Parents ask US schools to change books on Hinduism

Several NRI parents have urged schools in a suburb in the US Capital to change textbooks which stereotype Hinduism. Their lobbying has promp...

Several NRI parents have urged schools in a suburb in the US Capital to change textbooks which stereotype Hinduism. Their lobbying has prompted school officials to rethink on presentation of India and its culture in class, a report in The Washington Post said.

Sandhya Kumar, a businesswoman with three daughters in a Fairfax school, said after reading textbooks recommended for County schools, her children and American children would get a distorted and negative impression of India’s culture.

‘‘I thought the American children will think India is some Third World country with pagan beliefs and

backward thinking,’’ the report quoted her as saying.

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Sandhya and a dozen NRI parents launched a campaign to change the way India’s religious history is being taught in Fairfax, the nation’s 12th largest school system. Their lobbying has sparked efforts to develop a more thoughtful curriculum, the Post said.

Susan Douglas, a world history curriculum consultant, who has worked with Fairfax schools, said the changes mirror a broader shift in the way history and religion are taught.

Balaji Hebbar, a George Washington University religion professor, one of three scholars hired by Fairfax county to review the books, said he and his colleagues found few factual errors but the lessons boiled down a complex culture to ‘‘karma, cows and caste’’.

Based on the concerns of Fairfax educators, five publishers made modest changes in the texts, the Post reported.

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The concern, said the paper, began last spring when Rakesh Bahadur’s daughter told him the lessons in her history books were different from those she learned at home.