Thanks so much to Kat for her support over these months and to other supporters in the hallofmaat forum.

Kenuchelover's comments are really perceptive, in more ways than are obvious if you haven't followed the Hindutva (Hindu nationalist) movement in India, as I have for the last six years or so. The California textbook case was at heart never about textbooks, although that hasn't been evident to the general public. It was part of a much broader international attempt of far-right Indian groups, which lost control of the national government in May 2004, to rebuild their sagging movement using the United States as a launching pad. California was the natural place to try this because of the large and wealthy Indian population that has moved here since the Internet boom (this population is disproportionately high caste and conservative, for complex reasons). When the Hindutva-backed BJP party fell from power in India, similar attempts underway there to rewrite history from a political-religious perspective collapsed, after heated national battles that went on for years. After their failure in India, the plan of the right was to take their battle to the rich NRI (non-resident Indian) population in the US -- so that if their movement ever came to national power again in India they could claim US acceptance of their historical views as a lever to make similar changes in India.

We found out about the review process on November 5th 2005, four days before the Board of Education made what originally was to be their final vote of approval of the Hindutva edits, We were lucky that we were able to put together our successful international petition to the Board so quickly, thanks to Internet. I don't think it is an exaggeration that this will help setback the Hindu nationalist movement severely in India over the next few years, and if you knew much about the violent history of the movement, you'd see that this is very positive indeed.

Well, we beat them, thoroughly, despite an ugly smear campaign (I won't go into that, but Kat knows about it), and they aren't likely to succeed in similar future attempts in the West, since we've now awakened the international academic community, progressive Indian American organizations, publishers, Boards of Education to the nature of their movement.

Indian national TV is also producing a major story on this: a reporter from NDTV (sort of the CNN of India) drove up with me yesterday to Sacramento.

Thanks again to Kat, who is as always a great ally!

I should add that Kenuchelover's comments about New Age types in California is also perceptive, since many of the rightwing Hindus complaining about "their" ancient India (which belongs to all humans) being wrongly depicted were, in fact, American Caucasians wearing saffron. Not one of the many stories in the Wall Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, or even the Indian papers picked up on this side of the story. The long post-mortem story that Michael Witzel and I plan to write now on the Hindutva circus will discuss this issue, among many others.

Best,
Steve Farmer
[www.safarmer.com]