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

Colonial Discourse and the Suffering of Indian American Children is now published after academic peer-review and available through open access.

In this book, we analyze the psycho-social consequences that Indian American children face after they are exposed to the school textbook discourse on Hinduism and ancient India. We show that there is an intimate connection―an almost exact correspondence―between James Mill’s ( a prominent politician in Britain and head of the British East India Company) colonial-racist discourse and the current school-textbook discourse. Consequently, this archaic and racist discourse, camouflaged under the cover of political correctness, produces in the Indian American children the same psychological impact as racism is known to produce: shame, inferiority, embarrassment, identity confusion, assimilation, and a phenomenon similar to racelessness where the children dissociate from the tradition and culture of their ancestors

This book is an outcome of 4 years of rigorous research as a part of our ongoing commitment at Hindupedia to challenge the representation of Hindu Dharma within Academia.

Gurudaksiṇā

From Hindupedia, the Hindu Encyclopedia

By Swami Harshananda

Gurudaksiṇā literally means ‘honorarium paid to the guru’.

Ancient and medieval era considered education as too sacred an act to demand or accept any fee. However, if a disciple wanted to give something to his guru, at the time of his departure from the gurukula, as a mark of his gratitude, the guru could accept it. This could take two forms:

  1. Accepting whatever the disciple gave
  2. Asking for something which one really wanted

Benefaction of money, cows or land was very common. Sometimes uncommon or even odd things were asked for as gurudakṣiṇā. Droṇācārya wanted the Pāṇḍavas to capture the king Drupada and bring to him in gurudakṣiṇā. Udaṅka, a sage, had to take a lot of trouble to bring the ear-rings of queen Madavatī to Ahalyā, the wife of his guru, Gautama. However, the idea behind this concept is that the debt to one’s guru can never be repaid.


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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