Wendy Doniger's The Hindus, an Alternative History

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I am forwarding this petition against Wendy Doniger's " The Hindus, an

Alternative History " . The petition points to a number of quite shocking errors

and distortions.

 

Vishal Agarwal

**********

 

http://www.petitiononline.com/dharma10/petition.html

 

This is an earnest request to you to sign the online petition and forward it to

your friends for signature.

 

 

The petition to the Penguin Group asks for an apology for the publication of the

factually incorrect and offensive book " The Hindus-An Alternative History " by

Wendy Doniger. We expect Penguin Group to withdraw the book immediately.

 

" The Hindus: An Alternative History " is rife with numerous errors in its

historical facts and Sanskrit translations. These errors and misrepresentations

are bound and perhaps intended to mislead students of Indian and Hindu history.

 

Throughout the book, Doniger analyzes revered Hindu Gods and Goddess using her

widely discredited psychosexual Freudian theories that modern, humanistic

psychology has deemed limiting. 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...

 

 

We 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.

 

As concerned readers, we ask PENGUIN GROUP to:

 

1. WITHDRAW all the copies of this book immediately from the worldwide

bookshops/markets/ Universities/Libraries and refrain from printing any other

edition.

 

 

2. APOLOGIZE for having published this book " The Hindus: An Alternative

History " . This book seriously and grossly misrepresents the Hindu reality as

known to the vast numbers of Hindus and to scholars of Hindu tradition. PENGUIN

must apologize for failure to observe proper pre-publication scrutiny and

scholarly review.