[There are some excellent articles
on the Wendy Doniger issue in email circulation now. This is one of those which
I would like to share and even aggressively propagate to our readers because
it indirectly explains the Peter Heehs issue from a larger perspective. – Bireshwar Choudhury.]
FIRSTPOST
INDIA Feb 13, 2014
Before we begin we need to set two critical aspects in
the proper perspective:
The episode of Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus: An
alternative history is not a ban of the book. It is a voluntary withdrawal of
the book by its publisher, Penguin Books.
The episode is not an issue of free speech. Neither
Penguin nor the petitioners acted outside the boundaries of the law concerning
free speech in India.
The outrage over Penguin withdrawing Doniger’s book
has emanated mostly from the section that calls itself secular and liberal,
among other things. And this outrage cleverly sidesteps the valid and vast
critiques of Wendy Doniger’s scholarship and frames the issue as one of a book
ban and Hindu fundamentalism. The kind of arson and violence that erupted
across the world in the wake of the Danish cartoons fits the definition of
religious fundamentalism. It is clear that the petitioners simply took to legal
recourse in this case. Besides, it was Penguin’s decision to voluntarily
withdraw the book in an out-of-court settlement for reasons best known to it.
Therefore, raising the din that freedom of expression is under threat by
Hindutva forces is off the mark.
The other key aspect in this case is the element of an
imbalance of power in public and academic discourse which favours only specific
views and dismisses opposing and/or alternate ones as a conspiracy of Hindutva
forces. This has for the longest time both prevented and suppressed honest
examinations of the work of scholars like Wendy Doniger in the West and most
scholars in the humanities in India. As we observe even in the present case,
this phenomenon has only reinforced itself in various ways: by framing the
issue as one involving free speech and by suppressing the examination of
Wendy’s scholarship.
Indeed, there exists enormous literature pertaining to
this imbalance, specifically in the American academia in the area of Indology.
Perhaps the seminal expose of sorts of this phenomenon was done by Rajiv
Malhotra in the early part of the previous decade. Malhotra coined the term
“Wendy’s Child Syndrome” to title it. Around the same time, Yvette Rosser, a
PhD student in Asian Studies, wrote a five-part series, an in depth examination
of the “loss of scholarship” in South Asian studies. Then Professor SN
Balagangadhara from Ghent University wrote a rejoinder to Jeffery Kripal (an
ardent supporter of Doniger), which also includes a brief critique of Doniger’s
scholarship. Similar essays and critiques were compiled in a book titled
Invading the Sacred which is perhaps one of the most definitive works that aid
our understanding of the exact state of affairs in Indology in the US academia
in general and the scholarship of the likes of Wendy Doniger in particular.
To put it bluntly, Wendy Doniger is a syndrome that
dates back to the colonial era where entire departments of Indology, Sanskrit,
and Oriental studies were liberally funded by the British colonial
administration. They were liberally funded because the British Government
needed these Indologists to interpret the Hindu traditions, customs and laws
that in turn helped them shape policies to rule over the "natives".
And so from the time of, say, William Jones right up to Wendy Doniger, the
research, narrative, and interpretation was, unsurprisingly, colonial in both
colour and flavour. In other words, Eurocentric. This trend continues till date
where new scholarly papers and books are written purporting to
"reinterpret" or provide an "alternative interpretation" of
Hindu mythology, the Vedas, Puranas, symbolism, sages, Gods, Goddesses, and so
on.
It is, therefore, no coincidence that almost all of
these scholarly works meet with such intense criticism by not just scholars but
even by practicing Hindus. Indeed, when Aurobindo encountered such flawed (and
motivated) scholarship in his own time, he cautioned that these scholars lacked
the background necessary to properly understand core Hindu texts. In Doniger’s
case, it has been repeatedly shown that she frequently mistranslates Sanskrit
in order to arrive at the conclusion/thesis she has in mind. This apart, her
selective use of primary texts, and an almost single-minded focus of
eroticising every aspect of Hinduism are other serious lapses pointed out by
the critics of her scholarship. Here are just a few samples of the sort of
interpretation of Hinduism done by Wendy Doniger and other scholars in her
mould:
Holi [is] the spring carnival, when members of all
castes mingle and let down their hair, sprinkling one another with cascades of
red powder and liquid, symbolic of the blood that was probably used in past
centuries. (the now defunct Microsoft Encarta)
Krishna goads human beings into all sorts of murderous
and self-destructive behaviours such as war in order to relieve "mother
Earth" of its burdensome human population. (A lecture in 2000 entitled The
Complicity of God in the Destruction of the Human Race)
Rama had a fear of following his sex-addict father
Dasharatha’s footsteps, which made him betray his own sexuality, which in turn
made him abandon Sita.
Doniger looks for information about Hindu temple
building in the Kama Sutra instead of, say, in the Pancharatra or the
Vaikhanasa Aagama texts.
Ganesha’s large belly is a proof of the Hindu male's
enormous appetite for oral sex. (Paul Courtright, in his book on Ganesha)
Most of the works of these scholars also contain
elements of racially profiling Hindus. For example, Stanley Kurtz claims that
nursing Hindu mothers do not bond with their babies the way white women do. If
something similar were to be written about people of other cultures and/or
religions in the US or elsewhere, outraged screams of "racism!" would
ensue instantly. However, when Hindus respond with scholarly and honest
criticism of such scholarship, their response is dismissed as the ranting of
Hindu extremists. Indeed, Wendy herself sets the precedent by pretending that
her only critics are Hindu extremists and consistently refuses to address the
vast volume of genuine criticism. Of course, there’s no dearth of Indians who
cheerlead her by dismissing Rajiv Malhotra’s critiques as one of having a
"long history of essentially trolling Wendy Doniger".
The outrage of Hindus at scholars like Wendy Doniger
is rooted not in her actual portrayal of their religion but in a more
fundamental, subconscious level. Her portrayals of Hinduism—apart from flawed
scholarship—deny Hindus their own experience of their religion. In other words,
such portrayals will tell, for instance, Hindu women who worship the Shiva
Linga that they are essentially worshipping a penis. This is merely a
hypothesis or a theory but one which is completely at variance with the
centuries-old experience of the Shiva-linga worshipping Hindu women.
Equally, this hypothesis is not rooted any of the
primary Hindu texts that deal with the concept of Shiva Linga, and is therefore
incorrect. Yet, it passes off as truth in the US academia. Thus it is this
denying of experience—like conducting an academic study that somehow proves
that sugar is bitter contrary to experience—that has upset the Hindus; the
actual eroticisation is merely a manifestation of this denial. And as SN
Balagangadhara says, such theories are not even theories but are a
"theorising of someone else’s experience".
Unfortunately, none of the liberals who’re now crying
wolf over free speech have given this context. The new villain now is the
unjust law embodied in Section 295A. As this article perceptively observes, it
is these very liberals who paved the way for illiberalism for over 60 years.
This is not an argument for a ban or a curtailment of free speech, but really,
an examination of the hypocrisy in public discourse right from framing the
book-withdrawal issue as a ban. Those arguing against Penguin’s
"surrender", and those who respond by saying that the answer to
Doniger’s book is another book are precisely the people who have ignored and/or
rubbished precisely such books as Invading the Sacred.
I shall conclude with this quote by Wendy Doniger:
The Bhagavad
Gita is not as nice a book as some Americans think…Throughout the Mahabharata
... Krishna goads human beings into all sorts of murderous and self-destructive
behaviors such as war.... The Gita is a dishonest book …” (Quoted in
Philadelphia Inquirer, 19 November, 2000)
Assume for a moment that Wendy Doniger substituted
"Bhagavad Gita" and "Krishna" with "Koran/Bible"
and "Jesus/Mohammed". Would our liberals still support her as they’re
now doing?
Therein lies the true test of liberalism and
commitment to freedom.
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