Introduction
Blogger @BeingDifferent summarizes some of the key findings of the 500+ page book 'Invading the Sacred' (ITS) that represents a scholarly critique of Hinduism Studies in North America. The recent Penguin-books controversy was milked to the max by Wendy Doniger & co., driving the sales of her seriously flawed book "The Hindus' that denigrates Hinduism and India's freedom fighters all the way to the top: #1 best-seller in Amazon's religion section. On the other hand, Rajiv Malhotra has made ITS, the book that rebuts such distorted works by non-practitioners of Hinduism freely downloadable to counter the continuing misrepresentations of Doniger & co. It is noteworthy that Doniger & co. have not been able to challenge any of the scholarly assertions in ITS and have always shied away from a public debate with Rajiv Malhotra. This is a must-read book for Hindus all over the world. Rajiv Malhotra later wrote 'Breaking India', 'Being Different', and most recently, 'Indra's Net'. Each of them a best-selling masterpiece that most readers have described in one word: Unignorable.The following blogs provide a condensed summary of ITS' findings. We hope this encourages critical-thinking Hindus to take a few weeks to read ITS in its original form fully and recognize the underlying Kurukshetra that has unfolded, and the unprecedented challenges that Hinduism, and indeed, all Dharmic thought systems, face today.
Chapter Summaries
Chapter 1: Why is "Invading the sacred" an important book?
Chapter 2: Academic Hinduphobia
Chapter 3: Wendy's child Jeffrey Kripal on Sri Ramakrishna
Chapter 4: Sarah Caldwell - Reinterpreting Hindu Goddess as a symbol of sex and violence
Chapter 5: Paul Courtright's distortion of Ganesha and Shiva
Chapter 6: Stanley Kurtz on Hindu mothers and Hijackers
Chapter 7: Challenges to Wendy Doniger's Sanskrit
Chapter 8: Assault on Tantra Tradition: Part-1, Part-2
Chapter 9: Deconstructing The Psychology of Wendy Doniger and Children
Chapter 10: Hinduism Studies in the West: It's all about power
Chapter 11: Scholars should criticize but not define another’s religion
Chapter 12: Balagangadhara on the biblical underpinnings of secularism
Chapter 13: The children of colonial psychoanalysis: part 1, part-2
Chapter 14: Yuvraj Krishan on whether Siva-Ganesa fight is Oedipal conflict
Chapter 15: Yvette Rosser - Kripal on the couch in Calcutta
Chapter 16: Prejudice in Hinduism studies: The case of Microsoft Encarta: Part-1, Part-2
Chapter 17: An Independent Review of Paul Courtright's book on Ganesa - Part-1, Part-2, Part-3, Part-4, Part-5,
Read 'Invading The Sacred' Online
ITS Video section
1. Book Launch
2. Ajit Gulabchand at Book Launch
Other Articles and References
1. Rajiv Malhotra (Risa Lila-1: Wendy's Child Syndrome)2. Rajiv Malhotra (Risa Lila 2: Limp Scholarship & Demonology)
3. Swami Tyagananda (Jeffrey Kripal's Kali's Child)
4. Vishal Agarwal (Doniger's 'The Hindus')
5. Sandeep Balakrishna (Penguin controversy)
6. Rajiv Malhotra (Rediff interview)
http://creative.sulekha.com/from-orientalism-to-academic-hinduphobia-the-strange-career-of-the-american-approach-to-indian-studies_629049_blog
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