Colonial Discourse and the Suffering of Indian American Children is now freely available.
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In this book, we analyze the psycho-social consequences faced by Indian American children after exposure to the school textbook discourse on Hinduism and ancient India. We demonstrate that there is an intimate connection—an almost exact correspondence—between James Mill’s colonial-racist discourse (Mill was the head of the British East India Company) and the current school textbook discourse. This racist discourse, camouflaged under the cover of political correctness, produces the same psychological impacts on Indian American children that racism typically causes: shame, inferiority, embarrassment, identity confusion, assimilation, and a phenomenon akin to racelessness, where children dissociate from the traditions and culture of their ancestors.


This book is the result of four years of rigorous research and academic peer-review, reflecting our ongoing commitment at Hindupedia to challenge the representation of Hindu Dharma within academia.

Ālaya-vijñāna

From Hindupedia, the Hindu Encyclopedia

By Swami Harshananda

Ālaya-vijñāna literally means ‘consciousness, the home of impression’.

Whether the external world is perceived through the real senses or unreal ones is a question to all. If it is perceived through real, then what is its nature and if perceived through unreal then what is the reality? These are the questions often raised and discussed by the philosophical systems.

The Vijñānavāda school of Buddhism (also called the Yogācāra school) denies reality to the external world and considers it as ideas or states of the internal vijñāna (consciousness or mind), which alone is real. This vijñāna is the ālaya or abode of all the impressions. Hence it is named as ‘ālaya-vijñāna.’

It is the potential mind that is similar to the ātman of other systems. However it is considered not as an unchanging substance, but as a stream of continuously changing states. Through proper culture it can gradually stop the arising of the undesirable mental states and develop into the ideal state of nirvāṇa (emancipation).


References[edit]

  • The Concise Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Swami Harshananda, Ram Krishna Math, Bangalore

Contributors to this article

Krishna Maheshwari, Deval Sancheti

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