Saturday, February 05, 2005
Wendy Doniger
[From Sepia Mutiny] Further to my previous post on Hindutva : The New York Times writes on Wendy Doniger's latest book "The Woman Who Pretended to Be Who She Was" :
In India things have become even more serious. Hindutva, a form of Hindu orthodoxy, was enshrined during the Bharatiya Janata Party's reign (from 1998 until this May). But even with that party's fall from power, violence from Hindu groups has grown along with violence from radical Muslims. Scholarship about Hinduism has also come under scrutiny. Books that explore lurid or embarrassing details about deities or saints have been banned. One Western scholar's Indian researcher was smeared with tar, and the institute in Pune where the scholar had done his research was destroyed. Ms. Doniger said one of her American pupils who was studying Christianity in India had her work disrupted and was being relentlessly followed.
In an interview Ms. Doniger explained that this kind of fundamentalism was not new to Hinduism: the strain has run through the religion for centuries, but now it has a political cast. In May, she addressed some of these issues in The Times Literary Supplement, reviewing "Kiss of the Yogini," a book by David Gordon White about the origins of tantric sex. Mr. White argues that Tantra's origins were in a South Asian sexual cult that required the consumption of all manner of bodily emissions, a hypothesis that Ms. Doniger found plausible, if overstated. But, she pointed out, the book also had "political importance" because it was "flying in the face" of a revisionist Hindu tradition that had led to intemperate attacks on European and American scholars.
A couple of comments. One, there seems to be this obsession surrounding the sexual aspect of Hinduism. Speaking for the Indian epics at least, it is clear that their approach to sexuality is a merely an aspect of their holistic approach, and that they approach sex as a natural part of human behavior.
Two, it is certainly possible to have symbolic interpretations of Hinduism, but it is also important not to confine oneselves only with symbolic interpretations. The Mahabharata has been interpreted to represent "the connection and conflict between the different systems of Hindu Philosophy and Religion". A different scholar interpreted the Pandavas in the Mahabharata to symbolically represent the seasons, and Draupadi to represent the earth. But it is hard to argue that the epic is merely an allegory about the seasons. It is not clear why any one (or any set of people) would bother to write an expansive work such as the Mahabharata merely as a representation of the seasons. I think people are not served by viewing the Indian classics, or Hinduism, merely in terms of their symbolic aspects.
Manish rightly points out that among the Hindus, 'there’s also a sense of disenfranchisement over the scholarship of their own religion'. Part of this is Hindus trying to contribute their own understanding of their religion to the debate. As Manish puts it: 'It’s as if the religious studies field had decided that Jesus was gay, and those affirming his straightness were denied an academic microphone entirely.'
Sulekha.com ran an article on Wendy Doniger a little back, which talks about
Doniger's scholarship in perspective.
All these points contribute to one great function of Doniger's writing and teaching. She has helped to disseminate a complex, subtle view of Hinduism in the English-speaking world. She has provided an alternative to the two strains of colonialist Orientalism -- the denigrating strain that sees Indic traditions as degraded, and the romanticizing strain that sees Indic traditions as a source of pure spiritual light. Avoiding these tendencies is no easy matter. Anti-Hindu fanatics see any positive reference to Hinduism as a capitulation to its worst aspects. Hindu nationalists see any criticism as a sign of racism. Doniger has bravely tried to see Indic traditions as human, as manifestations of psychology and culture, like any other tradition. In short, she has tried to avoid the dichotomous options offered by colonialism.
I recently read Prof. Alf Hiltebeitel's book Rethinking the Mahabharata. The book steers away from offensive terminology, while remaining remarkably scholarly and insightful. We need more of these.
In India things have become even more serious. Hindutva, a form of Hindu orthodoxy, was enshrined during the Bharatiya Janata Party's reign (from 1998 until this May). But even with that party's fall from power, violence from Hindu groups has grown along with violence from radical Muslims. Scholarship about Hinduism has also come under scrutiny. Books that explore lurid or embarrassing details about deities or saints have been banned. One Western scholar's Indian researcher was smeared with tar, and the institute in Pune where the scholar had done his research was destroyed. Ms. Doniger said one of her American pupils who was studying Christianity in India had her work disrupted and was being relentlessly followed.
In an interview Ms. Doniger explained that this kind of fundamentalism was not new to Hinduism: the strain has run through the religion for centuries, but now it has a political cast. In May, she addressed some of these issues in The Times Literary Supplement, reviewing "Kiss of the Yogini," a book by David Gordon White about the origins of tantric sex. Mr. White argues that Tantra's origins were in a South Asian sexual cult that required the consumption of all manner of bodily emissions, a hypothesis that Ms. Doniger found plausible, if overstated. But, she pointed out, the book also had "political importance" because it was "flying in the face" of a revisionist Hindu tradition that had led to intemperate attacks on European and American scholars.
A couple of comments. One, there seems to be this obsession surrounding the sexual aspect of Hinduism. Speaking for the Indian epics at least, it is clear that their approach to sexuality is a merely an aspect of their holistic approach, and that they approach sex as a natural part of human behavior.
Two, it is certainly possible to have symbolic interpretations of Hinduism, but it is also important not to confine oneselves only with symbolic interpretations. The Mahabharata has been interpreted to represent "the connection and conflict between the different systems of Hindu Philosophy and Religion". A different scholar interpreted the Pandavas in the Mahabharata to symbolically represent the seasons, and Draupadi to represent the earth. But it is hard to argue that the epic is merely an allegory about the seasons. It is not clear why any one (or any set of people) would bother to write an expansive work such as the Mahabharata merely as a representation of the seasons. I think people are not served by viewing the Indian classics, or Hinduism, merely in terms of their symbolic aspects.
Manish rightly points out that among the Hindus, 'there’s also a sense of disenfranchisement over the scholarship of their own religion'. Part of this is Hindus trying to contribute their own understanding of their religion to the debate. As Manish puts it: 'It’s as if the religious studies field had decided that Jesus was gay, and those affirming his straightness were denied an academic microphone entirely.'
Sulekha.com ran an article on Wendy Doniger a little back, which talks about
Doniger's scholarship in perspective.
All these points contribute to one great function of Doniger's writing and teaching. She has helped to disseminate a complex, subtle view of Hinduism in the English-speaking world. She has provided an alternative to the two strains of colonialist Orientalism -- the denigrating strain that sees Indic traditions as degraded, and the romanticizing strain that sees Indic traditions as a source of pure spiritual light. Avoiding these tendencies is no easy matter. Anti-Hindu fanatics see any positive reference to Hinduism as a capitulation to its worst aspects. Hindu nationalists see any criticism as a sign of racism. Doniger has bravely tried to see Indic traditions as human, as manifestations of psychology and culture, like any other tradition. In short, she has tried to avoid the dichotomous options offered by colonialism.
I recently read Prof. Alf Hiltebeitel's book Rethinking the Mahabharata. The book steers away from offensive terminology, while remaining remarkably scholarly and insightful. We need more of these.
