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.

Atmopaniṣad

From Hindupedia, the Hindu Encyclopedia

By Swami Harshananda

Atmopaniṣad is a small Upaniṣad belonging to the Atharvaveda with just three sections in prose, it deals with three kinds of ‘puruṣas’ or beings, called ‘ātmā’.

  1. Bāhyātmā - It is the physical body comprising the various limbs and subject to birth and death. It is also called as the outer ātman.
  2. Antarātmā - It is the inner ātman. It is the mind composed of the sukṣma-bhūtas or the subtle elements. It is also responsible for the functions of the senses and various states like thinking, feeling and willing.
  3. Paramātmā - It is the third and the last and is also called as the ‘puruṣa,’ the Supreme Self or the Person. He is the true Self who is subtler than the subtlest. He is also described as the one beyond all the changes and destruction, the eternally pure witness of all, the infinite, the indestructible.

Some recensions contain an additional part in verses numbering 31, describing this Ātman-Brahman, the unreal nature of the manifested world and the state of liberation of the emancipated being.


References[edit]

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