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.

Ashley Cohen

From Hindupedia, the Hindu Encyclopedia

Ashley Cohen is an Associate Professor of English at University of Southern California Dornsife.

She works at the intersection of eighteenth-century, postcolonial, and South Asia studies. She authored a Critical edition of "Lady Nugent’s East India Journal" (published by Oxford University Press in 2014) and has articles and essays published in Eighteenth-Century Studies, Comparative Literature, The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, Sporting Cultures, 1650-1850 (UToronto Press, 2018), and Britain’s Black Past (Liverpool UP, 2020).

As per her CV and per Google Scholar, she has published no papers or research as pertaining to Hindus, rights of Hindus, Hinduism / Hindutva, India, Islam, Dalits, Sikhs, Christians, adivasis or dissident Hindus, or the Indian 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."

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