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 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.

Bīja

From Hindupedia, the Hindu Encyclopedia

By Swami Harshananda

Bīja literally means ‘the seed’.

  • Though the word means the seed of any plant or a tree, it is also widely been used in a more fundamental sense as the origin or the cause of anything.
  • As the cause of life it means the semen of living beings.
  • As the cause of samsāra or transmigratory existence, it represents avidyā or ajñāna (nescience).
  • In dramaturgy it stands for a root-cause out of which the whole play ultimately evolves.
  • In Haṭhayoga, it is a kind of mudrā or pose of hand and figures with a mystic significance (Bījamudrā).
  • As part of mantras it is the most important letter or letters, the recitation of which leads to desired results.

References[edit]

  • The Concise Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Swami Harshananda, Ram Krishna Math, Bangalore

Contributors to this article

Krishna Maheshwari, Deval Sancheti

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