Accepted changes Īccording to the State Board of California, some accepted changes were: The challenge created a procedural and legal conflict. However, 58 of the proposed edits by Hindu groups were challenged by various groups, including Professor Michael Witzel of Harvard University. Shiva Bajpai, Professor Emeritus of History, California State University Northridge.
Some 170 edits proposed by two Hindu foundations were initially accepted, supported by the reviewer, appointed by the California's Board of Education, Dr. After intensive scholarly discussions, over 500 changes proposed by Jewish and Christian groups and around 100 changes proposed by Muslims were accepted by the California Department of Education (CDE) and the State Board of Education (SBE) these scholarly discussions extended to January 6, 2006. Upon release of a draft of the textbook, Christian, Jewish, Islamic and the two Hindu groups submitted their edits in autumn 2005.
They also say: "No religious belief or practice may be held up to ridicule and no religious group may be portrayed as inferior.", and "Any explanation or description of a religious belief or practice should be presented in a manner that does not encourage or discourage belief or indoctrinate the student in any particular religious belief." Ĭhristian, Jewish and Muslim groups have done this for years, but the 2005 review was the first time Hindu groups participated. They say: "The standards will be achieved by depicting, when appropriate, the diversity of religious beliefs held in the United States and California, as well as in other societies, without displaying bias toward or prejudice against any of those beliefs or religious beliefs in general." The Californian Standards for Evaluating Instructional Materials for Social Content contain the guiding principles for the textbooks. 3 The State Board of Education decisionīackground California textbooks' guiding principles.2 Opposition to the edits of the two Hindu foundations.1.1 California textbooks' guiding principles.Ī follow-up debate on California textbook took place from 2016 to 2017, dealing with some of the same topics. In early 2006, the Hindu American Foundation sued the State Board over matters of process. According to the CDE, these scholars came to either an agreement or a compromise on the majority of the edits and corrections to the textbooks in 2006, with some proposed changes accepted and others rejected. Witzel, Stanley Wolpert and a third Indologist then revisited the proposed changes on behalf of the State Board of Education and suggested reverting some of the approved changes. Michael Witzel, Professor of Sanskrit at Harvard University organized Indologists against the objections of Hindu groups, sending a letter with some fifty signatories to the CDE to protest changes of a "religious-political nature". Bajpai, who was selected by the Vedic Foundation for the task, approved nearly all the changes while presented by the VF as an independent scholar, it later came out that he was a member of a closely affiliated organization. The California Department of Education (CDE) initially sought to resolve the controversy by appointing Shiva Bajpai, Professor Emeritus at California State University Northridge, as a one-man committee to review revisions proposed by the groups. The Texas-based Vedic Foundation (VF) and the American Hindu Education Foundation (HEF), complained to California's Curriculum Commission, arguing that the coverage in sixth grade history textbooks of Indian history and Hinduism was biased against Hinduism points of contention included a textbook's portrayal of the caste system, the Indo-Aryan migration theory, and the status of women in Indian society. A controversy in the US state of California concerning the portrayal of Hinduism in history textbooks began in 2005.