Board Committee Meeting On Textbook Depiction of Hindus Is Contentious

The battle between competing groups in the Hindu community over how their religion should be portrayed in school textbooks in California culminated in an emotional 4-hour hearing in Sacramento yesterday, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. (See prior posting.) The hearing ended with a few members of the overflow audience shouting at a subcommittee of the state Board of Education after it rejected changes they wanted in six new middle-school social studies textbooks . The Vedic Foundation and Hindu Education Foundation are seeking to remove or soften references to the untouchable caste and the subordinate status of women in India. Knight Ridder News in reporting on the meeting says that the special commission did accept a few proposed changes, like changing language that referred to a "caste system" to "class system. The committee will report its conclusions to the full Board on March 8.