California: There’s furious debate currently on over recommended changes to California textbooks that could wipe off certain historical references to India.
The plan is being proposed by a set of teachers who are suggesting that India before 1947 — the year of Independence — be described as ‘South Asia’ in the Social Studies Framework.
If approved, the changes could start showing up in textbooks for the sixth-to-tenth grade as early as 2017. The SF Examiner spoke to University of San Francisco’s media studies professor Vamsee Juluri about his campaign against the proposals.
“It’s a form of intellectual and mental genocide, nothing less than that,” Juluri said. “Within a generation people might forget who they really are… they will lose their identity. If this is indeed correct that ‘India’ is not an accurate term for ‘India’ before 1947,” Juluri wrote, “how is it possible that the word ‘India’ has been in usage in some form or another from the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans? Did Columbus go searching for ‘South Asia’?,” he was quoted as saying by the Examiner.
Juluri also fired off a letter to the California Board of Education on March 18 which is now part of an online campaign to get the changes shot down. The petition online has received almost 18,000 signatures in six days.
The changes to textbooks were first proposed by the South Asia Faculty Group during public comment, which was open between December 2015 and last month. It’s unclear who comprised that group.
Also, this is not the first time textbooks — and those in charge of education — in California have suggested changes in the way India’s history is taught. In 2005, the portrayal of Indian and Hindu history in textbooks sparked a lawsuit against the state - which was settled in 2009.
