Order Now | Hindu at Heart
Order Now | Hindu at Heart
Indu Viswanathan, Ed.D.
I am a researcher, educator, and author exploring questions of belonging, understanding across difference, and what it means to listen deeply.
About Me
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I am a researcher, educator, and author whose work has moved across education, research, community, and public scholarship. I am interested in how people make sense of the institutions and communities they are part of, how we understand ourselves as agentive, how we understand one another across difference, and what we discover when we listen with enough humility to be surprised.
Much of my recent research has focused on questions of education, faith, representation, and belonging. My book, Hindu at Heart: Education, Faith, and What It Means to Belong in America, grew from ethnographic research with Hindu American students and parents and from a larger question about what happens when people's lived experiences complicate the stories we think we already understand. That commitment to listening—to approaching research with curiosity rather than looking for confirmation of what I already believe—runs through much of my work.
My work has taken many forms: teaching and teacher development, research and program evaluation, institutional leadership, ethnography, public writing, community-based scholarship, mentoring emerging researchers, and conversations through podcasts and other public forums. Across them, I keep returning to questions of how we learn from people's experiences, how ideas move between research and public life, and what becomes possible when we understand something differently.
Learn more about my story below.
My Story
My journey as an educator began in New York City, against the backdrop of September 11, 2001, when I was a Master’s student at Teachers College, Columbia University. I felt called to advocate for compassion and intergroup dialogue amidst rising religious and ethnic discrimination in my beloved New York City. A few years later, I found my spiritual compass, in the form of my Guru, His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, a Hindu spiritual and humanitarian leader. I embarked on a path of self-discovery and community engagement, shaping my approach to education. For over two decades, I have taught in diverse settings, including New York public schools, educational NGOs and schools in India, and higher education.
Before pursuing my doctorate, I led national research and impact efforts for a school-based program focused on breathwork, meditation, and social-emotional learning, which I now refer to as the seeds of spiritual discipline. That experience of working with educators, researchers, and students led me to recognize the profound impact of contemplative practices and the limitations of current frameworks in fully grasping and communicating their significance and potential. This work in the space of interdisciplinary research led me to pursue a doctorate, where I began asking deeper questions about education, intuition, and human flourishing.
My doctoral research at Teachers College focused on the identity and belonging of second-generation Hindu American teachers in U.S. public schools. My book Hindu at Heart: Education, Faith, and What It Means to Belong in America (Briarcliff Press, 2026) is based on an ethnographic study with Hindu American parents and youth. I explore how Hindu Americans are shaping and shaped by the promises and contradictions of American public education, democracy, and citizenship. I also serve as the Director of Understanding Hinduphobia, a national initiative that I co-founded in 2021. UH supports K–12 and higher education institutions in addressing bias, improving representation, and advancing dignity for Hindu students and communities.
Today, my work carries the themes of Hindu at Heart outward, into schools, communities, and public conversations about belonging, perspective, and what it means to create spaces where everyone's way of seeing the world is genuinely welcomed. As I listen to educators, parents, and young people, I find that the longing for this kind of understanding is everywhere. That longing is what drives the work.
As a mother, educator, and seeker, I hold close the questions that shape our world and the ones we leave unasked. This site is a home for all of that work: grounded in tradition, open to emerging science and society-building, and listening for what comes next, with a steady commitment to protecting the hope, wonder, and possibility our children carry into the future.
Jai Guru Dev
Victory to the Greater Consciousness That Guides Us
Now Available
Hindu at Heart: Education, Faith, and What It Means to Belong in America
A thoughtful examination of how Hinduism and Hindus have figured in the long project of American public education.
Now available - individual and bulk orders from the first premium trade print run.