Indian-Americans fumed on the negative image of Hinduism and India proposed by the school textbooks of California.

"It is disappointing to see that even after a decade of building awareness by the Hindu-American community, textbooks especially by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH), McGraw-Hill, Discovery and National Geographic continue to use orientalist narratives to portray Indian civilization," said Shantharam Nekkar, the director of Hindu Education Foundation of USA (HEF).

Nekkar’s remarks came into light on Thursday, at a public hearing conducted by the California Department of Education (CDE) at Sacramento.

The Indian-American Community has been vigorously fighting with the state, from the past several years, to remove the myths and also inaccuracies about Hinduism in the school textbooks. But the state of California mandatorily wants the textbooks to be based under the framework of Department of Education.

As surrounded by many controversies, including the attempts made by academics and groups to replace ’India’ with ‘South Asia’, the state has revised the framework of textbooks in the last year.

Over the past two years, the department has made number of changes and updates based on the inputs by scholars, students and the community members, mentioning the concepts of Hinduism like Yoga and Dharma, Sages Vyasa and Valmiki and also Indian achievements in science and technology.

But, Hindu groups in U.S. pinpointed that many of these changes have not been reflected in the textbooks.

“Some publishers continue to single out and denigrate Hinduism while ignoring new additions to the framework that can help present Indian civilisation on par with other civilisations and cultures," said Sharat Joshi, a parent from San Jose.

"Negative portrayal of Hinduism has led to several instances of bullying of Hindu children in classrooms," Joshi added.

The Department of Education will send the recommendations made by it to the State Board of Education (SBE) later in this year for its approval.

The textbooks recommended by the State Board of Education (SBE) are expected to be adopted by the schools starting early next year.

Hinduism is a religion with great liberality. This is the reason why Hindus are able to accept others religion people as a part of their family. But, people are not able to understand the core meaning of Hinduism and distort the religion with all the myths and inaccuracies. The meaning of every religion has to be taught to people from childhood.

If the school textbooks portray the wrong image of a particular religion, then it may lead to hatred in their hearts. We all have to take an action against these incidents and spread peace and harmony among the people, which is the ultimate motto of Hinduism.

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Mrudula Duddempudi.