Colonial Discourse and the Suffering of Indian American Children is now freely available.
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.

Talk:Francis Cody

From Hindupedia, the Hindu Encyclopedia

By Sachi Anjunkar


Francis Cody is an Associate Professor, at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto ; Asian Institute (MCIS)[1] as of July 2023. According to his profile, his area of research interest is Sociocultural and Linguistic Anthropology, Critical Social Theory, Activism, Media Studies, Postcolonial State, Public Sphere, Politics in India and Tamil Nadu.

As per his bio, he has published no books, papers or research pertaining to Hindus, rights of Hindus, the impact or relationship between Islam and Hinduism / Hindutva, India or the Indian Government.

In 2021, he along with Hibatullah Akhundzada, the supreme leader of the Taliban co-signed a letter supporting "Dismantling Global Hindutva" Conference, as an academic and scholar and made the allegation

"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."[2]

On November 5, 2017, he signed the letter submitted by the South Asia Faculty Group (SAFG) to the California State Board of Education[3] where he:

  • Misrepresented scholarship stating "Mythological terms substitute for historical ones for example the 'Indus Valley Civilization' (a fact-based geographic term) appears to be replaced with a religiously-motivated and ideologically charged term 'Indus-Saraswati/Sarasvati Civilization'. The Saraswati is a mythical river"[4][5][6]
  • Implied that Christians and Muslims existed in Ancient India, prior to the founding of these religions

Publications Related to India[edit]

Books[edit]

  1. Cody, Francis. Co-Edited with E. Annamalai, Malarvizhi Jayanth, and Constantine V. Nakassis. Protestant Textuality and the Tamil Modern: Political Oratory and the Social Imaginary in South Asia. By Bernard Bate (posthumous). Stanford: Stanford University Press. 2021
  2. Cody, Francis. The Light of Knowledge: Literacy Activism and the Politics of Writing in South India. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. (South Asia edition published in 2013, Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan). 2013

Journal Articles[edit]

  1. Cody, Francis. "Wave Theory: Cash, Crowds, and Caste in India Elections." American Ethnologist, vol. 47, no. 4, 2020, pp. 402-416.
    The author discusses a rally in Tamil Nadu's Sivagangai constituency, specifically in the farming community of Alangudi. "Therbogi" Pandi, the AMMK candidate, belonged to a newly established regional political party. The author compares the "Modi wave" that helped Prime Minister Narendra Modi rise to power to the concept of a "wave" in Indian politics. Rally participants were promised 200 rupees, similar to offers from larger parties, and the AMMK candidate attracted larger crowds than the ruling party's chief minister.
    According to the author, voters evaluated each candidate's potential to significantly impact the political landscape, avoiding "wasting" votes on unlikely winners. Official opinion surveys and local information on caste, kinship, money flow, and party dynamics influenced the decision-making process. The author references Prime Minister Modi’s 2014 campaign, calling it a wave due to mass support, and compares it to the 2019 AMMK rally in Alangudi, where Pandi’s candidacy resonated with voters sharing his caste and the party's perceived power.
  2. Cody, Francis. "Millennial Turbulence: The Networking of Tamil Media Politics." Television and New Media, vol. 21, no. 4, 2020, pp. 392-406. Special issue: “Millennial India”: Global Digital Politics in Context, edited by Sahana Udupa, Shriram Venkatraman, & Aasim Khan.
  3. Cody, Francis. "Public Speech as Media Infrastructure for Democracy." Seminar, vol. 708, 2018, pp. 58-62. Special issue on Dravidianism, edited by Ravi Sriramachandran and Rajan Krishnan.
  4. Cody, Francis. "How is Multilingual Freelance Journalism Changing the Media Landscape in India?" Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 53, no. 19, 2018. Engage online publication.
  5. Cody, Francis. "The Obligation to Act: Gender and Reciprocity in Political Mobilization." Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, vol. 6, no. 3, 2016, pp. 179-199. Special section: Language and Political Economy Revisited, edited by Andy Graan.

References[edit]

  1. ↑ Francis Cody University Profile, accessed July 10, 2023
  2. ↑ "Letter of Support", Dismantling Global Hindutva Conference website, accessed August 7, 2022
  3. ↑ 2017 South Asia Faculty Group (SAFG) Letter to the California State Board of Education
  4. ↑ Chakrabarti, Dilip, and Sukhdev Saini. The Problem of the Sarasvati River and Notes on the Archaeological Geography of Haryana and Indian Punjab. Aryan Books International, 2009.
  5. ↑ Danino, Michel. The Lost River: On the Trail of the Sarasvati. Penguin Books, 2010.
  6. ↑ McIntosh, Jane R. A Peaceful Realm: The Rise and Fall of the Indus Civilization. Westview Press, 2002, p. 24. ​where she stated "Suddenly it became apparent that the “Indus” Civilization was a misnomer—although the Indus had played a major role in the development of the civilization, the “lost Saraswati” River, judging by the density of settlement along its banks, had contributed an equal or greater part to its prosperity. Many people today refer to this early state as the “Indus-Saraswati Civilization” and continuing references to the “Indus Civilization” should be an abbreviation in which the “Saraswati” is implied. There are some fifty sites known along the Indus whereas the Saraswati has almost 1,000. This is misleading figure because erosion and alluviation has between them destroyed or deeply buried the greater part of settlements in the Indus Valley itself, but there can be no doubt that the Saraswati system did yield a high proportion of the Indus people’s agricultural produce"
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