun, while doing justice to none. A book should be judged solely on scholarly merit and no more, no less. An appropriate demand in this context would be to ask for other books from Islamic scholars, Christian experts and Buddhist masters to be introduced in libraries. Not ask for this book to talk of Christmas or vice versa.
Tailpiece : Tokenisms may have a place elsewhere but not in academic pursuits. I rest my case.
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article3664275.ece
http://thecanaratimes.com/epaper/index.php/archives/17589
http://thecanaratimes.com/epaper/index.php/archives/17622
To cut a long story short, a book on 'Bharateeyara habba haridinagalu' , loosely translated as 'Indic festivals' was prescribed for school libraries by the government. Promptly several objections and protests have been organised. Media has been baying for blood. Calls for the arrest of the author have been made. Reason ? The book does not mention Christmas, Ramzan or Id. There are two issues to this controversy.
Firstly, should such a book on 'Indic festivals' have left out Ramzan and Christmas?
Secondly, should such a book be in school libraries?
Regarding the first objection.. Sounds valid? Well it did seem so to me for a moment. Until I googled for articles on 'Roman festivals' and 'greek festivals'. Neither of them mention Id, nor Christmas although Rome is home to the Pope. Sounds shocking? These are not isolated instances, as a search of the web would show. But not many take umbrage at these things. Quite naturally, these are articles on festivals that are typically associated with the native civilisations of Rome and Greece. Those festivals and the civilizations have since ceased to exist. Cut to the present, the case in point is not very different. A book on Indic festivals dealt with topics from the Indic civilisation. The only difference being that this civilisation, unlike the Greeks and Romans is a living tradition to this day, associated with a large population. And therein lies the genesis of this controversy and motivation for this attack. All that ensued was politics and personally I see no merit in discussing that game.
Regarding the second.. Should such a book be in a library? Is a physics book castigated for not mentioning biology? Or a Math book for not teaching Psychology? At this rate libraries should be stocked with nothing but encyclopedias. And as the internet age has shown the good old shiny books called encyclopedias were anything but complete. A fundamental tenet of academia is that experts talk on subjects of their expertise and may give an opinion or two on others topics but never pretend to be an authority on other topics. A library should have books written by subject experts rather than books that claim to cover everything under the sun, while doing justice to none. A book should be judged solely on scholarly merit and no more, no less. An appropriate demand in this context would be to ask for other books from Islamic scholars, Christian experts and Buddhist masters to be introduced in libraries. Not ask for this book to talk of Christmas or vice versa.
Tailpiece : Tokenisms may have a place elsewhere but not in academic pursuits. I rest my case.
No comments:
Post a Comment