Review: Invading the Sacred

[Guest guest]

Trespassers will be persecuted

Vineeta Kalbag, Hindustan Times

July 09, 2007

 

Review of

Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America

 

Some weeks ago, my daughter and I found ourselves sitting

next to three very expensively turned out ladies (Prada bags

variety) at a beauty salon. It was hard to not overhear their

conversation about the prize-worthy brother of one among

them, and we did so with increasing amusement. He was

apparently a very cultured gentleman, for he watched only

foreign films and could speak only English. And they

wished there were more like him in our backward India.

 

Now, what does this have to do with the book under review?

Only to illustrate our attitude to much that is Indian, and all

that is foreign. We hanker for the glossy West, pursue it

relentlessly, and get very bristly when we suspect or

perceive an absence of equal reciprocity from the 'outsider'.

Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in

America is just such a book. It is an angry book, but one

where the anger is neither focused nor fair.

 

What struck me first was that most of the contributors to the

book have chosen to live and work in the United States, are

widely published, and have held respected positions. For

example, S N Balagangadhara was recently co-chair of the

Hinduism Unit of the American Academy of Religion.

Sankrant Sanu's protest about the Wendy Doniger Encarta

entries on Hinduism led to their removal and replacement

with a 20-page contribution on the subject by Arvind

Sharma. So it

seems counter-intuitive to claim, as the book does, that there

is no respect for the view of 'insiders'.

 

The essay by Vishal Agarwal and Kalavai Venkat protests

that " a cursory search on WorldCat and other electronic

catalogs shows that approximately 300 college and school

libraries in North America... " have a copy of Paul

Courtright's psychoanalytic Ganesa, Lord of Obstacles.

However, a cursory search only on WorldCat shows up 86

titles by Arvind Sharma, out of which two randomly chosen

titles, Feminism and World Religions and Women in World

Religions, are available in 1,357 and 647 libraries

respectively in just the US.

 

We have to acknowledge that the US is an open and

unfettered place for study and inquiry; and that is why we

all love to send our children to study in its universities.

Interestingly, the US Senate is opening its session on July

17 with Vedic hymns. Catch our august parliamentarians

doing that.

 

What worries me about this book is its motivation. Is it a

scholarly treatise making a case for more 'insider' experts

on Hinduism in the American academia? Is it an angry

response to how the authors feel the American Academy of

Religion's (AAR) Religions in South Asia (RISA) group's

Western theories have influenced India-related studies? Is it

an attempt to discredit the work of individuals like Wendy

Doniger, Paul Courtright, Jeffrey Kripal ('Wendy and her

children' as coined by Rajiv Malhotra)? Is it an attempt to

discredit the Western media? Or is it an angry Hindu

response to Christianity and Islam? The fact also remains

that when authors like Sarah Caldwell (a member of RISA

for her scholarship on Kali) are met with criticism from

other 'outsiders' like Cynthia Humes, it is dismissed with a

comment like: " But how seriously does Caldwell have to

take such criticism? "

 

The book is very defensive where scholarship of Hinduism

is concerned and perceives any counter-objections from

Western scholars to the 'insider's' critique of their work as

'attacks', but discounts as ineffective any similar objections

from an 'outsider' to another 'outsider's' scholarship. The

editorial boxes interwoven in the essays add a more

hysterical note with hypothetical reasoning or one-sided

editorialising. The logic behind the book's illustrations -

comic strips that are pretty damning of the 'White non-

Hindu' - is also puzzling. These comics carry a disclaimer

at the bottom that they bear no resemblance to any real

person. So what is the purpose of their inclusion?

 

In one essay, Pandita Indrani Rampersad takes vehement

objection to Stanley Kurtz's anthropological study that

claims that unlike Western women, Hindu mothers do not

use nursing time as an occasion to cement an emotional

union with their child. Maybe in the community that he

observed, the women did not have the privacy of space or

the luxury of time

to use nursing as bonding time. But so what? Doesn't

Pandita Indrani's objection indicate that we too are judging

ourselves on Western matrices? We bond with our children

in a multitude of other ways.

 

The criticism in the book is aimed at psychoanalytic

methods used to interpret some of our Hindu mythology. It

would do well to remember that this is just one method of

analysis of - myths! The psychoanalytic interpretation

through Western eyes of Ganesa's trunk as a phallus is not

as bizarre as the authors claim, given the story of Queen

Maya's dream that a white elephant was tearing through her

womb and her subsequent conviction that she was going to

give birth to a boy; and indeed the Gautam Buddha was

born.

 

The Rig Veda I.164.46 states " Ekam sat vipraha bahuda

vadanti " or " truth is one, the sages give it many names " . It

is a noble task to familiarise the West with the Hindu's

understanding of Hinduism. But it should be done with

equanimity, and respect for the scholarship of others whose

interpretation may not be the same as ours; and most

certainly not by throwing eggs at them.

 

As you read this book, ask yourself one question - do you

stand for artistic and creative freedom? If the answer is yes,

then you must support academic freedom. Scholarly debate

is only enriching; muzzling is dehumanising. Let us also not

forget that the Rig Veda has been added to the UNESCO's

heritage list.

 

Vineeta Kalbag is a potter and psychologist, and has lived

overseas in several countries for many years.

 

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?

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or

http://tinyurl.com/34j2ms

 

 

, " drfmrls " <drfmrls wrote:

>

> Book Counters Academic Distortions of Hinduism in America

>

> By Francis C. Assisi

>

> URL of this page: http://www.indolink.com/displayArticleS.php?

> id=071507063046