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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 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.

Vṛsotsarga

From Hindupedia, the Hindu Encyclopedia

By Swami Harshananda

Vṛsotsarga literally means ‘letting loose a bull’.

The scriptures prescribe a number of religious rites and observances to be performed for the benefit of the soul of a dead person especially during the first two weeks after his death. One such is the vṛsotsarga or the letting loose of a bull on the eleventh day along with a heifer.

Both the animals have to be bathed, adorned and branded with a discus and a trident. After uttering a prescribed mantra both of them are driven away in the southern direction, the direction of Yama.[1] This act is supposed to free the dead person from the preta or the disembodied state, enabling him to cross the ocean of mortality. The ceremony is called mahāpātras is completed by a feast to eleven brāhmaṇas.


References[edit]

  1. ↑ He is the god of death.
  • The Concise Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Swami Harshananda, Ram Krishna Math, Bangalore

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