More on the Courtright Debate

[Guest guest]

More on the Courtright Debate

http://www.littleindia.com/

Achal Mehra

Oct 18, 2007

 

This month Little India undertook an exercise journalists

usually loathe -- seek to referee a festering public dispute.

Our report, " Parsing the Sacred, " determined that Paul

Courtright's 1985 book, titled Ganesa: Lord of Obstacles,

Lord of Beginnings, which has been fiercely criticized for

several years now, has inaccurate references on the Puranas.

 

Scholars have a professional obligation to engage dissenters,

just as their critics are obligated to unequivocally deplore

threats against those with whom they disagree. [....]

 

Hindus must [...] respect the traditions of intellectual

freedom and inquiry in an academic setting. We reject the

proposition that scholars should be sensitive in their

treatment of religious subjects. Scriptures in the Hindu

tradition are living, breathing documents, open to

reinterpretation and reinvention by Hindus and non Hindus

alike.

 

The Puranas are uncharacteristically honest in exploring the

deepest taboos and Hindus need not be touchy about

perceived slights, offensive treatments and departures from

narrow literal interpretations. Few Hindus have any

familiarity with the Puranas, precisely because they have

become fossilized by mechanical textual readings.

 

Notwithstanding the identified weaknesses in the

scholarship, Courtright's book on Ganesa is a valuable

contribution to the literature on one of Hindu's most

important deities. Likewise, [Wendy] Doniger's sometimes

playful, sometimes acerbic, often lurid discourses on Hindu

scriptures have engaged a generation of scholars and opened

new vistas in Hinduism studies. Attempts to suppress such

scholarship or intimidate these scholars, as occurred with

Courtright, whose book on Ganesa was withdrawn under

pressure from Hindu radicals by its Indian publisher, must

be denounced and resisted.

 

The public discourse cannot be surrendered to loonies and

extremists, who have a chilling effect upon scholars. But

surely the one arena where it should be possible to conduct a

nuanced, even if occasionally caustic, debate on

passionately held views is the academy.

 

[....] A commitment to intellectual freedom demands that

the academic community step up to its professional

responsibilities by engaging and embracing dissent, just as it

makes it incumbent upon their critics to unequivocally

deplore and counter threats against scholars with whom they

disagree.

 

 

http://www.littleindia.com/news/157/ARTICLE/1893/2007-10-02.html