Controversies

"CONTROVERSY, n. A battle in which spittle or ink replaces the injurious cannon-ball and the inconsiderate bayonet."

"Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog lovers, the cat lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that!... Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did."

"Controversy may rage as long as it adheres to the presuppositions that define the consensus of elites, and it should furthermore be encouraged within these bounds, thus helping to establish these doctrines as the very condition of thinkable thought while reinforcing the belief that freedom reigns."

"I am continually fascinated at the difficulty intelligent people have in distinguishing what is controversial from what is merely offensive."

"Controversy equalizes fools and wise men — and the fools know it."

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."

"The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way."

"During a period roughly parallel to Newton's lifetime, there was an active controversy between those, like Descartes, who believed that momentum is conserved in collisions and others led mainly by Leibniz who asserted that kinetic energy is conserved in collisions."

"When men differ in any matter of belief, let them meet each other manfully."

"No great advance has ever been made in science, politics, or religion, without controversy."

"It is humbling to mankind to contemplate men capable of grasping eternal truths, fencing and debating in trivialities, like gladiators fighting with flies."

"Doubtless there are times when controversy becomes a necessary evil. But let us remember that it is an evil."

"On May 28 of last year, President Obama stood next to Prime Minister of Poland in Warsaw and declared he would support new rules to help more Poles get tourist visas to the United States. “If you’ve lived in Chicago and you haven’t become a little bit Polish,” Mr. Obama joked, “there’s something wrong with you.”A year later, the president made himself the target of a searing denunciation by Mr. Tusk after he referred on Tuesday to a “Polish death camp,” instead of a Nazi death camp in Poland, in bestowing a Presidential Medal of Freedom on , a hero of the Polish resistance to the Germans during World War II. Mr. Obama was guilty of “ignorance, lack of knowledge, bad intentions,” Mr. Tusk said."

"Keynes's answer was that the rate of interest was determined in the financial markets, and there is no reason why it should necessarily gravitate to the requisite level. It was not a very convincing answer. This was the weakness Hicks would exploit. The demand function for investment (which Keynes called the marginal efficiency of capital schedule) was the Trojan horse that allowed the forces of his enemies to attack the very heart of Keynes's case for an under-employment equilibrium and hence for active government. It was one of Keynes's closest collaborators who solved the dilemma. From 1936 on, Joan Robinson had argued that if Keynes was right about the determination of employment, then orthodox theory must be wrong about the determination of prices. In the mid-1960s she at last found a way of sustaining her argument."

"The high theory debates that she and others conducted with the more orthodox theorists of MIT reached an agreed conclusion when Paul Samuelson was forced to concede that there was no logically consistent way to construct a demand function for capital outside the artificial confines of a one-commodity world (see the symposium on paradoxes in capital theory, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1966). This, in turn, means that it is not possible to formulate a logically consistent theory of the long-run normal rate of interest; hence no consistent theory of long-run prices or of output and employment is possible either. Building so-called Keynesian models on the basis of market failure no longer makes sense--there cannot be a short-run deviation from a long-run equilibrium that is not there in the first place! In one stroke the critical task in which Keynes had failed was accomplished, and the marginal efficiency of capital schedule was swept away too. What was left was the part of his theory that Keynes himself had regarded as his truly original contribution--the principle of effective demand."

"The state and its ideologues have steadfastly refused to recognize the fact that these regions are not merely chunks of territory with different names but areas which were historically inhabited by peoples who had different languages and cultures, and even states of their own. This official and intellectual denial has, no doubt, contributed to the progressive deterioration of inter-group relations, weakened societies cohesiveness, and undermined the state's capacity to forge security and sustain development."

"The message is clear and loud. The fortunes of the persons who rule the country and the contents of the textbooks run in tandem. When Ayub Khan was in power in 1969 and the Urdu book was published it was right and proper that the bulk of it should be in praise of him. When, in 1970, he was no longer on the scene and this English translation was published it was meet that the book should ignore him. All the books published during Zia's years of power followed this practice. The conclusion is inescapable: the students arc not taught contemporary history but an anthology of tributes to current rulers. The authors are not scholars or writers but courtiers."

"“While education appears to make people less favourable toward terrorist groups, there is also a worrying increase in favourability toward these groups at the secondary school level. My analysis of Pakistan Studies textbooks helped explain why that is the case: The books set up a framework of the world in which Pakistan is viewed as the victim of conspiracies of both India and the West, and Pakistanis and Muslims are pitched in opposition to other countries and religions.”"

"Secondly, the student is trained to accept historical mis-statements on the authority of the book. If education is a pre- paration for adult life, he learns first to accept without question, and later to make his own contribution to the creation of historical fallacies, and still later to perpetuate what he has learnt. In this way, ignorant authors are leading innocent students to hysterical conclusions. The process of the writers' mind provides excellent material for a manual on logical fallacies. Thirdly, the student is told nothing about the relationship between evidence and truth. The truth is what the book ordains and the teacher repeats. No source is cited. No proof is offered. No argument is presented. The authors play a dangerous game of winks and nods and faints and gestures with evidence. The art is taught well through precept and example. The student grows into a young man eager to deal in assumptions but inapt in handling inquiries. Those who become historians produce narratives patterned on the textbooks on which they were brought up. Fourthly, the student is compelled to face a galling situation in his later years when he comes to realize that what he had learnt at school and college was not the truth. Imagine a graduate of one of our best colleges at the start of his studies in history in a university in Europe. Every lecture he attends and every book he reads drive him mad with exasperation, anger and frustration. He makes several grim discoveries. Most of the "facts", interpretations and theories on which he had been fostered in Pakistan now turn out to have been a fata morgana, an extravaganza of fantasies and reveries, myths and visions, whims and utopias, chimeras and fantasies."

"...What he(Imran Khan) hinted at was that the who wanted more rights were “Western educated” and were responsible for the societal divide that his government would end by adopting a “uniform education system”. The obvious inference from his remark is that he would like to “merge” Urdu and English-medium education with the or the religious schools functioning in the country: He would be less able to prune the extremist religious-ideological material in the Urdu-medium-madrassa sector while expurgating the “liberal” aspect of the English-medium sector....Pakistan’s educational system has consistently opposed the “liberalism” that the growing middle class allows its children to imbibe in the English-medium sector. There was a time when Khan used to accuse his “modernised” opponents of “liberal fascism”. But no one ideologically inclined thinks of tackling the extremism nurtured by the Urdu-medium and madrassa sectors......Given Pakistan’s poor level of intellectual sophistication, the project of educational reform under Imran Khan runs the risk of becoming — which translates literally to “Western education is forbidden"...The uniformity of mind created in the state-sector schools is a kind of preparation for the final takeover by the pure madrassa stream — the utopia Pakistan aspires to. A majority of the suicide-bomber boys who did the dirty work of the Taliban came from the state-run schools. The madrassas, on the other hand, provided the warriors that waged cross-border jihad and at times, defied the patron-state itself. Today, Pakistan is simply not intellectually equipped to handle the problem it has posited to itself. The most locked mind in Pakistan is located inside the educational bureaucracy serving in the federal and provincial ministries....Pakistan is going through a withering process of , which is another word for turning inwards and showing hostility towards anything smelling of foreignness. Liberalism is under attack and liberal education is already not in favour even in the private sector stream where the financiers know it pays to create space for ideology and uniformity of the mind..."

"The Progressive Papers had always been an anomaly in Pakistan, where the bulk of the post-Partition intelligentsia was not merely conformist, but engaged in a project to rewrite the history of the struggle for Indian independence in order to provide the new state with a raison d’être."

"To this day, the country’s memories about its treatment of its former east wing remain, as one leading Pakistani publication put it, shrouded in “a fog of confusion” or lost in “collective amnesia.” Although upper-level textbooks can be much better, many of Pakistan’s textbooks have whitewashed out the atrocities against Bengalis and falsely claimed that the United States wanted Pakistan divided."

"Ironically, one of the few things that Indian and Pakistani textbooks seem to agree on is in fact a falsehood: namely, that Islam grew in precolonial India through the agency of Sufi saints. There is little contemporary evidence for such a thing. Generally speaking, Sufis were not interested in converting Hindus."

"The 'recasting' of Pakistani history [has been] used to 'endow the nation with a historic destiny'."

"“...We will, hopefully by next year, introduce a core syllabus for all schools that will be mandatory for students apart from the additional subjects each institution chooses to teach. This is how you create a nation. This is how you end rival cultures from developing. The that just happened… a different culture was visible in it. this is a cultural issue and this comes from the schooling system...”"

"But the worst effect of partition has been that 1947 has tended to produce two historiographies based on territorial differentiation. Comparing the works of Ahmad Ali entitled Culture of Pakistan with Richard Symond's The Making of Pakistan (London, 1950) on the one hand and Humayun Kabir's Indian Heritage and Abid Hussain's National Culture of India on the other, W. Cantwell Smith says that the Pakistani historian 'flees from Indian-ness, and would extra-territorialize even Mohenjodaro (linking the Indus-valley civilisation with Sumer and Elam) as well as the Taj (yet though left in India, the monuments and buildings of Agra and Delhi are entirely outside the Indian tradition and are an essential heritage and part of Pakistani culture, - p.205), and omits from consideration altogether quite major matters less easily disposed of (such as Asoka's reign, and the whole of East Pakistan) The Indians 'on the other hand seek for the meaning of Muslim culture within the complex of Indian 'unity in diversity' as an integral component.'27 So, after 1947, besides the 'objective' and 'apologist', 'Secular' and 'Communal' versions, there are the Pakistani and Indian versions of medieval Indian history."

"History, in the Pakistan school books I looked at, begins with Arabia and Islam. In the simpler texts, surveys of the Prophet and the first four caliphs and perhaps the Prophet's daughter are followed, with hardly a break, by lives of the poet Iqbal, Mr Jinnah, the political founder of Pakistan, and two or three "martyrs," soldiers or airmen who died in the holy wars against India in 1965 and 1971."

"If it is not anti-Indianism, then in what other terms could we possibly render Pakistani-Muslim nationalism? [….] The 'ideology of Pakistan' as defined to students at every school and college in the country is nothing except anti-Indianism. In every walk of life in Pakistan--from academia to journalism, from sports to bureaucracy--a vast majority of people have been inculcated with fantastic anti-India notions. [….] Phrases like the "Hindu mentality" and "devious Indian psyche" are part of the daily military talk. [….] Anti-Indianism, in short, runs deep in Pakistani state and society. It is a state of mind that cannot be switched off […]. People have no other alternative frame of reference in which to define Pakistani nationalism."

"Social studies textbooks in the Urdu language, printed by the government and used in government-run schools and institutions, fudge facts and indoctrinate students with a jaundiced worldview... The books … are [the] literary equivalent of hate speech. These books would not be out of place in any madrassah preparing the young for an early grave. ‘Hindu’ India and Britain are depicted as enemies while Saudi Arabia and the Muslim Ummah are extolled. The Pakistan Army and its ‘three decisive victories’ over India are mentioned liberally and are an example of how institutional attempt has been made to rewrite history. Words like ‘dark’, ‘ugly’ and ‘short’ are used to describe Hindus while Muslims are presented in glowing terms. Atrocities committed by Muslim invaders are glossed over while those by Hindu and Sikh invaders magnified. Invasions led by Muslims are justified as having been necessary for the expansion of Islam whereas Hindu- led invasions are depicted bleakly. Hindus are also reported as having colluded with the English to suppress the Muslims, according to these books. ‘Muslims have always helped the Hindus who have only returned the favour by massacring innocent Muslims,’ the textbook for Class IV makes plain on Page 85. ‘India is an enemy. Its designs are nefarious. We should receive military training so that we could fight our enemy,’ it suggests on Page 112. The propagation of the caste-system and of medieval practices such as satti (burning a widow on the husband's pyre) are used to illustrate the inferiority of Hindu culture."

"Pakistan’s public education system has an important role in determining how successful we shall be in achieving the goal of a progressive, moderate and democratic Pakistan. A key requirement is that children must learn to understand and value this goal and cherish the values of truthfulness, honesty, responsibility, equality, justice, and peace that go with it. [….] However, a close analysis by a group of independent scholars shows that for over two decades the curricula and the officially mandated textbooks in these subjects have contained material that is directly contrary to the goals and values of a progressive, moderate and democratic Pakistan."

"Our analysis found that some of the most significant problems in the current curricula and textbooks are: • Inaccuracies of fact and omissions that serve to substantially distort the nature and significance of actual events in our history. • Insensitivity to the actually existing religious diversity of the nation • Incitement to militancy and violence, including encouragement of Jehad and Shahadat. • Perspectives that encourage prejudice, bigotry and discrimination towards fellow citizens, especially wo men and religious minorities, and other nations. • A glorification of war and the use of force • Omission of concepts, events and material that could encourage critical self-awareness among students. • Outdated and incoherent pedagogical practices that hinder the development of interest and insight among students."

"The books on Social Studies systematically misrepresent events that have happened over the past several decades of Pakistan’s history, including those which are within living memory of many people. This history is narrated with distortions and omissions. The causes, effects, and responsibility for key events are presented so as to leave a false understanding of our national experience. A large part of the history of this region is also simply omitted, making it difficult to properly interpret events, and narrowing the perspective that should be open to students. Worse, the material is presented in a way that encourages the student to marginalise and be hostile towards other social groups and people in the region."

"There is an undercurrent of exclusivist and divisive tendencies at work in the subject matter recommended for studies in the curriculum documents as well as in textbooks. Pakistani nationalism is repeatedly defined in a manner that is bound to exclude non- Muslim Pakistanis from either being Pakistani nationals or from even being good human beings. Much of this material would run counter to any efforts at national integration."

"In September 1979, on Defence of Pakistan Day, there was a long article in the Pakistan Times on Bin Qasim as a strategist. The assessment was military, neutral, fair to the soldiers of both sides. It drew a rebuke from the chairman of the National Commission on Historical and Cultural Research. “Employment of appropriate phraseology is necessary when one is projecting the image of a hero. Expressions such as ‘invader’ and ‘defenders,’ and ‘the Indian army’ fighting bravely but not being quick enough to ‘fall upon the withdrawing enemy’ loom large in the article. It is further marred by some imbalanced statements such as follows: ‘Had Raja Dahar defended the Indus heroically and stopped Qasim from crossing it, the history of this sub-continent might have been quite different.’ One fails to understand whether the writer is applauding the victory of the hero or lamenting the defeat of his rival?”"

"Bangladesh is a majority Muslim country, with a significant, if shrinking Hindu minority—about 25-30% at the time of Partition in 1947, and less than 9% in 2003. The textbooks in Bangladesh are not based on an anti-Indian bias as are state sponsored textbooks in Pakistan. The social studies curriculum in Pakistan is premised on creating a national identity that is distinct from India, whereas Bangladeshi textbooks reflect a more pan-South Asian perspective, though Bengal-centric."

"For the past few decades in Pakistan, most educational reforms and curriculum policies have been politically and religiously driven, pedagogy being secondary. Denial and erasure are the primary tools of historiography as it is officially practiced in Pakistan. There is little room in the official historical narrative for questions or alternative points of view."

"In contrast, in Pakistan, during the years of General Zia-ul Haq's dictatorship, 1977-1988, textbooks were completely altered to promote fundamentalist Islamic perspectives glorifying worldwide jihad. There was no scope for the textbook boards in the provinces of (West) Pakistan to impact the narrative as it emanated exclusively from Islamabad. (5)"

"Pakistani textbooks have a particular problem when defining geographical space. The terms "South Asia" and "Subcontinent" have partially helped to solve this problem of the geo-historical identity of the area formally known as British India. However, it is quite difficult for Pakistani textbook writers to ignore the land now known as India when they discuss Islamic heroes and Muslim monuments in the Subcontinent. This reticence to recognize anything of importance in India, which is almost always referred to as "Bharat" in both English and Urdu versions of the textbooks, creates a difficult dilemma for historians writing about the Mughal Dynasties."

"It appears that Pakistani public school textbooks were not written to serve the pedagogical imperatives of intellectual development and the inculcation of critical thinking. Rather, they were written to perpetually justify a divisive ideology of rupture which had to be continually reiterated in the construction of national memory."

"History of Pakistan: Past and Present, a typical textbook taught in Pakistan’s schools, begins the story of Pakistan with the “Advent of Islam”, giving exactly nine pages to “Pre-Islamic Civilization”, negatively presented as Jahiliya, an important Islamic concept and a name for all pre-Islamic period."

"(The Pakistani historian) flees from Indian-ness, and would extra-territorialize even Mohenjodaro (linking the Indus-valley civilisation with Sumer and Elam) as well as the Taj (yet though left in India, the monuments and buildings of Agra and Delhi are entirely outside the Indian tradition and are an essential heritage and part of Pakistani culture, and omits from consideration altogether quite major matters less easily disposed of such as Asoka's reign, and the whole of East Pakistan)."

"The University Grants Commission (UGC) issued a directive in 1983 that textbook writers were To demonstrate that the basis of Pakistan is not to be founded in racial, linguistic, or geographical factors, but, rather, in the shared experience of a common religion. To get students to know and appreciate the Ideology of Pakistan, and to popularize it with slogans. To guide students towards the ultimate goal of Pakistan— the creation of a completely Islamized State."

"Disparity of treatment between Hinduism and other Faiths in these textbooks is the key issue here."

"There is an incessant and even anachronistic dwelling on the negatives of Hinduism, which seems to have been singled out as a religion for unfair treatment, when one reads the contrasting more balanced, even glowing narratives about Abrahamic faiths (Islam, Christianity and Judaism) in these and corresponding texts from other grades. Hindu sacred narratives are referred to as stories or myths, whereas Biblical and Koranic narratives are presented as historical facts. Most textbooks also describe the subtle Karma and rebirth related principles of Indic faiths in a minimal and essentially caricaturist manner (“according to this theory, if you do bad deeds, you will be reborn as an insect”)."

"A Muslim or a Christian person is termed a religious fundamentalist if he or she participates in initiatives that advocate or incorporate subversive physical violence or verbal threats. Hindus have it much easier, as demonstrated by the California textbook controversy. All that is required for a Hindu to earn the label “Hindutvawadi “ … is to raise her hand in defense of what she knows and say “Yes, but…”"

"The structure of American pluralism and the nature of the Hindu traditions give rise to two options. These options present themselves as routes that can be traveled by the NRI community in the coming years. On the one hand, the pagan traditions of India could renounce their true nature and transform themselves into variants of biblical religion. Then they will soon fit in as well in the American model of pluralism as the Jews and Muslims. On the other hand, these pagan traditions can remain true to their nature and explicitly represent themselves as completely different from the religions of the book. Then they will turn into a major challenge to American pluralism: the very structure of this model will require rethinking in order to accommodate the Hindu traditions. Currently, the NRI community is succumbing to the first option. It has accepted the American model of pluralism as the structure to which it should adapt itself. This could be seen very clearly in the California textbook controversy. A limited number of foundations have been appointed (or have appointed themselves) as the representatives of the Hindu traditions in the U.S.: the Hindu American Foundation and the Vedic Foundation are most prominent. These foundations play according to the rules of the notions of church and religion that are intrinsic to American pluralism. They challenge the unfair portrayal of the Hindu traditions in the American educational system. But they do so in a manner which advances the transformation of these traditions into inferior variants of Christianity. They intend to present the true doctrines of Hinduism and do so by making it look respectable to American Protestants. That is, the many devatas are transformed into different ways of worshiping the one true God. Hinduism becomes a proper monotheistic faith. A variety of pagan Indian traditions are excluded because they are embarrassing to the sanitized biblical model of American pluralism. These Hindu foundations have become the representatives of the ‘Hindu church’ in America: they will decide the true nature of the Hindu traditions for the American public. The way they are going, however, they will end up with a secularized variant of the old biblical understanding of the Hindu traditions as false religion."

"Now is the time for the NRI community to choose its leadership carefully. It needs people who are aware of the depth of the problems. Otherwise, it will succumb to the demands of American pluralism. It will waste its energy on irrelevant concerns borrowed from Christianity: ‘Who speaks for Hinduism?’; ‘Who has the authority to represent our religion?’; ‘Should only insiders be allowed to do so?’; ‘What are the true teachings of Hinduism?’ Events like the California textbook controversy indicate that the NRI community is at a crucial juncture: either it will become a driving force behind the rejuvenation of the Indian culture and her traditions; or it will repeat the mistakes of three-hundred years of colonialism. In the last century, we have seen the endpoints of the latter route: a growing fanaticism in Indian society; intellectually superficial movements; the threat of bankruptcy of an entire culture. The other route promises to allow the NRI community to play its role: become a rich and vibrant challenge to American pluralism. Not so that pluralism and tolerance might disappear from the American society but so that a pluralism, worthy of its name and liberated from the biblical straitjacket, might come into existence. Perhaps it is time we explore this route…"

"But on Truschke’s own side, the dividing line between bullies and academics is not so neat. Why stoop to street bullying if you have tenure? It is far more effective, then, to resort to academic bullying. Thus, in their intervention in the California Textbook Affair, where Hindu parents had sought to edit blatantly anti-Hindu passages, the explicitly partisan intervening professors even managed to get themselves recognized as arbiters in the matter. This would have been unthinkable if those bullies had not been established academics. (And this I can say eventhough my criticism of the Hindu parents’ positions exists in cold print.) Her focus on street bullies has the effect of misdirecting the reader’s attention, away from the more consequential phenomenon of academic bullying."

"During the cold part of 2005-2006, the Hindu community in the USA livd in expectation of a school history textbook reform in which Hinduism would get a fairer deal and no longer be reduced to hateful stereotypes. After all, Christian, Jewish and Muslim lobbies were having a decisive say in the portrayal of their own belief systesm, with the irrational or inhumane points whitewashed or kept out of view. ... A CAPEEM spokesman reported that a lot of evidence of the close cooperation between the court-appointed "experts" and anti-Hindu groups including Evangelical Churches and terrorist groups came to light. But that was not enough for CAPEEM to score a courtroom victory regarding the political issue at stake here, viz. the blatant inequality between the Abrahamic religions and Hinduism, which alone gets to suffer a schoolbook description imposed by its declared enemies."

"The general opinion among educated people, widely expressed, was to condemn all attempts at book-banning. To be sure, the intellectuals’ indignation was selective. There have indeed been cases where they have failed to come out in defence of besieged authors. No such storms of protest are raised when Muslims or Christians have books banned, or even when they assault the writers. Thus, several such assaults happened on the author and publisher of the Danish Mohammed cartoons, yet at its annual conference, the prestigious and agenda-setting American Academy of Religion hosted a panel where every single participant, including the speakers from the audience, supported the Muslim objections to the cartoons... The point is that the intellectual’s selective indignation shows very well where real authority lies. Threats of violence are, of course, highly respected."

"I was deeply distressed that the cartoons were seen by many Muslims as an attempt by Denmark to mark and insult or behave disrespectfully towards Islam or Mohammed."

"The American people rose up in a historic election in November of 2024 and they told Washington DC they have had enough of the Democrat embrace and love affair of the cartels in Mexico. But Democrats today are fighting to keep the Gulf of America named the Gulf of Mexico because the cartels are their business partners."

"But–this is fucking nuts, right? Guy's been in office less than a month, and he's already renaming bodies of water and then declaring a holiday? It's crazy, right?""

"This is all exhausting, and exposes the Gulf of America. Not the body of water. The real Gulf of America is the gap between the high aspirations that embody the founding of this country, and the thuggish gangsterism that this crew thinks makes us great again."