A Letter to Concerned Hindu American College Students
Winter 2020
Dear Hindu American students and organizations,
How wonderful that Hindu student organizations are on U.S. college campuses. When I was an undergrad in the mid-nineties, they weren’t as prevalent. I wonder how that might have changed my journey, if a sangha could have helped me develop a more nuanced, critical Hindu lens earlier on in life, a lens that the academy still doesn’t offer.
My name is Indu and I am a Hindu American scholar-activist-mom. I’ve spent nearly twenty years in the field of education and I am currently working on my doctorate at Teachers College. My research focuses on the transnational knowledge of second-generation Indian American teachers in NYC. I also teach critical multicultural social studies methods to pre-service teachers as a part of TC’s inclusive education program; the program is dedicated to anti-racist, inclusive pedagogy, acknowledging that teaching is a political act. I graduated from the program right after 9/11. In other words, I spend a lot of time thinking about, writing about, learning, teaching, and researching from anti-racist, anti-colonial theoretical lenses and other critical theories, like transnational literacy.
Recently, I have found myself thinking, reading, researching, and writing about being a progressive Hindu…
