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 expose the correspondence between textbooks and the colonial-racist discourse. This racist discourse 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:Ruby Lal

From Hindupedia, the Hindu Encyclopedia

By Renuka Joshi


Ruby Lal is a professor of South Asian Studies, Emory University as of June 4, 2023.[1] According to her university profile, her fields of study include feminist history and theory, and the question of archive as it relates to writing about Islamic societies in early modern and modern world.

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 B.J.P. Government.

In 2021, she 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 in 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, she signed the letter submitted by the South Asia Faculty Group (SAFG) to the California State Board of Education[3] where she:

  • She 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]

Refereed/Peer reviewed[edit]

  1. Lal, Ruby. In the Wake of Colonial Ascendancy: Rethinking Muslim Respectability. Mutiny at the Margins: New Perspectives on the Indian Uprising of 1857, Vol. 5, "Muslim, Dalit and Subaltern Narratives, edited by Crispin Bates, Sage Publications, 2014.
  2. Lal, Ruby, and Beverly Bossler. "Gender Systems: The Exotic Asian and Other Fallacies". What India and China Once Were: The Pasts that May Shape the Global Future, edited by Sheldon Pollock and Benjamin Ellman, Columbia University Press, 2019.

Academic books[edit]

  1. Lal, Ruby. Coming of Age in Nineteenth-Century India: The Girl-Child and the Art of Playfulness. Cambridge UP, 2015.
  2. Lal, Ruby. In Pursuit of Playfulness: The Girl-Child/Woman and Nineteenth-Century India. Primus Books, 31 Jan. 2019.

References[edit]

  1. ↑ Ruby Lal Emory University profile, accessed June 4, 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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