Скачать или смотреть Decolonizing The Indian Mind and Education - by Dr. Kundan Singh

Colonization has had far greater psychological and sociological consequences than we have realized so far and acted upon to neutralize their effects. This talk will go into the very foundations of the colonial discourse that was generated upon us by the Britishers. It will analyze the psychological and sociological consequences that we suffer from as an aftermath and suggest certain remedies from an educational standpoint. Specifically, it will critically analyze and deconstruct the contents of a nineteenth century colonial production of Indian history and society by James Mill titled “The History of British India”, analyzing the pervasive influence that it generates on Indian society currently.

Kundan Singh, PhD is a professor at Sofia University, Palo Alto, California and the president of the Cultural Integration Fellowship, San Francisco, California. He is the author of many articles, book chapters and books, including “Colonial Discourse and the Suffering of Indian American Children: A Francophone analysis,” “The Evolution of Integral Yoga: Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Vivekananda, and Sri Aurobindo,” and “The Battle for Consciousness Theory.” He has extensively lectured in the United States and India.

Here's the uncomfortable truth we unpack in this discussion:
Western science rests on a philosophy called logical positivism—the idea that only what can be accessed through the five senses (plus reason) is real and worth investigating. Indian epistemology doesn't reject the senses or the mind. It simply says there's a realm beyond them. And when you follow certain processes, you can experience that realm yourself.
Both traditions claim to be empirical. Both point to experience as their foundation. Yet one dominates every university, every research institution, every policy discussion—while the other sits in the backyard, untouched.
Why?
The easy answer is "practicality." We're too busy navigating the modern world to investigate transcendent states of consciousness. Fair enough. But here's where it gets interesting: Is our obsession with practicality itself a product of colonization?
Think about it. Before 1757, before the Battle of Plassey, before the Asiatic Society started translating Sanskrit texts in 1784—would we have developed knowledge differently? Would we have arrived at our own version of scientific inquiry, rooted in our own epistemological foundations?
We don't know. Because we've never seriously asked.
And that's the point. The colonized mind doesn't recognize its own colonization. We swim in categories—binaries like real/unreal, practical/impractical, scientific/superstitious—without questioning where these categories came from.
Here's something that might surprise you: Hegel's dialectics, Marx's dialectical materialism, Nietzsche's deconstruction, Derrida's postmodernism—all of them emerged after Indian philosophical texts were translated and circulated in Europe. The genealogy is traceable. Western philosophy's greatest innovations may owe more to Indian thought than anyone acknowledges.
Meanwhile, we've internalized the framework that dismisses our own traditions.
The economic drain of colonization has been studied extensively. The psychological and epistemological drain? Barely scratched.
This isn't about pride or nationalism. It's about truth. It's about asking why a treasure sits in our backyard while we look elsewhere for answers.
The question isn't whether Indian knowledge systems are valid. The question is: Why don't we think they're worth investigating?
That question, honestly examined, reveals everything.