Old and new images of sepoy and master

pic linked from punch.photoshelter.com

pic linked from devdutt.com

The first image shows British master with Indian sepoy. The body language is asymmetric and explicit.

In the second image, Devdutt Pattanaik and Wendy mom are embracing as equal love birds. But power is asymmetric. One has intellectual adhikara over the other. One has superiority complex and the other is colonized as inferior. One is funding the other and giving him legitimacy and prestige. The subordinate does the dirty work for his master. But in this new American form of colonization, the sepoy gets treated with outward respect. Americans are better at the game than the Brits. The sepoys they hire are better educated and more polished. The lure of sepoy-hood is greater than before.

Please compare & contrast the two eras of colonization, and how Sepoy 1.0 have morphed into Sepoy 2.0.

Don’t Cry Dona from Chicago

By Naveen Chandra

The article The Repression of Religious Studies by Wendy Doniger touches on many topics of which I chose to answer a few.

A. Intellectual Territorial Integrity Violations

Soon after Rajiv Malhotra’s seminal book, The Battle For Sanskrit, came out, scholars from various fields signed a petition to remove Pollock from the leadership of MCLI, among who was Makarand Paranjpe, a JNU professor of English. He answered in his erudite way outlining the reasons why this petition was signed. Either the Dona from Chicago didn’t read it or didn’t understand it or chose to ignore it or all the above, we don’t know. Didn’t she also do a similar thing in the past? Sheldon Pollock himself invaded the intellectual territory of others on August 27, 2015 when he signed a petition to bar Mr. Narendra Modi, India’s Prime Minister from going to Silicon Valley, which effort was characterized as “far Left” by the Silicon Engineers who signed a counter petition welcoming Mr. Modi, as “a very strong representation from faculty in engineering disciplines, who, arguably, are best prepared to comment on Digital India as well as the Aadhaar program.’ Obviously Pollock’s efforts were not on par with the engineers’ qualifications with the implication that he was not qualified to comment on Digital India.

Qualifications of Sheldon Pollock Questioned

1. Pollock’s previous experience with Clay Library has to be looked into. Translations by Doniger (“Harsh Ratnavali”) and Pollock ("Raghu Vamsa "and "Rasamanjari") were found to be have many pitfalls (https://hrdayasamvada.wordpress.com). His translation of a verse from Chandodogyopanishad was found to contain many errors (http://www.jagritbharat.com/index.php/bfs/browse-shashtrarth/1210-pollock-s-translational-woes-continue-12-errors-found-in-his-handling-of-a-single-two-line-sanskrit-verse.)

2. It is clear that Pollock is man of contradictions. For example in his paper published in 1985 he at one place says sastras are prescriptive followed by the statement later that there were professions which did not follow any sastras. Elsewhere he says at one place Sanskrit helped the languages of Southeast Asia followed by statement that Sanskrit killed those languages.

3. He works a theory, cites data supporting that theory and ignores data that don’t. His theory was that the sastras were repressive of the society. He says these texts are dogmatic, regressive used for political and social oppression, without providing any evidence. People read an Upanishad or one of the Darshanas or Geeta because they find them enlightening, freeing and progressive. He quotes Kautilya who showed disdain for sastras but does not follow up on this stream of thought and ignores it when concluding.

4. For a man who spent 40 years writing about Hinduism his knowledge of his subject matter leaves many gaps. He missed major paradigm shifts in Hindu philosophy - Vedas, Upanishads, Darshanas, Advaita, Visishtadvaita and Dvaita each represented a change suggesting an evolution of thought. He does not mention this most important feature of Hindu philosophy.

5. He said that the worship of Ram is a ‘cult’ popularized around the 12thC to rally the masses against the Turkish invaders by projecting them as the demonic ‘other’. Is he suggesting that Ravana the villain of Ramayana was a Muslim? Even though Ravana was a Brahmin he did not escape punishment for his misdeeds. Historical evidences to Ramayana date back, as Nandita Krishna says, to Lumbini pillar erected by Ashoka in 249 BCE. Famous Sanskrit books such as Uttararamacharita by Bhavabhuti in 8th and Raghuvamsa by Kalidasa in 5Th based on Ramayana were written well before 12th century. In Sangam literature, in the book Puranaanooru, in verse 378, on page 604, there is a mention of jewels of Raman’s wife Sithai. This could have been anytime between 4th Century BCE and 5th Century CE.

6. According to him Mahabharata is the most dangerous political story in the world because it is a deep meditation on the fratricide in civil war. Mahabharata war was not a civil war. It was a war fought between two clans- Kauravas and Pandavas who were cousins not brothers. His admiration for Moguls is well known and he should know that the history of Moguls is the best example of meditation on the fratricide.

7. His opinion that Sanskrit is a ‘dead’ language whose revival was done by barbarous invaders coupled with carefully read this “The German Holocaust was inspired by the Nazis reading of Sanskrit texts” is not evidence based.

8. His statement that Rama didn’t have free will and was a fatalist to accept decisions made by his father assumes that Rama was incapable of making any decisions independently. The events in Ramayana show otherwise- his dealings with Sugreeva, Hanuman and Vibheeshana show him as a very sagacious person and his conduct in War show him as a capable leader and fighter. Sam Harris says,” Decision is already made before you are aware of it. We are not the conscious makers of our actions”, thus nullifying the concept of Free Will. Spinoza thought that there was no Free Will. Thus even the western opinion is divided on this issue. What is Pollock doing criticizing Rama for not having free will?

There are many other issues on which Pollock either does not understand Hindu documents or is willfully misrepresenting them for a higher goal such as breaking up of India. These are enough to show that he is not capable to run a classical library of Indian languages translated into English.

B. Need for Swadeshi Indology

The Battle For Sanskrit argues that South Asian Studies first carried out under the aegis of European Orientalism, and when money ran out there found a new lease under American Orientalism, is nothing but a mutual admiration society that has as put by an observer “little regard to due process, academic rigor and rational approach to theorizing”, as seen by allowing Pollock to formulate theories without evidence as shown above. His theory on oral tradition, his penchant for using outdated works in interpreting ancient Hindu books, his dismissal of ideas that run contrary to his theory without giving a reason or evidence, declaring “social and grammatical orders are related by their very nature” without proof, and his famous contradictions that go unchallenged all point to the breakdown of peer evaluation in the process of publications on South Asian Studies. Is this treatment reserved for Hindu studies alone? Will they make statements like these on other religions? Academic freedom allows classifying Ramayana and Mahabharata under mythology but no book under Islam, Christianity or Judaism is classified as mythology according to Rajiv Malhotra.

Ursula King spins a theory that Vivekananda borrowing ideas from the west such as compassion erected an edifice of modern Hinduism which otherwise did not exist before. This is well explained in Malhotra’s earlier book, Indra’s Net. In doing so he contradicted Adi Sanakara’s theory of attaining mukti from jnaana path alone. This statement became the lynch pin of the entire western Indology that relegates Hinduism to a meaningless conglomeration of a million unconnected narratives, ideas, processes, personalities events and places. In the worst case scenario these Indologists compare Hinduism to Humpty Dumpty put together by Vivekananda with glue of western ideas. For Ursula King nothing seems to have happened in Hinduism in the eleven hundred years from Sankara to Vivekananda which is either total ignorance or total willful misrepresentation of history to undermine Hinduism.

Besides Advaita in the eighth century two other equally important schools of thought emerged one in the eleventh century called Visishtadvaita proposed by Raamaanujaachaarya and the second one in the thirteenth century called Dvaita proposed by Madhvaachaarya. While Advaita in a nutshell says Brahman and Prakriti are same, only Brahman is Real, Ramanuja says they are both same and real, and Madhva says Hari and Prakriti are different and are real, Narayan and Hari respectively taking the place of Brahman in the two traditions. These fundamental differences are debated by scholars showing a robust evolution of thought in Hinduism totally ignored by western scholars. All three Achaaryas as they were known also gave Bhashyas to Upanishads and Geeta in accordance with their theories. Many other thinkers gave interpretations to the three theories themselves essence of which was there were many ways to attain mukti. Sankara wrote three great poems that are the source of puja even today- Bhaja Govindam, Mahishaasura Mardanam and Kanakadhaara stotram evidence that he advocated Karma and Bhakti besides Jnaana as paths to Mukti.

Those who criticize Hindu society for lack of compassion forget David Copperfield, Les Miserables, Count of Monte Cristo, Brothers Karamazov, Grapes of Wrath and others where Western Society’s inhuman behavior towards other human beings is portrayed in great detail. The violence that marked Europe is conveniently forgotten. The colonialism, oppression, suppression, slavery, imperialism are shoved under the rug from everybody’s view. Of all the societies in the past Hindu society was the most egalitarian and giving. Hindus didn’t borrow compassion from the west. The borrowing of compassion was done in the fifteenth century by the Jesuits who took it to Europe where it became digested and now passes on as a western commodity.

Great many western Indologists come with background of Theology, Seminary training and Evangelical fervor, Ursula King, Wendy Doniger and Richard Fox young being the prominent examples. Thus their interest in Hinduism is not limited to an objective study of but to nitpicking and putting down Hinduism paving the way to conversions.

These later day interpreters of Hinduism pay no attention to earlier thinkers like Bailey, Playfair, Voltaire, Hodgkinson, Thoreau, Durant, Emerson, Toynbee, Romain Rolland, Oppenheimer, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Goethe, Mark Twain and others who showered encomiums on Hinduism, but they instead push their critical view to damage Hinduism with sole purpose of . carrying on culturally genocidal conversion. In this they are ably led by Marxists like Pollock who cling onto outdated theories of class struggle that have failed in the erstwhile USSR beside other countries including India.

The contributions made by Hindus are never mentioned in California text books but only negative aspects thanks to South Asian scholars at Universities. Thankfully, there has been a growing chorus of Hindu voices complaining about this now. The utter failure of Max Mueller in writing the true history when added to the current crop make Hindus cringe at the prospect of foreigners writing their history. If somebody said to Gandhi,”France is ruled by French, Germany by Germans, but let us rule India, as we know better”, what would he have said. Furthermore all academic work done in India is ignored by American Orientalists on one pretext or other.That is why there is a need for Swadeshi Indology, a term and concept developed and proposed by Rajiv Malhotra.

C. Book banning case study; Satanic Verses

The author of The Hindus did not in her own words suffer from the case. The book was not banned. It was sold under the counter stealthily. She likes it that she has upped the Hindu objectors. She made money albeit immorally bordering on intellectual dishonesty, whereas Satanic Verses was banned. Does the author claim her book is comparable to Verses in literary values such as style, creativity and language? Why did Verses fail so much financially and faired so much worse politically but excelled intellectually? Why did her book an instrument in the hands of evangelists did better financially and politically but miserably failed intellectually? Does she stop to think? Which book will survive in the long run? Compare the magnanimity of Hindu objectors that allowed the sale of The Hindus to be continued to the dogged, mindless and vicious campaign that banned Verses, a great literary work. By the way on what side is she and her friends are on banning Verses?

D. What does Rajiv Malhotra say?

Rajiv Malhotra says of Pollock, “I found Pollock's modus operandi to be work back from a conclusion, offering selective references to support it, and oftentimes simply base it on an assumption with no evidence to back it.”

We saw above ample evidence for this. Malhotra asks questions such as did Sanskrit prevent anyone from learning, are Hindus fatalists, are sastras repressive, did Vedas prevent growth of knowledge, are the Rishis same as Christian priests of Europe of a bygone era, what is the true meaning of four ashrams, what is the true meaning of four purusharthas, does Karma prohibit meaningful engagements of individuals in making families and communities prosperous, is Sanskrit responsible for German debacle, is Hindu society chaotic, and many others and asks Hindus to learn about their history, practices and greatness much to the chagrin of South Asian Studies scholars who give answers denigrating Hinduism. Malhotra asks Hindus to do poorva paksha and uttara paksha to get to the truth much to the discomfort of American Orientalists. Malhotra brings to the attention of Hindus the works of Reinhold Guenendahl that refute Pollock but does not get the public exposure they deserve as the space is occupied by more wealthy Americans who control the media.

Naturally a truth seeker like Malhotra gets the ire of a prevaricating Dona from Chicago.

F. Brahmins Blamed Again
Dona from Chicago says the wealthy Brahmins in the US support Malhotra in his battle against her and Pollock. American Orientalists’ favourite target finds its rightful place in this write up. Is there any grain of truth in this yarn? Why didn’t the Dona from Chicago do some home work before she made this baseless allegation? American Orientalists have signed close to fifteen petitions against Hinduism, India, Modi and similar causes some time in the numbers that exceeded 500, including the Dona from Chicago. Many of these are also persons of Indian origin. Did she check how many of them were Brahmins? Isn’t it a bit hypocritical to cry that Brahmins support Malhotra at the same time drawing huge support from them to her cause? She is promoting hatred which is illegal in the US and the FBI would like to take a look at her.

Conclusions: American Orientalists are outdated in their knowledge, are prevaricating, are hypocritical, are unscientific, are irrational, are promoters of hatred against Brahmins, are ignorant of Hinduism, lack academic integrity- these are only a few among other character flaws. I as a Hindu would not want them write about Hinduism.

Working draft - Players and priorities in the Kurukshetra

Players and Priorities in the Kurukshetra

By Rajiv Malhotra

While 25 years ago I routinely faced serious resistance from our community when I discussed how our discourse is dominated by outsiders, today there is enough awareness of this problem. Despite this awareness, we have not yet achieved much by way of actually changing the discourse in the mainstream. One of the reasons is that too often our opinion leaders do not start with a clear statement of our goals in the mainstream; they tend to jump ahead to opine or start taking actions that might not be well thought through.

In this brief note, I want to focus one issue one: the relationship between deep structures and superficial discourse. From this follows my analysis of the types of players who are active and what prevents better coordination among ourselves.   

Can superficial involvement topple the deep structures?

There are many levels and sub-levels of discourse, but for my purpose here I will discuss the two extremes (namely, the deep level and the superficial level). My thesis is succinctly stated below.

1. While mainstream media and pop culture tend to discuss things superficially, there lies a deep level of discourse that requires more specialized expertise to engage. This is where the intellectual power resides. One must drill down to this level to really know what is going on that matters.
2. Our opponents have worked hard at the deep level for the past several generations. They have systematically established their ideologies, assumptions, loyal players, and the means of knowledge production and distribution. Often, they have not only conceded the superficial level to us as a way to make us happy and complicit, they have also actively helped us at the surface level to seem like allies. By now, very few among us are aware of what goes on at the deep level, and fewer still are concerned about this with enough passion and fearlessness to be able to make any impact. Most of us are negotiating their place within the deep structure controlled by others.
3. We are micro-optimizing our position in the sense of short sighted improvements and benefits for a few. We are sacrificing the marco situation as a result. We have been doing this for many centuries. First it was the Muslims in control, then the Europeans, and now the Americans. 
4. Over the past 25 years, there has been a groundswell improvement of public awareness of this predicament. However, not much has been achieved in the deep levels where the structures remain hostile to our civilization. We are fighting superficial battles even after becoming aware of the serious predicament we face.
5. The deep structures cannot be disrupted by using superficial methods and superficially trained minds. This is where the crux of my issue lies.
6. The deep level of work required is inherently tough, multi-disciplinary, risky, and there is no quick victory or personal gratification in the conventional sense. In other words, it is thankless work demanding high sacrifice and with high personal risks.
7. Given the enormity of the deep level challenges, we need multiple experts each specializing in different kinds of issues. There is room for plenty of leadership without tripping over each other or trying to bring each other down. However, we lack such broad vision among many of the leaders. Why?
8. There is too much opportunism, and this is because the easy/quick superficial levels are more enticing, and because most of our people reward the superficial work. It is a quick way ahead for many. This means there is neglect of the deeper levels, and to much glorification and limelight for superficial work. Many are turning the deep discourse into superficial level for quick fame. Who will do the heavy lifting then?
9. My advice to individuals wanting to be deeply involved is to pick a movement and dedicate yourself to it.
10. Match your work with your svadharma, and turn that into your yajna.

But first, I will give a simple overview of the different types of players in the battlefield. Then was can find ways to organize ourselves better to achieve the goal of toppling the deep structures and discourse that we have inherited from the past.

Categories of players

The simple view most of us have is that there are just two kinds of players in the intellectual battlefield, our home team and our opponents. My movement has been to fight those opponents who are the thought leaders, and not waste time fighting the ordinary ones. I choose those opponents where I can make a game changing impact, and especially where others on our ideological side have not taken up the fight yet, or at least nobody has done the heavy lifting required to spark such a fight. I am now doing this kind of pioneering work with Pollock, and I have earlier started similar movements against other heavy weights like Wendy Doniger.

Individuals on my home team are those supporting my strategy, identification of targets, plans and methods. In other words, they must be team players and must have enough tapasya and competence to be useful in pragmatic ways.

However, another major category of players is of those who are not on my home team, who are other pro-dharma leaders aligned with our ideals and fighting for dharma on their own. For example, I have great respect for leaders of dharma such as Dr. Subramanian Swamy and Baba Ramdev, and intellectuals like S. Gurumurthy, Madhu Kishwar and Koenraad Elst, who have each achieved their own independent impact in a substantial way. The diagram below shows these three types of players.

The point to appreciate is that these other dharmic forces (type 3) act independently of my work; but we appreciate each other’s work, try to stay in touch privately and help each other when we can. One can use the analogy of coalition partners – separate identity and organizations, but aligned strategically.

Focus: the type 4 nuisance

I wish life in the kurukshetra was this simple. Unfortunately, much of my energy is wasted on a fourth category of persons. The reason form writing this paper is to draw attention to this group. The other categories are mentioned very briefly just to locate the type 4 group and discuss them in detail.

This is a very large set of individuals acting in disruptive ways while thinking they are helping our cause. To put it simply, these are persons who are unwilling to fit into my home team (type 2) and are not competent enough or effective enough to have become high-impact players in their own right (type 3). I want to discuss this type 4 individual in detail. The diagram that follows shows all four categories I have introduced thus far.

The problem with such misfits can be understood by first appreciating the importance of any enterprise having a common strategic plan. A master chef has a well-developed recipe he wants to make with the help of others, but he cannot afford to allow helpers who have their own recipes no matter how good. Imagine that a chief town planner has developed the master architecture for a major project, complete with standards, methods, priorities and so forth. Then imagine some workers join who don’t want to follow these plans but have their own rival or conflicting ideas. Yet they do not want to go away and take responsibility for developing their own separate town somewhere else. They want to work here but not follow the narrative that has been put in place to guide the project. Any leader would find this behavior an obstruction and look for a way to get rid of such people. The same can be said for someone who joins a surgical team for a complex surgery, but who revolts in the middle of the surgery against the plan being carried out by the chief surgeon. A military commander would not tolerate some on his team that argues in the middle of battle and demands his own approach to battle be carried out instead. These are all examples we learn in the corporate world as team builders and leaders.

There is a time for brainstorming to make decisions, and a time to comply with the team’s playbook once that is set. Too often, I find that we Indians lack this kind of team dynamics and there tends to be internal fighting when the focus ought to be to unite against the opponents out there.

In my career as an entrepreneur, I used to offer such rebellious but otherwise intelligent individuals a chance to lead their own project, one in which they would be the boss. Many did take up such challenges and performed very well. They would be classified as type 3 in the above diagram – i.e. those cut out to be their own autonomous leaders. But many such rebellious individuals were not capable to lead their own ventures, because they lacked the necessary strategic thinking, leadership experience and risk taking. They were not cut out to take responsibility and be accountable for producing the results expected. Nor would they follow the lead of someone else. Such team misfits have to be removed after some attempts have been made to try and work with them. This becomes important for the sake of the health of the overall enterprise.

Many such individuals turn out to be opportunists who sneak in under the guise of wanting to help. But they want to quickly pick up some ideas or resources, and then go away to try their own mobilization. Some of them have the audacity of demanding that I should work for them. They try to impose their own scheme/narrative of how to do things and constantly argue against the approach I have developed over many years and one that works for me. After internal bickering which is unproductive, one has to ask them to leave us alone. This can turn into acrimony as the person feels insulted that their capabilities were rejected. Indians must learn more team work and accept that often a good individual worker might be a bad team member. For the sake of team performance, it become better to remove the individual. Anyone who has run complex projects knows what I am talking about.

Once such a relationship has become antagonistic, there is a range of potential outcomes possible. One hopes the person peacefully goes away. We can be friends from a distance, leaving each other alone. But too often the disgruntled person become a hijacker because by now he knows too many secrets.  I have had individuals try to blackmail me with warning that they will join my enemies. Many indeed have done so. Some persons vacillate between playing a positive role in one of my teams and turning toxic when we reject his or her ideas.

At some stage, one must recognize that the relationship cannot be salvaged and it becomes a matter of damage control. I see them as pests or hecklers that I must try to contain somehow. The diagram below has many signature qualities listed in bullet points under type 4. This might seem strange to readers who are inexperienced in this kind of work, because they assume that Hindus would come to seva with a spirit of dedication and surrender of the ego. In practice, this is not how it works.

In the recent clash with R. Ganesh, several type 4 individuals showed their true colors. I have this side of them for many years. Some are newcomers who tried marching in and demanding to take things over, and when politely asked to leave us alone, they turned hostile. I am not naming persons here, but if you look at the archives on some Facebook and others discussions you will find such patterns of behavior.

As for R. Ganesh himself, I never expected that he would want to work in my home team following our grand strategy. But it would have been nice if he had carved a niche in the kurukshetra and become a responsible leader of type 3. We could be friends from a distance while sympathizing and morally supporting each other. A sign of slavery of a defeated people is this silo mentality. To get out of this we need to put lacs of our youth through corporate leadership roles where they learn how to play roles from the big ones to the small ones, in harmony and with the use of diverse people with specialized strengths and weaknesses. Unfortunately, our education system does not emphasize leadership or management or strategic thinking skills.

The fifth type of person is someone who does not want to commit to concrete roles in a type 2 or 3 setting, and nor is ambitious as a type 4 activist wanting to do things his own way. Such individuals stay out of the limelight, and might do things like retweeting or supporting from the outside once in a while. They can be very useful because we have a large number of them and collectively they definitely matter. We cannot count on them to do big tasks, but nor are we concerned that they might turn toxic and destructive. Those who wish to remain passive readers in order to learn for the sake of self-improvement belong here as well. While many of them will remain here long term, several will migrate to one of the other categories.

Let me return to the challenge I posed earlier: How can we align the players and formulate priorities to topple the deep discourse? The simplistic grid like I have presented here, though far from perfect, allows readers to crystalize a view of the internal politics we must deal with deftly.

Unfortunately, many talented individuals are sitting and watching, some are splashing water to get attention, some are trying to trip the hard working leaders out of excitement or to get personal attention; some do this out of jealousy and spite.

Not only should you avoid becoming another type 4 destructive person, I suggest that you must actively engage in fighting the type 4 persons. Just as the body’s immune system defends it from threatening forces, so also we need help to fight off such disruptive forces even if they are micro-optimizing and seem to have good intentions on the surface.

Purvapaksha of Wendy Doniger edited 'Purana Perennis'

Chatsinn, a member of the Rajiv Malhotra discussion forum discovered when browsing through the MCLI website, the CV of Velchuru Narayana Rao who is part of the translation team for the 'Story of Manu' or Manucharitra in Telugu.

Velchuru was also one of the contributors of the book Purana Perennis, edited by Wendy Doniger. Chatssin says that a reading of the book throws up the same biases that are seen in Pollock's work. Apart from the biases, there are also very fundamental errors in the translation. He says there is a very casual attitude in the writing which discounts the sacred dimension of our texts. He also observes that the tool of political philology is predominantly used for the interpretation of the texts.

He says:

-When talking about the objective of the book below is her [Doniger] statement, tone was so demeaning and devoid of any shraddha. And the statement also shows colonial hegemony of projecting themselves as saviours who are reviving the puranas. But In India these are already widespread and well read by common man.

"If Vedic texts were Brahmins of Indology, the puranas were the untouchables. We all felt that study of these neglected traditions was long overdue as a kind of puranic affirmative action. The essays in this book represent a first step in that direction." (pg 59)

There is another chapter titled “Purana as Brahminic Ideology” by V Narayana Rao who looks like a sepoy of the Cabal. For him our civilization is a Brahminic civilization and he is looking even the scientific Hindu calendar from Marxist lens.

"India has three different ways of conceptualizing time and space, all of which are still at work in the lives of Indian people. The low-caste, nonliterate people have folk concept of time/space, uppercaste Sanskrit-educated Brahmins have a puranic concept of time/space, and the western educated Indians have a modern concept of time/space." (pg88)

But if you go deep into the further chapters it is not a dharmic study of puranas but a crass political study. She [Doniger] is referring to Skanda Purana as “Scrap Purana”.

"In this world of ever-shifting puranic sands, the Skanda Purana is surely the shiftiest, or perhaps the sandiest, of all. The longest and most sprawling of all the puranas, though it was usually grouped with the Maha -rather than the Upapuranas it was regarded even by the native Indian tradition as a scrap-bag; its name forms a pun to this effect in Tamil, where it is the “scrap” Purana (Kantal-Puranam)." (Pg 59)

I googled for Kantal Puranam did not got any results. But got for Kanthal (note the additional h) and means flower. Not sure if she is removing h and mentioning as Kantal. Tamil people in this forum can confirm this.

To the above research, Senthil added his comments:

What shoddy authorship!!!! And Wendy is supposedly an "authority" on Hinduism... Pathetic that such illiterates are occupying prestigious chairs in top US universities.

Kantha-Puranam in Tamil narrates the birth and story of Kantha. Kantha is another name for Muruga/Karthikeya, the son of Shiva and it's common meaning is "The Beautiful One". If I twist my brain like Wendy then I can infer that she's mixing "Kantha" with "Kanthal" a Tamil word meaning "Torn". Even then it is not same as "Scrap". A torn piece of cloth can be used as scrap cloth in kitchen, but that does not mean Torn = Scrap. And stretching it even further to say Kantha Puranam = Scrap bag is ridiculous.

Even with my basic knowledge on Skanda-Purana, I can tell that there are HUGE differences between Skanda-Purana(Sanskrit) and Kantha-Puranam(Tamil).
Skanda purana is massive and there are so many Khandas and Samhitas that comprise the Sanskrit body of the purana. Its subject matter is diverse.
Kantha puranam is a Tamil work that was inspired by a specific Khanda of a specific Samhita from the Sanskrit version. It is much smaller in size and has a more focused subject matter. All the more reason why it makes no sense why Tamils would call it a scrap bag.

Also, there are many other Tamil literary works like "Kanthar Alangaram", "Kanthar Anubhoothi", "Kantha Sasti kavacham", "Kantha Guru Kavacham" etc. Why would Tamils call all these works as scrap??

In fact the purana about Kantha-puranam, tells us about the rigorous intellectual debates that went behind, before it was accepted as a purana.
Here's the version:

Katchiappa Shivacharyar was born in Kanchipuram, Tamilnadu in the Kaumaram sect that worships Kantha(Murugan). Once he had a vision in which the Lord asked him to bring his sacred purana to the Tamil people, from the Sanskrit version. HE gave clear instructions on the source material: Shiva-Rahasya Khanda of Shankara Samhita of Skanda Purana. HE also gave the author, the first few Tamil words with which to start the purana (Thigada-sakkara...).

Every day the author would prepare 100 verses and keep it at the feet of Muruga's murthi at Kumarakottam temple at night. The next morning he would find it corrected for grammar and poetic usage of language.
Once he completed his work, Shivacharyar went to the learned assembly of scholars and submitted it for peer-review. To his disappointment, the very first words (incidentally given by Muruga) of the book were rejected by the scholars stating that it contradicted the rules-of-union of words as per Tamil grammar. He went back home dejected to re-work on his product.

The next day, an old scholar (Muruga Himself or someone blessed by Him) appeared in the assembly in defense of the choice of words of Shivacharyar. He provided citations from another Tamil work called Veera-Choliyam (Sandhi chapter, 15th verse) where such grammatical unions were used and were approved by the learned scholars. The assembly was satisfied at that point and the work became published for mass consumption as a purana.

Calling such a purana, a scrap-bag?

Vishal Agarwal responds to the Wire article

In response to The Wire article, Vishal sent in this response as a comment:

The writers get it wrong. The issue is not videshi versus swadeshi school of Indology, but between a Hinduphobic Eurocentric interpretation of the classics on one hand and an authentic and culturally informed interpretation on the other. Let me clarify with an example. In the Chhandogya Upanishad, there is a story of a cart driver Raikya approached by King Jaanashruti for obtaining Brahmavidya. Jaanashruti offers him increasing amounts of gold etc but Raikya turns the king away contemptuously. Finally, when the king returns with his daughter and offers to Raikya as a wife, the cart driver looks at her face and says, 'With this alone, you could have obtained the Vidya from me.' The likes of Wendy Doniger, who see sex in everything interprets this story to say that Raikya parted with his knowledge only when the king offered his own daughter for providing sex to Raikya! And to top it all, she finds nothing grand in Raikya's teachings. In both of her claims, she has totally missed the point because of her erotic lens and materialistic hermeneutics. The Upanishadic story starts with a statement that though the King was virtuous, he had this ego, 'It is due to me that subjects get to eat' etc. It is with this ego that he approached Raikya and offered to 'buy' his wisdom. But only when, he accepted Raikya's superiority and approached him in humility (because in the Hindu tradition, you offer your daughter's hand in marriage only to someone who is superior - a cultural element that Doniger totally misses), Raikya parts with his wisdom. And what is this wisdom? Raikya says that the same enabling Prana/Vayu that flows within him flows within the King and in all creatures. The import is that it is (to put it in the words of Gita), all the doing of Paramatman. Then why have the ego, "I did this great task, I am the doer?" While doing good karma, we must think of ourselves merely as an instrument of the Divine. The next story in the text, further elaborates on the Antaryamin Brahman (as Prana) and how, when we ill-treat others, we ill-treat the same Brahman who is present within everyone. Doniger completely misses the mark in every way, and converts this profound Vedantic episode into one of sex slavery. And the first miss (as to what is the significance of Jaanashruti offering his daughter to Raikya as his bride) is a clear case of her not getting the cultural nuances even after her 50 year engagement with Indic studies. This is a classic example of how an etic understanding can only result in crass interpretations, and an emic perspective is a must to understand spiritual scriptures. Even the Amar Chitra Katha gets this story right, whereas Doniger doesn't! Similar types of errors due to cultural insensitivity (or plain mediocrity) abound on Pollock's translations. The authors of this article might also want to read the recent book "The Nay Science" (Adluri et al) that demonstrates how hollow the claims of western (in particular German) Indology on its so called objectivity are. The fact that the authors of this article prefer to brand all the 132 professor and 15000+ other signatories of the petition as 'foolish and dangerous' reflects their own ignorance and hatred.

Hitchhiker's Guide to 'Invading The Sacred'

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)

Complete Rediff Interview

Does Devdutt Pattnaik know the meaning of cult?

Here is Devdutt Pattnaik's original article.

And here's a great original rebuttal by Rajiv Malhotra forum member Jithu

Dear Devdutt,

               A writers job is to curb the use of unnecessary words, letters etc. You have used one letter too many. Whereas your article could have been titled "Delightful truths of cult leader', you have very incorrectly made the leader a plural. Because lets face it, its all about Rajiv Malhotra. Though you've touched upon Rampal in the intro, no Hindu with a slightly endowed intelligence would ever accept him as his Guru. Of course he could still be classified as a cult leader. 

               As you could have easily guessed by now, I am a fan of Rajiv's works. Actually have been for more than a dozen years. And at the same time I'm not a fan of your works because, how can I put it? Let me take a shot it. Oh I got it:  its pretty superficial simple, probably a lot like your readers. I know you are the golden boy of the urban educated Hindu who is anxious of the ignorance of his own culture but just doesn't want to know it enough that he may have to seriously spend some quality time in knowing it and doing something about it. Thats where you come in. You talk about 'myths', about  gays, draw some crazy figures on a slate and lo wallah, you are their savior: a little bit of history, a bit of modern psychology. By the way, were you not in some way advising or coaching Rahul Gandhi?  Its really difficult to say who rubbed their intelligence on whom.

              But this reply has not been instigated by Rajiv though I read your article through his forum. And my first reaction was where are the cult leader(s) and where is the cult? Its very obvious that the whole article is about RM, although you sprinkle about other 'rational' leaders' , just as a writing exercise. I wasn't sure which ran longer, your dislike or put more strongly, your hatred for Rajiv or your knowledge of cult leaders. Either way, it makes a poor display of your supposed 'knowledge' 'expertise'.
             Firstly, I'm not sure if you know about this, but for any crime thats been committed the detectives always look at who benefits by the crime. So suppose if RM committed the crime of writing books and debating people, one has to ask, what does he achieve by it? Money, fame? As you already know he used to run multinational companies, so money can't be the goal. He could have been much more famous by writing mundane books: look at you. But he didn't. So what is the end goal of his crime, I wonder!

             Secondly, about the cult. Sure he does ask help from people for his books, research etc. And he does have a lot of fans, readers, supporters etc. He also does rejects people's help when they don't fit his needs, including yours truly. Most of the times when people complain, he asks them to do what needs to be done by themselves, rather than getting himself involved because of his limited resources.Which brings me to the question: Do you really know the meaning of 'cult' ? Or does your definition goes only as far as when Bollywood calls one of its monstrosity as a 'cult' film? For a cult to exist, there should be a cult leader who promises something at the end, usually something pretty looney if I may add, like the Heavens Gate cult, Mormon cult etc. Some even call Christianity and Islam as a cult because they promise an afterlife in heaven. It might surprise you that Rajiv hasn't promised any of his readers or his fans any thing. He doesn't arrange gatherings or even satsanga. And he for sure hasn't announced that there is going to show the light at the end of the tunnel. Frankly he is more interested in his own swadharma and his sadhana. And speaking of 'Swadharma' he is a kshatriya by the way and hence if he takes up the case for 'intellectual kshatriya'  he is just doing his duty. Alas you are far from being a Brahmin. 

             Sure he wants people to carry on his legacy, continue his works. But if you apply your definition of 'cult' for that then you should also apply that for every guru, every sage in India. There should be a Vyasa cult, Ramana cult, Aurobindo cult, Sankaracharya cult etc.

             And thirdly regarding his 'demands' for invitations to speak. You probably haven't heard the phrase 'right of way'. Anyone who learns driving in the U.S would know it. You 'demand' your right of way if you are obstructed while driving on your permitted legal route by others. So if Rajiv demands to be invited to speak, he in fact is entitled to, especially in programmes that have no balancing act of their one sided agenda. Why don't you attend them and participate, debate the other side? Rajiv has done so many debates with people from the opposite side, I don't see you doing it. You sit on your lazy ass and have the arrogance to ridicule him if he takes up the initiative to counter their arguments! Oh wait, you are the other side, nodding to everything Doninger says, shamelessly selling out as soon as seeing some white skin.
             May be she instigated you to write the article. May be you are just afraid that your works wouldn't sell if more people got to know about RM's works or you are frightened how much of a 'sepoy' you are with no hint of original thought. May be you are just jealous. Or may be you are just a little 'cuckoo' in your head. In any case I would prescribe a little reading of RM's works or watch his videos. They might help you to learn something. Or may be sit somewhere silently and meditate. That also clears up the mind. But for Godsake don't put your readers through such banal and petty articles such as the one you published in Mid-day. We don't deserve such punishments.

Cheers,

Jithu

Added reading is another post on this forum which discussed the issues of plagiarism by Devdutt Pattnaik. Here is the link.

To join the discussion group please register on yahoo. The thread can be followed here. 

Avoiding 5 common mistakes when defending Hinduism

The primary background to this thread can be found in this storify exchange between Rajiv Malhotra and Tavleen Singh and in this thread which captures the whole plagiarism issue which was raised with Sanjeev Sanyal and which has since been resolved amicably..

Rajiv summarizes five mistakes that need to be avoided when defending Hinduism. He says:

Mistake 1: Dont criticize someone who is a "fellow Indian". 

This was cited by a supporter of Sanjeev Sanyal recently. However, Maoists are also fellow Indians, are they not? The kauravs/pandavs were fellow brothers, right? So how does defending dharma have anything to do with giving a free pass just because someone is a fellow Indian. Conversely, being a non-Indian does not make a person our enemy or a problem. Defending Hinduism is not about race. Hinduism is not racism.

Mistake 2: As long as the person is anti-evangelists and pro-Hinduism we must accept whatever he says..

According to this logic, Moron Smriti and other leadership issues facing Hindus should not be discussed. After all, all morons and incompetent leaders do lash out against evangelists, and they do take pro-Hindu stands. I find many Hindu  forums only capable of discussing "positive" topics and want to stay away from genuine problem-solving.

Such a policy tolerates incompetence. It is precisely why we face such a leadership crisis - lack of quality controls on leadership. By far the largest part of my Kshatriyata workshops is on the epidemic of internal leadership rot, and not on external problems caused by others. Hindus have stopped challenging the incompetence of other Hindus, and tend to go long with whosoever leads them, as long as the person says a few standard "positive" things that make us "feel good". We run the risk of becoming a tradition of the morons, by the morons, for the morons.

Mistake 3: Better to be ignorable, dont rock the boat; dont confront problems.

My entire writing career has focused precisely on issues where our own leaders are misinformed, or not informed at all. But there is resistance when one tries to educate Hindus about a serious problem they did not know. 

Example: Wendy Doniger was completely unknown to Hindu leaders when I started my criticisms of her cabal in the late 1990s. I heard all sorts of nonsense from Hindus who were disinterested in my work, or even asking me to stop it, like:

• They are unimportant, so lets not waste time; truth will triumph anyway; we know the truth in our hearts; all path will ultimately lead the person to the same final goal;
• Let us not stir things up, since we are doing so well in our personal careers; if we highlight such problems we will attract attention and spoil our image, maybe even get in trouble. (i.e. policy to remain ignorable.)

Same thing happened when I raised the Breaking India issues. In fact, the late B. Raman, who used to be head of counter-terrorism at RAW, had initially agreed to write the foreword to Breaking India. We knew each other and exchanged emails. He asked me to send him the draft when ready. But when he saw the draft he changed his mind. He also refused to attend the book launch. In fact, the publisher was informed at the last minute to remove his name from the program. Why? because BI was considered too sensational by him. Imagine such a top intelligence official being afraid to face the problems. I tried to convince him that he was free to be on the panel and disagree with my book. But he did not want to be linked to it at all. Almost as if Big Brother is watching us.

The slave APP downloaded in many Indians, triggers the desire to be non-confrontational, seeking the path of least resistance to deal with situations.

Mistake 4: Distributing whatever limited knowledge we have is all important; serious R&D to discover and develop newknowledge is unimportant.

This means my type of work can suffer, but let the plagiarists not be discouraged because they are "spreading positive ideas". We need them no matter what. Such a posture shows lack of appreciation for the critical need to encourage fresh thinking. 

This mentality encourages leaders to be rewarded based on "hustling" and "networking" and "showing off". In my workshops, I give numerous examples of this syndrome. Most such leaders are ill informed of the major issues we face. Their subject matter expertise is abysmal, often to the point of causing us harm when they speak. They can at best copy-paste the latest statements that some serious thinker has made, and use it in their next speech or blog as their own idea. Fools leading bigger fools does not comprise a kshatriya army.

Mistake 5: Support even those who might deeply undermine Hinduism by their intellectual positions, as long as on the surface they "say positive things about us", and make us "feel good".

People who facilitate digestion tend to say good things about what they are digesting. (You dont hate the food you want to eat.) Many of our leaders cannot recognize digestion and see it as a form of praise/support. The digesters have studied us well and learned to exploit these vulnerabilities.

Pollock represents a different sub-category. He is NOT wanting to digest. He is undermining Sanskrit in the deepest way that I have seen anyone do. Yet on the surface he is championing the revival of sanskrit studies, etc. My job is to first thoroughly understand his works, and then to simplify for my readers the arguments he makes, and my response to it. 

My biggest challenge here is to get people's attention span. All they care about is that he wears a dhoti with tilak on his forehead, quotes some sanskrit verses, says what a great language it is, and so forth. Applause! Awards! Funding!

Indians being starved for self respect, cannot hold back their love and enthusiasm when they hear this. Notice the huge success he has had in winning the hearts and pocketbooks of top tier Indian elites. Its their way to "feel proud" and remove the guilt they carry for betraying their dharma. He fills a unique void in their psychology.

Such Indians/Hindus see me as someone on the wrong side. They see me creating an embarrassment by criticizing their hero. Notice the reaction from Tavleen Singh, despite the fact that she and Ajit Gulabchand were extremely appreciative of Invading the Sacred. She wrote a great editorial on it after interviewing me. He was on stage when it was launched and gave a major speech.

My own policies:

• Stick to the issues and ignore the personalities involved. If the substance of someone's work is wrong, it must be criticized regardless of what kind of person they are.
• Look at the deeper layers and not the surface of a situation.
• Do serious problem-solving, and do not see the work as a "feel good" psychotropic drug.
• Be non-ignorable, audacious, willing to take the heat. (But only after doing a lot of homework to make sure I am on a solid foundation which I can defend.)
• Reject offers of help that are likely to let me down somewhere along the way.
• Most important, be rooted in sadhana, and let the prerna flow and be the driving force.

To be a part of this thread and participate in the discussion please join up on the yahoo discussion forum and follow the thread here.