Why are Hindus Celebrating the Digestion of Hinduism? - Part 2

This is the latest in our series of blogs dealing with the problem of digestion of Hinduism, which is quite different from both inclusivism and conversion to Abrahamic faiths. For example, in Kerala, the digestion of many aspects of Hinduism in general, and the festival of Onam, in particular have been covered in the last few days. This post is part of the discussion on Phil Goldberg's 'American Veda' has been shown to be an example of this problem. You can find Part-1 of the current discussion here. However, many Hindus live in denial for a variety of reasons. You can find the first set of posts in 2012 on Goldberg's American Veda: Analysis-2 that summarizes the first set of feedback on AV is here, and Analysis-1, is the very first summary, where AV was introduced to the forum, and shows Goldberg's attempted defence of his work.

There are several other dicussions of 'digestion' in the forum that can be accessed by clicking the keyword. Another external blog that was among the very first to comment on AV is the 'Digesting Veda blog'. 

For those who want to get the full details on digestion of Hinduism, the links (total of 9 posts) provided above can be traversed in the following order:
1. Familiarize yourself with digestion activities in Kerala
2. Understand how digestion differs from both inclusivism and conversion  
3. American Veda: start with the DigestingVeda blog 
4. Then read Analysis-1 and Analysis-2
5. Read Part-1 and Part-2 of the current discussion on how American Veda is being supported by Hindu intellectuals (this one and the previous one)
6. Examine other discussions of digestion in the forum. 
7. Don't stop there! Blog, discuss and educate others about this serious problem.


In Part-2 of our current discussion below, we examine the foreword and contents of Phil Goldberg's book 'American Veda' shared in this blog, and then see how Hindu intellectuals respond to it.

Inside the 'American Veda' - celebration of uturners
Subra shares: "...  Just the first 25 pages. We can see the shoddy scholarship, the Sanskrit mistranslations being used to set the stage for digestion, the reductionism, and the justification for digestion. Once this is done, the remaining chapters celebrates one u-turner after another..."

Rajiv responds:
"Thanks for a good analysis. People who are in doubt should read the analysis:

It is sad how many so-called supporters of our cause failed to understand digestion at work, and went around proudly promoting the author. One such man called me... to say: "What if we get him to state he is against the Aryan theory and against missionaries"? I told this man he does not understand digestion. It is not about being against missionaries, being against Aryan theory, and so forth.

If a thief is taking your assets and digesting them by characterizing them as belonging to others, does it help you because he praises your home, expresses anger at some of your opponents, etc and other unrelated things.

THE DIGESTER LOVES WHAT HE IS DIGESTING OTHERWISE HE WONT DIGEST IT. Why am I unable to get this across???

These people among us are so STUPID and ignorant of our own history where we have seen so many westerners support us, praise us, etc precisely to dupe such IDIOTS. By now we ought to have no more fools but sadly we do.

I am confident I can get a statement from Witzel opposing missionaries. In fact he told me as such in person many years ago. But is that the issue???

Can Hinduism be rescued by a bandwagon of fools, who are easily swayed, lazy to read and understand issues, and in awe of someone supporting them with glamor.

I hope people who have promoted his works will now do penance by promoting the link above with greater enthusiasm."
 
Aditya has a useful suggestion:
"... Does anyone want in this group want to write an "alternative" review for AV on Amazon with a mention of "Being Different" as a book to read?

...  for someone who has [read the book], this would be one small step in the right direction."

css shares feedback from another person who disagreed that 'American Veda is digestion'. Please read the details in the forum. We only provide a gist of the arguments here:
1. He acknowledges the impact of Indian spirituality on America
2. He is not working on behalf of missionaries
3. He is not a practitioner in the Ken Wilber mould
4. Sloppy scholarship does not prove digestion

Rajiv comment: The above looks at DIRECT digestion only. Does not understand the subtlety and multi layered processes at work. This simplistic view is quiet common and hence I know my work is cut out for me.

PhilG valorizes digesters - he himself does not have to be one. Every digester has a coterie of cheerleaders supporting him, building is brand value, legitimizing him. These cheerleaders might not be smart enough to do the heavy thinking like a digester. They are his support team. PhilG is such a cheerleader. Wilber and Keating are examples of top tier digesters that PhilG celebrates. Good analogies are:

- most sepoys merely suck up to another thinker and hence build brand credibility for a major thinker and are not capable of doing this thinking themselves.

- People in Indian media are supporting X but not doing the nasty things personally that X does. Yet we oppose such media persons. They are part of the entourage of X that makes X important.

The problem .... is that he has not read Keating or Wilber, for example...What he sees is PhilG praising these folks in ways that seem reasonable. This is why incomplete knowledge is dangerous... I have separate volumes in the pipeline on each of these men, along with many others.

The history of PhilG work with me... (Read the original and complete information in the forum).

...
5) When the book came out I was shocked. He took all my info on the uturners and made them look like heroes. This inverts my thesis. He celebrates the process that I consider a problem...

6) ...PG's book has a couple of pages on me. I am depicted as someone who complains about uturns. He is dismissive of my complaint. He includes me to be able to say "I have already factored what Malhotra has to say". This is a tactic to dispose of a serious issue without properly dealing with it.

....point on PG criticizing missionaries is simply irrelevant. It further shows shallowness of understanding this theater. ...Witzel also opposes proselytizers, and so do most western scholars we fight - Doniger, et al. By the standards of sophisticated western scholars, proselytizing is crude, old fashion, meant for extreme right wing christianity. These folks are liberal left wing and hence anti-proselytizing.

....As I said before: People who digest from the liberal left wing side are not proselytizers or in support of them. For instance, Wilber is too sophisticated to operate at the evangelism level. Nor are any of the neuro-scientists and cognitive scientists appropriating Hindu and Buddhist ideas and practices. ... understand the complexity of liberal/leftist ideas of dharma and not try to collapse all western approaches as proselytizing. (For one thing Jews are not christians or proselytizers and yet many of them are digesters!)

It is sad that while I must invest years of rigor to get one book at a time out, there are "supporters" who cant wait. .... On limited knowledge they align themselves with the very same digesters I spend all my time investigating."

 

RMF Summary: Week of January 21-27, 2013

January 22 (continuing discussion)
Confused celebrities who are intellectually deficient, ashamed of be
Here is a typical example of a confused celebrity who is intellectually deficient and appears to be ashamed of being different (no pun intended). Shaan (a.k.a....

January 23
Swami Vivekananda Chair, University of Chicago
Prashant shares: Namaste to all! Please read the scanned image of a recruitment advertisement in the Times of India, 23rd Jan 2013 asking for applications for the Swami...

Rajiv comments:
When GOI made this grant to set up the chair a year or two back, I pointed out that U of Chicago is the home of Wendy Doniger from where emerged the Freudian psychoanalysis of Sri Ramakrishna, the guru of Swami Vivekananda. What irony that the genre of scholarship that has done the most damage to Vivekananda's guru gets the multi-million dollar chair endowed supposedly to teach about Vivekananda. You can image what kind of spin that chair will teach. Similarly, the India chairs set up by GOI in some other countries have had questionable occupants. Many tend to be selected based on being cronies, sepoys, or if they are well-intended they lack the ability to stick their necks out and change the discourse in any meaningful manner.

The same it true of some non-govt initiatives set up by "Hindu activists". The selection process in one recent academic appointment was a gimmick to give the appearance of being a genuine search. One applicant told me that when he went for his interview, he was told by an insider that the selection had already been made, and this interview was just to show that the selection was objective and fair..... This candidate felt so angry at the blatant abuse of academic due process.

I am saying all this because its unclear if the newspaper advertisement is genuine or merely for show.."

January 25
2014 Vedic conference in Kozhikode .. headed by anti hindu Harvard Witzel
Venkat shares: 
Quote: "A committee of international Vedic scholars, headed
by the workshop chair, Prof. Michael Witzel (Harvard University), will make the final selection of papers to be presented, totally expected to be around 40 in number."

I wonder if anybody in our esteemed group is in a position to
inform/influence the organizer about Michael Witzel who no friend of India and and certainly no Vedic/Hindu scholar and does not deserve to head the committee.


Website
Kozhikode to host 6th International Vedic workshop


Shambu responds:
"This is Prof. Witzel's baby since 1989 - he started it, as his answer to the WAVES conferences. He decides who is in and who is not. Therefore it is limited to his small network of Indology friends and naive Hindus.

With the demise of the Aryan Invasion Theory, and then the followed-up Aryan Migration Theory, Indology has been struggling to gather food: udara nimttam baukrta vesham. Of late, the secular Government of India and the NarayanaMurthys have been rescuing it.

If we care about India, Samskrita, the Veda, and all that has sprung out of it, we need not fight it out and waste time, since it is in its death bed. Time to meditate and recite viSNu sahasranaamaavali!...

Rajiv's comment: 
By what criteria and on what evidence did you conclude that AIT/AMT are dead? In which institutions and segments of population are they dead, and in which are they alive? How about rigor in gathering evidence and then informing us. For example, please address:
- I dont find it dead in textbooks in India or USA.
- I dont find it dead on the GOI web sites where they discuss Indian history.
- I dont find it dead in the publications of people getting padam bhushan type of awards, and academic chairs for India studies.
- Worst of all, I dont find it dead amongst scholars being given grants and funds by so-called dharma civilization foundations.

Also, maybe you should follow your advice to not bother with such issues and practice: "Time to meditate and recite viSNu sahasranaamaavali!""

Gopal pings the organizers and forwards their response:
"This is the response I got from Srikant[] one of the Organizers,

Respected Sir,

I have received your mail and have noted the contents. As the organizers of this 6th Vedic International Workshop have decided, the main focus of this conference is the Tradition of the Vedic Shakhas in Kerala and other parts of India. They will not entertain any discussion on Aryan Problem and related controversial issues for which there are other platforms. No one, including Prof. Witzel, will be allowed to speak or make a presentation that directly or indirectly points to those issues or supports anti-Hindu propaganda, or denigrates Indian Culture. We do not subscribe to such views and are not interested to spend our time for initiating such a discussion.

As for Prof. Witzel's position as the Chair, it has been there for the past several years, since 1989, when he initiated this workshop. I have attended the past three workshops and have found no controversial issues discussed. ....

Prof. Witzel has done significant work on the Vedic Shakhas and published several articles. You may read them and refute his arguments, if you so desire. 

.....

I hope I have made our position clear.

Can the members of the forum decipher it and provide a respectful response."

Venkat replies to Gopal:
"....  link and content of a dossier of Witzel anti Hindu nature which you should forward to Shrikant[].

Thus Spake Professor Michael Witzel
A Harvard University Case Study in Prejudice?
_________________________________________________
CONTENTS: Pg. No.
1.0 Background 2
2.0 Statements stereotyping Indian Americans…………………………………………………..
2.1: Indian Americans are ‘lost’ and ‘abandoned’
2.2: Indian American scholars are all chauvinists
2.3: Indian/Hindu American groups are Hindu fundamentalists
2.4 Rudeness towards Indian Americans and Indians
2-6
3.0 Statements Stereotyping scholarship in India and Indians in general……………………
3.1 Direct attacks by Witzel-..."

Vishal comments:
"...What [Srikhant] says ... is true. The conferences have rigidly stuck to studying Vedic traditions in the past.

Witzel will be 70 in July this year - so not much time for him to keep going. Given his health, people think he is 80.

But what are WE HINDUS doing to study our traditions OURSELVES? Most Hindus have not even seen copies of the Vedas, nor have heard them being chanted.

Given this situation, we should follow the dictum, "one should learn Dharma even from the lowliest..."

Venkat responds:
I received a reply..:
 ... Thank you ... Let me make it clear that I do not subscribe to his views nor do I support them. My area of study is limited to .... This is the reason why I try to help ....

Rajiv's comment:
His reply is typical of washing one's hands of responsibility.
"I only do my work, poor little me." "I have my eyes closed to what others do."
 
January 26
Rajiv's new blog on FirstPost.
Kaajal posts:
Please read Rajiv's new blog on FirstPost. The title: We need to Study Western, "White" culture on our own terms. This blog draws upon Rajiv's writings from a few years ago on identity formation of Indians in America. In particular, Rajiv
draws our attention to the importance of studying "whiteness" as a means of fully understanding Western culture and its claims of universalism. [Here's the e-group link to the December 2012 discussion cited].
 
January 26 
"Guardian article dividing Hinduism on Republic Day
Ganapathi shares:
".... article appeared in left-liberal newspaper The Guardian of UK, against Hinduism once again making an artificial division in..."


January 26
Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania (Jehovah's Witnesses) Leaks

Chirayu shares: Anybody researching on Jehovah's Witnesses may find this interesting. Recently the hackers collective known as anonymous hacked into the JW's servers and released about 700 MB of data. You can download the release from here ..."

RMF Summary: Week of November 16-22, 2012

November 19 (continuing discussion from November 1st)

Why mantra cannot be performed by a machine I am involved in a private debate with some Sanskrit scholars who dispute my position that mantra requires a jiva - i.e. prana/consciousness. Implication of my... Latest comment: "Isn't the whole concept of Mantra Puja based on the concept of 'Bandhu' as written in BD by Rajiv Ji. The Mantra in a written form and/or verbal form is 'Apara' while when performed by a Pandit achieves the 'Para'? ..." November 19 hiding Indian source Carpentier posts: An example of purposely hiding the Indian source: Some weeks ago a Swiss woman with whom I shared a room 25 years ago in Satya Sai’s ashram traced me. She ..... ... Her Answer.... Vedanta is an experience level, it neither belongs to India nor to any part of the world. Vedanta is an experience level IN you, call it the THAT level. We called it the It level. This book wanted to show that it does not matter in which religion you are born, the true religion you find in yourself. I don't think that India, Indian philosophy needs to be defended; it is eternal and speaks to the innermost truth in every human being. Therefore, dear Maria, cheer up, relax, it is everything as it is meant to be (end) A similar line of argument used a German psychology professor whom I asked why so many of his colleagues (not he) take from India and don't acknowledge though the Indian knowledge is beneficial for everyone. He answered, 'well, if it is beneficial for everyone, it means it belongs to humanity as a whole and not to a particular country.' Rajiv Malhotra's comment: "we are asking them to acknowledge Vedanta, not India. Since the[y] acknowledge Vedanta privately, they should do so publicly in their writings, just as they would acknowledge a wstern thinker of school of thought. They diverted the issue by responding about India." Carpentier followup:  "I think one sees an old reflex born out of the West's instinctive far of polytheism, created through centuries of inquisition and ideological control. Too many people are afraid to quote Hinduism for fear of being labelled polytheists and idol worshipers, which is why they often prefer to seek affiliation with Sufism or Buddhism... "  Rajiv Malhotra's followup: "There are many factors for this stage-2 of uturn, i.e. removing the dharmic context. Fear of idolatry etc is just one of them. More broadly, the Hinduphobia that has been put in place in the past 25 years is designed to cause people to dis-associate from Hinduism. For more on Hinduphobia, see my earlier writings on Sulekha that later culminated in the book INVADING THE SACRED".  November 20 Radhasoami: Another proponent of "sameness" encouraging the deer to be eaten Chandramouli posted a couple of links. Carpentier responds: I learnt today coincidentally that the person in charge of all publications for Radhasoami Satsang Beas is a Jewish gentleman who embraces the creed that all religions are equal expression of God's message. Rajiv Malhotra follows up: Purva paksha requires one to investigate what is meant by the above reference to "God's message" in each religion. God's message cannot be reduced to a few simple sentences pulled out out thousands of statements from their texts. God's message must be understood in entirety for a given faith in order to understand it. Only then can one assess whether all these messages in various religions are saying the same thing. or whether there are serious contradictions. In BD I explain in detail that Nicene Creed as Christian normative statement of God's message is in mutual contradiction with dharma ideas of the nature of reality, karma, reincarnation...  November 21 This tragedy caught the attention of people from all around the world. Hindu woman dies in Ireland due to imposition of Catholic law cnn link sent by Srinath. November 22 Angana Chatterji hosted at Harvard by Michael Witzel There were many who were wondering where Angana went after being arrested in the US. Kaajal Ahuja finds that she is back in business with a couple of friends well-known in 'Breaking India'. If you wonder what Indologist Sanskrit academics in the US do, here is an example. "In Breaking India, Rajiv & Aravindan write about some US academics who produce literature with questionable funding that could aid in the disintegration of India or at the very least US intervention. Angana Chatterji was fired by the California Institute of Integral Studies recently but is now working at Berkeley University. Whats more, she will speak at a panel hosted by Michael Witzel of Harvard. Monday, Nov. 26: South Asia Without Borders Seminar Series. Angana Chatterji, Berkeley University will discuss "Naxalism and Orissa: Divergent Conflicts, Political Economy, and Minoritization." Sanjeev Uprety, Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu will present "Neat and Laundered Middle Classes and Third Gender Nepal Communist party-United Marxist Leninist: Masculinity and Politics in Contemporary Nepal." Michael Witzel, Wales Professor of Sanskrit, Department of South Asian Studies will chair the event.  Tattvaanveshanam provides a useful link about Angana's current project. November 22 Re: Request for RigVeda and Shiva translation... In Lalita-Sahasra Namam, which is widely memorized and recited among Shakti worshippers, one namavali runs thus: Unmesha-nimishotpanna-vipanna-bhuvanaval..