Dr. Kundan Singh in conversation with Dr. Rinkoo Wadhera on "Colonial Discourse On India and Hinduism".
"Making Children Hinduphobic : A Critical Review of McGraw Hill's World History textbooks" is an expose of McGraw Hill’s history textbooks for school-going children in California containing Hinduphobic material, set into motion during the British colonial period. The textbooks are guilty of describing Hinduism as an oppressive “religion,” primarily framing the arguments around caste, oppression, and hierarchy. Such is the bias and prejudice that its foundational concepts like dharma and karma are also explained through the prism of elitism, caste, hierarchy, and oppression. They promote Buddhism as an improvement upon Hinduism, attributing the greatness of the Mauryan Empire to Buddhist beliefs, even as they distort the epics Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata to show Hinduism in a poor light. They do not incorporate the last few decades of research on the Harappan civilization, which otherwise would have shifted the epicenter of the civilization to both the Sarasvati and Indus river systems. They describe the Aryan invasion of the Indian subcontinent in politically correct terms, designating it as the migration of Aryans while morphing the earlier discredited theory of Aryans as a race. Though written in the backdrop of textbook adoption process in the California school system, the material discussed is representative and characteristic of slandering and inaccurate materials taught on India and Hinduism all over the world. The analysis involves evidence and Critical Thought. is an expose of McGraw Hill’s history textbooks for school-going children in California containing Hinduphobic material, set into motion during the British colonial period. The textbooks are guilty of describing Hinduism as an oppressive “religion,” primarily framing the arguments around caste, oppression, and hierarchy. Such is the bias and prejudice that its foundational concepts like dharma and karma are also explained through the prism of elitism, caste, hierarchy, and oppression. They promote Buddhism as an improvement upon Hinduism, attributing the greatness of the Mauryan Empire to Buddhist beliefs, even as they distort the epics Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata to show Hinduism in a poor light. They do not incorporate the last few decades of research on the Harappan civilization, which otherwise would have shifted the epicenter of the civilization to both the Sarasvati and Indus river systems. They describe the Aryan invasion of the Indian subcontinent in politically correct terms, designating it as the migration of Aryans while morphing the earlier discredited theory of Aryans as a race. Though written in the backdrop of textbook adoption process in the California school system, the material discussed is representative and characteristic of slandering and inaccurate materials taught on India and Hinduism all over the world. The analysis involves evidence and Critical Thought. About Speakers: - A former core faculty with Sofia University, Palo Alto, California, Kundan Singh, PhD is currently a core doctoral faculty with the Hindu University of America, Orlando, Florida where he is developing a new field of study titled Postcolonial Hindu Studies. He is also the Vice President of the Cultural Integration Fellowship in San Francisco and Senior Fellow at Hindupedia, Cupertino, California. Author of the Evolution of Integral Yoga: Sri Aurobindo, Sri Ramakrishna, and Swami Vivekananda and numerous book chapters in edited books, and joint author of Making Children Hinduphobic, he has lectured extensively in San Francisco Bay Area and has many academic presentations at international and national conferences to his name. Dr Rinkoo Wadhera is a researcher with a Post Doctorate in Gender Studies & Folkloristics. She is also an educational consultant & teacher-trainer with schools. She is the author of—Existentialism and Upanishadic Resolution in Indian English Poetry.