The US-based Hindu Education Foundation has claimed that protests by "Hindu" students and their parents have led the California Department of Education's Instructional Quality Commission to reject suggestions by a group of professors to replace the word "India" with "South Asia" in California textbooks.
It said that professors of what is known as the "South Asia Faculty Group", comprising Sheldon Pollock, Robert P Goldman, Lawrence Cohen and Kamala Visweswaran among others, had written to the department that most references to "India" before 1947 be replaced with "South Asia".
A petition to protest the suggestion was signed by 18,000 people, and several students testifying at a public hearing on the issue in Sacramento on March 24 said they were "dismayed and anguished at negative portrayal of India and Hindus in textbooks". The commission thereupon rejected the suggestion for removal of "India" but agreed to add "South Asia" in parentheses after most mentions of ancient India.
