Stanley Kurtz on Hindu mothers and Hijackers - chapter 6

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Stanley Kurtz, an anthropologist specializing in Indian Studies, uses psychoanalysis to substantiate his loathsome supposition that Hindu mothers do not have ‘a Western-style loving, emotional partnership with their babies’:

The special relationship between the Hindu mother and her son appears here as a variation on a distinctive Hindu pattern rather than as a mere intensification of a style of intimacy found in the West . . . Nursing is not therefore, an occasion through which mother and child cement on an emotional union. The child is frequently fed, yet the mother seldom lingers to mirror the baby’s satisfaction. Thus, while the child no doubt develops a strong emotional attachment to the mother as a result of the physical gratification she provides, the mother does not respond by setting up a Western-style loving, emotional partnership. [Emphasis added.]

This racially biased and bizarre declaration is utterly false, as anyone who has spent significant time with families in India can attest. It is absurd to say that a Hindu mother does not see nursing her baby as an opportunity to cement emotional union, in the same ‘loving, intimate’ way that Western women presumably do. Even more amazing is the limited evidence on which such statements are based and astonishingly, that they pass inspection with peer-review processes.

In another book, All the Mothers Are One, Stanley Kurtz constructs a model for the psychology of Hindus based on his studies of Indian social and family structures along with interviews of some devotees of the Goddess Santoshi Ma. Kurtz claims that Durga, one of India’s most revered deities, symbolizes the castrating Mother Goddess. He interprets Goddess’ symbols as pathological—a manufactured ‘Durga Complex’ to explain his ‘findings’ about Indians:

[T]he characteristically Hindu form of conflicts over unconscious incestuous strivings [in which] castration symbolism at the most mature level represents transformative self-willed sacrifice signaling the abandonment of infantile attachments.108

Obviously, Kurtz denies Hindus their sense of individuality:

Their notion of the divine knows neither boundaries of time, place, substance, nor identity. [And therefore] . . . individualism is built into our psychic structure but not into that of the Hindu. [Emphasis added.]

In addition to finding many technical flaws in Kurtz’s methodologies, Humes criticizes his work for using ‘a method which in the end borders on racism:’

Despite arguing for greater sensitivity to cultural difference in psychology, ‘those people’ over ‘there’ are actually all alike—but not like ‘us’ . . . Kurtz’s psychology excludes Hindu women . . . they are, after all, ‘mommies’ whose psychology can be dispensed with in a few words and a note.

Mercifully, someone in the academy actually voiced criticism, but it had little impact on Kurtz’s theories. (For anthropologists’ reaction to this state of affairs, please read page 61 and 62, chapter 6)

Dehumanizing and exoticized images of Hinduism—no matter how ludicrous and fringe they may seem on the surface—must not be taken lightly. History shows that pogroms and genocides have followed similar patterns of cultural denigration. The soon-to-be victims are alleged to be irrational, immoral, lacking a legitimate religion, and even lacking in compassion so that they cannot show ‘proper’ love towards their babies. In Western mythmaking, it follows that these ‘savages’ must not be extended the same human rights as ‘we’ enjoy. (See the first chapter in section III for an account of this.) (For some more elaboration of this, please refer page 62, chapter 6)

Though similar practices regarding women are found historically in all major world religions, introductory classes rarely sum up Judaism, Islam or Christianity with a list of negative attributes. Introductory classes on Hinduism at the university level, often begin with the Rg Veda and move on through the Upanishads and other texts, and end the year with the dangers of Hindu fundamentalists who killed Mahatma Gandhi. The same can be seen in secondary level World History textbooks, where after a survey of Hindu beliefs and texts, they conclude with a list of ‘Hindu problems’ such as ‘suttee’ and poverty caused by Hindu cultural norms. In a comparative context, the Hinduphobia is tangible.

The case is being built that Hinduism is not only inferior but that it causes human rights problems, and the cure lies in its eradication. How does today’s scholarship regarding Hindus compare with earlier Eurocentric scholarship about Native Americans, Africans, Jews, Roma, and others, who became victims of various kinds of ‘savage wars’ and genocide? Malhotra has asked:

Are certain ‘objective’ scholars, unconsciously driven by their Eurocentric chauvinism, perhaps to pave the way for a future genocide of a billion or more Hindus, because of the supposed economic and/or ecological pressures of overpopulation later in this century?

Even in those instances where the scholar might be criticizing genuine social problems, Dave Freedholm, a teacher of World Religions in an American secondary school, explains how Hinduism is not given the same treatment as Christianity:

When scholars examine the world’s religions they usually attempt to distinguish between their ‘universal’ theological/philosophical foundations and the particular historically and culturally bound social structures of societies that practice those religions. To take Christianity as an example, biblical scholars, using a sophisticated hermeneutics, extract a ‘universal’ Pauline theology from the social context of Paul’s letters that presumed slavery, the subjugation of women, etc. Pauline statements that seem to support this social order are reinterpreted in light of passages that are deemed to reflect more universal values.

Courtright is right in saying that Doniger had raised the visibility of Indian civilization and the liveliness of its mythic tradition. But raised the visibility in what manner?

Courtright praises Doniger’s efforts in recruiting young Indian students into her school of thought:

Wendy has worked hard at Chicago to recruit Indian graduate students (as we have here at Emory) because we are concerned that there is an imbalance between ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’—whatever that means—in the field.

Just because one brings in a diversity of skin tones to the University of Chicago’s student body does not mean that a true diversity of ‘insider’ versus ‘outsider’ perspectives is represented, or that vigorous, uncomfortable debate is permitted. It is always much easier for a student—of any color or background—to conform to the dominant voices in the discipline. As will be seen in section III, sometimes graduate students are sent ahead as storm-troops to electronically engage the ‘enemy’, creating a Hinduphobic space for their mentors.

This ‘sepoy mentality’ was exemplified by an Indian-American graduate student at the University of Chicago who, in 2002, warned his RISA colleagues, ‘To watch out for WAVES’ (the World Association of Vedic Studies), which he found ‘deeply disturbing’.

Immediately, the well-known Sanskritist, Professor Gerald Larson, who occupied the Rabindranath Tagore Chair at the University of Indiana for many years, chimed in to support the call. Making no attempt to independently verify the allegations, Larson wrote:

I am becoming increasingly concerned that the field of the serious study of South Asian religion and culture is being ‘highjacked’ by a variety of folks with ‘off the wall’ agendas ranging from crackpot religiosity to the worst kinds of Hindu chauvinism. I, therefore, very much appreciate the comment about the ‘WAVES’ conference and think these sorts of things need to be exposed and rigorously criticized in the RISA exchanges.

Larson used the metaphor of hijacking to describe his concern that the study of Hinduism was being somehow stolen by Hindus. He seems to blithely ignore that the airplane—in this instance Hindu culture—belongs to Hindus. Larson reduces the complex variety of Hindus with their great diversity of views and ideas into extreme camps, caught between ‘crackpot religiosity’ and the ‘worst kind of Hindu chauvinism’.

Christians, Jews, Muslims and Buddhists routinely participate in theological conferences specific to their respective faiths, without becoming the recipients of similar attacks. Hindu self-study groups are unfortunately dismissed as dangerous ‘Savages from the Frontier who threaten Eden’. It is exactly this insistence on Eurocentric hegemonic control over Hindu religious studies, and the power to categorize and demonize Hindus, that worries many progressive voices and underscores the need for investigations such as this book.

Read the entire chapter from page 60 to 65

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Sarah Caldwell - Reinterpreting Hindu Goddess as a symbol of sex and violence-chapter 4

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Sarah Caldwell, another member of RISA, won the prestigious Robert Stoller Award for her scholarship on the Hindu Goddess. Below is a long excerpt from her research paper, ‘The Bloodthirsty Tongue and the Self-Feeding Breast: Homosexual Fellatio Fantasy in a South Indian Ritual Tradition’, for which she was given an award by her largely Western peers.

This essay demonstrates that in Kerala, symbolism of the fierce goddess [Kali] does not represent abreactions of the primal scene fantasies of a Kleinian ‘phallic mother’ or introjection of the father’s penis; rather, we will show that themes of eroticism and aggression in the mythology are male transsexual fantasies reflecting intense preoedipal fixation on the mother’s body and expressing conflicts over primary feminine identity.

The essential rituals of the Bhagavati cult all point to the aggressive and fatal erotic drinking of the male by the female, the infamous orgy of blood sacrifice of male ‘cocks’ at the Kodungallur Bhagavati temple; the male veliccappatu’s cutting of his head in a symbolic act of self castration . . . [Kali] is herself, first of all, a phallic being, the mother with a penis . . . she is the bloodied image of the castrating and menstruating (thus castrating) female . . . In this type of analysis the phallic abilities of the goddess disguise castration anxieties ultimately directed toward the father as well as homosexual desire for the father’s penis. Following Freud, such analyses stress the father-son polarity of the oedipal conflict as the central trauma seeking expression.

As Alter and O’Flaherty amply demonstrate, milk and breastfeeding are also symbolically transformed in the male imagination into semen and phallus . . . The ascetic male who retains the semen becomes like a pregnant female with breasts and swollen belly; the

semen rises like cream to his head and produces extraordinary psychic powers . . . Not only are the fluids of milk and semen, symbolic equivalents, but the act of ‘milking’ or breastfeeding becomes a symbolic equivalent to the draining of semen from the phallus in intercourse. [Emphasis added]

Caldwell uses the English word ‘cock’ for the rooster, so as to link the ritual with the phallus. Since the Keralites were not mentally imagining this English word with its double meaning for both rooster and penis during their ritual, this translation by Caldwell is a clear example of how her psychological predispositions enter into a supposedly ‘scholarly’ interpretation. She goes so far as to put quotation marks around the word ‘cock’ in order to emphasize the double meaning that she is aware of, but not the Keralites. In other words this is a projection of the scholar.

In the example cited above, the Goddess becomes shorn of all her numerous, traditionally accepted meanings and a new primary meaning is authoritatively adduced by the privileged Western scholar. Thus Kali becomes, without argument, “first of all, a phallic being, the mother

with a penis . . . she is the bloodied image of the castrating and menstruating (thus castrating) female.” [Emphasis added] This genre of essentializing, which precludes all other meanings, is a symptom of Wendy’s Child Syndrome as explained in a later chapter.

Fortunately, criticisms from within the scholarly community of the methods used by scholars such as Caldwell are not entirely lacking. But they do not go far enough in uncovering the problems that lie within these free-floating kinds of analyses. In 1999, Caldwell published another book, Oh Terrifying Mother: Sexuality, Violence and Worship of the Mother Kali.79 In her review of the book, Cynthia Humes wrote,

Caldwell documents numerous themes of sexuality, abuse, and vengeance in Keralite religion and culture. She concludes, ‘Mutiyettu actors who are particularly talented at playing the role of Kali might be traumatized individuals whose particular psychological propensities and histories compel them towards this form of performance’ I find this unconvincing. As she herself notes, Caldwell did not conduct a detailed study of or even collect the life histories of the individual Mutiyettu actors playing the role of Kali; so there is no direct evidence of even one individual fitting this typology. The implications she sees, while tantalizing and truly fascinating, are based on extended digging into and assembling a dispersed array of sensationalist and homoerotic mythological themes, combined with rumored sexual activity. The unlikelihood of the thesis is underscored by the fact that the role of Kali is only open to a handful of individuals, who must wait until the age of over fifty to even assume this coveted starring role, and further, they would need to evidence ‘particular talent’.

But how seriously does Caldwell have to take such criticism? Is such criticism serious enough to question the quality of the scholar’s work so as to insist that such work be simply disregarded? Or, in the absence of that, should at least some safeguards be put in place to ensure more rigorous quality control over work like this in the future? Unfortunately, Humes is not willing to go that far. In spite of her acknowledging the lack of evidence in Caldwell’s sweeping claims, Humes is still able to imagine how Keralite society is indeed highly charged with homosexuality, sexual trauma, and abuse, without citing any credible scholarship. In fact, later in her review, Humes agrees with certain aspects of Caldwell’s sexual interpretation of the ritual. She superimposes an entirely different sexual psychosis on the Keralites than does Caldwell, and thus the peer-review becomes merely an argument between different kinds of pathologies of Keralite Hindus.

It certainly gives the impression that criticism by RISA insiders is encouraged to remain within certain boundaries, in order to give this kind of lackluster analysis the appearance of peer reviewed integrity. On the other hand, as we shall see in later chapters, when Indians talk in a similar fashion about White scholars and their culture, they are denounced by the academic establishment as ‘attackers’. The right to criticize is a carefully protected privilege.

Autobiography as Scholarship

Cynthia Humes mentions that Caldwell’s work (like Kripal’s) is largely autobiographical in nature. In the end, they may only amount to creative psychodramas that expose personal pathologies, often hidden deep beneath wounds of past trauma. Humes writes,

I do not doubt the sincerity of Caldwell’s belief that the goddess was somehow ‘running my show’ or that her personal tragedies had ‘meaning and significance beyond my personal lusts, fears, neuroses, and confusions.’ Abundant examples of Caldwell’s lingering resentment are given free reign, deservedly in some ways toward her now ex-husband but less so toward her disapproving academic guide. This guide (despite his assistance in interviews, and arrangements to have one of his students aid her in settling in, and provision of some obviously helpful advice) she grills for his attempt to influence her research program. She further suspects him of avariciousness toward her grant and, ironically, belittles his suspicion of her possible infidelity (a suspicion that turns out to be justified). These become examples of Obeyesekere’s theories of ‘progressive orientation’, underscoring how Caldwell’s personal confession authorizes her broad psychoanalytic theories about a remarkably similar projected rage and resentment in the person of Bhadrakali. In so doing, Caldwell preserves and in important ways, I believe, even enlarges the power differential between author and reader that authorizes her participant-observer projections onto her subjects. [Emphasis added]

No single form of the Goddess represents all of her forms, and any view of the Goddess is incomplete if it is not seen as a part of a wider and more comprehensive portrayal of her. Therefore, the Westernized over-emphasis on her sensational, sexual and violent aspects is reductionism of the worst kind.

Scholars often contend that their works are meant exclusively for fellow residents of the Ivory Tower and therefore have few real-world implications for ‘outsiders’. However, such works filter into school textbooks, popular culture, media and journalism, thus becoming the accepted lenses through which many aspects of Indian culture are viewed.

Many of these scholars have an interesting love-hate relationship with India. They appropriate the practices, symbols, vocabulary and awareness that may make them seem distinct in their own culture. The enhancement of the scholar’s status is often done at the devastating expense of India’s native culture, which nurtured them and gave them dignified lives in their own vulnerable years. This raises ethical and moral questions about whether the scholars provide full disclosure to, and obtain informed consent from, their Indian subjects and collaborators about the potential negative stereotyping of their cultures in America.

Psychoanalyzing Popular Hindu Culture

Scholars build upon each other’s work, and often expand the intended scope of such works. Thus, Caldwell supported Kripal’s work on Sri Ramakrishna, and adds another intriguing dimension. She interprets all complaints from Hindus about Kripal as signs of psychological disorders within the Hindu community, and she strongly recommends psychoanalyzing Hindu society to find out its pathologies. (For more on this, please read page 46 and 47, chapter 4)

The kind of theorizing described on pages 46 and 47 has deeply troubling implications. Academic exercises to psychoanalyze a public culture could serve as a cover for ‘ethnic profiling’ of the Indian-American diaspora, and be used to foster campaigns of hatred against Indians.

One has to note that Caldwell in the theorizing separates out the ‘personal domain as is common in Europe and America,’ and offers Euro-Americans individuality and agency; whereas, on the other hand, she denies Indians, and especially Hindus, that same individual agency. In contrast to her approach towards the ‘good white people’, whom she grants a personal domain, in the case of Indians she suggests psychoanalyzing their culture to expose the ‘distorted masculinity’ of Hindus, and the ‘confused sexuality’ of the Hindu male, as symptoms of abusive social orientations and dangerous nationalism. She culminates with a warning regarding today’s Indian/Hindu male threat—invoking tragedy, trauma and fear of the ‘other’.

By reversing the gaze, one can look at the source of this genre of scholarship as emanating from individuals who are in psychological need of a ‘Hindu Other’. Malhotra surmises that their inner-directed psychological and cultural conditioning drives them to the following allegations:

1. Sexual ‘madness’ in Hindu saints and in the Goddess is common and expected.

2. To hide this pathology from the West, Vivekananda (who was Ramakrishna’s ‘passive homosexual object’) had to repackage Hinduism into a ‘presentable’ masculine image.

3. The alleged sexual deviance and hyper-masculinity applies not only to particular Hindu individuals but also to the social culture of Hinduism in general.

4. Hence, there is urgency to study contemporary Hindu culture in a sexually explicit, psychopathological fashion. This approach is particularly ‘timely and essential’ because it enables US foreign policy the option to intervene against such ‘human rights abuses’ inherent in the ‘other’. This ties in well to the demented religious paranoia calls for fundamentalist Christian thought to drive US International Relations.

Hindus sometimes find the conclusions of psychoanalysis . . . offensive to their own self-perceptions and cultural understandings; given the psychoanalytical attempt to crack the codes of the social and intra-psychic censors and its explicit desire to reveal secrets and uncover hidden truths, it would be very surprising indeed if they reacted in any other way. In short, psychoanalysis is a method that expects to be rejected. Psychoanalysis, then, goes well beyond the anthropologist’s field study and the Sanskritist’s text and the historian of religions’ phenomenological study to answer questions that no interview, text, or phenomenological study is willing to ask, much less answer.

Thus Kripal paints his critics as being emotionally and intellectually incapable of self-reflection, thereby evading the real issues that they have raised. The primary reason Hindu intellectuals question psychoanalysis is not because they fear the codes it may crack, but because the basic building blocks and suppositions of psychoanalysis are incongruent with the foundational concepts of dharma. Aurobindo isn’t the only Indian intellectual who found psychoanalysis to be infantile. In The Analyst and the Mystic: Psychoanalytic Reflections on Religion and Mysticism, Sudhir Kakar reflected on the inapplicability of psychoanalysis in interpreting Hindu ethos, writing about ‘the existence of a deep gulf between psychoanalysis and the Indian mystical tradition’. (For more on what Sudhir Kakar states and how this explains Kripal’s statements, please read pages 49 and 50, chapter 4)

(Please read the poignant comic strips on pages 51 and 52, chapter 4)

Read the entire chapter from page 42 to 52

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