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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.

Virajāhoma

From Hindupedia, the Hindu Encyclopedia

By Swami Harshananda

Virajāhoma literally means ‘homa to become free from impurities’.

When a person decides to take sanyāsadīkṣā, embrace monastic life with certain vows, he has to perform some rites and ceremonies. One of the most important of these is the Virajāhoma.

It is a lengthy ritual. It comprises offering forty oblations in a duly consecrated fire with fuel sticks, cooked rice and ghee. The mantras recited during those oblations are the ones given in the Mahānārāyana Upaniṣād.[1] A typical format of the mantras is like this:

‘May my five prāṇas be purified, may I be light or illumination, free from rajas and from evil, svāhā!’

This is repeated a number of times to include several items such as:

  • Five senses
  • Mind
  • Intellect
  • Seed
  • Thought
  • Constituents of the body
  • Several limbs of the body
  • Five guṇas of the elements
  • Five kośas or sheaths
  • Etc.


References[edit]

  1. ↑ Mahānārāyana Upaniṣād sections 65 and 66
  • The Concise Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Swami Harshananda, Ram Krishna Math, Bangalore

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