Hindu American groups on Saturday said they have won a \u201csignificant victory\u201d in California state, as education officials acceded to their over decade-long efforts for an \u201caccurate, equitable, and culturally competent portrayal\u201d of Hinduism and India in school textbooks. At its final hearing late this week, the California Education Department\u2019s State Board of Education (SBE) \u201cvoted unanimously\u201d to approve positive edits submitted by Hindu American community groups to improve the portrayal of Hinduism and India in as many as 10 textbooks.<\/p>\n
The board also \u201cvoted to reject\u201d two textbook programmes from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (Grades K-6 and Grades 6-8) for adversely reflecting on Hinduism and other diverse communities, according to a media release. \u201cThis is truly historic. After many years of civic engagement, Hindu-Americans have started to make themselves heard,\u201d said Shantharam Nekkar of Hindu Education Foundation USA, an organization dedicated to enriching the understanding of Indian civilization and Hinduism in America.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will continue to engage constructively and fight biases and prejudices against Hinduism and India,\u201d he said. Several top American lawmakers including Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard and Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi, along with elected state officials, scores of academicians and experts backed by a large number of community organisations and parents of Indian American students supported the efforts led by Hindu Education Foundation (HEF).<\/p>\n
The decision taken by California\u2019s State Board of Education can be implemented only in the state of California, but it sets the trend for the rest of the US as a majority of other states either follow the guidelines and textbooks approved by them or are deeply influenced by their textbooks and syllabus. The Decision of State Board of Education came after hearing testimonies and receiving letters from thousands of Hindu American parents, children, educators and community members from across California, including immigrant Hindus from Fiji, the Caribbean and India, as well as letters from a broad coalition of more than 75 interfaith and community groups, 17 state and federal elected officials, and 38 leading academics, HEF said in a statement.<\/p>\n
The Board, HEF said, \u201crebuffed last-minute attempts to disrupt\u201d the process of South Asian Histories for All or SAHFA, which it alleged \u201cmade vitriolic, bigoted, and Hinduphobic\u201d statements about Hinduism in public testimony and on social media. \u201cDespite the false claims of SAHFA, our broad interfaith coalition that represents individuals from all communities including Dalits, never tried to erase any community, caste, or religion\u2019s history, and believe that all groups should be represented fairly in textbooks,\u201d said Samir Kalra, senior director at the Hindu American Foundation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hindu American groups on Saturday said they have won a \u201csignificant victory\u201d in California state, as education officials acceded to their over decade-long efforts for an \u201caccurate, equitable, and culturally competent portrayal\u201d of Hinduism and India in school textbooks. At its final hearing late this week, the California Education Department\u2019s State Board of Education (SBE) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10007,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10006"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10006\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10008,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10006\/revisions\/10008"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}