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.

Laura Brueck

From Hindupedia, the Hindu Encyclopedia

By Sachi Anjunkar


Laura Brueck is a Professor of South Asian and Comparative Literature at Northwestern University[1] as of April 2024. According to her university profile, her research areas are caste and race, Dalit literature and literary publics, Indian detective fiction and media, modern and contemporary Hindi literature, theory and practice of translation, postcolonial literature and literary theory, South Asian cinema and media studies, comparative literature, world literature.

As per her bio, she has published no books, papers, or research pertaining to Hindus, the rights of Hindus, the impact or relationship between Islam and Hinduism / Hindutva, India or the Indian Government in the context of BJP government.

In 2021, she endorsed the "Dismantling Global Hindutva" conference stating that

"the current government of India [in 2021] has instituted discriminatory policies including beef bans, restrictions on religious conversion and interfaith weddings, and the introduction of religious discrimination into India’s citizenship laws. The result has been a horrifying rise in religious and caste-based violence, including hate crimes, lynchings, and rapes directed against Muslims, non-conforming Dalits, Sikhs, Christians, adivasis and other dissident Hindus. Women of these communities are especially targeted. Meanwhile, the government has used every tool of harassment and intimidation to muzzle dissent. Dozens of student activists and human rights defenders are currently languishing in jail indefinitely without due process under repressive anti-terrorism laws."

Publications related to India[edit]

Books[edit]

  1. Brueck, Laura R. The Rhetorical Imagination of Hindi Dalit Literature. Columbia University Press, 2014.
  2. Navaria, Ajay. Unclaimed Terrain. Translated by Laura Brueck, Navayana Publishing, 2012.
  3. Gupta, Charu, et al., editors. Literary Sentiments in the Vernacular: Gender and Genre in Modern South Asia. Routledge, 2021.
  4. Brueck, Laura, Jacob Smith, and Neil Verma. Indian Sound Cultures, Indian Sound Citizenship. University of Michigan Press, 2020.

Selected Publications[edit]

  1. Brueck, Laura, and Francesca Orsini. "South Asian Crime Fiction." The Cambridge Companion to World Crime Fiction, edited by Jesper Guldall, Stewart King, and Alistair Rolls, Cambridge University Press, 2022, pp. 141-159.
  2. Brueck, Laura. "The Democratic Aspirations of Dalit Literature." State of Democracy in India: Essays on Life and Politics in Contemporary Times, edited by Manas Ray, Primus, 2022, pp. 503-518.
  3. Brueck, Laura. "Mother Tongues: The Disruptive Possibilities of Feminist Vernaculars." South Asia, vol. 43, no. 5, 2020, pp. 988-1008. Republished in Literary Sentiments in the Vernacular: Gender and Genre in Modern South Asia, edited by Charu Gupta et al., Routledge, 2022.
  4. Brueck, Laura. "Bhais Behaving Badly: Vernacular Masculinities in Hindi Detective Novels." South Asian Popular Culture, vol. 18, no. 1, 2020, pp. 29-46.
  5. Brueck, Laura. "Narrating Dalit Womanhood and the Aesthetics of Autobiography." Journal of Commonwealth Literature, vol. 51, no. 1, 2019, pp. 25-37.
  6. Brueck, Laura. "Bending Biography: The Creative Intrusions of ‘Real Lives’ in Dalit Fiction." Biography, vol. 40, no. 1, 2017, pp. 77-92.
  7. Brueck, Laura. "Dalit Literary Discourse and the Problem of Premchand." Dalit Studies: Unfreedom and Modernity in India, edited by Gopal Guru et al., Duke University Press, 2016, pp. 180-201.
  8. Brueck, Laura. "At the Intersection of Gender and Caste: Re-scripting Rape in Dalit Feminist Narratives." South Asian Feminisms, edited by Ania Loomba and Ritty Lukose, Duke University Press, 2012, pp. 224-243.
  9. Brueck, Laura. "Good Dalits and Bad Brahmins: Melodramatic Realism in Dalit Short Stories." South Asia Research, vol. 30, no. 2, 2010, pp. 125-144.
  10. Brueck, Laura. "Mainstreaming Marginalized Voices: the Dalit Lekhak Sangh and the Negotiations over Hindi Dalit Literature." Claiming Power from Below: Dalits and the Subaltern Question in India, edited by Anne Feldhaus and Manu Bhagavan, Oxford University Press, 2008.


References[edit]

  1. ↑ Laura Brueck University Profileaccessed on April 15, 2024

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Sachi Anjunkar

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