Colonial Discourse and the Suffering of Indian American Children PDF 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.

Talk:Sankaran Krishna

From Hindupedia, the Hindu Encyclopedia

By Sachi Anjunkar


Sankaran Krishna is a Professor at the Department of Politics, College of Social Sciences, University of Hawai'i, Manoa[1] as of July 2023. According to his University profile, his area of research interest includes international relations, postcolonial studies, and political economy with a focus on India/ South Asia, specifically on its Eurocentric epistemology and its obliviousness to matters of race, colonialism, and inequality on a global scale. In the bio of his university profile, Sankaran Krishna states "I am keeping a wary and increasingly worried eye on the rising tide of Hindu fundamentalism in the country".

In 2021, he endorsed the "Dismantling Global Hindutva" conference and made the allegation

"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."[2]

In 2016, he signed a letter[3] addressed to the State Board of Education, California Department of Education, dated May 17, 2016. The letter stated the following:

  1. "There is no established connection between Hinduism and the Indus Civilization. The Rg Veda contains numerous mentions of horses and chariots but there is no conclusive material or fossil evidence for either at any Indus valley archeological site."
  2. "It is inappropriate to remove mention of the connection of caste to Hinduism."
  3. "The geographic location of the Indus Civilization lies in what is now contemporary India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The use of "South Asia" to describe this shared civilizational heritage is thus entirely appropriate in some places of the framework, even though South Asia is a modern term, and some source materials use the term ‘Ancient India.' "


Publications related to India[edit]

Journal Articles[edit]

  1. Krishna, Sankaran. “Number Fetish: Middle-Class India’s Obsession with the GDP.” Globalizations, vol. 12, no. 6, Oct. 2015, pp. 859–71, https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2015.1100854.
    According to the author, Sankaran Krishna, the middle class in India has a fascination or obsession with the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth rate. This obsession is referred to as the "GDP Fetish". The author claims that in India, the middle class has become fixated on the GDP growth rate as a way to determine their perceived status in the global economy. They see a higher GDP growth rate as a sign of India's advancement and a validation of their aspirations to be recognized as part of the "first world."
    The main goal of the author seems to be to use statistics about India to refute the GDP as an important statistic to measure growth. The author cites multiple issues faced by India to disprove the growth rate of the Indian Economy during the period 1990-2004.
    Author Sankaran Krishna makes the following claims about the BJP Government.
    "Portray its leader Narendra Modi as an efficient technocrat."
    B.J.P.’s “renewed commitment to generating high GDP numbers on the basis of such a neoliberal strategy is likely to generate worse societal outcomes for the vast majority of India’s population.”
    Conclusion: The author makes strawman claims in the midst of proving the Middle-class India's Obsession with the GDP.
  2. Krishna, Sankaran. “Colonial Legacies and Contemporary Destitution: Law, Race, and Human Security.” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, vol. 40, no. 2, 2015, pp. 85–101. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24569425.
  3. Krishna, Sankaran. “On Introducing Ambedkar.” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 49, no. 16, 2014, pp. 23–25. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24480149.
  4. Krishna, Sankaran. “Migrant Acts: Deterritorializing Postcoloniality.” Theory & Event, vol. 12, no. 4, 2009, https://doi.org/10.1353/tae.0.0094.
  5. Krishna, Sankaran. “The Bomb, Biography and the Indian Middle Class.” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 41, no. 23, 2006, pp. 2327–31. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4418323.
  6. Krishna, Sankaran. “Methodical Worlds: Partition, Secularism, and Communalism in India.” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, vol. 27, no. 2, 2002, pp. 193–217. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40645045.
  7. Krishna, Sankaran. Postcolonial Insecurities: India, Sri Lanka and the Question of Nationhood, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.
  8. Krishna, Sankaran. “Cartographic Anxiety: Mapping the Body Politic in India.” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, vol. 19, no. 4, 1994, pp. 507–21. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40644820.

Book Chapters[edit]

  1. Krishna, Sankaran. “The Social Life of a Bomb: India and the Ontology of an ‘Overpopulated’ Society,” in Itty Abraham (ed.) South Asian Cultures of the Bomb: Atomic Publics and the State in India and Pakistan, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, (2009): 68-88.
  2. Krishna, Sankaran. “Forgetting Caste While Living It: The Privileges of Amnesia,” in D. Shyam Babu (ed.), Caste In Life: Experiencing Inequalities (New Delhi: Pearson Education, 2010): 7-19.

References[edit]

‌

  1. ↑ Sankaran Krishna University Profile, accessed July 9, 2023
  2. ↑ "Letter of Support", Dismantling Global Hindutva Conference website, accessed August 7, 2022
  3. ↑ 5-17 Kamala Visweswaran South Asian Faculty Group.pdf
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