For me, as a researcher, the level of condemnation and the condescension among historians in India was impressive and easy to document. Uncomfortably… - Yvette Rosser

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For me, as a researcher, the level of condemnation and the condescension among historians in India was impressive and easy to document. Uncomfortably, even engaging the Indo-centric perspective as something worth discussing caused a few historians at JNU and NCERT to ask me if I was a fascist sympathizer. Numerous times, I was told that in their estimation the blossoming Indic orientation in the interpretation of history was invalid, dangerous. I was warned that anyone who considered issues broached by the BJP, such as the unequal implementation of secularism in the Indian context or possible changes in the narration of history, was obviously politically tainted, ideologically contaminated, or just plain misguided.

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About Yvette Rosser

Dr. Yvette Rosser (31 January 1952 - 20 November 2021), also known as RamRani, was an American writer and scholar. Her books have been cited as a notable contribution to the literature about education in South Asia by Yoginder Sikand and others. Among her positions was Vice President of the G. M. Syed Memorial Committee . Her writings were also published in Invading the Sacred, Religious Fundamentalism in the Contemporary World: Critical Social and Political Issues, The Hindu and other publications. Novelist Raja Rao wrote: Of all the students I have taught at The University of Texas at Austin, which were thousands, Yvette Rosser understood India the best.

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Alternative Names: Yvette Claire Rosser Ram Rani

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The new editions have re-embraced the view of Bangladeshi nationalism that was promoted by the military regimes. However, the BNP's efforts to vindicate the perpetrators of genocide have gone considerably further than even the former textbooks of Zia and Ershad's periods where the word "razakar" still appeared in reference to the murderers of the intellectuals on December 14, 1970. In 1996 era textbooks, the Awami League added "al-badars" and "al-shams" to the list of collaborators, specifically naming the "Jamaat-i-Islami" as culpable in the murder of the intellectuals. The new 2001 genre textbook leaves all of these names out of the narrative and simply blames the deaths of the intellectuals on themselves and on the Pakistani Army. After October 2001, eliminating references to razakars and certainly the Jamaat-i-Islami was an imperative since former razakars and members of the Jamaat are now part of the ruling coalition. ... An important impact of the omissions and extractions is that the genocidal excesses of the infamous collaborators, the razakars are ignored and thereby excused. This deflection of guilt by the Jamaat-i-Islami was one of the first orders of business for the BNP/Islamists political dispensation that came to power in October 2001.

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Several years ago, I was told by a leading professor of "South Asian Studies" at a major University that I "should never report anything positive about the BJP" (Sangh Parivar combine) or I "would never find a job in American academia". A colleague of mine submitted a manuscript for publication to Oxford University Press, Delhi and the then editor of OUP informed her that it was a good manuscript but since it had passages that reflected positively on the Sangh Parivar they could not publish it. He said if she would remove the passages that were not critical of the Hindu Mahasabha and the BJP then OUP would consider publishing her book – otherwise it was against their policy. Amazing isn't it?

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