Colonial Discourse and the Suffering of Indian American Children is now freely available.
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.

Dharmasindhu

From Hindupedia, the Hindu Encyclopedia

By Swami Harshananda

Dharmasindhu literally means ‘Ocean of dharma’.

For over two millennia, the society has been guided and regulated by a special class of literature known as the dharmaśāstras. These works have prescribed rules of conduct for a person both at the individual and at the social level.

Dharmaśāstras Features[edit]

The Dharmaśāstra literature has three aspects:

The dharmasutras
The dharmasutras mainly deal with ācāra and vyavahāra (code of conduct in personal and social life).
The smṛtis
The smṛtis technically refers to the secondary scriptures like Manusmṛiti which remind one, of the great spiritual truths contained in the Śruti or Vedas.
The nibandhas
The nibandhas are the digests containing a lot of information on various aspects of dharma. It also consists of various applications of dharma, culled from a number of authoritative sources.

Conception of Dharmasindhu[edit]

The Dharmsindhu of Kāśīnātha Upādhye is also known as the Dharmasindhusāra or Dharmābdhisāra. It is a leading and popular work, especially in the Maharashtra State, guiding religious observances. It might have been composed during the period A. D. 1790-91. It seems to have derived it's inspiration from another more well known work called Nirnayasindhu of Kamalākara (A. D. 1612).

Essence of Dharmasindhu[edit]

The book is divided into three paricchedas or sections. The topics dealt with in it may be summarized as follows:

  • Divisions of the year
  • The seasons and the times considered auspicious or inauspicious for religious and social rites
  • Sacraments like upanayana and marriage
  • Āhnika or the daily duties of a dvija (a member of the first three castes)
  • Śrāddhas or obsequial rites


References[edit]

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

Contributors to this article

Krishna Maheshwari, Apurva Mahendra Bhangdia, Deval Sancheti

Explore Other Articles

Retrieved from "https://hindupedia.com/index.php?title=Dharmasindhu&oldid=134153"