2. Washington Post Publishes Article on Disputes in Hindu Studies in America

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Hindu-American community can explore means of funding chairs in Hindu studies

and even entire institutes of Hindu studies.We reproduce the article in full

below:By Shankar VedantamWashington Post Staff WriterFolklore has it that

elephants never forget, and Paul Courtright has reason to believe it. A

professor of religion at Emory University, he immersed himself in the story of

Ganesha, the beloved Hindu god with the head of an elephant. Detecting

provocative Oedipal overtones in Ganesha's story -- and phallic symbolism in

his trunk -- he wrote a book setting out his theories in 1985.Nineteen years

later, thanks to an Internet campaign, the world has rediscovered Courtright's

book. After a scathing posting on a popular Indian Web site, he has received

threats from Hindu militants who want him dead."Gopal from Singapore said, 'The

professor bastard should be hanged,' " said Courtright, incredulous.

"A guy from Germany said, 'Wish this person was next to me, I would have shot

him in the head.' A man called Karodkar said, 'Kill the bastard. Whoever wrote

this should not be spared.' Someone wanted to throw me into the Indian

Ocean."Other academics writing about Hinduism have encountered similar

hostility, from tossed eggs to assaults to threats of extradition and

prosecution in India. The attacks against American scholars come as a powerful

movement called Hindutva has gained political power in India, where most of the

world's 828 million Hindus live. Its proponents assert that Hindus have long

been denigrated and that Western authors are imposing a Eurocentric world view

on a culture they do not understand. That argument resonates among many of the

roughly 1.4 million Hindus in North America as well.In November, Wendy Doniger,

a University of Chicago professor of the history of religion who

has written 20 books about India and Hinduism, had an egg flung at her by an

angry Hindu when she was lecturing in London. It missed. In January, a book

about the Hindu king Shivaji by Macalester College religious studies professor

James W. Laine provoked violent outbursts: One of Laine's collaborators in

India was assaulted, and a mob destroyed rare manuscripts at an institute in

India where Laine had done research. The Indian edition was recalled, and

India's prime minister warned Laine not to "play with our national pride."

Officials said they want to extradite the Minnesota author to stand trial for

defamation, and the controversy has become a campaign issue in upcoming

parliamentary elections.Doniger, a 63-year-old scholar at the center of many

controversies, is distressed to see her field come under the sway of what she

regards as zealots. "The argument," she said, "is being fueled by a

fanatical nationalism and Hindutva, which says no one has the right to make a

mistake, and no one who is not a Hindu has the right to speak about Hinduism at

all." U.S. Cradle of BacklashThe recent controversy began not in New Delhi but

in New Jersey.In an essay posted on a Web site called Sulekha.com, New Jersey

entrepreneur Rajiv Malhotra argued that Doniger and her students had eroticized

and denigrated Hinduism, which was part of the reason "the American mainstream

misunderstands India so pathologically."Malhotra criticized in particular a

book for which Doniger had written the foreword -- Courtright's "Ganesa: Lord

of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings." The book drew psychoanalytic inferences

about Ganesha, also known as Ganesa or Ganpathi, the son of the Hindu god Shiva

and his wife, Parvati.Malhotra's critique produced a swift and angry response

from thousands of Hindus. An Atlanta group

wrote to the president of Emory University asking that Courtright be fired."The

implication," said Courtright, "was this was a filthy book and I had no

business teaching anything." He said the quotes had been taken out of context

and ignored the uplifting lessons he had drawn from Ganesha's story.Salman

Akhtar, an Indian American psychoanalyst, said the disagreement sprang from

different worldviews. "Are religious stories facts or myths?" he asked. "Facts

cannot be interpreted. Stories can be interpreted."The book was withdrawn in

India, where the local edition's book jacket, which Courtright had neither seen

nor approved, depicted Ganesha as a child -- in the nude."It was very painful

reading," said T.R.N. Rao, a computer science professor at the University of

Louisiana at Lafayette who advises the university's branch of the Hindu Student

Council, a national group with Hindutva roots. "It makes Ganesha

a eunuch . . . It was very vulgar."Rao and the council started an Internet

petition against the book. Seven thousand people signed within a week -- and

among their comments were 60 threats of violence. The petition was swiftly

removed. "We condemn any threats to the author and the publisher," said Rao.

"We wanted to get the book corrected and replaced. . . . We are not asking for

banning the book. I am a professor and I know the value of academic

freedom."Insider vs. OutsiderCourtright was not the first to find Oedipal

overtones in the Ganesha story. But his book became a rallying point for devout

Hindus in the United States who say the academic study of their religion is

completely at odds with the way they experience their faith."For the past five

years, our field has been in turmoil," said Arvind Sharma, a professor of

comparative religion at McGill University in Montreal, who sides with the

critics even as he disavows the violence. "There may be a Hindutva connection in

what happened in India and the death threats and the person who threw the egg,

but there also is a Hindu response."Sharma was asked to write an essay on

Hinduism for Microsoft's Encarta encyclopedia to replace a previous essay

written by Doniger. The switch came after a Hindu activist, a former Microsoft

engineer named Sankrant Sanu, charged that Doniger's article perpetuated

misleading stereotypes and asked for a rewrite by an "insider." "For pretty

much all the religious traditions in America, most of the people studying it

are insiders," said Sanu. "They are people who are believers. This is true for

Judaism, Islam, Christianity and Buddhism. This is not true for Hinduism."In

January, fresh controversy along the same lines erupted over a book by

Macalester College's Laine, "Shivaji: A Hindu King in Islamic India," which

explored the life of a 17th-century icon of the Hindutva movement. After Laine

suggested in his book that Shivaji's parents may have been estranged -- an

assertion that upset Hindus who see them as nearly divine -- a history scholar

in India who had collaborated with Laine was roughed up and smeared with tar by

members of Shiv Sena, a Hindutva group. Another nationalist group called the

Sambhaji Brigade stormed the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in the city

of Pune, and destroyed priceless manuscripts. The reason? Laine had done

research there ."No one in Pune today will defend my book, not my friends, not

my colleagues, because they are fearful," Laine said. "Oxford University Press

pulled the book because they are fearful of physical violence. There will be a

chilling effect on what topics you choose to do."Many Indian scholars have

rushed to the defense of the American authors. They say the

controversy over the books is part of a larger pattern of political violence

against scholars in India. Doniger blames the Internet campaigns. "Malhotra's

ignorant writings have stirred up more passionate emotions in Internet

rs who know even less than Malhotra does, who do not read books at

all," Doniger wrote in an e-mail. "And these people have reacted with violence.

I therefore hold him indirectly responsible."Dwarakanath Rao (no relation to

T.R.N. Rao), a Hindu psychoanalyst in Ann Arbor, Mich., said Doniger had

written moving interpretations of Hindu texts that made them accessible for the

first time in North America. "I just do not hear disrespect," he said. "I hear

a woman who, frankly, is in love with India."India Inc.Malhotra said he began

his campaign after visiting African American scholars at Princeton University,

who told him that it had taken the civil rights

movement before black scholars were allowed into schools to tell their own

history. Hindus were only following in the footsteps of blacks, Jews and the

Irish, he said, likening his campaign to a consumer struggle: "It's no

different than Ralph Nader saying we need a consumer voice against General

Motors."Malhotra disavowed the violence -- he called the attackers "hooligans."

He said he has campaigned against the Hindutva agenda and opposed the Internet

petition against Courtright. "I know I am championed by the Hindu right but

there is nothing I can do about that," he said.Indeed, Malhotra's critique

seems to have less to do with religious nationalism than public relations.

Doniger and other academics are "an inbred, incestuous group that control a

vertically integrated industry," the former telecom entrepreneur said. Unlike

other critics' objections, Malhotra's is not that outsiders have written about

India

-- he has himself encouraged many Americans to study India -- but that the books

have harmed the image of what he calls "India Inc." "In America," he said,

"everything is negotiable -- you have to negotiate who you are and how they

think of you." Previously, Malhotra waged a campaign against CNN for coverage

that he charged was biased toward India's rival, Pakistan. A foundation he has

launched is dedicated to "upgrade the portrayal of India's civilization in the

American education system and media."This approach does not go down well within

the academy. "We are not in the business of marketing a nation state," said

Vijay Prashad, an international studies scholar at Trinity College in Hartford,

Conn., in a recent Internet debate with Malhotra. "That is the job of the

ambassador of India, not of a scholar."McGill's Sharma, a practicing Hindu,

countered that the academy had never been neutral, objective

ground. Trends in academia have always been governed by shifts in public

opinion: "The recalibration of a power equation is an untidy process."But if

the controversies are only about influence, Doniger said, there was little use

in discussing the merits of the various books, or her Encarta essay on

Hinduism. "It does not matter whether the article published under my name was

right or wrong," she said in an e-mail. "The only important thing about it was

that I wrote it and someone named Sharma did not." © 2004 The Washington Post

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