Hyderabad: In a big victory of Indian academics’ fight against efforts to erase the name of “India” from textbooks of the Californian Board of Education, it has been decided not to change the History Social Science Frameworks (Syllabus) .
The word “India” is retained. It had earlier been proposed to replace India with “South Asia”. Mr Vamsee Juluri from Hyderabad, a professor of Media Studies in University of San Francisco, who led the fight, said, “We saved our nation’s name. I feel very, very proud of how far this movement has come and how much many have done.”
The International Quality Commission voted on Friday to retain the name of “Ancient India”. Scholars for People, who ran an online campaign against the move to replace “India”, gathered the support of 25,000 people. “Hinduism” will also not be deleted and replaced with “religion of ancient India”. The IQC has also withdrawn the move to accept and edit by the South Asia Faculty Group deleting references to “Valmiki” and “Vyasa”.
Writer Hindol Sengupta (author of Being Hindu) posted on FB: “In California, Vamsee Juluri and a spirited set of Indian academics and students from all communities fought back a vicious bunch of blatantly biased academics to ensure that the word 'India' is not replaced by 'South Asia'. It remains the Indian civilization. This is really a massive victory against some of the most bitter, malicious political foes of India. This must be celebrated.” The Hindu American Foun-dation also supported the campaign “donteraseindia”.
South Asia Faculty Group was arguing that India gained Independence from Britain in 1947 and that there was no India before 1947. Mr Juluri argued against this and emerged victorious.
