'The Interpretation of Gods' [was Doniger: Respect For Women Yes]

[Guest guest]

Hi Janardana:

 

I know that Wenday Doniger is a controversial and provocative figure,

and that she is currently the principal " Western academic " bugbear of

the Hindutva movement -- but quite honestly, she is a serious

scholar, not a " crack-smoking Hindu-basher. "

 

I do not agree with all (or even most) of her conclusions, and I

understand why some equally serious and intelligent Hindus do not

approve of her methods.

 

But the story is not that simple. If Doniger is manipulating Hindu

history and culture, please understand that Rajiv Malhotra and the

other Hindutva activists who are calling for her blood are

manipulating it no less. There are many agendas at play, none of them

totally pure.

 

If any SS members want to enter into (or even understand) this

debate -- and they you want to be intellectually honest about it --

then I would respectfully ask them to take a few minutes and read

this excellent article. Doniger and many similarly maligned

colleagues get their say; the Malhotras get their say; and -- thank

goodness -- the centrists get their say too.

 

It is a bit on the long side, but it is very thorough, well-written,

balanced, and interesting from beginning to end -- and very much

worth your trouble to read.

 

DB

 

********************

 

THE INTERPRETATION OF GODS:

Do leading religious scholars err in their analysis of Hindu texts?

 

By Amy M. Braverman

 

Wendy Doniger didn't see the egg fly past her head, but she heard it

splatter against the wall behind her. Continuing a November 2003

University of London lecture on the Hindu Ramayana text, Doniger

looked down, thinking perhaps she’d broken her water glass against

the podium. When an audience member shouted, " It's an egg! " she

turned and saw the trickle of raw goop. The man who'd thrown the

ovoid missile quickly exited the room.

 

During a post-talk discussion, an Indian woman took the microphone

and quietly read a series of questions that went, as Doniger

recalls: " From what psychoanalytic institution do you have your

degree? "

 

" None, " she replied.

 

" Have you ever been psychoanalyzed? "

 

" No. "

 

" Then why do you think you have the right to psychoanalyze Hindu

texts? "

 

They were questions that Doniger, the Mircea Eliade distinguished

service professor of the history of religions, had heard before. At

the November 2000 American Academy of Religion (AAR) annual meeting

in Nashville, her former students marked her 60th birthday by

producing a Festschrift, Notes From a Mandala, filled with essays

assessing the state of Indology.

 

A panel discussed the impact that her teaching (at Chicago since

1978) and scholarship (more than 20 books written, edited, and

translated) has had on religious studies. During the after-panel Q &

A a man raised his hand. Doniger called on him, and he asked her the

same questions the softspoken woman repeated three years later in

London.

 

WENDY'S CHILD SYNDROME

 

The man was Rajiv Malhotra, an entrepreneur and activist living in

New Jersey. Malhotra, who studied physics at India's St. Stephens

College and computer science at Syracuse University, now works full

time at the Infinity Foundation, a nonprofit he founded in 1995

to " upgrade the quality of understanding of Indian civilization in

the American media and educational system, as well as among the

English language educated Indian elite. "

 

Malhotra remembers the Nashville exchange differently than Doniger

does. As he recounts in a 2002 online essay, " Wendy's Child

Syndrome " : " I stood up and asked: Since you have psychoanalyzed

Hinduism and created a whole new genre of scholarship, do you think

it would be a good idea for someone to psychoanalyze you, because an

insight into your subconscious would make your work more interesting

and understandable?

 

" She replied that there was nothing new that any psychoanalyst would

find about her, because she has not hidden anything. I stated that

most clients also tell their psychoanalysts that they have nothing

hidden in their mental basement, but that such clients are precisely

the most interesting persons to psychoanalyze.

 

" She took it well, and said, 'You got me on this one.' I predicted

that research on her own private psychology would get done in the

next several years, and that it would become important some day to

psychoanalyze many other Western scholars also, since they

superimpose their personal and cultural conditioning on their

research about other peoples. "

 

His 23,591-word (including 91 footnotes) essay, published on the

Indian…quot;community Web site Sulekha.com, has become a pivotal

treatise

in a recent rift between some Western Hinduism scholars -- many of

whom teach or have studied at Chicago -- and some conservative Hindus

in India, the United States, and elsewhere.

 

Since G. M. Carstairs's 1958 book " The Twice-Born " (Hogarth Press)

scholars have noted Freudian themes in old Indian texts and stories,

arguing, for example, that the god Ganesha can be read as having an

Oedipus complex.

 

More recently, with the Internet's help, the Hindu diaspora -- about

2 million in the United States, according to the Hindu American

Foundation -- has become better organized. Some members have begun to

protest that Western scholars distort their religion and perpetuate

negative stereotypes. They've raised questions about who should teach

and interpret their texts, whether it's appropriate to apply

psychoanalysis and other Western constructs to South Asian culture,

whether there is one correct way to teach religion, and how Hindus

are portrayed in the West.

 

In two years Malhotra's essay received more than 22,000 hits and

generated 445 comments (several by Malhotra himself) and two response

essays. Most readers agreed with his conclusion: " Rights of

individual scholars must be balanced against rights of cultures and

communities they portray, especially minorities that often face

intimidation. Scholars should criticize but not define another’s

religion. "

 

GROWING ANGER

 

Other readers took their anger farther, calling for the scholars'

resignations, sending hate mail, tossing eggs, or issuing death

threats. The adamant, at times violent responses parallel a political

movement in India, where conservative Hindu nationalists have gained

power since the early 1990s. Though Malhotra's academic targets say

he has some valid discussion points, they also argue that his

rhetoric taps into the rightward trend and attempts to silence

unorthodox, especially Western, views.

 

For instance, in " Wendy’s Child Syndrome " Malhotra condemns " the

eroticisation of Hinduism by Wendy Doniger, who is un-doubtedly the

most powerful person in academic Hinduism Studies today, " and " her

large cult of students, who glorify her in exchange for her

mentorship. "

 

He notes that religious studies -- a field that teaches about a

religion without preaching its beliefs -- is rare in India, making

academic discussions of Hinduism a mostly Western

conversation. " Under Western control, " he argues, " Hinduism studies

has produced ridiculous caricatures that could easily be turned into

a Bollywood movie or a TV serial. "

 

He cites, among others, two books for which Doniger wrote the

forewords: " Ganesa: Lord of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings " (Oxford

University Press, 1985), by Emory University interim religion

department chair Paul B. Courtright, and " Kali’s Child: The Mystical

and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna " (University

of Chicago Press, 1995), by Rice University religious studies chair

Jeffrey J. Kripal, PhD’93.

 

Malhotra also quotes Harvard South Asian studies chair Michael E. J.

Witzel, who has questioned Doniger’s Sanskrit translations and her

proclivity for finding sexual meanings in ancient texts. Doniger --

who was named Martin Marty Center director this year and whose

appointments span the Divinity School, the Department of South Asian

Languages & Civilizations, the Committees on the Ancient

Mediterranean World and Social Thought, and the College -- knows that

her work, including a retranslation of the " Kamasutra " (Oxford,

2002), can be controversial.

 

" If people think sexuality is a shameful thing, then it's

embarrassing for them to have the texts that talk about it

discussed, " she says. " A Sanskrit word can have ten different

meanings. A translator must choose, based on her knowledge of the

context. Choosing the sexual meaning, " she continues, " is not

incorrect if that is one of the attested meanings. It's a matter

of, 'Did the author mean that?' You can make a judgment, and another

person can argue and say you chose the wrong meaning. "

 

'I WOULD NEVER READ YOUR WORK!'

 

After Malhotra's essay hit the Web, Doniger received a dozen negative

e-mails. One person asked, " Were you raped as a child? Is that why

you write such things? " At first, she says, she responded. When a

critic argued, " Everything you've written about Hinduism is

incorrect. You must have bought your degree from Harvard, " she asked

to which books the protester was referring. " I would never read

anything you've written, " came the reply. At that point, she

thought, " That's it. This is not a serious discussion, " and she

stopped answering such messages and reading the online debates. After

last year’s egg incident she canceled a lecture in Bombay.

 

Emory's Courtright, meanwhile, faced harsher threats. His

book, " Ganesa " , received little attention outside academia when it

was first published in 1985. In it he uses several methods to

interpret the story of Ganesha, the god created by his mother, the

goddess Parvati, to guard the door while she bathed. When her

husband, Shiva, came home to a stranger blocking the way to his wife,

he beheaded Ganesha. Pavarti protested, so Shiva brought him back to

life and replaced his head with that of an elephant.

 

On page 103 of his book Courtright includes a psychoanalytic

interpretation -- " It would have been odd if I hadn’t done so, " he

said in a Divinity School lecture this past April -- noting the

story’s Oedipal theme of father-son confrontation and its alternative

conclusion of the son being wounded rather than the father. He

compares Ganesha, who is celibate in most versions, to a eunuch who

stands at a harem doorway. And previous scholars, Courtright writes,

have called Ganesha's broken tusk and his trunk phallic symbols.

 

" I was approaching this story, " he said, " as belonging to the public

domain, not just Hindus. " Some Hindus, however, didn't see it that

way. After " Ganesa " 's second edition in 2001 and Malhotra's essay in

2002, the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, Hindu Student Council

collected 7,000 signatures on an Internet petition asking for a

public apology, a recall of the book, and a new version changing

parts the group found offensive.

 

In India, where the conservative, recently defeated Bharatiya Janata

Party (BJP) was still in power, the book was withdrawn from

bookstores. Courtright received hate mail, including some

threats. " You will get what you deserve from Lord Ganesha, " one

read. " He should be tortured alive until he turns to ash, " went

another.

 

ANTI-HINDU SCHOLARSHIP?

 

This past February eight members of a local Hindu organization, the

Concerned Community of Atlanta, met with Emory College dean Robert

Paul, and other faculty. The group wanted the school to " reiterate

their feelings of insult, " classify his interpretations " as acts of

racial insensitivity, " have Courtright issue an apology, remove him

from teaching Hinduism courses, and " find Hindu scholars to teach

Hinduism. "

 

After the meeting Paul wrote a letter explaining that Courtright's

book was not meant " to offend or provoke but to explore hidden

connections. " He noted that using psychoanalysis was " widely

controversial but widely accepted as scholarly work of good faith. "

The group wrote back to say they weren’t satisfied, but the conflict

has faded a bit since then.

 

" These things have a shelf life, " Courtright says in a November

interview. " It’s moved on. "

 

Still, Malhotra and his cohorts are " building a general case that

American scholars of Hinduism are anti-Hindu, " he contends.

 

Recently on Malhotra's radar screen, Courtright notes, is David

White, University of California…quot;Santa Barbara religious studies

chair. White's book " Kiss of the Yogini: Tantric Sex in its South

Asian Contexts " (Chicago, 2003) -- as Malhotra argues in a May

Svabhinava.org entry -- contends that the Hindu tantra tradition " was

intended as South Asian decadent sexuality, without spiritual

purpose, and that this decadence was the result of sociological

suffering of Indian subaltern (lower castes) in classical times. "

 

On the same Web site White's former student Jeffrey S. Lidke counters

that the writer " does not reduce the origins of tantra to anything

other than the sphere of religion " and that rather than " decadent, "

tantric sex in White’s account " was a primary means by which yogins

and yoginis ultimately became immortal. "

 

Malhotra also argues that U.S. Hinduism scholars actively promote

each other’s work. " You scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours --

this seems to be the modus operandi of this cult of scholars, " he

writes.

 

To Courtright, though, the academic study of Hinduism " works like

anything else " : an author submits a book to a publisher, the

publisher sends the text to expert scholars for review, and " on the

basis of those opinions they'll make a decision on whether to publish

it. " The idea, he says, " that we all somehow get in a room and figure

out who we're going to publish and who we're going to screw over is

ridiculous. "

 

BANNING 'KALI'S CHILD'

 

While Courtright has answered critics in lectures and essays, Rice's

Kripal has gone further, writing a new introduction to " Kali's

Child " , fixing translation errors, publishing several essays

including a Sulekha.com response to " Wendy’s Child Syndrome, " and

setting up a Web site (www.ruf.rice.edu/~kalischi/) explaining his

side of the story.

 

In " Kali's Child " , which won the AAR's 1996 award for best first book

in the history of religions, he analyzes an original Bengali text to

glean new information about the 19th-century saint Ramakrishna, an

important figure in modern Hinduism known for experiencing ecstatic

states and visions and for inspiring the Ramakrishna Order. The title

refers to the goddess Kali, whom Ramakrishna saw in his visions.

Kripal translates one passage as saying that during his mystical

experiences Ramakrishna often placed his foot " 'in the lap' (kole) --

that is, on the genitals -- of a young boy disciple. "

 

Interpreting that line and others through the lenses of both

psychoanalysis and Hindu tantra, Kripal argues that the saint's

ecstasies were driven by " mystico-erotic energies that he neither

fully accepted nor understood. "

 

In fact, Kripal writes, the experiences were " profoundly,

provocatively, scandalously erotic, " and Ramakrishna harbored

unconscious " homoerotic " desires for " young, beautiful boys. "

 

Malhotra slams Kripal's " scandalous conclusions, " his command of

Bengali, and his psychological motivations. But he wasn't the first

to criticize the book. In January 1997 Calcutta's English-language

daily The Statesman published a full-page negative review, generating

a flurry of even angrier letters to the editor and further media

attention.

 

" It morphed into a ban movement. The central government got

involved, " and, he says, India’s Central Bureau of Investigation

started a file on him.

 

Two Ramakrishna Order reviewers pointed out translation errors…

quot;Swami

Atmajnanananda (born Stuart Elkman) in the International Journal of

Hindu Studies and Swami Tyagananda in a self-published and online

article. Kripal printed apologies and fixed the errors flagged in

time for the 1998 second edition. Mistakes found after the new

edition, he says, " are all minor and can be changed easily without

changing the thesis. " Several items criticized as errors, he

argues, " are issues of interpretation, not translation per se. "

 

In spring 2001 another ban movement germinated in India, this time

escalating beyond the papers and into the upper house of Parliament,

where it failed -- not because " Kali's Child " wasn't offensive,

according to newspaper accounts, but because " it would have given

undue publicity " to the book.

 

Then a letter-writing campaign tried to block his 2002 tenure at

Rice. And though many readers liked the book -- " I have received

hundreds of appreciative letters, some from spiritual leaders,

scholarly reviews that are extremely enthusiastic, and numerous

enthusiastic responses from Hindu readers " -…quot; Kripal has " pretty

much

spent the last eight years responding to these critics. "

 

A LEGITIMATE APPROACH

 

His response included another book, " Roads of Excess, Palaces of

Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism "

(Chicago, 2001), which is " one long argument that most mystical

traditions are homoerotic, " he says. There he applies " the same

methods of Kali's Child to Christian, Islamic, and Jewish mysticism,

to the lives of Western scholars, and to my own life and thought,

including my own experience of being psychoanalyzed. "

 

In other words, he argues, it isn’t only in Hinduism but in many

religions that Western scholars see hidden, often sexual, meanings.

 

Although academics frequently interpret religions through a sexual

lens (see, for example, Theodore W. Jennings Jr.'s " The Man Jesus

Loved: Homoerotic Narratives from the New Testament " [Pilgrim Press,

2003]), for some Hindus such scholarship has hit a sensitive chord.

 

Online writers complain that psychoanalysis has been discredited in

psychology, and applying it implies that Hindus are " sick. "

But " historians of religion are not doing therapy; they're

interpreting texts, " Kripal argues. " A model can be accurate and

therapeutically unhelpful " (though for him personally, he says,

psychoanalysis has been an effective therapy).

 

" People use psychoanalysis or Foucault because it's the most

sophisticated language we have in the West to talk about the

questions we have. " In " Kali's Child " , he says, he doesn't apply a

strict Freudian analysis but also interprets Ramakrishna's story

through the Hindu tantric tradition. " Both are languages, " he

says, " that turn to sexuality as the key to human religious

experience. "

 

Even so, many Jewish or Christian studies scholars were born into the

religion they study, giving them, as Barnard College religion

professor John Stratton Hawley puts it, " some sort of perceived right

to speak. That's not the case for people like us [Doniger, Kripal,

Courtright, himself] who have come to Hinduism only later in life. "

 

Hawley, who also has scuffled with Malhotra, acknowledges the need

for more Hindus in the field. " As a secular academic discipline,

religious studies scarcely exists in India, " he notes. " What theology

meant in the British academy was Christian studies. "

 

Hence India's educational landscape is different than in the United

States. Although students of Indian descent often take up history,

literature, anthropology, or the sciences, " that hasn't happened in

religion. It’s going to take a generation for people who are Hindu by

background to enter religious studies in large numbers. "

 

Meanwhile, Hawley says, " newly immigrant families have encouraged

sons and daughters to enter fields that seem more meaningful, more

mainstream " -- not to mention more lucrative. So while few Hindus

have gone into religious studies, " the injustice isn't caused by

someone like me, but by the long history of what has happened. We

train Hindus to enter the field alongside non-Hindus, and are very

eager to do so. It takes time for the numbers to even out on the

other side of the Ph.D. "

 

'WHITENESS STUDIES'

 

It's a problem Malhotra also laments. In " Wendy's Child Syndrome " he

notes that " a peculiar brand of 'secularism' has prevented academic

religious studies from entering [india’s] education system in a

serious manner. " Therefore, unlike other religions, he writes in an e-

mail interview, " there is a lack of Indic perspective that would

provide equivalent counter balance " to Western scholars' theories,

creating an " asymmetric discourse. "

 

Further, he says, most of the Hinduism scholars are " either whites or

Indians under the control of whites. One does not find Arabs,

Chinese, blacks, Hispanics, etc., engaged in this kind of Hinduphobia

racket. "

 

He's begun to research " whiteness studies, " which analyzes

the " anthropology of white culture and uncovers their myths. ... I am

researching issues such as white culture's Biblical-based homophobia,

deeply ingrained guilt of sex (Garden of Eden episode) and

condemnation of the body.

 

" I posit that many white scholars are driven into Hinduism studies by

their own private voyeurism or fantasy, or an attempted escape from

white culture's restrictions. This is what I earlier called Wendy's

Child Syndrome because my sample was a few of Doniger's students. But

now the sample is much larger .... "

 

The Indian/white, or insider/outsider, issue has been debated in both

academia and the Hindu community. In September 2002, Sankrant Sanu, a

former Microsoft manager and freelance writer, argued in a

Sulekha.com essay that Microsoft's online Encarta encyclopedia

article on Hinduism -- written by Doniger -- put forth " a

distinctively negative portrayal of Hinduism, " especially when

compared to the entries on Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

 

Sanu recommended that someone " emic " to the community rewrite the

Hinduism entry, as had been the case for the other religions.

Microsoft obliged, exchanging Doniger’s essay with one by Arvind

Sharma, a McGill University professor of comparative religion.

 

For Sharma, author of " Classical Hindu Thought: An Introduction "

(Oxford, 2000), the debate has shades of gray.

 

" Both the insider and the outsider see the truth, " he writes in an e-

mail interview, " but genuine understanding may be said to arise at

the point of their intersection. At this intersection one realizes

that the Shivalinga [the icon of the god Shiva] is considered a

phallic symbol by outsiders but rarely by Hindus themselves, or that

the Eucharist looks like a cannibalistic ritual to outsiders but not

to Christians. "

 

He continues, " If insiders and outsiders remain insulated they

develop illusions of intellectual sovereignty. Each is required to

call the other’s bluff. "

 

A FINE LINE

 

There's a fine line, some scholars say, between legitimate Hindu

concerns and the right-wing political wave that has recently hit

India.

 

Although Malhotra, for example, condemns the violence and threats, he

has acknowledged in a Washington Post article that the Hindu right

has appropriated his arguments. Just as he points to certain Western

academics -- arguing they perpetuate what he calls the " caste, cows,

curry, dowry " stereotypes -- in India, " the Hindu right has taken

education as an important field of political battle, " trying, for

instance, to install conservative textbooks in schools, says Vijay

Prashad, a Trinity College assistant professor of international

studies.

 

Malhotra's goal is to " rebrand India, " says Prashad, a self-described

Marxist who studied history and anthropology, not religious studies,

at Chicago, and who has debated Malhotra in online forums.

But " scholars, to me, are not in the business of branding. "

 

Malhotra and others " have created the idea that there is one Indic

thought, " Prashad says, but " there are so many schools of thought

within Hinduism. "

 

He does, however, agree with Malhotra about Western educational

institutions. " The U.S. academy is totally insular, " he says. " We

don’t engage the public often enough. "

 

Religious-studies professors, he argues, should write editorials and

otherwise engage the public as often as political scientists. " The

oxygen in public opinion is being sucked by people like Rajiv

[Malhotra]. He's the only one pressing so hard. He uses that silence

to say that people are arrogant and they don't have any answers. "

 

For Doniger it's a matter of considering multiple explanations. Both

Courtright and Kripal, she says, " applied psychoanalysis in a limited

way, and they found something that is worth thinking about. They said

this could be one of the things that's going on here, not the only

thing. "

 

She understands that Indians are sensitive to postcolonial threats to

their culture. " For many years Europeans wrote anything they wanted

and took anything they wanted from India, " she says. " Even now so

much of Indian culture is influenced by American political and

economic domination. And India is quite right to object to that. "

 

PROTO-FASCIST VIEWS

 

The protesters, however, have transferred that concern to an

intellectual level, arguing " that Western scholars have pushed out

Indian views the same way Coca-Cola has pushed out Indian products. "

 

But, she argues, " it's a false model to juxtapose intellectual goods

with economic ones. I don't feel I diminish Indian texts by writing

about or interpreting them. My books have a right to exist alongside

other books. "

 

Though Doniger often (but not always) focuses on sexuality, the

current protests derive from more than a Victorian sense of decorum,

says Prashad. The issue seeps deeper, he says, stemming from the

Hindu right's " proto-fascist views. "

 

Recent events demonstrate the lengths to which some nationalists have

taken their protests. This past January a group looted India’s

Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute because it was where James W.

Laine, Macalester College’s humanities dean, had researched his

book " Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India " (Oxford, 2003) -- which

suggests that the revered parents of Shivaji, a Hindu nationalist

icon, may have been estranged. A month earlier another group attacked

Indian historian Shrikant Bahulkar, tarring his face, because Laine

had thanked him in his acknowledgements.

 

Though such violence hasn't occurred in the United States, Western

scholars have felt the effects of India’s new politics. In her Hyde

Park home Doniger displays her Indian art collection -- colorful

tapestries, bronze sculptures including dozens of Ganeshas, and

paintings adorn every surface.

 

" A lot of these things you couldn’t buy in India now, " she says,

noting that some pieces she bought in the 1960s have become antiques,

which today India, like many countries, protects from exportation.

But unlike art, ideas don't get stopped at the border.

 

SOURCE: The University of Chicago Magazine, December 2004

URL: http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0412/features/index.shtml

 

 

, Janardana Dasa

<lightdweller wrote:

>

> Annoying. She really needs to put down that crack pipe and stop

trying to think SHE knows best how to solve the world's problems.

Another reputed academician, who is a Hindu basher on the sly in the

name of academic freedom. She and some of the others, always seem to

try to transpose their opinionated, shallow, lame, western, Freudian,

psychoanalytical/sexual constructs on age old Hindu theology.

>

> JANARDANA DAS

[Guest guest]

I am with you in believing both sides don't have a totally pure motive. BUT, if

given my choice I would stand with the Hindutva people any day; not just because

i follow the religion, but because I know that they won't be strappin' on no

bombs anytime soon and going that far like some of the Christians and Muslims.

As a educator by profession let me give you an analogy: on the 1st day of

school you always come in as hard as nails. If you do not, you will have hell

to pay later on trying to get respect. Similarly, what the Hindu adherents have

done is let scholars (some well meaning), present their version of Hinduism and

remain acquiescent while others say or do anything however offensive & far out.

Now, because of that earlier presentation, and passivity on their part, the

Hindus now have hell to pay trying to gain respect, and something as simple as a

proper presentation of their religion. That is something that is given to Jews,

Christians, & Mohammadans just by

default! Now, if the Hindutva people, had their way, they would surely be

quite rigid, etc., but, they would surely at least have Hinduism presented

correctly, and by insiders (real practitioners). And then later on, because of

Hinduism's self checking nature, they (the Hindutva people) would easily and

automatiaclly be put back in line.

 

JANARDANA DASA

 

Devi Bhakta <devi_bhakta wrote:

Hi Janardana:

 

I know that Wenday Doniger is a controversial and provocative figure,

and that she is currently the principal " Western academic " bugbear of

the Hindutva movement -- but quite honestly, she is a serious

scholar, not a " crack-smoking Hindu-basher. "

 

I do not agree with all (or even most) of her conclusions, and I

understand why some equally serious and intelligent Hindus do not

approve of her methods.

 

But the story is not that simple. If Doniger is manipulating Hindu

history and culture, please understand that Rajiv Malhotra and the

other Hindutva activists who are calling for her blood are

manipulating it no less. There are many agendas at play, none of them

totally pure.

 

If any SS members want to enter into (or even understand) this

debate -- and they you want to be intellectually honest about it --

then I would respectfully ask them to take a few minutes and read

this excellent article. Doniger and many similarly maligned

colleagues get their say; the Malhotras get their say; and -- thank

goodness -- the centrists get their say too.

 

It is a bit on the long side, but it is very thorough, well-written,

balanced, and interesting from beginning to end -- and very much

worth your trouble to read.

 

DB

 

********************

 

THE INTERPRETATION OF GODS:

Do leading religious scholars err in their analysis of Hindu texts?

 

By Amy M. Braverman

 

Wendy Doniger didn't see the egg fly past her head, but she heard it

splatter against the wall behind her. Continuing a November 2003

University of London lecture on the Hindu Ramayana text, Doniger

looked down, thinking perhaps she’d broken her water glass against

the podium. When an audience member shouted, " It's an egg! " she

turned and saw the trickle of raw goop. The man who'd thrown the

ovoid missile quickly exited the room.

 

During a post-talk discussion, an Indian woman took the microphone

and quietly read a series of questions that went, as Doniger

recalls: " From what psychoanalytic institution do you have your

degree? "

 

" None, " she replied.

 

" Have you ever been psychoanalyzed? "

 

" No. "

 

" Then why do you think you have the right to psychoanalyze Hindu

texts? "

 

They were questions that Doniger, the Mircea Eliade distinguished

service professor of the history of religions, had heard before. At

the November 2000 American Academy of Religion (AAR) annual meeting

in Nashville, her former students marked her 60th birthday by

producing a Festschrift, Notes From a Mandala, filled with essays

assessing the state of Indology.

 

A panel discussed the impact that her teaching (at Chicago since

1978) and scholarship (more than 20 books written, edited, and

translated) has had on religious studies. During the after-panel Q &

A a man raised his hand. Doniger called on him, and he asked her the

same questions the softspoken woman repeated three years later in

London.

 

WENDY'S CHILD SYNDROME

 

The man was Rajiv Malhotra, an entrepreneur and activist living in

New Jersey. Malhotra, who studied physics at India's St. Stephens

College and computer science at Syracuse University, now works full

time at the Infinity Foundation, a nonprofit he founded in 1995

to " upgrade the quality of understanding of Indian civilization in

the American media and educational system, as well as among the

English language educated Indian elite. "

 

Malhotra remembers the Nashville exchange differently than Doniger

does. As he recounts in a 2002 online essay, " Wendy's Child

Syndrome " : " I stood up and asked: Since you have psychoanalyzed

Hinduism and created a whole new genre of scholarship, do you think

it would be a good idea for someone to psychoanalyze you, because an

insight into your subconscious would make your work more interesting

and understandable?

 

" She replied that there was nothing new that any psychoanalyst would

find about her, because she has not hidden anything. I stated that

most clients also tell their psychoanalysts that they have nothing

hidden in their mental basement, but that such clients are precisely

the most interesting persons to psychoanalyze.

 

" She took it well, and said, 'You got me on this one.' I predicted

that research on her own private psychology would get done in the

next several years, and that it would become important some day to

psychoanalyze many other Western scholars also, since they

superimpose their personal and cultural conditioning on their

research about other peoples. "

 

His 23,591-word (including 91 footnotes) essay, published on the

Indian…quot;community Web site Sulekha.com, has become a pivotal

treatise

in a recent rift between some Western Hinduism scholars -- many of

whom teach or have studied at Chicago -- and some conservative Hindus

in India, the United States, and elsewhere.

 

Since G. M. Carstairs's 1958 book " The Twice-Born " (Hogarth Press)

scholars have noted Freudian themes in old Indian texts and stories,

arguing, for example, that the god Ganesha can be read as having an

Oedipus complex.

 

More recently, with the Internet's help, the Hindu diaspora -- about

2 million in the United States, according to the Hindu American

Foundation -- has become better organized. Some members have begun to

protest that Western scholars distort their religion and perpetuate

negative stereotypes. They've raised questions about who should teach

and interpret their texts, whether it's appropriate to apply

psychoanalysis and other Western constructs to South Asian culture,

whether there is one correct way to teach religion, and how Hindus

are portrayed in the West.

 

In two years Malhotra's essay received more than 22,000 hits and

generated 445 comments (several by Malhotra himself) and two response

essays. Most readers agreed with his conclusion: " Rights of

individual scholars must be balanced against rights of cultures and

communities they portray, especially minorities that often face

intimidation. Scholars should criticize but not define another’s

religion. "

 

GROWING ANGER

 

Other readers took their anger farther, calling for the scholars'

resignations, sending hate mail, tossing eggs, or issuing death

threats. The adamant, at times violent responses parallel a political

movement in India, where conservative Hindu nationalists have gained

power since the early 1990s. Though Malhotra's academic targets say

he has some valid discussion points, they also argue that his

rhetoric taps into the rightward trend and attempts to silence

unorthodox, especially Western, views.

 

For instance, in " Wendy’s Child Syndrome " Malhotra condemns " the

eroticisation of Hinduism by Wendy Doniger, who is un-doubtedly the

most powerful person in academic Hinduism Studies today, " and " her

large cult of students, who glorify her in exchange for her

mentorship. "

 

He notes that religious studies -- a field that teaches about a

religion without preaching its beliefs -- is rare in India, making

academic discussions of Hinduism a mostly Western

conversation. " Under Western control, " he argues, " Hinduism studies

has produced ridiculous caricatures that could easily be turned into

a Bollywood movie or a TV serial. "

 

He cites, among others, two books for which Doniger wrote the

forewords: " Ganesa: Lord of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings " (Oxford

University Press, 1985), by Emory University interim religion

department chair Paul B. Courtright, and " Kali’s Child: The Mystical

and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna " (University

of Chicago Press, 1995), by Rice University religious studies chair

Jeffrey J. Kripal, PhD’93.

 

Malhotra also quotes Harvard South Asian studies chair Michael E. J.

Witzel, who has questioned Doniger’s Sanskrit translations and her

proclivity for finding sexual meanings in ancient texts. Doniger --

who was named Martin Marty Center director this year and whose

appointments span the Divinity School, the Department of South Asian

Languages & Civilizations, the Committees on the Ancient

Mediterranean World and Social Thought, and the College -- knows that

her work, including a retranslation of the " Kamasutra " (Oxford,

2002), can be controversial.

 

" If people think sexuality is a shameful thing, then it's

embarrassing for them to have the texts that talk about it

discussed, " she says. " A Sanskrit word can have ten different

meanings. A translator must choose, based on her knowledge of the

context. Choosing the sexual meaning, " she continues, " is not

incorrect if that is one of the attested meanings. It's a matter

of, 'Did the author mean that?' You can make a judgment, and another

person can argue and say you chose the wrong meaning. "

 

'I WOULD NEVER READ YOUR WORK!'

 

After Malhotra's essay hit the Web, Doniger received a dozen negative

e-mails. One person asked, " Were you raped as a child? Is that why

you write such things? " At first, she says, she responded. When a

critic argued, " Everything you've written about Hinduism is

incorrect. You must have bought your degree from Harvard, " she asked

to which books the protester was referring. " I would never read

anything you've written, " came the reply. At that point, she

thought, " That's it. This is not a serious discussion, " and she

stopped answering such messages and reading the online debates. After

last year’s egg incident she canceled a lecture in Bombay.

 

Emory's Courtright, meanwhile, faced harsher threats. His

book, " Ganesa " , received little attention outside academia when it

was first published in 1985. In it he uses several methods to

interpret the story of Ganesha, the god created by his mother, the

goddess Parvati, to guard the door while she bathed. When her

husband, Shiva, came home to a stranger blocking the way to his wife,

he beheaded Ganesha. Pavarti protested, so Shiva brought him back to

life and replaced his head with that of an elephant.

 

On page 103 of his book Courtright includes a psychoanalytic

interpretation -- " It would have been odd if I hadn’t done so, " he

said in a Divinity School lecture this past April -- noting the

story’s Oedipal theme of father-son confrontation and its alternative

conclusion of the son being wounded rather than the father. He

compares Ganesha, who is celibate in most versions, to a eunuch who

stands at a harem doorway. And previous scholars, Courtright writes,

have called Ganesha's broken tusk and his trunk phallic symbols.

 

" I was approaching this story, " he said, " as belonging to the public

domain, not just Hindus. " Some Hindus, however, didn't see it that

way. After " Ganesa " 's second edition in 2001 and Malhotra's essay in

2002, the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, Hindu Student Council

collected 7,000 signatures on an Internet petition asking for a

public apology, a recall of the book, and a new version changing

parts the group found offensive.

 

In India, where the conservative, recently defeated Bharatiya Janata

Party (BJP) was still in power, the book was withdrawn from

bookstores. Courtright received hate mail, including some

threats. " You will get what you deserve from Lord Ganesha, " one

read. " He should be tortured alive until he turns to ash, " went

another.

 

ANTI-HINDU SCHOLARSHIP?

 

This past February eight members of a local Hindu organization, the

Concerned Community of Atlanta, met with Emory College dean Robert

Paul, and other faculty. The group wanted the school to " reiterate

their feelings of insult, " classify his interpretations " as acts of

racial insensitivity, " have Courtright issue an apology, remove him

from teaching Hinduism courses, and " find Hindu scholars to teach

Hinduism. "

 

After the meeting Paul wrote a letter explaining that Courtright's

book was not meant " to offend or provoke but to explore hidden

connections. " He noted that using psychoanalysis was " widely

controversial but widely accepted as scholarly work of good faith. "

The group wrote back to say they weren’t satisfied, but the conflict

has faded a bit since then.

 

" These things have a shelf life, " Courtright says in a November

interview. " It’s moved on. "

 

Still, Malhotra and his cohorts are " building a general case that

American scholars of Hinduism are anti-Hindu, " he contends.

 

Recently on Malhotra's radar screen, Courtright notes, is David

White, University of California…quot;Santa Barbara religious studies

chair. White's book " Kiss of the Yogini: Tantric Sex in its South

Asian Contexts " (Chicago, 2003) -- as Malhotra argues in a May

Svabhinava.org entry -- contends that the Hindu tantra tradition " was

intended as South Asian decadent sexuality, without spiritual

purpose, and that this decadence was the result of sociological

suffering of Indian subaltern (lower castes) in classical times. "

 

On the same Web site White's former student Jeffrey S. Lidke counters

that the writer " does not reduce the origins of tantra to anything

other than the sphere of religion " and that rather than " decadent, "

tantric sex in White’s account " was a primary means by which yogins

and yoginis ultimately became immortal. "

 

Malhotra also argues that U.S. Hinduism scholars actively promote

each other’s work. " You scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours --

this seems to be the modus operandi of this cult of scholars, " he

writes.

 

To Courtright, though, the academic study of Hinduism " works like

anything else " : an author submits a book to a publisher, the

publisher sends the text to expert scholars for review, and " on the

basis of those opinions they'll make a decision on whether to publish

it. " The idea, he says, " that we all somehow get in a room and figure

out who we're going to publish and who we're going to screw over is

ridiculous. "

 

BANNING 'KALI'S CHILD'

 

While Courtright has answered critics in lectures and essays, Rice's

Kripal has gone further, writing a new introduction to " Kali's

Child " , fixing translation errors, publishing several essays

including a Sulekha.com response to " Wendy’s Child Syndrome, " and

setting up a Web site (www.ruf.rice.edu/~kalischi/) explaining his

side of the story.

 

In " Kali's Child " , which won the AAR's 1996 award for best first book

in the history of religions, he analyzes an original Bengali text to

glean new information about the 19th-century saint Ramakrishna, an

important figure in modern Hinduism known for experiencing ecstatic

states and visions and for inspiring the Ramakrishna Order. The title

refers to the goddess Kali, whom Ramakrishna saw in his visions.

Kripal translates one passage as saying that during his mystical

experiences Ramakrishna often placed his foot " 'in the lap' (kole) --

that is, on the genitals -- of a young boy disciple. "

 

Interpreting that line and others through the lenses of both

psychoanalysis and Hindu tantra, Kripal argues that the saint's

ecstasies were driven by " mystico-erotic energies that he neither

fully accepted nor understood. "

 

In fact, Kripal writes, the experiences were " profoundly,

provocatively, scandalously erotic, " and Ramakrishna harbored

unconscious " homoerotic " desires for " young, beautiful boys. "

 

Malhotra slams Kripal's " scandalous conclusions, " his command of

Bengali, and his psychological motivations. But he wasn't the first

to criticize the book. In January 1997 Calcutta's English-language

daily The Statesman published a full-page negative review, generating

a flurry of even angrier letters to the editor and further media

attention.

 

" It morphed into a ban movement. The central government got

involved, " and, he says, India’s Central Bureau of Investigation

started a file on him.

 

Two Ramakrishna Order reviewers pointed out translation errors…

quot;Swami

Atmajnanananda (born Stuart Elkman) in the International Journal of

Hindu Studies and Swami Tyagananda in a self-published and online

article. Kripal printed apologies and fixed the errors flagged in

time for the 1998 second edition. Mistakes found after the new

edition, he says, " are all minor and can be changed easily without

changing the thesis. " Several items criticized as errors, he

argues, " are issues of interpretation, not translation per se. "

 

In spring 2001 another ban movement germinated in India, this time

escalating beyond the papers and into the upper house of Parliament,

where it failed -- not because " Kali's Child " wasn't offensive,

according to newspaper accounts, but because " it would have given

undue publicity " to the book.

 

Then a letter-writing campaign tried to block his 2002 tenure at

Rice. And though many readers liked the book -- " I have received

hundreds of appreciative letters, some from spiritual leaders,

scholarly reviews that are extremely enthusiastic, and numerous

enthusiastic responses from Hindu readers " -…quot; Kripal has " pretty

much

spent the last eight years responding to these critics. "

 

A LEGITIMATE APPROACH

 

His response included another book, " Roads of Excess, Palaces of

Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism "

(Chicago, 2001), which is " one long argument that most mystical

traditions are homoerotic, " he says. There he applies " the same

methods of Kali's Child to Christian, Islamic, and Jewish mysticism,

to the lives of Western scholars, and to my own life and thought,

including my own experience of being psychoanalyzed. "

 

In other words, he argues, it isn’t only in Hinduism but in many

religions that Western scholars see hidden, often sexual, meanings.

 

Although academics frequently interpret religions through a sexual

lens (see, for example, Theodore W. Jennings Jr.'s " The Man Jesus

Loved: Homoerotic Narratives from the New Testament " [Pilgrim Press,

2003]), for some Hindus such scholarship has hit a sensitive chord.

 

Online writers complain that psychoanalysis has been discredited in

psychology, and applying it implies that Hindus are " sick. "

But " historians of religion are not doing therapy; they're

interpreting texts, " Kripal argues. " A model can be accurate and

therapeutically unhelpful " (though for him personally, he says,

psychoanalysis has been an effective therapy).

 

" People use psychoanalysis or Foucault because it's the most

sophisticated language we have in the West to talk about the

questions we have. " In " Kali's Child " , he says, he doesn't apply a

strict Freudian analysis but also interprets Ramakrishna's story

through the Hindu tantric tradition. " Both are languages, " he

says, " that turn to sexuality as the key to human religious

experience. "

 

Even so, many Jewish or Christian studies scholars were born into the

religion they study, giving them, as Barnard College religion

professor John Stratton Hawley puts it, " some sort of perceived right

to speak. That's not the case for people like us [Doniger, Kripal,

Courtright, himself] who have come to Hinduism only later in life. "

 

Hawley, who also has scuffled with Malhotra, acknowledges the need

for more Hindus in the field. " As a secular academic discipline,

religious studies scarcely exists in India, " he notes. " What theology

meant in the British academy was Christian studies. "

 

Hence India's educational landscape is different than in the United

States. Although students of Indian descent often take up history,

literature, anthropology, or the sciences, " that hasn't happened in

religion. It’s going to take a generation for people who are Hindu by

background to enter religious studies in large numbers. "

 

Meanwhile, Hawley says, " newly immigrant families have encouraged

sons and daughters to enter fields that seem more meaningful, more

mainstream " -- not to mention more lucrative. So while few Hindus

have gone into religious studies, " the injustice isn't caused by

someone like me, but by the long history of what has happened. We

train Hindus to enter the field alongside non-Hindus, and are very

eager to do so. It takes time for the numbers to even out on the

other side of the Ph.D. "

 

'WHITENESS STUDIES'

 

It's a problem Malhotra also laments. In " Wendy's Child Syndrome " he

notes that " a peculiar brand of 'secularism' has prevented academic

religious studies from entering [india’s] education system in a

serious manner. " Therefore, unlike other religions, he writes in an e-

mail interview, " there is a lack of Indic perspective that would

provide equivalent counter balance " to Western scholars' theories,

creating an " asymmetric discourse. "

 

Further, he says, most of the Hinduism scholars are " either whites or

Indians under the control of whites. One does not find Arabs,

Chinese, blacks, Hispanics, etc., engaged in this kind of Hinduphobia

racket. "

 

He's begun to research " whiteness studies, " which analyzes

the " anthropology of white culture and uncovers their myths. ... I am

researching issues such as white culture's Biblical-based homophobia,

deeply ingrained guilt of sex (Garden of Eden episode) and

condemnation of the body.

 

" I posit that many white scholars are driven into Hinduism studies by

their own private voyeurism or fantasy, or an attempted escape from

white culture's restrictions. This is what I earlier called Wendy's

Child Syndrome because my sample was a few of Doniger's students. But

now the sample is much larger .... "

 

The Indian/white, or insider/outsider, issue has been debated in both

academia and the Hindu community. In September 2002, Sankrant Sanu, a

former Microsoft manager and freelance writer, argued in a

Sulekha.com essay that Microsoft's online Encarta encyclopedia

article on Hinduism -- written by Doniger -- put forth " a

distinctively negative portrayal of Hinduism, " especially when

compared to the entries on Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

 

Sanu recommended that someone " emic " to the community rewrite the

Hinduism entry, as had been the case for the other religions.

Microsoft obliged, exchanging Doniger’s essay with one by Arvind

Sharma, a McGill University professor of comparative religion.

 

For Sharma, author of " Classical Hindu Thought: An Introduction "

(Oxford, 2000), the debate has shades of gray.

 

" Both the insider and the outsider see the truth, " he writes in an e-

mail interview, " but genuine understanding may be said to arise at

the point of their intersection. At this intersection one realizes

that the Shivalinga [the icon of the god Shiva] is considered a

phallic symbol by outsiders but rarely by Hindus themselves, or that

the Eucharist looks like a cannibalistic ritual to outsiders but not

to Christians. "

 

He continues, " If insiders and outsiders remain insulated they

develop illusions of intellectual sovereignty. Each is required to

call the other’s bluff. "

 

A FINE LINE

 

There's a fine line, some scholars say, between legitimate Hindu

concerns and the right-wing political wave that has recently hit

India.

 

Although Malhotra, for example, condemns the violence and threats, he

has acknowledged in a Washington Post article that the Hindu right

has appropriated his arguments. Just as he points to certain Western

academics -- arguing they perpetuate what he calls the " caste, cows,

curry, dowry " stereotypes -- in India, " the Hindu right has taken

education as an important field of political battle, " trying, for

instance, to install conservative textbooks in schools, says Vijay

Prashad, a Trinity College assistant professor of international

studies.

 

Malhotra's goal is to " rebrand India, " says Prashad, a self-described

Marxist who studied history and anthropology, not religious studies,

at Chicago, and who has debated Malhotra in online forums.

But " scholars, to me, are not in the business of branding. "

 

Malhotra and others " have created the idea that there is one Indic

thought, " Prashad says, but " there are so many schools of thought

within Hinduism. "

 

He does, however, agree with Malhotra about Western educational

institutions. " The U.S. academy is totally insular, " he says. " We

don’t engage the public often enough. "

 

Religious-studies professors, he argues, should write editorials and

otherwise engage the public as often as political scientists. " The

oxygen in public opinion is being sucked by people like Rajiv

[Malhotra]. He's the only one pressing so hard. He uses that silence

to say that people are arrogant and they don't have any answers. "

 

For Doniger it's a matter of considering multiple explanations. Both

Courtright and Kripal, she says, " applied psychoanalysis in a limited

way, and they found something that is worth thinking about. They said

this could be one of the things that's going on here, not the only

thing. "

 

She understands that Indians are sensitive to postcolonial threats to

their culture. " For many years Europeans wrote anything they wanted

and took anything they wanted from India, " she says. " Even now so

much of Indian culture is influenced by American political and

economic domination. And India is quite right to object to that. "

 

PROTO-FASCIST VIEWS

 

The protesters, however, have transferred that concern to an

intellectual level, arguing " that Western scholars have pushed out

Indian views the same way Coca-Cola has pushed out Indian products. "

 

But, she argues, " it's a false model to juxtapose intellectual goods

with economic ones. I don't feel I diminish Indian texts by writing

about or interpreting them. My books have a right to exist alongside

other books. "

 

Though Doniger often (but not always) focuses on sexuality, the

current protests derive from more than a Victorian sense of decorum,

says Prashad. The issue seeps deeper, he says, stemming from the

Hindu right's " proto-fascist views. "

 

Recent events demonstrate the lengths to which some nationalists have

taken their protests. This past January a group looted India’s

Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute because it was where James W.

Laine, Macalester College’s humanities dean, had researched his

book " Shivaji: Hindu King in Islamic India " (Oxford, 2003) -- which

suggests that the revered parents of Shivaji, a Hindu nationalist

icon, may have been estranged. A month earlier another group attacked

Indian historian Shrikant Bahulkar, tarring his face, because Laine

had thanked him in his acknowledgements.

 

Though such violence hasn't occurred in the United States, Western

scholars have felt the effects of India’s new politics. In her Hyde

Park home Doniger displays her Indian art collection -- colorful

tapestries, bronze sculptures including dozens of Ganeshas, and

paintings adorn every surface.

 

" A lot of these things you couldn’t buy in India now, " she says,

noting that some pieces she bought in the 1960s have become antiques,

which today India, like many countries, protects from exportation.

But unlike art, ideas don't get stopped at the border.

 

SOURCE: The University of Chicago Magazine, December 2004

URL: http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0412/features/index.shtml

 

, Janardana Dasa

<lightdweller wrote:

>

> Annoying. She really needs to put down that crack pipe and stop

trying to think SHE knows best how to solve the world's problems.

Another reputed academician, who is a Hindu basher on the sly in the

name of academic freedom. She and some of the others, always seem to

try to transpose their opinionated, shallow, lame, western, Freudian,

psychoanalytical/sexual constructs on age old Hindu theology.

>

> JANARDANA DAS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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