Professor Wendy Doniger is a controversial figure.
A towering personality in the field of Indology, Ms Doniger’s notoriety in academic circles stems from her insistence on translating, interpreting and comparing elements of Hindu mythology through contemporary lenses of gender, sexuality and identity. Much of the organized resistance to Ms Doniger flows from Rajeev Malhotra’s seminal analysis of the state of Indology studies in his essay ‘RISA Lila 1 – Wendy’s Child Syndrome’, published in Sulekha, in 2002. RISA stands for Religions In South Asia and is a unit within AAR, i.e., The American Academy of Religion, the official organization of academic scholars of Religious Studies in the Western world. Mr Malhotra forcefully argued that Hinduism studies in America are dominated by a cabal of academics led by Ms Doniger, suffers from deep set systemic biases, tends to psychoanalyze without context to present the ‘kinky’ side to Hinduism and worst of all, smacks of academic dishonesty in condemning academics who dare to differ from the strain of Hinduism being peddled by Ms Doniger and her cabal.
Predictably, Mr Malhotra’s essay kicked up a storm and the entire phalanx of academics who supported Mr Malhotra’s claims were dismissed as Hindutva sympathizers. On the positive, Encyclopedia Encarta recognized the validity of Sankrant Sanu’s exposure of systemic biases in Ms Doniger’s presentation of Hinduism and replaced her write up with a one by Prof Arvind Sharma. This apart, the development which could be said to be far more positive was a new found assertion of Indian Academics in analysis of writings on Hinduism, an effort which got ably reflected in the work ‘Invading the Sacred’ which conducted rigorous reviews of works by ‘Wendy’s children’ - Sarah Caldwell (Kali as the eroticized demon mother), Paul Courtright (Ganesh as a eunuch suffering from Oedipus complex), Jeffrey Kripal (Ramakrishna Paramhansa as a repressed homosexual) and the general inaccuracies in Hinduism research in American universities.
Of course, like any other good Samaritan, Ms Doniger was cloaked with the divine robe of a ‘martyr’ when an egg was hurled at her during one of her university talks, when the controversy was its peak. While the egg missed her, of course fortunately, this murderous assault on her person was sufficient for Ms Doniger to declare herself above debates completely!
With an impressive line up of memberships, awards and publications behind her, her opus ‘Hindus – An Alternative History’ was among the most awaited books in the field of religion in 2009. While I had formed an impression of Ms Doniger’s work through a perusal of her comments, interviews and nomenclature of her works like Asceticism and Eroticism in the Mythology of Siva (Oxford University Press, 1973), Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), Tales of Sex and Violence: Folklore, Sacrifice, and Danger in the Jaiminiya Brahmana (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), The Bedtrick: Tales of Sex and Masquerade. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, her translation of Kamasutra, among others, I certainly wanted to have a first hand experience of a book authored by Ms Doniger to check for myself if her notoriety is really deserved.
Let me first confess that my knowledge of our Vedas, Puranas and Epics is limited for I cannot even remotely claim to be a scholar. Secondly, I don’t know Sanskrit and my limited knowledge rests on translations and commentaries in Hindi and English alone. Hence, my appreciation or critique of Ms Doniger’s work solely rests on a logical analysis of patterns supported by my knowledge (even though limited) of our scriptures. Those interested in a scholarly review of her book are requested to read this, by Vishal Agarwal.
After going through the book in its entirety, I have no hesitation in accepting that Ms Doniger is a learned personality. At the same time, she is clearly driven by an agenda to present Hinduism as a decadent and oppressive religion without having any central theme at all. The problems with her ‘alternative’ history can be summarised in a few points. Since I neither have the inclination nor the means to go into a deep analysis, I will restrict myself to pointing out to a couple of errors under each ‘problem’. The broad deficit areas in this work are:
A towering personality in the field of Indology, Ms Doniger’s notoriety in academic circles stems from her insistence on translating, interpreting and comparing elements of Hindu mythology through contemporary lenses of gender, sexuality and identity. Much of the organized resistance to Ms Doniger flows from Rajeev Malhotra’s seminal analysis of the state of Indology studies in his essay ‘RISA Lila 1 – Wendy’s Child Syndrome’, published in Sulekha, in 2002. RISA stands for Religions In South Asia and is a unit within AAR, i.e., The American Academy of Religion, the official organization of academic scholars of Religious Studies in the Western world. Mr Malhotra forcefully argued that Hinduism studies in America are dominated by a cabal of academics led by Ms Doniger, suffers from deep set systemic biases, tends to psychoanalyze without context to present the ‘kinky’ side to Hinduism and worst of all, smacks of academic dishonesty in condemning academics who dare to differ from the strain of Hinduism being peddled by Ms Doniger and her cabal.
Predictably, Mr Malhotra’s essay kicked up a storm and the entire phalanx of academics who supported Mr Malhotra’s claims were dismissed as Hindutva sympathizers. On the positive, Encyclopedia Encarta recognized the validity of Sankrant Sanu’s exposure of systemic biases in Ms Doniger’s presentation of Hinduism and replaced her write up with a one by Prof Arvind Sharma. This apart, the development which could be said to be far more positive was a new found assertion of Indian Academics in analysis of writings on Hinduism, an effort which got ably reflected in the work ‘Invading the Sacred’ which conducted rigorous reviews of works by ‘Wendy’s children’ - Sarah Caldwell (Kali as the eroticized demon mother), Paul Courtright (Ganesh as a eunuch suffering from Oedipus complex), Jeffrey Kripal (Ramakrishna Paramhansa as a repressed homosexual) and the general inaccuracies in Hinduism research in American universities.
Of course, like any other good Samaritan, Ms Doniger was cloaked with the divine robe of a ‘martyr’ when an egg was hurled at her during one of her university talks, when the controversy was its peak. While the egg missed her, of course fortunately, this murderous assault on her person was sufficient for Ms Doniger to declare herself above debates completely!
With an impressive line up of memberships, awards and publications behind her, her opus ‘Hindus – An Alternative History’ was among the most awaited books in the field of religion in 2009. While I had formed an impression of Ms Doniger’s work through a perusal of her comments, interviews and nomenclature of her works like Asceticism and Eroticism in the Mythology of Siva (Oxford University Press, 1973), Women, Androgynes, and Other Mythical Beasts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), Tales of Sex and Violence: Folklore, Sacrifice, and Danger in the Jaiminiya Brahmana (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), The Bedtrick: Tales of Sex and Masquerade. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, her translation of Kamasutra, among others, I certainly wanted to have a first hand experience of a book authored by Ms Doniger to check for myself if her notoriety is really deserved.
Let me first confess that my knowledge of our Vedas, Puranas and Epics is limited for I cannot even remotely claim to be a scholar. Secondly, I don’t know Sanskrit and my limited knowledge rests on translations and commentaries in Hindi and English alone. Hence, my appreciation or critique of Ms Doniger’s work solely rests on a logical analysis of patterns supported by my knowledge (even though limited) of our scriptures. Those interested in a scholarly review of her book are requested to read this, by Vishal Agarwal.
After going through the book in its entirety, I have no hesitation in accepting that Ms Doniger is a learned personality. At the same time, she is clearly driven by an agenda to present Hinduism as a decadent and oppressive religion without having any central theme at all. The problems with her ‘alternative’ history can be summarised in a few points. Since I neither have the inclination nor the means to go into a deep analysis, I will restrict myself to pointing out to a couple of errors under each ‘problem’. The broad deficit areas in this work are:
- Tendency to provide the most sexualized interpretation to a word or an event: Too many to recount. A few interesting ones are with regards to the tale of Svetketu. Mahabharata holds that in ancient times, women were free to intercourse with anyone even after marriage. However, when a young Svetketu got to know of this ‘freedom’ after witnessing his mother going with another man, he bought about a change in established sexual mores and made fidelity a bedrock of marriage. So far so good. However, not content with this ‘license’, Ms Doniger makes the other man take away Svetketu’s mother ‘forcefully’ – all under the benign gaze of the husband and the son. Obviously, consensual sex is not as exciting as rape for Ms Doniger. In yet another instance, she mentions Rishi Kutsa, cohabiting with Indra’s wife – Shachi, taking advantage of his strong facial resemblance with Indra. Our scriptures content themselves with merely stating that Shachi mistook Kutsa for Indra once following which the Rishi shaved off his hair. The scriptures must be wrong. If Ms Doniger says that this sex by deception happened, it must have happened.
- Blanket assertions which are not necessarily based on facts: Too many to recount. Funnily, she does not even have an idea of the length of the Mahabharata. She claims it as comprising of 75000 verses, 'rounded off' to 1 lakh! Whoa! She quotes Arthashastra numerous times and then goes on to state that temples started getting constructed in India only in the late Gupta age. Wonder whether she missed the entire guidelines devoted to managing temples, priests and the offerings, as given in this 4th Century BC work of Chanakya. Almost an entire sub-chapter in her book is devoted in Rama’s suspicions on Lakshman’s repressed desires for Sita. Source? Her interpretations of what might have been going in their minds!
- Mutual contradictions: The book begins with quite a promise when she accepts Indological studies being wrongly interpreted on account of ‘false negatives’, i.e., absence of something somewhere does not necessarily mean that the thing is absent altogether. She accepts that while occasional beef consumption might have happened, cow slaughter was a social taboo right from the very early Vedic days. However, when commenting on the Hindutva movement, she approvingly quotes DN Jha and commends him for proving that the sacred cow is a recent myth. Likewise, she moves on to Ram Janmabhoomi and points to absence of any reference to the demolition of the temple in Goswami Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas and claims that this denotes that the demolition never happened. For that matter, Ramcharitmanas doesn’t mention Akbar or Surdas either. Surely, this means that both these characters are mythical and do not have any base in history?
- Exalting peripheral and contemporary works to the level of central mainstream works: Ms Doniger interprets the epics based on 20th century works. So, we have Nina Paley’s ‘Sita Sings the Blues’ being treated as a retelling of Ramayan, at par with Valmiki’s work. We have instances of works written as recent as those by Ashok Banker and Shashi Tharoor being quotes and analysed. An obscure work on Sita and Ram being siblings has been quoted so many times that one may be excused for believing that the mainstream belief of their being husband and wife belongs to the fringe
- Out of context interpretation of events: She compares the treatment of crow in both Ramayan and Ramcharitmanas and claims that on account of the positive impact of Buddhism in India, Ramcharitmanas shows Rama as being compassionate to that lowliest of creature, the crow, while the same Rama had blinded the crow in one eye in Ramayan. However, she fails to mention that the crow blinded in one eye was Jayant, the wayward son of Indra, who had pecked and clawed at Sita till she bled on the foot. While Ram shot an arrow which followed Jayant round the universe so that he be killed, the compassionate Sita intervened for his life and Rama spared him with the arrow only plucking out one eye. Most importantly, she fails to mention that this incident is presented in both Valimik’s and Tulsidas’s versions of Ramayana. The other crow is Kakbhushundi and is present primarily in Ramcharitmanas. He is the narrator of the tale and has been blessed by Rama. In another instance, she berates Rama and Lakshmana for disfiguring Shurpnakha for merely expressing her desire to have sex with them while the ‘progressive’ Bhima married Hidimba when she had expressed such desire. The points about Shurpnakha attacking Sita to kill her, Rama and Lakshmana sparing her life, their being self constrained by the vow of ‘Ek patni vrata’, of Hidimba desiring to be the wife of Bhima and Kunti’s and Yudhishthira’s blessing of the marriage are all of course minor irritants in the tale.
- Selective quotations: She quotes the lesser known Bhavishya Purana to show how Gautam Buddha was sought to be integrated in Hinduism as a demon, i.e., making people forget the Vedic religion so that the Brahmins can salvage their souls later. She of course makes no mention of the fact that 7 other Puranas –Vishnu Purana, Bhagavata Purana, Garuda Purana, Agni Purana, Narada Purana, Linga Purana and Padma Purana, besides works like Gita Govinda and Harivansa, speak of Budhha as a divine manifestation of Lord Vishnu. How different does it make her from JNU variety of historians who implant obscurity on Ayodhya on account of its absence of its mention (though Saket is mentioned) in the lesser known Vishnu Smriti when other texts Vishnu Purana, Shrimad Bhagvat Purana and numerous other works exalt Ayodhya as among the most sacred of pilgrimages?
- Political theme: Apart from finding sex of the kinky variety in every word in every work on Hinduism, the predominant concern of Ms Doniger seems to be centered around ensuring deepening fissures and divisions in the Hindu scoeity. Her insistence on projecting works as that of Brahmins, of Kshatriyas, of Shudras, of Dalits and of women, as belonging to mutually antagonistic schools leaves one deeply discomfited with her agenda. A perusal of her footnotes and indexes will reveal instances where she has quoted a single work numerous times but has given an impression of those being distinct works by different author. Eg – 'A Dalit woman writer states… ' The next line talks of another dalit woman commenting on the same topic and the footnotes reveal both the references from the same book by a single woman author! While she has liberally referred from the likes of Ms Romila Thapar, DN Jha, KN Pannikkar and other Marxists, she has missed out on works from Jadunath Sarkar, RK Mukherjee, scholars like Neelkanth Shastri or any other historian from the objective school. For that matter, she finds Col Todd’s works on Rajputs problematic for it presents the Muslim-Rajput wars as those in between the foreign barbaric invaders and the native invaded. Forget about distant history – she attributes Mahatma Gandhi as having uttered ‘Ram-Rahim’ as he was dying!
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