Rally against author of book on Hindu history

Dr Wendy Doniger

NEW YORK: Hindu groups held a demonstration March 10, in New York City against Dr. Wendy Doniger, Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago Divinity School who was to be honored by National Book Critics Circle for her book titled 'Hindus: An alternative History'.

The protest was organized by the United States Hindu Alliance (USHA), a national organization of Hindus dedicated to protecting the interests of Hindus worldwide and is opposed to any acts of racism, bigotry and intolerance.

USHA representatives say Dr. Doniger's book is not only factually incorrect and offensive but it is also rife with serious errors in its content and Sanskrit translations.

"Professor Doniger has been for decades masquerading as a scholar on Hindu Dharma. Hence it is necessary that we should expose her bogus scholarship and discredit her in the eyes of academia using objective and factual criteria," a USHA statement said.

USHA is garnering worldwide support for further actions against Dr. Doniger and supporters of her anti-Hindu agenda, including its publisher Penguin Books, the statement said.

Throughout the book, Doniger analyzes revered Hindu Gods and Goddess using her widely discredited psychosexual Freudian theories that modern, humanistic psychology has deemed limiting, the organization says. These interpretations are presented as hard facts and not as speculations. Doniger makes various faulty assumptions about the tradition in order to arrive at her particular spin. In the process, the beliefs, traditions and interpretations of practicing Hindus are simply ignored or bypassed without the unsuspecting reader knowing this to be the case. This kind of Western scholarship has been criticized as Orientalism and Eurocentrism. The non Judeo-Christian faith gets used to dish out voyeurism and the tradition gets eroticized.

The protesters point to several examples of factual errors as well as derogatory statements made in the book such as:

* It is claimed that the entire Harappan culture had a population of 40,000 (Page 67), when in fact the estimated population of the entire culture is around 500,000.

* The book wrongly states that the Hindus had only a triad of passions (Page 206). Fact is
Hindu scriptures list six main evils and the concept of shadripus (six internal enemies).

* It is claimed that Emperor Ala-ud-Din Khalji did not sack temples in Devagiri (Page 450). Fact is his contemporary Amir Khusro clearly mentions that the Emperor sacked numerous temples and raised mosques instead.

* The Sikh teacher Guru Govind Singh was assassinated in 1708, while 'attending Emperor Aurangzeb'. Emperor Aurangzeb died in 1707 (Page 537).

Guru Gobind Singh was assassinated in 1708 during the reign of Aurangzeb's successor, Emperor Bahadur Shah I. It is insulting to say that the Guru was 'attending' on the Emperor.

* The book claims that Mirabai lived from 1498-1597 (Page 550), and then on page 568, the author claims that Mirabai lived from 1450-1525!

Fact is both dates are wrong and the commonly accepted dates are 1498-1547.

The Hindu groups further says that clumsily written, each chapter of Doniger's book is a shocking and appalling series of anecdotes which denigrate, distort and misrepresent Hinduism and the history of India and Hindus. Doniger uses selective quotations from obscure and non-original, peripheral and ignorant references with a bizarre emphasis on sexuality and eroticism, they say.

One such example shows that (on page 40) the author says: If the motto of Watergate was 'Follow the money', the motto of the history of Hinduism could well be 'Follow the monkey' or, more often 'Follow the horse'.

The author alleges that in Rigveda 10.62, it is implied that a woman may find her own brother in her bed. It likens the Vedic devotee worshipping different Vedic deities to a lying and a philandering boyfriend cheating on his girlfriend(s).

Referring to King Dasharatha I the Ramayana, Doniger says: Dhasharatha's son is certainly 'lustful'... Rama knows all too well what people said about Dasharatha; when Lakshmana learns that Rama has been exiled, he says, 'The king is perverse, old, and addicted to sex, driven by lust.

In yet another chapter, Doniger says: The mosque, whose serene calligraphic and geometric contrasts with the perpetual motion of the figures depicted on the temple, makes a stand against the chaos of India, creating enforced vacuums that India cannot rush into with all its monkeys and peoples and colors and the smells of the bazaar.

By her own admission in the book, Doniger has no credentials as a historian and the title of the book is misleading as the book is not on the 'History' nor an 'Alternative History' of India. This shows that the author is not an authority on the subject as she is not able to understand the deep meaning of Sanskrit verses or Indian concepts.

The Hindu groups emphasize that this defamatory book misinforms readers about the history of Hindu civilization, its cultures and traditions. "The book promotes prejudices and biases against Hindus. Can Penguin's editors really be incompetent enough to have allowed this to pass to publication? If this is not deliberate malice, Penguin must act now in good faith," they say.