USA, August 1, 2007: (HPI note: following is a review by Dr. V. V. of “Invading the sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America,” edited by Krishnan Ramaswamy, Antonio de Nicolas, Aditi Banerjee, Rupa & Co. New Delhi, India. 2007.)
Roots of the book: Like the multiplicity of the authors who have contributed to this volume, many factors have converged to create this book. These include a growing dissatisfaction with Western images of the non-West, the application of inappropriate methodology for understanding traditional world views, and the continued hegemony of the West even in matters that don’t concern it, such as what Hindus think about their Puranas. Already in the first decades of the twentieth century, many Indian thinkers declared that Indic culture cannot be subjected to, much less analyzed, through the blurred lens of Western rationality. Indeed, it may be said more generally that scientific probing and cold rationality can never grasp the full significance of any living tradition.
The primary catalyst for this book is Rajiv Malhotra, a thinker, scholar, idealist, and activist, besides having been a highly successful entrepreneur more than a decade ago. He is a thinker in that he reflects deeply on important issues, a scholar in that he is widely read in history and current cultural debates, an idealist in wanting to see a world where all cultures and civilizations receive equal and fair treatment; and an activist in that he has been participating in conferences, organizing meetings, giving lectures, writing provocative essays, and funding projects, all with one goal in mind: To correct what many people perceive as distortions and misrepresentations of the Hindu world and of Indic traditions in North America. In a single decade he has achieved more in this endeavor than many authors who are read and appreciated by countless people.
The book’s relevance and thesis: No matter how one reacts to it – and it is bound to touch large numbers of people, lay and scholarly – this book is likely to become a landmark in the history of India-related studies. It dissects a number of cases in which scholarly commentaries on aspects of Hindu thought, lore, and religion have been incorrect and offensive. It focuses primarily on the writings of six authors (of whom I will mention but three), and it argues that their callous misrepresentations are systemic to Eurocentric commentaries on other cultures.
The book is a strong and considered response to Western Freudian scholarship on Hinduism, which, the authors contend, has missed the mark altogether. Essentially the thesis is this: Obsessed by the Freudian approach to life and literature, some American scholars have transformed Puranic mythopoesis (literally, “myth making”) into pure pornography, examined a highly revered spiritual personage’s life in homo-erotic terms, and desecrated the lofty vision of a time-honored Hindu deity by reducing it to sexual allegory.
Aside from deliberately sinister analyses of scriptures, saints and symbols, the journalistic portrayal of Indic culture has generally been in terms of cows and castes, superstitions and satis, daughters-in-law and dowries, monkeys and masalas. A growing number of English-reading Hindus in the West are not willing to tolerate such selective sketches of a dynamic civilization to which they are heirs. Such writings have pushed many Hindus in America beyond what Eric Sharpe called the response threshold. Put differently, that’s when the target group says, “Enough is enough!”
The chapters in the book are by different authors. They examine the questionable, and to Hindus also objectionable, theses based on gross psychoanalytic interpretations. The chapters are replete with examples of unwarranted extrapolations, distorted interpretations, and ridiculous caricatures. Such writings may be okay for Western specialists who examine Hinduism like entomologists dissecting bees and grasshoppers. But they are confusing and misleading, distorted and dangerous.
For the balance of the review, and more information on the book, click URL above.