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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.

Pramā

From Hindupedia, the Hindu Encyclopedia

By Swami Harshananda

Pramā literally means ‘the knowledge’.

Technicalities of Treatises[edit]

Philosophical treatises often use four technical terms:

  1. Pramā - The correct knowledge that is got through the pramāṇas is ‘pramā’.
  2. Pramāṇa - The means of knowledge that gives us its correct understanding is ‘pramāṇa’.
  3. Prameya - An object that has to be known is ‘prameya’.
  4. Pramātṛ - The person who knows it thus is the pramātṛ.[1]

For instance, a pot is ‘prameya’. The eye that sees it and the process of seeing is ‘pramāṇa’. The knowledge got that it is a mud pot of small size, black in color, containing water, is ‘pramā’.

Classification of Pramā[edit]

Pramā is the true knowledge which is not negated by later perceptions. If negated, like seeing a snake in a rope in insufficient light and then discovering it in bright light that it is a rope, it is only a bhrama.[2] Sometimes, false knowledge is called apramā and three more varieties of it are predicated:

  1. Smṛti - insufficient memory
  2. Sanśaya - doubt
  3. Tarka - false logic


References[edit]

  1. ↑ Pramātṛ means the knower.
  2. ↑ Bhrama means the illusion or false perception.
  • The Concise Encyclopedia of Hinduism, Swami Harshananda, Ram Krishna Math, Bangalore

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