I had previously blogged about how Indian community leaders in the Virginia suburbs had petitioned to update the textbooks that high school students use. These textbooks are often riddled with gross inaccuracies about India and Hinduism. Parents and community leaders in California have been pursuing a similar goal there, but the results have been mixed and now a significant group has voiced opposition to some changes. This begs a closer look at possible hidden agendas. New American Media reports:

Don’t stand so, Don’t stand so close to me…

Some Hindu and Sikh activists in the U.S. who have been trying in recent months to persuade the California Board of Education to adopt curriculum revisions in textbooks for elementary and middle school students say they are unhappy over the direction their efforts seem to have taken while on the home stretch.

A clutch of academics and historians, who have just recently joined the debate, seems to have neutralized the gains the activists believe they had made. The academics weighed in with their views Nov. 8, which collectively dismiss many of the curriculum changes suggested over the past year by individual Hindus, as well as such organizations as the Vedic Foundation and the Hindu Education Society.

For example, one of the statements Hindu activists want deleted from a social science book is that Aryans were a “part of a larger group of people historians refer to as the Indo-Europeans.”

The activists assert Aryans were not a race, but a term for persons of noble intellect. The academics have urged that this statement not be removed.

In that same book, Hindu activists want the statement, “Men had many more rights than women,” replaced with, “Men had different duties (dharma) as well as rights than women. Many women were among the sages to whom the Vedas were revealed.”

The response from the academics? “Do not change original text.”

It seems that many of the academics and historians that have voiced opposition to certain changes are suspicious of the motives of some of the Hindu activists. This group of academics includes Romila Thapar.

Writing on behalf of the academics, Michael Witzel, a Sanskrit professor at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., asserted that the groups proposing the changes have a hidden agenda.

“The proposed revisions are not of a scholarly but of a religious-political nature, and are primarily promoted by Hindutva supporters and non-specialist academics writing about issues far outside their area of expertise,” Witzel wrote to CBE president Ruth Green in the letter.

Among the 45 or so signatories to his letter are Stanley Wolpert, professor of history at UCLA, and Romila Thapar, India’s well-known historian.

If the historians are correct in their recommendations, and I have no reason to suspect that they are not, then this might be a great disservice to others around the country seeking legitimate changes for inaccuracies such as the ones pointed out in Virginia. If word spreads that there is an effort to actually place Hindutva propaganda in U.S. school textbooks, then every legitimate complaint will lose credibility. The school board was supposed to vote on changes yesterday, but as of now I cannot find the results (I will update the post when I do).

Supporters are hoping to make a last ditch effort to have their voices heard. They say it is crucial that the CBE accepts their suggestions if students are to get a proper perspective of Indian culture and history.

“The social science and history textbooks do not give as generous a portrayal of Indian culture as they do of Islamic, Jewish and Christian cultures,” asserted Malhotra, founder of Infinity Foundation, an organization that is trying to give a “fair” portrayal of India in the U.S. “The Board of Education needs to have a standard that should be applied to all religions.”

“There’s a Euro-centric slant to what’s being taught in California classrooms,” noted San Francisco Bay Area resident Mona Vijaykar to India-West. “I’m upset that India’s contribution to modern civilization is not highlighted, and presented like European civilization is.”

Vijaykar runs the “India in Classrooms” program she launched two years ago in the San Francisco Bay Area to set right misconceptions teachers and students have about Indian history and culture.

I visited the India in Classrooms link above (which is where I got the image of the apple with a bindi). They had several Powerpoint presentations that serve as teacher resource guides. I didn’t go through them thoroughly, but they seem harmless. Perhaps more diligent SM readers can uncover any hidden agenda. Most of these groups probably have noble motives. It only takes a couple bad apples to ruin needed change.