American's book on Ganesha stirs Hindu outrage

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American's book on Ganesha stirs Hindu outrage

 

Indo-Asian News Service

Washington, November 12

http://hindustantimes.com/news/5967_456306,001600060001.htm

When an American religion professor wrote a book about Hindu god

Ganesha 18 years ago, none outside the academic circles noticed it.

 

However, last month Emory University teacher Paul

Courtright's "Ganesha: Lord of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings" picked

up attention after Internet messages appeared attacking it as porn

and an affront to the god.

 

A section of Hindus in the U.S. is now up in arms against the

professor and has dashed off letters of protest to the publisher and

the Atlanta, Georgia-based Emory University, says a report in the

Atlanta Journal Constitution.

 

At least 4,500 Hindus in the U.S. and India signed an online petition

demanding that Courtright apologise and remove certain passages from

his book.

 

The petition also asked a publishing company to yank the book off

shelves in India. The company obliged and did just that. It also

publicly denounced the book.

 

Nineteen Hindus in Atlanta said in a letter to Courtright's boss in

the Emory religion department that they were "sorely disappointed at

the lack of sensitivity" he had shown.

 

They also sent a letter to Emory's president, saying they

were "surprised that Courtright ... continues to teach courses on

Hinduism".

 

All this has shocked Courtright, who specialises in Indian

religions. "I have the highest regard for the Hindu tradition. And I

certainly intended no offence."

 

The book draws parallels to the Greek character of Oedipus, who

killed his father to marry his mother. Courtright raises questions

about symbolism: Is Ganesha's broken tusk a symbol of castration? Are

there erotic overtones in the god's desire to stay close to his

mother? What to make of Ganesha's insatiable appetite for sweets?

 

According to the Journal report, outraged Hindus said those questions

are out of bounds.

 

"We find it deeply offensive and repulsive to our innermost

sensibilities that a member of Emory's faculty should

use 'psychoanalysis' for interpreting sacred symbols of Hinduism in

an erotic manner," they wrote in the letter to Emory's president.

 

"Can you not see that such insensitive analysis of somebody else's

faith can lead to breakdown of tolerance for each other?"

 

One person who signed the letter, Morehouse College chemistry

professor K.K. Vijai, said the book reads like "a crude kind of

revolting pornography".

 

Courtright has written several scholarly articles and co-edited a

book about Hindu culture, gender and religion. He said he is dismayed

by what he sees as an attempt to stifle intellectual freedom.

 

"Hinduism is a very broad and diverse religion," he said. "I've

received a lot of e-mails from Hindus who were not offended."

 

Several people objected to the cover of the book's Indian edition,

which shows a photograph of an Indian sculpture showing the elephant

god, as a toddler, in the nude.

 

Courtright said he was not involved in choosing the cover. The U.S.

cover, he said, depicts a clothed Ganesha dancing.

 

Several Indian groups in metro Atlanta have recognised his work, and

even people upset by some passages in his book had praise for other

chapters, the Journal report said.

 

"It's like a mixed salad -- there are some good vegetables mixed with

some dirty, stinky salad dressing," said Dhiru Shah, a Hindu

businessman.

 

Courtright said scholarly interpretations of religious myths often

differ from explanations offered by the faithful. He said "a few

sentences that appear in a complex presentation...that I wrote 20

years ago have been lifted out of context, repackaged and posted on

the web."

 

Mention of the book on a website for Indian Americans last year

intrigued T.R. Rao, a Hindu computer science professor at the

University of Louisiana in Lafayette.

 

He started to read it but said he could not get past page 124, the

Journal report said.

 

"It was excruciating for me to read," Rao said. "The god I pray to

was made to look like ... a eunuch. He was competing incestuously

with his father for his mother."