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, reflecting our ongoing commitment at Hindupedia to challenge the representation of Hindu Dharma within academia.

Bhikṣugitā

From Hindupedia, the Hindu Encyclopedia

By Swami Harshananda

Bhikṣugitā literally means ‘the song of the mendicant’.

The Bhagavadgitā, the most widely studied scripture has in course of time given rise to a voluminous Gītā-literature. One of the minor gītās that forms part of another celebrated gītā, the Uddhavagītā[1] is the Bhikṣugita.[2]

In the country of Avantī there lived a brāhmaṇa rolling in wealth but a miser to the core. His peevish and rude behavior resulted in successfully driving away all his kith and kin. Willful neglect of duties, both temporal and scriptural, made the gods angry with him and they withdrew their grace.

Eventually he lost all his wealth and got vairāgya or spirit of renunciation which made him reflect on his past life and behavior. He then took to the life of a bhikṣu or mendicant. Wherever he went he was reviled and even assaulted because of his past history. However, he stoically put up with everything taking it all as due to his own past karma. He then taught his own mind thus:

‘I gave so much trouble to this body in order to earn wealth and not for dharma (righteousness) or kāma (pleasure of the flesh). Wealth thus accumulated by the greedy and the miserly ones ruins all the good one may have. Wealth gives rise to many evils like theft, violence, lust, vanity, and enmity even amongst the loved ones. Those who waste this invaluable human birth in the pursuit of wealth ruin themselves. When death knocks at our doors, money can never rescue us; nor do people or objects of desire. God, the infinitely merciful one, has blessed me thus by deliberately taking away my wealth and possessions. I will now spend the rest of my life in tapas or austerity and be ever vigilant against all selfishness. It is the mind under the influence of the three guṇas that are responsible for our weal or woe. Control of this mind is the best of yogas. One who successfully accomplishes it is verily a god!’

References[edit]

  1. Bhāgavata 11.7-29
  2. Uddhavagītā 11.23
  • The Concise Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Swami Harshananda, Ram Krishna Math, Bangalore

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