From Lalit K Jha

Washington, May 17 (PTI) A group of 41 prominent scholars, including several Indian-Americans from across the US have written to the California Department of Education opposing proposals to change "India" to "South Asia" in the state text books.

Signed by distinguished academics such as Barbara McGraw of Saint Marys College of California, Diana Eck of Harvard University and Gerald James Larson of Indiana University, the letter called for a "representation of India and Hinduism that is consistent with the manner in which other cultures and religions are portrayed, and one which avoids Eurocentric biases".

In the letter dated May 5, this group of academicians under the name Social Science and Religion Faculty Group (SSRFG) termed the recommendations to use "South Asia" in place of ancient India "anachronistic" and "not historical".

A copy of the letter accompanied a statement.

The group argued that the term "South Asia" is a post World War II geopolitical designation to account for the breakup of British India.

The academics pointed out that textbook narrative "refers to all other ancient geographical areas by their ancestral terms China, Japan, Egypt, Greece, etc". Only "India" is recommended for a change".

Earlier this year, the California Department of Educations (CDE) Instructional Quality Commission (IQC) had proposed to accept several changes to the textbook framework suggested by another group of academics named South Asia Faculty Group (SAFG), the statement said.

The suggestions included replacing references to India before 1947 with "South Asia" and "Hinduism" with "ancient Indian religions.

The group was led by academics Kamala Visweswaran of University of California, San Diego, and Robert Goldman of University of California, Berkeley, it added.

In its seven-page letter, SSRFG questioned these edits and said that SAFGs views did not constitute scholarly consensus as claimed by the latter.

The academics of SSRFG while welcoming "robust academic debate about the politics of India" in the academia cautioned that the debate is not "appropriately addressed in a K-12 textbook Framework narrative in California".

Calling into question the suggestion to replace the word "Hinduism" with "ancient Indian religions" the letter said "if anyone were to argue that Hinduism did not exist then as what we today refer to as "Hinduism", that would be an unfounded erasure of history on the grounds of semantics," said a statement issued on behalf of SSRFG.

Meanwhile, Harvard scholar Nathan Glazer has also called for using the term "India" for ancient Indian civilisation. MORE PTI LKJ UZM