Sufism: The latest fashion statement among Hindus

This introductory post on 'Sufi' brings to your attention how Hindus are constantly found wanting in assessing the dangers that will eventually confront them if they are not vigilant to the modes and forms of digestion prevalent around them today. Sufism is one such attractive and subtle mode of inculturation and digestion that has enticed a large number of Hindus particularly among the elites (read 'secular') in India and the diaspora in the West.

While this post focuses primarily on a current thread in the forum, we also provide links to other threads where the subject has surfaced before and highlight some of Rajiv Malhotra's comments. Interested readers can navigate to the discussions to gain a more in-depth understanding of the what is going on. First to the particulars of this thread:

As we have just celebrated Ganesh chaturthi, Rajiv Malhotra wrote in to say:

Last evening there was a high class event in my neighborhood thrown by a wealth Hindu family. It featured sufi quwalli singers.

I have been down with flu for 3 days so I could not have gone in any cse. But it was called a great success by many. Strange way to celebrate Ganesh Chaturthi!

Clearly, the digestion into Islam/Sufism/Urdu is a serious issue deserving discussion. This is the high fashion among north Indian Hindus.

Ashok replied:

A couple of months ago I sat through a very Hindu wedding reception with similar 'Alla-hoo, Alla - hoo' and 'Khwaja mere Khwaja' being sung and danced to with great enthusiasm by the troupe. 

I lightheartedly objected amongst those at my table and although they too felt a bit uneasy when I mentioned it, the general feeling was 'what a good singer - he reached the finals in the Britain Has Got Talent TV show, you know'. 

It would have been very rude of me to mention it to the host (who obviously paid for this) but I would not be surprised if he was ambushed into this and was feeling sorry for not having vetted the songs in advance. 

I am mentioning this here, so none of us make a similar mistake. 

To the above, Rajiv responded by saying that he was in disagreement about the fact that those Hindus who are actually sponsoring such sufi programs at their celebratory gatherings might be naive or careless about checking facts. Rajiv was of the opinion that such Hindus genuinely loved the music and that they were willing to pay for this. He added:

I am told yesterday's event [the one near his place for Ganesh Chaturthi] was paid by every attendee. 90% were Hindus, the same ones who go for pujas to the temples. 10% were Pakistani Muslims, delighted to see this easy entry.

The sales pitch yesterday was that sufism unites all religions. God is one. So whats the problem singing to God this way? There was a nice intro explained to sufism, which the Hindus lapped up. Nobody disagreed at all. It was a huge success. Many more Hindus now want to host a similar event in their homes.

Rajiv also provided a link which profiles the group that had performed at the puja.

Ananth then wrote in referring from a paper titled "The Mughals, the Sufi Shaikhs and the Formation of the Akbari Dispensation" by Muzaffar Alam. He said:

Muzaffar Alam (Ref 1, p171--172) says that Baqi-Billah, a Naqshbandi Sufi, opposed the importance of music, considered mysticism of secondary importance, and emphasized the dividing line between a believer and an infidel.  When Baqi-Billah fell ill, his mother recommended a Hindu doctor.  Because Baqi-Billah emphasized obedience to parents, he obeyed his mother, but when the Hindu doctor examined him, Baqi-Billah refused to make eye contact with the doctor.

What this shows is that among Sufis, there was disagreement about how much tolerance Muslims had to show to Hindus.  It is true that some Sufis did consider other religions on par with Islam (Ref 1, p 162).  Those Sufis would satisfy Rajiv's criterion of mutual respect (Being Different).  But many Sufis were not interested in the principle of mutual respect. 

The practice of left-leaning secularists is to gloss over this fact.  Left-leaning secularists only speak of the those Sufis who actually showed mutual respect.  But how important were they to practicing Muslims?

Sant wrote in to give a perspective on the lead singer of the group that was asked to perform at the puja near Rajiv's place. He said:

The lead vocalist is Sonny K Mehta has been the President of Hindu Students Association.

Years ago, I together with a number of Hindu elders in Washington DC area had collected funds to promote their activities. Sometime later to my surprise turned to this form of entertainment.

The original Hindu Students organization at the university campuses in the US were getting discredited.

Rajiv responded that it was interesting to see how change happened in individuals within as short a time span as 3 years (the article linked above in Sant's post is dated in 2011); the fact that it seemed that less and less of the people considered leaders and role models by the Hindu diaspora were real "Hindus"; that a Hindu student leader in the USA had turned into a sufi singer.

Other forum members responded on this thread. Champak wrote in to say how sufi music had become a regular fixture at the Ganga Mahotsav held at Varanasi every year. Saptaswara talked of how there was a a qawwali performace at Chinmaya Mission temple in Boston. Prayas wrote in to say that while Hindus agonized about sufi music becoming so popular, it was also important that Hindus questioned themselves on why they stopped popularizing and patronizing Hindustani and Carnatic classical music among their kids. Rohit spoke about the recent trend of dharmic festivals being corrupted these days with the introduction of extremely frivolous forms of entertainment. In response, Rajiv expanded on the topic thus:

1) How far back the digestion occurred is irrelevant: Our calendar got replaced by western calendar long back. But the effect of this change is v. important to understand. One day people will say we are English speakers for generations, so why bother discussing it? Maybe in 20 years most Indians will practice Christian Yoga and scholars trying to uncover the dogestion will be told this is an old thing so leave it alone. Point: Though sufism might be old in India, that does not make any difference on what we must think of it.

Analogy: Smoking tobacco became popularized in India by the Mughal court long ago. That should not prevent us from fighting against it.

2) Understand the philosophical dimension first: I have explained in Youtubes and/or blogs how advaita vedanta and sufism differ in serious ways. Similarity, eys. But apple is similar to orange does not make them interchangeable or the same. Similarity means certain overlap exists between x and y. Thats true of any to objects. Even shit and prasad share the fact that both are made of the same electrons, protons, neutrons; hence one could say they are the same because they are made of identical ingredients. Difference is what makes an entity what it is. At the human level of consciousness where dharma is enacted, how we relate to something is as per whats distinct about it. Otherwise there would be no difference between dharma and adharma, between tamas and sattva, between right and wrong. Once you appreciate whats different about sufism then you can converse intelligently, beyond superficialities.

3) Understand the political past of sufism in India: Sufis were the Good Cops sent to soften the target, and then the Bad Cops (tough, radical Muslims) could then defeat the compromised Hindus. Please try to understand this history.

4) Pop culture can be understood only after 2 3: All digestion facilitators are nice guys, goody-goody, we are same, global brotherhood, no boundaries, etc.Tell them to practice this in the other side. Why dont the Sufi festival people in Delhi hold it in Jama Masjid? In Mecca? After all, this would present the world a great face for Islam. The Nawab running the Delhi Sufi fest was shocked at my question in a delhi elite farmhouse gathering of Hindu morons - all in awe of his aristocracy. Most Hindus present sided with him that we need not go into it, just sit back and enjoy. But I persisted. Finally, he told me that the "authorities at major mosques will not allow music, sufi or not". So this should be one's opportunity to open the door to further inquiry. 

5) Read Muslims scholars on the differences between Sufism and mainstream Islam: You must realize Sufism is outside the fortress, meant to appease and tempt non Muslims in the door. Its a strategic deployment, just like inculturation by the church in the third world to make the natives happy, and remove barriers to conversion.

Shalini added to the discussion by providing some links on sufism. Some of the links are provided below.

The Wiki entry on sufism states:

Muslims and mainstream scholars of Islam define Sufism as simply the name for the inner or esoteric dimension of Islam^[2] which is supported and complemented by outward or exoteric practices of Islam, such as Islamic law.^[15] In this view, "it is absolutely necessary to be a Muslim" to be a true Sufi, because Sufism's "methods are inoperative without" Muslim "affiliation".^[16] In contrast, author Idries Shah states Sufi philosophy is universal in nature, its roots predating the rise of Islam and Christianity.^[17] Some schools of Sufism in Western countries allow non-Muslims to receive "instructions on following the Sufi path".^[18] Some Muslim opponents of Sufism also consider it outside the sphere of Islam.^[2][19]...

Its also states:

The rise of Islamic civilization coincides strongly with the spread of Sufi philosophy in Islam. The spread of Sufism has been considered a definitive factor in the spread of Islam, and in the creation of integrally Islamic cultures, especially in Africa^[52] and Asia. 

Here is a google books link which in fact shows that sufism in medieval times, was a way for forcible conversion particularly in Bengal. Interestingly, the book is a critique of Islam by M.A Khan, a person who left Islam for reasons mentioned here.

In an earlier thread relating to this topic, the context for Rajiv's response above was provided by Vijendran who noted:

The irony is that the US/European universities like Harvard are introducing Bhagawad Gita as a part of the standard texts for their MBA programs, while the Indian IIMs are stuck with the western ideals! ..

This comment from Rajiv underlines how mentally colonized Hindus believe sufi is "cool".

Rajiv responded thus:

 Indian universities are also teaching BG in IIMs. ...The problem is different. 

Indians are borrowing spirituality from the west which the west appropriated has from India - this is called stage 5 of Uturn, the Pizza effect. Hence, [Howard Gardner?] teaches multiple intelligences at Tata, Infosys and other corporate houses even though we have more profound versions of it in dharma; Andrew Cohen and Eckhart Tolle type of frauds impress Indians because they see it as "Made in USA" spirituality. Many secular folks I know in Delhi who are outright embarrassed by things Hindu, flock to such events because its cool. In the same way, its cool to get "sufi" teachings even though the same or deeper versions are found in Hinduism.

To follow this entire thread go here on this blog.

On another thread, Rajiv touched upon the use of sufism as a tool for digestion. The context was provided by a conversation between Jeffrey and Maria, on the point of how Hindus are different and how one needs to take firm positions.

Rajiv response was to point out that those who didn't take clear positions and preferred to sit on the fence advocating sameness of religions, were generally stage 2 u-turners. He reiterated that this phase was dangerous because the mirage of sameness led to a false "feel good" factor among Hindus who believed they were legitimized by a westerner. He also gave the example of Unitarians who tried hard to make "whitened Bengalis" (or sameness experts) of Ram Mohan Roy and other Bengali bhadralok with the result that they are an extremely marginalized (<1%) group among the US Christian population. He uses this example to drive home the point that most other Christian denominations reject "sameness". Rajiv also uses the fashion for sufism (a digestion tool) among Hindus today, pointing out that only a very small portion of mosques allow sufi music and dance. He stresses that the core of Islam has no place for sufism.

To follow the entire thread, join the discussion. Here is the link to that particular discussion on yahoo groups. Here is the summary of that thread on this blog.

An Independent Review of Paul Courtright's book on Ganesa - Chapter 17 part 5

Go to Chapter 17 part 4

Pdf of the book is available for free download here

Ganesha as a Trickster

Courtright cites the British anthropologist Edmund Leach approvingly: Leach sees this characteristic as Ganesa’s closes link to the trickster: Ganesa’s broken tusk and severed head with the long flaccid trunk are the clearest signals of his sexual ambiguity.

Concluding his own estimation of Ganesha as a ‘trickster’, Courtright then likens the deity to a eunuch:

His sexuality remains ambiguous, as his relationship with his mother and father, his detachable tusk/phallus and his similarities to eunuchs all suggest.

All the above passages of Courtright are not only dubious from an academic perspective, they are also plainly offensive, and perverse. Perhaps, Courtright et al always see life through a different aperture than most of us. Perhaps, they always see everything as a cigar, and

the cigar as only a Lingam.

The Worship of Ganesha

Chapter IV deals with the worship of Ganesha in homes, in temples, and during public festivals in Maharashtra. Overall, the description is balanced, readable and nothing out of the ordinary. It is clearly written from the perspective of an observant outsider. A few references to Indian literature on the subject are thrown in, besides some from the works of the Indologists as well, perhaps to give the entire narrative a quasi-academic flavor. For the Hindus, the chapter perhaps does not offer much that is not already known to them in general terms. For the Westerners or even Westernized Indians, the narrative could serve as a useful and informative background on how the tradition of worship of Ganesha is actually practised in our times.

Chapter V titled, ‘Ganesa in a Regional Setting: Maharashtra’ deals with the well-known fact of deep devotion of Maharashtrians to Ganapati. It opens with a strange comment, based on an old work, that in South East and in East Asia he is more often portrayed as demon. Perhaps this has changed in the last six decades since the book referenced by Courtright was written. One of us, who has worked in and has traveled to that part of the world (Thailand, Bali and Java, Singapore)

would clearly question this characterization today. At least in our own times, he is a beloved deity for the Hindus of Bali (and even more so in eastern Java), as well as for the Buddhists in urban Thailand. (For more on the rest of the chapter please read page 242, 243 and 244, chapter 17)

Taking Liberties with Liberal Arts (Courtright’s Ph.D. Thesis)

We had an opportunity to obtain a copy of Courtright’s Ph.D. thesis300 of which the book under review is an expansion. Interestingly, in the Preface of his thesis, the author states:

Nearly ten years ago, while I was teaching conversational English at Ahmadnagar College in central Maharasthra, several of my students invited me to join them and their families for the annual celebrations to the Hindu god Ganesa. At that time all I knew about Ganesa was that he was the elephant-faced deity who Hindus regarded as the god of good fortune. I had seen his picture in numerous shops in the city and had gathered the impression that the good fortune he was believed to bring had largely to do with the financial success and material well-being. Hindus seemed to view him with a compelling light-heartedness which I found quite different from the more somber attitudes my Protestant upbringing had taught me were appropriately religious.

He states that during the Ganesha Festival at Ahmadnagar, the Maharashtrian dancers made him dance with them and as a result, “I had become united with them. It seemed that I had finally experienced India ‘from the inside’.” He expresses his acknowledgements to his informants in the following words:

Although the title page lists me as the author of this dissertation, many others have been involved in its completion. The people of Maharashtra, displaying attitudes of hospitality for which India is famous, welcomed my frequent inquiries about their festival and its traditions, patiently submitted to my interviews, and made my research pleasurable. No scholar could hope to have greater cooperation than I received from them.

Through our analysis of the resulting book, we have seen the manner in which Courtright  expressed his gratitude for the cooperation offered by Maharashtrian Hindus: calling the cherished deity of his ‘native informants’ as something of a eunuch, something like a homosexual, and a pervert harboring sexual fantasies for his mother! Perhaps, it is not out of place to mention that even Courtright’s PhD thesis is so full of errors, that it does not even spell the names of Hindu texts and common Hindu terms correctly. (For more on this please read page 245 and 246, chapter 17)

Conclusion: Academic Scholarship, or ‘Peer-Reviewed Pornography’?

The above examples are but a small specimen of erroneous translations, selective use of Hindu textual evidence, insufficient knowledge of Tantric and Yogic traditions, and the over-sexualization of passages in Hindu texts that characterize Courtright’s book, page after page, and chapter after chapter. It is fair to say that being based on incorrect data, his interpretations and his reconstruction of the Hindu deity Ganesha are by and large invalid.

To conclude then, Courtright’s book may be considered as an example of excellent pornographic fiction, and also as an example of careless academic scholarship. It is therefore surprising that scholars in South Asian and Indology programs in the United States have praised the book and awarded it prizes. It makes one wonder if this is due to the fact that the level of scholarship in Indian and Hinduism studies is really substandard in American Universities.

In an apparent effort to defuse the crisis, Courtright wrote an email to an internet list of scholars in South Asian Studies:

I wrote it over twenty years ago, in a different discursive environment than we have now . . . were I writing that book today I would, hopefully, be more aware of how it might be read by some Hindu readers in both India and its diasporas.

This confession must be quite puzzling to any honest academic. This approach raises questions regarding ethics and honesty in scholarship. Is an academic expected to play to the gallery, as Courtright has confessed he did and perhaps intends to do in the future as well? If so, is it not a violation of objectivity, ethics and honesty? One may understand that interpretations of literature, history, or any other observable phenomenon changes as new proven theories and data

emerge. But why should the interpretation change according to the readers? What kind of academic objectivity is that? Is it not a corroboration of the accusation that there is a deeply entrenched anti-Hindu bias among Wendy’s Children?

Courtright apparently felt that so long as his audience was not Hindu and annoyingly knowledgeable, he could depict Hinduism in an obscene manner—perhaps as an ‘inside’ ethnic joke shared with his white colleagues. One cannot help but recall Doniger’s thigh-slapping, triumphant amusement upon ‘learning’ from Kripal that the Sri Ramakrishna that many ‘moronic’ Hindus worship as the epitome of their religion could be academically tried and convicted as a conflicted, maladjusted homosexual, and a pervert to boot. Those were cozy

times indeed to laugh about the heathen and his blindness, with one’s buddies. Today, with more Hindus constituting the audience, Courtright feels that he has to calibrate his interpretations differently. Strangely, the academic reaction to this bizarre phenomenon ranges from a

deafening silence to showering praises on him.

Books such as those of Courtright and Doniger merely conform to the latest fad in eroticizing ‘exotic’ cultures, just as a few decades earlier it was very fashionable for some Western anthropologists to go ‘bravely’ to some remote island in the Samoa archipelago to study the sexual practices of Samoans. Such studies not just demean the culture that forms their subject. They are like the gaze of a pervert that mentally disrobes a lady standing in front of him. Indeed, the book reviewed by us does not necessarily illuminate its purported subject matter. Rather, it allows us to act as voyeurs of the mind of the author. Hindus and Indians do not need such ‘dedicated’, ‘thoughtful’, ‘respectful’ and ‘loving’ scholars to promote an understanding of our heritage in the West, just as an abandoned orphan would do well without the love of a pedophile.

Read chapter 17 part 5 from page 241 to 247

Pdf of the book is available for free download here.

Go to Chapter 18

An Independent Review of Paul Courtright's book on Ganesa - Chapter 17 part 4

Go to Chapter 17 part 3

Pdf of the book is available for free download here.

Courtright’s ‘Limp Phallus’ not attested in texts of Ganapatya Sect

Anyway, his fiction of limp trunks and phalluses is not exactly supported by the Hindu texts. For instance, the Ganesha Purana (Upasana Khanda 12.38) states that the trunk of Ganesha is so strong that it is more powerful than that of Airavata and other elephants who are guardians of the eight quarters of the Universe. Courtright thus misses a good opportunity to discuss ‘Penis-Envy’. The Tantric texts, which Courtright ignores, distinguish clearly between the trunk and his phallus, and the latter does perform its intended functions according to these texts. In short, data from the texts ignored by Courtright completely negates his own fantasy about Ganesha’s trunk.

Numerous depictions of the deity actually show him with a raised or an erect trunk. Courtright has ignored the diversity of the Hindu tradition with regard to the deity and has chosen only those aspects that fit his predetermined thesis.

Courtright should have considered the fact that in Indian culture, the lifted trunk of an elephant represents a salute by the animal. The deity is not really supposed to salute us, which is why He may have a lowered trunk in most of His iconic representations so as to symbolize His benevolence and omnipotence.

Ekadantin of Hindu Tradition—Courtright Castrates Ganesha Thrice

Now we have another curious fact regarding Lord Ganesha. One of the tusks of the deity is broken, or missing. How does Courtright unravel this mystery? As expected, under the subject ‘The Tusk’ in his book, all kinds of disjointed, unrelated, disparate Puranic narratives are brought together in an artificial manner by Courtright to lay the ground for discussions on beheading, decapitation, amorous play and all such sexual, Freudian materials in Chapter III. Ignored of course are the mystical and spiritual interpretations of his single tusk in Hindu tradition (e.g., Mudgala Purana 2.52.13–14) wherein the tusk is related to maayaa.

It is definitely worth investigating what meaning Hindu tradition itself accords to the broken tusk of the deity. To determine the traditional meanings of the broken tusk, we explored a wide range of Hindu texts, from Kaavyas to the Puranas, and found the following explanations. In a major Purana text, Lord Vishnu explains the word ekadanta as follows: The word eka means ‘supreme’ or pradhana, and the word danta denotes strength. “To Him (Ganesha) who is supremely powerful/strong, I (Lord Vishnu) offer homage”.

Far from being a castrated phallus, the broken tusk of Ganesha is a potent weapon. The Ganesha Purana, Kridakhanda (chapters 62–70) describes a battle waged between Devàntaka and Ganesha, the latter assisted by his spouses. Devàntaka uproots the tusk of Ganesha, but the deity uses this very broken tusk to penetrate the demon’s chest and thus kills him. (For more on this please read page 230, chapter 17)

Courtright considers Ganesha’s beheading as a castration, his trunk as a symbol of a limp phallus and now his broken tusk as another castration. It is therefore legitimate to ask if one person can

be castrated and emasculated thrice! And from a psychoanalytical perspective, one may wonder who it is that has actually demonstrated a Penis Envy in this entire episode!

Indian Males in relation to Ganesha’s Sexuality, Celibacy and Incest:

Courtright summarizes his Freudian interpretations on Ganesha in the following manner:

Iconographically Ganesa’s body is that of a plump infant. Although at least one Puranic source has an account of his marriage, Ganesa is generally represented as celibate, a celibacy suggested visually and perhaps caricatured by his exaggerated but perpetually flaccid trunk. Finally, his insatiable appetite for sweetmeats [modaka]—a source of many amusing tales—raises the question (from a psychoanalytical perspective) of whether this tendency toward oral erotic gratification may not serve as compensation for his arrested development at not reaching the phallic stage as well as the severing of the maternal bond he underwent at the beheading hand of his father. Gananath Obeyesekere interprets Ganesa’s celibacy, like his broken tusk, as the punishment he receives for incestuous fixation on his mother.

This generalization of Ganesha is preceded by something even more sinister. Indians as a whole are force-fit into a stereotypical category by Courtright, and then this stereotype is subjected to a demeaning Freudian analysis. Courtright is not alone in treating the stereotyped Indian male as a subject of Psychoanalyses. In fact, he draws upon the works of Sudhir Kakar and the like repeatedly in this chapter.

Courtright says:

Ganesa’s celibacy links him both to his father and his mother, but for opposite reasons. He remains celibate so as not to compete erotically with his father, a notorious womanizer, either incestuously for his mother or for any other woman for that matter.

There is nothing in the tradition to defend this portrayal of Ganesha as an incestuous son. So, anecdotes that none can verify, are used to bolster the case.

Once Parvati asked Ganesa whom he would like to marry; he replied, ‘Someone exactly like you, Mummy.’ And Mummy got outraged by such an openly incestuous wish and cursed him with

everlasting celibacy.

Courtright quotes A.K. Ramanujan, who doesn’t name his source. In any event, Ramanujan’s version is very different from those that other South Indians are aware of. In that version, when Ganesha tells Parvati that he would want a bride just like her, she laughs at him, and jokingly tells him that he may never get married in that case, implying that there is none comparable to Shakti. It seems that Ramanujan has added his own spin to this tale in his amateurish attempt at psychoanalysis. The fact is that in a vast country such as India, with more than a billion people (or 700 million people in 1980s when Courtright wrote his book), there are literally thousands of tales and stories about different deities floating around orally amongst the Hindu masses. Should one bring together these stories with passages of older texts and then construct a psychoanalytical theory on them? Is this methodology sound?

Even though in this unverifiable tale, the child Ganesha alone is pronounced guilty of harboring incestuous thoughts, Courtright is quite eager to indict Parvati too on this count. He has no hesitation in invoking a tale that, by his own admission, does not find any mention in published editions of the Varaha Purana, but is only to be found in the writings of Abbe Dubois, the missionary that never concealed his hatred for Hinduism. In this invented and disparagingly

presented tale, the beauty of the newborn Ganesha fascinates all women and this triggers a supposedly incestuous jealousy in Parvati, who curses his beauties to vanish.

It is very common in India for sons when asked, what kind of girl they want to marry, to say that they would marry someone like their own mother. The Indian ethos emphasizes sacrifice, and the mother is often the embodiment of sacrifice.

Having unfairly declared Ganesha an incestuous son, Courtright proceeds to present even the most innocent events of Ganesha’s life as sordid tales of incest. In a Sri Lankan legend, Ganesha competes with his brother Skanda for a mango. While the latter circumambulates the world, Ganesha simply circumambulates his parents and wins the mango. Courtright quoting Obeyesekere concludes that the mango is a symbol for the vagina, and hence this episode of Ganesha eating the fruit symbolizes his incestuous possession his mother. (For more on this please read page 232 and 233, chapter 17)

In the Song of Songs in the Old Testament, the breasts of a woman are likened to bunches of grapes. Should we, following Courtright-Obeyesekere ‘methodology’, see hidden meanings every time a Christian or a Jew offers wine?

There is a Maharashtrian folk tale that narrates the intrigues between a Mahar soldier and a woman of the palace under Peshwa rule. The illicit liaison is exposed and the soldier, whose name is Ganapati, is punished by death. His spirit, according to the folklore, haunted the king. To propitiate it, he installed the effigy of the slain soldier at the gate of the palace in the form of the deity Ganapati and required everyone to pay obeisance to it. There is nothing in this story to compare with the legend of the deity Ganesha, except the name and the fact that the Mahar’s effigy was installed in the form of the deity, but Courtright sees striking parallels in this tale with the supposed incest of Ganesha with his mother. Such meaningless parallels promote

neither an understanding of the deity, nor do they promote knowledge. Instead they offer an insight into Courtright’s perverse mind.

Ganesha as a Eunuch

Several sacred stories pertaining to Ganesha describe him as a doorkeeper or guard outside his mother Parvati’s inner chambers. Courtright sees in this a parallel to an old Indian practice of posting eunuchs as guards of the doors to harems. He then quotes an Indologist to the effect that

these eunuchs had a reputation of being homosexuals, with a penchant for oral sex, and that they were frowned upon as the very dregs of society, implicitly ascribing the same qualities to the charming Ganesha and reducing his symbolism to ‘an explicit denial of adult male sexuality’. (For more on this please read page 233 and 234, chapter 17)

Courtright then quotes Edmund Leach, an anthropologist, in support of his own interpretations:

This combination of child-ascetic-eunuch in the symbolism of Ganesa—each an explicit denial of adult male sexuality—appears to embody a primal Indian male longing: to remain close to the mother and to do so in a way What will both protect her and yet be acceptable to the father. This means that the son must retain access to the mother but not attempt to possess her sexually. As a child, a renouncer, or a eunuch, he can legitimately maintain that precious but precarious intimacy with his mother because, although he is male, he is more like her then he is like his father. This may explain why Ganesa takes on these qualities through his own choice or why he willingly accepts them as mutilations from others—even from Parvati herself—so long as they will guarantee his continued proximity with her.

The Modaka as a (Sexual) ‘Toy’

Hindus fondly depict Lord Ganesha as devouring a sweetmeat called modaka. Courtright applies the ‘oral’ and ‘anal’ paradigms of Freudian ideology to interpret this in a sexualized manner:

The perpetual son desiring to remain close to his mother and having an insatiable appetite for sweets evokes associations of oral eroticism. Denied the possibility of reaching the stage of full

genital masculine power by the omnipotent force of the father, the son seeks gratification in some acceptable way. As long as he remains stuffed full he is content and benign, like a satisfied infant at its mother’s breast. If Ganesa should go hungry because of the devotee’s failure to feed and worship him first before all other gods, then his primordial hostility is aroused, to the detriment of all. Feeding Ganesa copious quantities of modakas, satisfying his oral/erotic desires, also keeps him from becoming genitally erotic like his father . . . Ganesa’s impatience for food suggests an anxiety, a hunger that is never completely fed no matter how many modakas he consumes. He is the child forever longing for the mother’s breast—that fountain of life-giving elixir he once enjoyed without distress in infancy but is now denied because of the father’s intrusion . . . Ganesa’s story is, in part, the story of maternal attachment, loss, and indirect but incomplete compensation. As a celibate child, and resembling the ambiguous figure of the eunuch, Ganesa is one whose masculinity remains partial, trimmed, and contained. Unable to take full possession of his mother in the face of his father’s beheading/castrating power, Ganesa lives a threshold existence—near but nor far enough— seeking his own fulfillment in dutiful service to his parents and taking pleasure in an endless flow of sweetmeats from adoring devotees. He is the mythical expression of the male wish for maternal intimacy denied in real life in the course of growing up, a fantasy in which the defeats of the son must suffer at the hands the father are compensated indirectly by an orally erotic celibate proximity to the mother. (For story on the moon and Ganesha’s tusk please read page 235 and 236, chapter 17)

As we extracted these and similar passages from Courtright’s book for our review, we felt a lot of mental agony seeing that he could use words such as ‘limp-phallus’, ‘castration’, ‘orally erotic’, ‘eunuch’, ‘amorous play’ and so on in the context of a child, even if it be mythical

for a Christian such as Courtright (but Divine for us). Our American readers could perhaps feel our pain by imagining a situation in which Courtright would use such language for the baby Jesus, or if you are not religious, an all-American anthropomorphic child-character such as Mickey Mouse.

Hindus invoke the presence of and blessings of Lord Ganesha at the start of all our prayers. Mickey Mouse is not worshipped of course, but he continues to delight millions of adults and children all over the world with his delightful antics. If someone were to obsessively and insistently see genitalia and other kinds of sexual stuff in the character or persona of the baby Jesus or Mickey Mouse, we would normally conclude that he is suffering from some pathological disorder requiring medical attention. While reading his book on Ganesha, the thought that kept repeating in our mind page after page was—how could he have written this? Why did he do this?

Sexualizing the Hindu Child: The Initiation Ceremony (Upanayana):

In her two-page Foreword, Wendy Doniger refers to the use of Freudian analysis in the following words:

The episode of beheading by the father cries out for (and has been given by others) a party-line Freudian analysis; Courtright does, indeed, sail through this particular strait, but though he listens with unwaxed ears to the song of the psychoanalytical sirens, he is not seduced. He offsets the Freudian analysis with his own striking model of the parallels between the Ganesa story and the Hindu ritual of the initiation of a young boy . . .

And what are these parallels that deserved a special acknowledgment by Wendy Doniger? While describing his sexualized version of Ganesha and the stories associated with Him, Courtright takes a step forward and transplants erotica onto the solemn Hindu ceremony of upanayana

in which young Hindu males are initiated into their student life. In effect, after demeaning the Hindu male, Courtright targets the innocent Hindu child. The upanayana ceremony involves a symbolic transformation of the would-be teacher of the student into his new father. This father-son relationship between teacher-student is maintained for a lifetime and does not sever the relationship of the student with his biological father. However, Courtright sees something sexual in this whole affair.

This new father/son, guru/disciple. Acarya/brahmacarin relationship creates a new bond of affection in the context of absolute domination by the authority figure and utter dependence of the disciple. The sexual nuances of this relationship are well hidden, but it is significant that in the myth Siva gives Ganesa his weapons and in the ritual the acarya gives the brahmacarin the ascetic’s staff [yogadanda]—symbols, like the broken tusk, of the detached phallus. Carstairs notes further ‘There is also a powerfully repressed homosexual fixation on the father. This is shown . . . in indirect and sublimated form, in a man’s feeling toward his Guru—in one context in which a warm affectionate relationship (although a passive and dependent one) is given free expression.’

So, the scholarly pair of Carstairs and Courtright have debased even the ‘teacher–student relationship’ in Hindu society (perhaps privileging the Western version indirectly) by imparting perverse sexual connotations to it. We are indeed curious to know how Courtright would

psychoanalyze his relationships with his own students. (For more on this please read page 237, chapter 17)

In the Indian ascetic tradition, there is a long-standing controversy on whether the staff should be single or if it should be a triple-staff (tridanda). One wonders what would be Courtright’s perspective on this controversy. Hindu tradition sees the danda as a symbol of chastisement or discipline, whether inflicted or self-enforced. When a young student assumes a danda, he is in effect vowing that he will live according to the prescribed rigors of student life.

It may be pointed out here that Hindus have been performing the upanayana ceremony for their children, often aged five to eight years, for several thousand years now. If there is any reality to Courtright’s imaginative interpretation that danda = penis, then the inescapable conclusion is that millions of Hindu children have been subjected unconsciously (or consciously) to sexual abuse by being handed a pseudo-penis in their hand by a male elder during the ceremony. While we find such sexualized interpretations of the upanayana defamatory and degrading, Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty finds it so apt and insightful that she made a special mention of it in her Foreword to Courtright. The consequences of such essentializing can indeed be grave for an American minority. One wonders how Doniger and Courtright (and the Prize committees that lionize these scholars) view Hindu-American parents who have celebrated their seven year-old’s upanayana—as potential perverts who should be kept away from white children? (For more on the upanayana ceremony please read page 238 and 239, chapter 17)

This interpretation is supported by explanations in numerous traditional commentaries.The staff is seen to be a reminder and a symbol of Dharmic authority, or Dharmic discipline with which the teacher invests the student and motivates him to pursue his divinely ordained duty of studying the sacred texts before he gets married.

The staff is widely used to symbolize authority and discipline in numerous cultures all over the world, and Hindu texts are no exception. Perhaps Courtright could explain to us what the staff of Moses, which parted the Red Sea, stands for in his Freudian world.

Courtright does not even make the pretense of acknowledging how the Hindu tradition itself interprets the staff of a celibate student, something that he could have found out by referring to even basic works on Hindu samskaras or sacraments. He would have found that according to some authorities, studentship was considered as a long sacrifice, and therefore, a student was expected to bear the staff just as a scholar would in a long sacrifice. Paraskara Grihyasutra 2.6.26 suggests that the purpose of the staff was to protect against human and non-human attackers. According to Manava Grihyasutra 1.22.11, the student is a traveler on the long road of knowledge. When this paradigm is considered, the staff assumed by the student then becomes reminiscent of the staff used by a traveler. According to the Varaha Grihyasutra, the staff was the symbol of the watchman. Apararka in the Yajnavalkya Smriti 1.29 states that bearing the staff makes the student self-confident and self-reliant when he goes out to the forest to collect fire-sticks for yajnas, for tending the cattle of his teacher, or when he travels in darkness. In other words, while the Indian tradition takes the staff as a symbol of authority, discipline, protection and so on, Courtright sees just a Penis.

Marriage of Ganesha

Hindu tradition is not uniform on the marital status of the deity. While the dominant view depicts him as a son devoted to his mother and as a bachelor, other traditions state that he has two wives. Courtright expends a lot of energy in depicting the ‘eunuch’ and ‘oral’ nature of Ganesha, in keeping with his Freudian paradigms. So when conflicting textual evidence relating to his marital status emerges, it has to be explained away in some way. Courtright does this with the following

words:

Iconographically he is sometimes represented sitting between Siddhi and Buddhi, but there is little in the way of mythology about his marriage in the textual tradition. These women appear more like feminine emanations of his androgynous nature, saktis rather than spouses having their own characters and stories. (For more on this please read page 240, chapter 17)

Courtright continues:

The celibate character of his marriage is evoked by the seventh century poet, Bana, who wrote of Ganesa and his bride as the fusedandrogyne, lacking sufficient separateness from one another to

engage in the erotic possibilities of marriage. ‘May the single tusked Ganesa guard the universe, who imitates his parent’s custom in that his bride, it seems, has been allowed to take that half of

him wherein his face is tuskless.’

Banabhatta is in fact referring to the concept of ardhnaariishvara283 that depicts Siva and Parvati (who definitely are not a celibate couple) as two halves of one deity, and suggests that the wife of Ganesha, being tusk-less, represents a similar conception with her constituting that side of his which does not have the tusk (since one of his tusks is broken). (For more please read page 241, chapter 17)

Read chapter 17 part 4 from page 229 to 241

Pdf of the book is available for free download here.

Go to Chapter 17 part 5