California Passes Textbook Standards Including ‘Comfort Women,’ Sikhs

California’s State Board of Education approved a new History-Social Science Framework for California Public Schools Thursday, adding changes on a wide variety of topics, including “comfort women” in World War II, the Bataan Death March and the Battle of Manila, discrimination faced by Sikh Americans, and the roles of LGBTQ community in U.S. and California history, according to the California Department of Education.

“Hundreds of people representing broad perspectives contributed to the development of this important tool for teachers and classrooms,” Michael Kirst, State Board of Education president, said in a statement. “The new Framework will help guide classroom instruction at each grade level and will be used with other instructional resources to ensure all students have a broad understanding of history.”

“These changes are important for all California students and for the South Asian American community, in that through grassroots organization South Asian American organizers were able to beat back a well-funded Hindu fundamentalist lobby to ensure the facts were taught about the Dalit, Sikh, Ravidassia, Buddhist, and Muslim communities,” Thenmozhi Soundararajan, a Dalit-American activist, co-founder of Dalit History Month, and part of the South Asian Histories for All Coalition, told NBC News.

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