Showing posts with label Balagangadhara. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Balagangadhara. Show all posts

Dharma is NOT the same as paganism

April 2014

In this post Rajiv explains how there is a common fallacy among people to equate Dharma with paganism and how it's very dangerous to do this since it becomes a step towards digestion into Western Universalism through first, digestion into paganism. A related topic where the holy spirit is equated to Shakti or Kundalini and how that is a complete misrepresentation can be read here.

Rajiv deals with fundamental differences between Dharma and Western Universalism in his seminal work Being Different. The book site can be accessed here and to join the discussion exclusively on the ideas contained in Being Different, please join this group.

A conversation with a fellow traveller on a flight to Delhi prompted Rajiv to clarify things through this post. He says:

The 10-hour brainstorm with someone sitting next to me in the flight to Delhi was interesting. This was a well-informed individual, yet not closed minded or fixated. So I became interested in explaining many things that he was keen on understanding. It became clear to me that too many Indian postcolonialists as well as Hindu thinkers are mixed up on the relationship between dharma and paganism.
Just because two entities each differ from something X, it does not follow that both entities are the same
​. An orange and mango each differ from a banana but it does not mean that mango = orange. This is the simple error with huge consequences that many thinkers make when they assume that since paganism and dharma each share the following characteristics of difference with christianity:
  1. They got colonized and harmed by Christianity
  2. They differ from christianity because they allow pluralism of deities, no central institutional authority
  3. They differ from christianity because they did not seek to expand through evangelism.etc
  4. They differ from christianity because they did not limit God to male form.
  5. etc.
That therefore dharma = paganism.
This is devastating for dharma as it has the effect of digesting dharma into paganism.
Indeed many western digesters make the argument that same/similar ideas to dharma already existed in the Greco-Roman pre-christian faiths. This trick makes them digest dharma into the pre-Christian phase of Europe, which got later superseded by Christianity. So whatever dharma teaches them can be repackaged as part of early Europe before christianity.
In other words, many good cop western scholars equate dharma = pre-Christian Greco-Roman paganism and praise it profusely. Hindus foolishly celebrate this and thank them with rewards.
A good example of this error by a Hindu thinker is made by S.N. Balagangadhara, a  postcolonialist, whose main research has been on how "religio" (traditions of Greco-Roman pagans) got digested into "religion" (Christianity), and the former got wiped out. So far so good. (This is well known to historians of Christianity anyway.)
But the blunder comes when he assumes dharma =  paganism without even bothering to argue this. It is unconsciously applied. The result is that his decolonizing thesis is from a pagan perspective and not a dharma one. (All postcolonialists are not the same as they argue against western colonialism from different vantage points; for instance there are many Muslim postcolonialsits, Marxist postcolonialists, etc.)
He does not establish a dharma-specific framework, one that differs from both paganism and christianity.
Some key ingredients of dharma not found in paganism or at least not as developed in an integral manner are:
  1. Rishis: The notion that rishis achieved the unity consciousness potential available to all of us and this was the empirical method of attaining ultimate knowledge. There are no pagan rishis in this proper sense, not just the term but the meaning.
  2. Yoga: 1 is the result of a lack of yoga as systematic technologies for humans to attain higher states of consciousness.
  3. Tantra: In paganism there is a lack of cohesive, comprehensive techniques married to theories of antah-karan/adhyatma-vidya, etc
Paganism never had a fully worked out metaphysics with the sweeping scope of dharma. In fact dharma has several such systems each far more sophisticated than anything paganism offers.
What is common among all "native faiths" including paganism, dharma, etc. needs to be celebrated; and there are important alliances needed to contain Christian and Islamic expansionism.
But be clear on whats different in dharma, what I have called non-negotiable. Do not slip into becoming digested into paganism. That is just another stomach leading to Western Universalism - in BD I point out the unresolved inner schisms in WU and hence why it is synthetic


Balagangadhara on the biblical underpinnings of 'secular' social sciences - chapter 12

Go to Chapter 11

Pdf of the book is available for free download here.

Soon after RISA Lila-1 appeared, Prof. Balagangadhara, from the Department of the Comparative Science of Cultures in Ghent University, Belgium, posted extensive comments on the Sulekha website. Thus began his prominent role as a key scholar in this debate ever since. Below are excerpts from his remarks made in three parts spread over a few days.

To Rajiv Malhotra and all other seekers, by S.N. Balagangadhara

Deservedly, Rajiv’s article has appalled the readers: horror, indignation, anger and bewilderment at the RISA ‘lila’ . . . I want to raise three issues: (a) how to analyze what Rajiv portrays; (b) depending on that, what an adequate response consists of. Before we do either (this is one
of the things I have discovered through my own research during the last two decades), we need to be clear about (c) how we ‘should not’ analyze the situation that Rajiv has sketched. Given that all three (in their general form) have been my obsessions, I have been reflecting on them deeply, seriously and systematically for some time now. I would like to share some of the results of this reflection with you.

Perhaps, it is best to begin in an autobiographical mode. I came to (continental) Europe some 25 years ago, naively thinking that ‘cultural difference’ is something that ‘cosmopolitan’ Indians would not experience: after all, I had studied Natural Sciences in India; knew English rather well; was more familiar with the British and European history than I was with that of India; felt right at home with the Western philosophy … It took me about four years of living in Europe, without relating to any Indian (or even Asian) community because I did not want to land up in an emotional and social ghetto, to realize that I was wrong: ‘cultural differences’ were no fictitious invention of anthropologists; it involved more than being a vegetarian or being barefoot at home when the weather was not too cold. This realization was instrumental in shaping my research project: what makes the Indian culture different from that of the West? Of course, the first fields I went into were Indology and Anthropology. Pretty soon I discovered that neither was of any use. Not only did they fail to provide me with any insights, but they also succeeded in merely enraging me: the kind of rage you feel when you read the analyses of Wendy Doniger or Kripal.

Indology is full of ‘insights’ like those you have read in Rajiv’s article. What has varied over time is the intellectual jargon that clothes these ‘analyses’. (For more on this, please read page 124, chapter 12)

My initial reactions to these discoveries [discussed in preceding paragraphs] parallel the response of many a post on this e-board: horror, rage and a conviction that ‘racism’ is inherent in these writings. Pretty soon, this conviction about ‘racism’ of European authors gave way to doubts: Is it possible to convict all European authors of racism? Are we to assume that, in the last 400
years or so, all writers who wrote on India were racists? If yes, how to understand the powerful impact these writers and their theories have had on the Indian authors and Indian social sciences? If no, why did they say pretty similar things? Is one to say that the ‘respected’ Indian social scientists are no better than brown sahibs? Is Indian social science merely a disguised variant of Indology? So on and so forth.

Today, many of us are familiar with Edward Said and his book ‘Orientalism’. In his wake, many buzzwords like ‘essentialism’, ‘Eurocentrism’ (though interesting, Blaut is not theoretically well equipped), ‘Orientalist discourse’, the ‘us-them dichotomy’ etc. whiz around. I would be the last to detract from the merits of Said’s book: he was one of the earliest writers to have drawn attention to the systematic nature of the Western way of talking about the Orient. Despite this, the concept ‘Orientalism’ is totally inadequate to analyze the situation underlying RISA lila. Surely, the question is: ‘Why is the West Orientalist?’ Said’s plea ends up denying any possibility of understanding cultural differences or indeed why Orientalism came into being, or what sustains it. (For more on this, please read page 125, chapter 12)

What I am saying is that one should not think that Rajiv paints a ‘racist’, or ‘orientalist’ or a ‘eurocentric’ picture. These words obfuscate the deeper issue, one which is more insidious than any of the above three. It might or might not be the case that Wendy and her children are ‘racist’; ditto about their ‘eurocentrism’ or ‘orientalism’. But when you realize that they are not saying anything that has not been said in the last three hundred years (despite their fancy jargon), the question becomes: ‘why does the western culture systematically portray India in these terms?’

To say that Western culture is, in toto, racist or ‘eurocentric’ is to say pretty little: even assuming, counterfactually, that the Western culture is all these things (and that all the Westerners are ‘racist’, etc), why do these attitudes persist, reproduce themselves and infect the Indians? There is a weightier reason not to tread this path. In fact, it has been a typical characteristic of Western writings on other cultures (including India) to characterize the latter using terms that are only appropriate to describe individual psychologies: X culture is stupid, degenerate, and irrational; Y culture is childish, immature, intuitive, feminine, etc. To simply repeat these mantras after them is to achieve very little understanding.

Rajiv says repeatedly that these writings ‘deny agency to the Indian subjects’. I am familiar with this phrase through ‘post-colonial’ writings. This too is a mantra like many of them, without having the desired effect. And why is that? It might appear to make sense if we merely restrict ourselves to Wendy and her Children’s analyses of Ganesha, Shiva or Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. However, it loses all plausibility when we realize that, for instance, social sciences use one and the same ‘epistemology’ to analyze both the West and India and that despite this, their claims about India reproduce the ‘Indological truths.’ (For more on this, please read page 126, chapter 12)

In a way, you could say, we need to do to the West what it has done to us, namely, study it
anthropologically. But how to go about doing this and not simply reproduce what generations of thinkers (from the West) have already said about the West?

It is amusing to use Freud to analyze their Freudian analyses of Indian religions; or use Patanjali’s Chakras to typify their personalities. But at the end of the day, we are still left with the task of studying and understanding why the Western culture talks about us the way it does. Let me just say this: our problems do not either begin or end in religious studies or Indology. They are deeper. Much, much deeper. To tackle RISA lila as a separate phenomenon, i.e., to focus either on Wendy or her ‘parampara’ alone, would be to compound tragedy with conceptual blunder. Not only that. It would prevent us from understanding RISA lila for what it is: a phenomenon that is typical of the Western culture.

In the [above] . . . I drew attention to the fact that Wendy and her Children draw from the existing social sciences, while contributing at the same time to their further ‘development’. In this post, I will elaborate what this statement means, what it implies, and what it says about the ‘Western culture’

1. Not many would challenge the claim that Christianity has been highly influential in the development of the Western culture. We need to take this statement utterly seriously. It means that many things we ‘take for granted’, whether in the West or in India, come from the influence that Christianity has exerted. I claim that Christianity expands in two ways. (This is not just typical of Christianity but of all religions. I will talk only of Christianity because I want to talk about the Western culture.) Both of these have been present ever since the inception of Christianity and have mutually reinforced each other. The first is familiar to all of us: ‘direct conversion.’ People from other cultures and ‘religions’ are explicitly converted to Christianity and thus the community of Christian believers grows.

2. Funnily enough, the second way in which Christianity expands is also familiar to us: the process of secularization. I claim that Christianity ‘secularizes’ itself in the form of, as it were, ‘de-de-Christianized Christianity’. What this word means is: typically Christian doctrines spread wide and deep (beyond the confines of the community of Christian believers) in the society dressed up in ‘secular’ (that is, not in recognizably ‘Christian’) clothes. We need a very small bit of Western history here in order to understand this point better.

Usually, the ‘enlightenment period’, which is identified as ‘the Age of Reason’, is alleged to be the apotheosis (or the ‘high point’) of the process of ‘secularization’: the enlightenment thinkers are supposed to have successfully ‘fought’ against the dominance that religion (i.e. Christianity) had until then exercised over social, political, and economic life. From then on, so goes the standard textbook story, human kind began to look to ‘reason’ instead of, say, the Church in all matters social, civic, political etc. The spirit of scientific thinking, which dominated that age, has continued to gain ascendancy. As heirs to this period, which put a definitive end to all forms of ‘irrational’ subservience, we are proud citizens of the modern day world. We are against all forms of despotism and we are believers in democracy; we believe in the role of reason in social life; we recognize the value of human rights; and we should understand that ‘religion’ is not a matter for state intervention, but a ‘private’ and personal affair of the individual in question. This, as I say, is the standard textbook story.

4. The problem with this story is simply this: the enlightenment thinkers have built their formidable reputation (as opponents of ‘all organized religion’ or even ‘religion’ tout court) by ‘selling’ ideas from Protestant Christianity as though they were ‘neutral’ and ‘rational’. Take for example the claim that ‘religion’ is not a matter for state intervention and that it is a ‘private’ affair of the individual in question. (Indian ‘secularists’ agitatedly jump up and down to ‘defend’ this idea.) Who thought, do you think, that ‘religion’ was not a ‘private’ affair? The Catholic Church, of course. The Protestants [on the other hand] fought a battle with the Catholics on ‘theological’ grounds: they argued that ‘being a Christian believer’ (or what the Christian believes in) is matter between the Maker (i.e. God) and the Individual. It was ‘God’ (i.e. the Christian God), who judged man; and men ‘could not’ judge each other in matters of Christian faith. The Church, they argued, could not mediate between Man and God (according to their interpretation of the Bible); (For more on this, please read page 129, chapter 12)

5. The same story applies with respect to what is enshrined in the UN charter. The doctrine of Human Rights (as we know them today) arose in the Middle Ages, when the Franciscans and the Dominicans fought each other. (Both are religious orders within the Catholic Church.) All theories of human rights we know today were elaborated in this struggle that continued nearly for two hundred years. These were ‘theological’ debates, to understand which one
needs to understand Christian theology.

6. I am not merely making the point that these ideas had their origin in religious contexts. My point is much more than that: I claim that ‘we cannot accept these theories without, at the same time, accepting Christian theology as true.’ What the Western thinkers have done over the centuries (the Enlightenment period is the best known for being the ‘high point’ of this process) is to ‘dress up’ Christian theological ideas (I am blurring the distinction between the divisions within Christianity) in a secular mantle. Not just this or that isolated idea, but theological theories themselves.

7. I am not in the least suggesting that this is some kind of a ‘conspiracy’. I am merely explicating what I mean when I say that Christianity spreads also through the process of ‘secularization’. What has been secularized are whole sets of ideas about Man and Society which I call ‘Biblical themes’. They are Biblical themes because to accept them is to accept the truth of the Bible. Most of our so-called ‘social sciences’ assume the truth of these Biblical themes.

8. I know this sounds unbelievable; but I have started to prove them. I have already shown, for example, that the so-called religious studies presuppose the truth of Christian theology. That is why, when they study the so-called ‘religions’ from other cultures, their results do not fundamentally differ from a theological treatment of the same religions. (For more on this, please read page 130, chapter 12)

9. To begin appreciating the plausibility (if not the truth) of my claim, ask yourselves the following question: why are the so-called ‘social sciences’ different from the natural sciences? I mean to say, why have the social sciences not developed the way natural sciences have? Comparatively speaking, it is not as though the social sciences are starved of funding or personnel. Despite all this, the social sciences are not progressing. Why is this? I put to you that this is what has happened. Most of our so-called social sciences are not ‘sciences’ in any sense of the term: they are merely bad Christian theologies.

10. If this is true, it also helps us understand why both ‘conversion’ and the notion of ‘secularism’ jars Indian sensibilities. Somehow or the other, Nehruvian ‘secularism’ always connotes a denigration of Indian traditions; if you look at the debates in the EPW and SEMINAR and journals like that, one thing is very clear: none of the participants really understands what ‘secularism’ means. In India, ‘secularism’ is counter posed to ‘communalism’ whereas ‘the
secular’, in European languages, has only one contrast—‘the sacred’.

11. To summarize what I have said so far. Christianity spreads in two ways: through conversion and through secularization. The modern day social sciences embody the assumptions of Christian theology, albeit in a ‘secularized’ form. That is why when Wendy and her Children draw upon the resources of the existing social sciences, they are drawing upon Christian theology. In this Christian theology, we are worshippers of the Devil. Our gods are demons (followers of the devil). As such, amongst other things, they are perverts: sexually, morally and intellectually.

This is the insidious process I talked about: the process of secularization of Christian ideas. Let the ‘simplistic’ presentation not lead you to think that the ideas I am proposing are ‘simplistic’. They are not.

Read entire chapter 12 from page 123 to 131

Pdf of the book is available for free download here.


Go to chapter 13

An overview of the voices which rose in criticism of such writings on Hinduism - chapter 11

Go to Chapter 10

Pdf of the book is available for free download here.

Every inbred organization defends its integrity by citing its so-called ‘independent’ reviews. But the standard definition of ‘independent’, as used in business and law, would fail to qualify RISA scholars as being truly independent. Criticism that is controlled and licensed by those who are to be criticized is not entirely legitimate. The denial of agency to Indians who are outside the academy’s controls and supervision continues to provide cover to hide questionable practices. Truly independent critics such as those featured in this section become targets of the establishment’s wrath. When all other arguments fail to silence these critics, they are attacked personally as being ‘anti-social’ elements—as we shall see later. This is an entirely arbitrary judgment, without any independent critical analysis or direct representation by those being so condemned.

Scholars should criticize but not define another’s religion.

The article, RISA Lila-1, generated an avalanche of critiques of RISA by non-mainstream scholars. This in turn triggered a backlash from several RISA-associated academicians. Many of these scholars refused to allow agency to the living, breathing other, who is today also their American neighbor. Perhaps the fight for ‘agency’ is on behalf of those who are absent, belonging to bygone eras or living in rural India, and unable to talk back. The participation of the living diaspora, whose culture is being represented, has often been seen as an annoyance.

When asked whether his somewhat negative tone could turn off scholars who might otherwise be receptive, Malhotra replied, “The British didn’t like Gandhi’s aesthetics, either.” He felt his style had to be commensurate with what it took to get the desired impact, and that it should be compared with the scholars’ own styles which are amply on display—against the critics in the Indian diaspora, against the Hindu deities, against the gurus, and so forth. Later, you will see graphic examples of the RISA scholars’ verbal abuses of one another and of Indian ‘others’.) Many felt that the scholars do not come with ‘clean hands’ as their own discourse is full of ad hominem attacks.

One of the scholars moved to respond after reading Risa Lila-1 was Prof. S.N. Balagangadhara of University of Ghent, Belgium. Balu (as he is popularly called) is the author of The Heathen in His Blindness, an acclaimed book on the flaws in looking at Indian traditions through the prisms defined by Western scholars based on Abrahamic religions. Balu became actively engaged in arguing against the Doniger School on Sulekha, and has since then deepened his involvement through other forums.

He first posted extensive comments in three parts to the Sulekha discussion thread, and these parts are excerpted and presented as chapter 12. (Later, he wrote a further article on Sulekha in which he used Kripal as interlocutor but the points he makes are of general importance to understand how the West studies India. This appears as Appendix-2.)

Chapter 13, titled, ‘The Children of Colonial Psychoanalysis’ is a summary [drawn up by Yvette Rosser], of an important paper by Christiane Hartnack. It shows how the colonizers used psychoanalysis as a tool to profile Indians, especially Hindus, in a manner that fit the colonial agendas. The similarities between the colonial writings and Doniger’s School today are striking.

The article in chapter 14, ‘Is the Fight Between Siva and Ganesha an Episode of Oedipal Conflict?’ by Yuvraj Krishan, a prolific Indologist from within the tradition, is focused on showing that core Freudian assumptions simply do not apply to Ganesha and Shiva and that Western scholars have stretched the facts to fit their thesis. He references original texts of the tradition to argue his case.

Chapter 15, ‘Kripal on the Couch in Calcutta’ is a summary of an article by Prof. Somnath Bhattacharyya (‘Kali’s Child: Psychological And Hermeneutical Problems’). It exposes the flawed application of Freudian analyses by Doniger’s School. Bhattacharyya is a professor of psychology in Calcutta (emeritus) as well as a practising psychologist and well read in the original Bengali texts central to the Kripal scandal.

Sankrant Sanu, an independent scholar who was a Microsoft Manager analyzed the material on Hinduism written by Wendy Doniger for Microsoft Encarta encyclopedia and wrote a critique of the numerous biases it contained. This became yet another popular Sulekha article and is reprinted as chapter 16. Doniger has said publicly several times that the Encarta article was removed because her name was not ‘Sharma’ [since the section was re-written by Prof. Arvind Sharma from McGill University]—implying a racial bias, rather than her work being unable to withstand Sanu’s criticism or her inability to respond to its substance.

Chapter 17 is a reprint of a very detailed point-by-point evaluation of Paul Courtright’s book on Ganesha by two dedicated scholars from outside the academia, Vishal Agarwal and Kalavai Venkat. It raises serious questions about the rigorousness of peer-review that occurs within the academia. It also raises very troubling questions about the quality and integrity of Courtright’s scholarship, not just about Hinduphobic cultural bias—questions that have so far been ignored both by Courtright and his peers, primarily by claiming victim status for the scholar. Doniger has also condemned criticisms of Courtright, claiming these are attempts by ‘extremists’ to control the study of Hinduism.

A few others have been selected for inclusion in the Appendices. Dr. Alan Roland is a well-known psychologist who has specialized in clinical work with Indians living in the United States for a few decades and has authored scholarly books based on this work. He criticizes the use of Freudian psychoanalysis in interpreting Indians and Indian cultural symbols, because he is convinced that Freud’s models are not valid for Indians. Appendix-1 is a reprint of Roland’s article, titled, ‘The Uses (and Misuses) Of Psychoanalysis in South Asian Studies: Mysticism and Child Development’.

Appendix-2 ‘India and Her Traditions: A Reply to Jeffrey Kripal’ is an essay by S.N. Balagangadhara. This is based on Balagangadhara’s cogent and direct rejoinder to Jeffrey Kripal.

The final article, titled, ‘The Butterflies Baulked’, is a compilation of reader responses to RISA Lila-1 by Yvette C. Rosser. It gives a sampling of the over one thousand comments and private emails from supportive voices across cyberspace. These are a good barometer of the quality and quantity of the spontaneous mobilization and intellectual ferment caused by the essay.

Read entire chapter 11 from page 119 to 122

Pdf of the book is available for free download here.


Go to chapter 12

Why is "Invading the sacred" an important book?


Pdf of book is available for free download here.

From the foreword by S.N Balagangadhara

Non-white and non-Christian cultures will increasingly have a significant impact on the affairs of the humankind in this millennium. Here, India will be a global player of considerable political and economic impact. As a result, the need to explicate what it means to be an Indian (and what the ‘Indianness’ of the Indian culture consists of) will soon become the task of the entire intelligentsia in India. In this process, they will confront the challenge of responding to what the West has so far thought and written about India. A response is required because the theoretical and textual study of the Indian culture has been undertaken mostly by the West in the last three hundred years. What is more, it will also be a challenge because the study of India has largely occurred within the cultural framework of America and Europe. 


What our text books say:

The standard textbook story, which has schooled multiple generations including mine, goes as follows: caste system dominates India, strange and grotesque deities are worshipped in strange and grotesque ways, women are discriminated against, the practice of widow burning exists and corruption is rampant.

Where were our thinkers before:

If these properties characterize India of today and yesterday, the puzzle about what the earlier generation of Indian thinkers were doing turns into a very painful realization: while the intellectuals of European culture were busy challenging and changing the world, most thinkers in Indian culture were apparently busy sustaining and defending undesirable and immoral practices. Of course there is our Buddha and our Gandhi but that is apparently all we have: exactly one Buddha and exactly one Gandhi. If this portrayal is true, the Indians have but one task, to modernize India, and the Indian culture but one goal: to become like the West as quickly as possible.

However, what if this portrayal is false? What if these basically Western descriptions of India are wrong? In that case, the questions about what India has to offer the world and what the Indian thinkers were doing become important. For the first time, the current knowledge of India will be subject to a kind of test that has never occurred before.

Why “for the first time”:

Why ‘for the first time’? The answer is obvious: the prevailing knowledge of India among the English-educated elite was generated primarily when India was colonized. Subsequent to the Indian independence, India suffered from poverty and backwardness. In tomorrow’s world, the Indian intellectuals will be able to speak back with a newly found confidence and they will challenge European and American descriptions of India. That is, for the first time, they will test the Western knowledge of India and not just accept it as God’s own truth. This has not happened before; it will happen for the first time. Generations of Indian intellectuals have accepted these descriptions as more or less true. The future generations will not be so accommodating
though: they will test these answers for their truth. More than most, they realize that answers to these and allied questions about the nature of Indian culture have the potential to ignite an intellectual revolution on a world scale.

From the preface by Arvind Sharma

On relations between academic community and the Hindu Community in the US.

The relations between the academic community and the Hindu community in North America have recently come to be characterized by a sharp debate, which has also spilled over into journalism and on to the Internet. It was prompted by the reservations expressed by a significant number of Hindus in North America over the way Hinduism is portrayed in the Western academia and by the vigorous response of the academic community to such criticism.

What defines the book:

This book singes with the sparks that flew as the psychoanalytic approach to the study of religion became the lightning rod of the grievances of the Hindus, particularly those residing in the United States, against a cross-section of the academic community in North America devoted to the study of Hinduism. It documents the way these grievances were articulated and ventilated, as well as the response from the world of the Western academia and, to a certain extent, from the media, as the issue came to a head.

How should the book be viewed:

It seems to me that the issue first needs to be viewed on the broadest canvas possible, namely, that of history, before one turns to the details.

Such a historical perspective is best developed by utilizing the distinction regularly drawn in the study of religion between the insider and the outsider, notwithstanding some problems of definition involved in invoking this distinction. From the point of view of this distinction, the study of religion, in the intellectual history of humanity, seems to exhibit a fourfold typology in terms of the modalities of transmission involved, in the context of the various religious traditions over the past few centuries: (1) insider to insider; (2) outsider to outsider; (3) outsider to insider and (4) insider to outsider. (For further expansion of this idea, please read page XII, preface)

Where are we now:

If the perspective presented above possesses some measure of verisimilitude, then we are now at a turning-point in the relationship among the interlocutors in the study of religion. Historical changes, however, are not linear, even when their direction is discernible. Historical changes are more like the changes in ocean flows caused by tides. It is sometimes not apparent that the tide has begun to turn, even when it has. And even as the tide advances there are backflows, which tend to confuse the onlooker. Such a tidal shift generates eddies and undercurrents. The going is not as smooth as at high tide, when the scene takes on a serene aspect and the ocean seems to bare its bosom to the moon, as Wordsworth might say.

The four encapsulating expressions:

• The response threshold
• Cognitive versus non-cognitive approaches
• Bias and error
• The genetic fallacy

What is the response threshold:

We owe this expression to Prof. Eric J. Sharpe. He writes: A “response threshold” is crossed when it becomes possible for the believer to advance his or her own interpretation against that of the scholar.

The response threshold (in today’s discourse on the study of religion) implies the right of the present-day devotee to advance a distinctive interpretation of his or her own tradition—often at variance with that of Western scholarship—and to be taken entirely seriously in so doing.

What one is thus experiencing now in the academic world is the crossing of the response threshold by the Hindu community in North America. This Hindu community in North America has now reached the demographic critical mass, when its reactions can no longer be disregarded. This raises the question: How are we to react when members of the faith community, and not just members of the student community or colleagues in the academic community, cross the response threshold?

What is Cognitive Vs Non-Cognitive Approaches:

It is clear from the documentation provided in the book that the protest is not always about facts which may be adjudicated on the basis of evidence but often about interpretations, especially psychoanalytic ones, which do not seem susceptible to such verification. The main achievements of modern science proceeded from the falsifiability of its hypotheses but such does not seem to be the case here. We thus need to distinguish clearly between cognitive and non-cognitive approaches to the study of religion. (For more on this, please read page XV and XVI, Preface)

What is Bias and Error:

In this book, the critics of the academics claim in essence that the academics are either biased or in gross error when dealing with some aspects of Hinduism. However, fallibility is a human condition—no one is either infallible or capable of achieving Archimedean objectivity.

Both common sense and humanity demand that some procedures be devised in our field for distinguishing between random human error and error caused by bias (conscious or unconscious). Only a person guilty of the latter should reasonably be put in the dock, as it were.

The task might appear insurmountable on the face of it, but there is good news. Statistics as science is concerned with, and indeed has, evolved ways of distinguishing between random error and systemic error (or bias) through the process known as hypothesis-testing. (For more on this please read page XVII, Preface)

What is Genetic Fallacy:

Members of both the Hindu and the academic community have expressed deep distress at the ad hominem nature of the attacks leveled on or by the members of the two communities. This book, to which this preface is being written, itself attests unabashedly to such a state of affairs. The Hindu community wonders if the academic community can ever evoke Hinduism without condescension and the academic community wonders if the Hindu community can evoke Hinduism without sentimentality.

One scientist offers the following telling if homespun illustration of the genetic fallacy: the theory of relativity is false because Einstein was not a good husband or a mere clerk. Character assassination can kill the person (metaphorically speaking) but not the proposition.

This is not to say that a person’s background has no bearing on the discussion, for, after all, an expert’s statement may not always be treated the same way as that of one who is not. But such background only affects the credibility of the proposition, not its falsity. After all, experts can also commit mistakes.

As the book is primarily concerned with psychoanalysis and its application to Hinduism, it may not be out of place to cite the following comments of Erich Fromm on the genetic fallacy (sometimes alluded to as the psychogenetic fallacy in certain contexts):

Freud himself states that the fact that an idea satisfies a wish does not mean necessarily that the idea is false.

The criterion of validity does not lie in the psychological analysis of motivation but in the examination of evidence for or against a hypothesis within the logical framework of the hypothesis (For more on this please read page XVIII, Preface)

For About the contributors, please refer pages XIX, XX and XXI of the book

Chapter 1: Why this book is important.

Indeed, hateful speech and false information can create a climate in which . . . violence is to be expected . . . So how long will it be before a crazed gunman attacks a crowded Hindu temple in America, believing, . . . that Hindus are possessed by demons? How many children will grow up believing Hinduism is a ‘filthy’ religion, or that Hindus worship the devil? When they grow up, how will such children treat their Hindu co-workers and neighbors? Will they give them the respect due to a fellow citizen and human being?

Jeffery D. Long, Chair, Department of Religious Studies
Elizabethtown College

This book is a chronicle of an important attempt to start a new kind of dialog in India-related cultural and post-colonial studies. Unlike the debates internal to the academy which privilege Western theories, institutions and networks of influence, this dialog brings practitioners of Indian traditions as equals at the table. Each side (the ‘outsiders’ and the ‘insiders’, respectively) has its limitations and blind spots in examining the traditions, and each is burdened by its baggage. Yet each view has merits and deserves to be considered with due respect.

The debate challenges Western portrayals of India, her religions and problems. Indian culture is defined by a series of abuses, such as caste, sati, dowry murders, violence, religious conflict, instability, immorality, grotesque deities and so forth. The problems in India are not seen as historical and economic in origin, but as essences of the traditions, cultures and civilization of India, making it a ‘chaotic and even desperate country’. In its most insidious form, this view implies that unless Indians are rescued from their culture by external intervention, they are doomed. Indians simply lack the agency to chart their own destiny and are in need of foreign care in their own best interest. What is startling is that these ideas which formed the keystone of moral rationalizations offered by the British for colonialism and exploitation continue to enjoy wide academic respectability in the West today. What has changed over time, as other scholars have noted, “is the intellectual jargon that clothes these ‘analyses’”.

The starting point of this book is a searching analysis of how elements of the American academy, notably the powerful American Academy of Religion (AAR), like to imagine India and Hinduism. In contrast to how American Business Schools view India—as a place of opportunity, problems and problem-solving creativity—these scholars project a generally negative, chaotic and backward view of India.

The problems of India are seen by Americans as inseparable from the problems of Hinduism. Attempts by secular Indians to distance themselves from Hinduism have led to an academic vacuum about Indian traditions which has been filled by external voices which often have their own agendas.

The research and writings of religion scholars go beyond the discipline’s boundaries, penetrating the mainstream media, and directly impact the American public perception of India via museum displays, films and textbooks. AAR’s Religions in South Asia group can be identified as a key source of Western academic influence over India-related studies.

Input from these scholars can also have an impact on US foreign policy. For instance, a recent conference at the University of Chicago featured Wendy Doniger, Martha Nussbaum, Amartya Sen, among others, talking about generic ‘Hindu groups’ as being the most serious threat to India’s democracy. Indeed, in the conference announcement, Nussbaum claims that Americans are wrong to be focusing on Islamic fundamentalism as a threat to democracy. She alleges that “Thinking about India is instructive to Americans, who in an age of terrorism can easily over-simplify pictures of the forces that threaten democracy . . . In India, the threat to democratic ideals comes not from a Muslim threat, but from Hindu groups.

Unlike in India, the academic study of religion in the USA is a major discipline involving over 8,000 university professors, most of who are members of the AAR. Within this organized hierarchy, the study of Hinduism is an important and influential discipline. This book argues that the discipline has been shaped by the use of preconceived Eurocentric categories that are assumed to be universal by Western syndicated research. Most internal criticism or ‘peer-review’ comes from among scholars who are interrelated in different ways, and it largely excludes practitioners of Hinduism. The producers and distributors of this specialized knowledge comprise a sort of closed, culturally insular cartel, which has disastrous consequences for original thinking about India and Hinduism.

This book is about a recent intellectual challenge to this state of affairs, and the responses and counter-attacks from the academic Religious Studies establishment in America. As a result of this debate, Indian-Americans and others have started to systematically critique the misrepresentation of their traditions with the hope of widening the range of ideas presented in the academy. This generated a groundswell of support among Indians worldwide and appreciative participation by many academic scholars. At the same time, however, it has brought anger from many entrenched academicians who see the status quo of power being threatened.

Section I is a summarization of Rajiv Malhotra’s path-breaking paper critiquing the academic study of Hinduism, an event which many academicians have recognized as a ‘tipping point’ in opening up a serious debate. The problems he exposes and the evidence he cites are extensive and worrisome. The evidence shows serious problems with the training and competence of academic scholars of Hinduism, and raises questions about parochial lenses and sloppy methodology. Most troubling are the questions he raises about the rigorousness of peer review, and about whether scholars are in fact free to publish critiques of powerful living academics without fear or favor. Malhotra has argued that these mechanisms of quality control and self-correction which the academy relies upon have corroded into ineffectiveness in the case of Hinduism studies. These issues should deeply concern anyone who cares about the health of our academic programs. (For more on this, please refer pages 4 and 5)

Section II contains various other scholarly and thoughtful essays, many of which resulted from Malhotra’s attempts to start a critique of academic Hinduphobia. Included are essays and summarization of papers from noted academic scholars like Prof S.N. Balagangadhara, Dr Alan Roland, Prof Somnath Bhattacharya, Yuvraj Krishna and Yvette Rosser, among others. These essays by experts in various fields highlight serious problems with the use of Eurocentric lenses and methodologies to Indic thought and culture and also raise questions about the level of scholarly training in the academy.

Section III chronicles what transpired in the wake of all this intellectual ferment. It describes both the community activism by the Indian-American community and the actions and reactions of many scholars from the academic establishment.

Section IV examines how this debate played out in the American mainstream media—such as in Washington Post and New York Times—as well as niche publications like the diaspora press and alumni magazines.

It provides an account of well-entrenched stereotypes and tropes as well as of attempts to challenge them. (for more on sections II, III and IV, please refer pages 5, 6)

We wish to be clear that the entire blame of biased and selective portrayals of Hinduism and Indian Culture cannot be laid at the doorstep of the American Academy of Religion or even of biased scholars within it. Indians themselves have contributed to the problem in significant ways.

In order to engage in a serious academic study of Hinduism, Indians have to go to American, British or Australian universities because there are hardly any opportunities available for such study within India. In other words, unlike all other major world religions, Hinduism does not have its own home team, by which we mean a committed group of academic scholars who are both practitioners of the faith and well-respected in the academy at the highest levels.

Authenticity of representation and full participation in shaping the understanding of one’s culture has implications beyond the fields of anthropology, cultural and religious studies.

For one, Indian-American, and especially Hindu-American children are often the target of cultural and racial bias in the classroom. By and large the civilizational achievements of India in science and technology in its long history, or its contributions to modern American lifestyles like yoga, vegetarianism, non-violent political protest and the like are largely ignored in the classroom setting. When academically licensed misportrayal of the oppressiveness, weirdness and dangerousness of Indian culture and religions is added to this mix, it has a powerful impact on Hindu-American children, many of who try to hide their religious identity. The pride that Christian-American children take in their civilzational contributions to the world is lacking in many Indians, and this leads to emotional pain and self-alienation.

Furthermore, as numerous American historians point out, the control of ‘others’ depictions by white Americans has led to their ethnic cleansing, incarceration, enslavement, invasions and genocides. Native Americans, Blacks, Jews, Gypsies, Cubans, Mexicans, Chinese, Filipinos, Japanese, Vietnamese and now Iraqis have suffered brutalities that were legitimized by depictions of them as primitive/exotic, irrational, heathen, savage and dangerous and as lacking in human values. Malhotra has raised the alarming possibility that the failure of Indian-Americans to translate their personal success into respect for their cultures and traditions is a condition paralleling Jews in Europe not so long ago, and that in an economic downturn, they could become scapegoats in America.

The view from the business world and from top business schools is increasingly upbeat. It sees Indians as problem-solvers and the Indian economy as a positive engine for the world. While keenly aware of numerous Indian problems, this view does not see them as being inherent pathologies of Indian civilization and therefore unchangeable. Rather, these problems are the result of historical and economic forces, and Indians are seen as having the necessary civilizational creativity, will and wherewithal to address them. This view is counteracted by academic Hinduphobia.

“A country is like a brand because it has a reputation, and because that reputation partly determines its success in the international domain. The ability of each country to compete against others for tourists, for investment, for consumers, for the attention and respect of the media and of other countries is significantly determined by the power and quality of its image . . . What seems certain is that India’s brand new image is a fragile one, based on a couple of prominent sectors and a handful of globally successful entrepreneurs: . . . but it isn’t yet clear how ‘Capitalist India’ fits together in the public imagination with the ‘Indo-chic’ of music, fashion and movies, and with the ‘Traditional India’ image of a vast, mysterious, culturally rich but chaotic and even desperate country. A clear, single, visionary national strategy is badly needed—but one that is, of course, rooted in truth and not in wishful thinking.” [Emphasis added]
Simon Anholt
Diplomat and public intellectual

Anholt’s point is that unless Indian’s take charge of engaging with the world concerning how their country and its culture are portrayed, the economic future of all Indians may be at stake.

As Anholt notes,
“Just like any other country, India needs to consider perceptions alongside reality, and recognise their almost equivalent importance in today’s globalised world. India’s brand image may not be complete, up-to-date or even very fair, but so much in the modern world depends on what people believe to be true, that a good twenty-first century government must learn to be as good at branding the country as building the country. [Emphasis added]

Anholt is dead right when he says that unfair perceptions can have serious economic consequences for India. Even the most successful and admired Indians can be affected in surprising ways. For instance, in the recent acquisition of Arcelor by Mittal Steel, the culture, race and religion of Mittal Steel’s principals, specifically its chairman Lakshmi Narayan Mittal, played an important role. The New York Times reported that Arcelor’s principals initially ridiculed the idea of a merger with ‘a company of Indians’ and it was only after shareholders threatened to revolt that they backtracked. The Times also reported that the offer by Mittal was originally mocked as ‘monkey money from an Indian’. Mittal was viewed as “Attila the Hun attacking from the east, taking over an iconic company from the west.

This book is also about another major development of our times: the use of the Internet to bypass old channels of information flow that tend to be controlled by established power structures. Sulekha.com was merely one of many web portals catering to Indian interests on the Internet, until the diaspora challenge to the academic scholars arrived at its doorstep in 2002. This controversy became the focal point of an energetic and often learned debate on Sulekha, converting it into an important forum for a large number of immigrants and others disenfranchised by the existing discourse. The articles on Sulekha have also been used as reading material in several courses in Hinduism Studies, South Asian Studies, History, Cultural Studies and Anthropology.


We hope that this book will make a contribution to understanding what happens when those who know Indian culture best sit on the sidelines and allow its portrayal to be controlled exclusively by others i.e. by the dominant culture

(For the entire chapter 1, read pages 1-12 of the book)

Pdf of book is available for free download here.

Go to chapter 2