Wikipedia and India -a story that needs to be shared widely

Kids use Wikipedia as a source for projects. What are they learning about India, especially about Hindus?

Here’s what parents & children need to know about Wikipedia
1/5 🧵

Source: Opindia (Examples & link in replies)

https://twitter.com/lsanger/status/1937958369933009227

Who actually writes the Wikipedia entries?

Is it free, fair and open to all as they claim?

Is it truly crowdsourced?

How is it integrated with Big Tech?

Who funds Wikipedia?

How is search indexed, thereby controlling how frequently it appears as a go-to source?

Today it is Megha Vemuri of MIT

A month ago it was Ranjani Srinivasan

Last year it was Prahalad Iyengar

Before that it was Riddhi Patel

But why?

Let’s understand the reasons Indian (origin) Hindu youth are turning to activism,often unknowingly throwing away their future🧵
1/ Humans need to belong

Youth needs a sense of purpose, to feel useful

A campus movement is perceived as a way to make friends

It offers camaraderie, companionship, the vision of a grand cause, escape from loneliness

Fulfils the need to belong & contribute to the community.

2/

Long before the “parenting fail” that people are now fond of repeating, Hindu samaj had the Great In-Law Fail

All effects that are now blamed on feminism especially, are downstream of that single fail

The in-law fail has harmed innocent young Hindu men & women

Let’s see how.
+ When a young woman in the previous two generations married, the attitude on the part of most in-laws was glee.

From today you are ours.

Forget your parents

A girl never forgets disrespect towards her parents.

This girl becomes a mother while carrying bitterness & resentment
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Yet another racist way that India is introduced to “teens and tweens”. Our children are also getting info from such books.

That’s why it’s important to know & talk to kids about, colonialism, propaganda, religion, white man’s burden etc.

Let’s look closely at the content.

1/ Right off the bat, the welcome page says how Hindu traditions have become controversial in recent times.

“The British Empire played a key role in elimination of inhumane traditions”

“While India is independent, its people debate whether its traditions are appropriate “

2/

As parents, we worry about the holistic education of our children.

@vidyakshetra shows us the way forward for modern education rooted in IKS. Please support this model in whatever capacity possible

Privileged to visit the school on Kaartika Shukla Dvadasi, Tulasi puja. Thread. Starting with Shishu Vaatika, for the littlest ones up to 6 years.

You can feel the loving care given to each child by the mother figure who teaches & cares for them.

Surprised by the stove? Well, these little ones help to cut vegetables and cook for the school once a week!

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Hindu parents,think about the underlying messages in #Diwali ads

How can we help our young ones process them? There’s no quick band aid.

Are we aware that everything leaves an impression on the subconscious, & leaving kids to market forces alone isn’t an option?

Some examples+ 1.

“This Diwali, cancel out the noise or bring out your unheard side”

What your child hears: “firecrackers are a nuisance. I can buy earbuds to tune out the noise! Wow this is a neat solution!”

What parents must see: consumption is an alternative to engaging with festivals

++

This image has generated debate. Which is a good thing

If we are stuck on the material plane of what it ostensibly represents, we’ve missed the point

Humans interpret everything that they take in through the senses

Images & words are not processed by the thinking brain alone
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https://twitter.com/hinduparenting/status/1561154606725414912

Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of psychology & neuroscience, or even plain common sense & a degree of sensitivity knows that the discussion about the image itself is irrelevant.

What matters is what the average person, especially the average child, perceives subliminally
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There is deep confusion in the Hindu mind. Parents retweet their kid’s garba dance at NBA as a sign of Indian success, while studiously ignoring Hindu genocide,unconcerned about institutionalised Hindu-hate in Univs

The average Hindu has been successfully ‘other’-ed for them
1/n How does one argue with a parent who insists that she personally hasn’t encountered racism at Rutgers, so it doesn’t exist? That whites appreciate Diwali and do yoga, therefore Indians are greatly respected? That we -(who see/read more into things)- are simply rabble-rousers?
2/n

Colonialism is continuing to hurt Hindu families.

Men were first to be English educated. Indigenous knowledge was devalued and left to the women.

It has created a generational divide too as many bitter women have pushed their daughters to westernise to get worldly respect.

1/ It started with men..our patriarchs started to quote Churchill, Dickens n were held in awe by society. Then they turned ‘rational’, ‘atheist’, ‘anti-superstition’..

But their children were largely ok because the mother still grounded them in Hinduism, though apologetically.
2/

This is not going to be easy. Hindu students don't have their own centre because barely 5% would want to be associated with anything that even uses the word Hindu. It's been successfully demonized.

Most parents have raised kids without uttering the H word for 18 long years. (1)

https://twitter.com/singhsahana/status/1367288662992580609

Right now, most are probably unaware or disinterested in what happened to Rashmi. If parents know, they are probably actively warning kids to stay away from Hindutva and painting it as Rashmi and her parents' fault for 'coming out' as Hindus and making life hard for everybody (2)

Absurd n frightening implications for the future.

Tomorrow if a child shares a photo of Satyanarayana puja at home or playing violin in a concert with vubhuti on his forehead, can anyone anywhere accuse/target him/her for just being Hindu?

vamseejuluri.medium.com/today-in-hindu…
@VamseeJuluri It's important to realise that nothing stops this from happening in an Indian University soon. Will we stay quiet and normalise our own destruction?

Unless we speak and collectively call out the bigotry that has no place in a university, this is only the beginning of the end.

Slow deracination by degrees:

Great-grandfather, a nityagnihotri, wants son to be respected in society,sends him to England for education.Traditional grandfather switches kids to English medium for a good future,takes grandkids to movie 'Sound of Music'..but not 'Maya Bazaar'
1/ Next gen, deeply appreciative of Indian classical arts, but encourages children to only sing convent carols. No upanayanam for son, because 'anyway they won't follow all this'. Doesn't tell children about gomata coz it never occurred to them that child may grow up to try beef.
2/