Colonial Discourse and the Suffering of Indian American Children Book Cover.webp

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.

Bāul

From Hindupedia, the Hindu Encyclopedia

By Jit Majumdar


  1. (from “vātula”) mad; intoxicated; devoid of senses
  2. (from “vyākula”) wild; ecstatic; passionate
  3. a lokāyata sect of humanistic and iconoclastic mystic minstrels and their musical tradition, that are native to Bengal (West Bengal in India and Bangladesh), whose mystic tradition derives from Tantra, Sahajiyā Vaişņavism, Sahajiyā or Tāntrika Buddhism and Sufi Islam. The key element of their tradition is realizing the body principle (deha-tattva) and the expression of the body (deha-sādhanā) and the mind (mano-sādhanā), faith and reliance on the earthly life and in humanity instead of in otherworldliness or hypothetical philosophies and concepts, the realization of the human body as the centre of all truths and the expression of the universe, and the combined devotional practices by a man and a woman together.