On Hinduism : Doniger, Wendy: Amazon Books

On Hinduism : Doniger, Wendy: Amazon.com.au: Books

On Hinduism Hardcover – 1 March 2013
by Wendy Doniger (Author)
4.2 4.2 out of 5 stars 114 ratings


On Hinduism contains a list of related essays that aim to explore the various concerns that are connected to Hinduism. These matters are as relevant today as they were in the olden times of the Vedas. The book raises many longstanding questions such as what changes have come in the Hindu beliefs concerning death, rebirth and Karma over so many years? In what way can a remorseful Hindu gain salvation? What do animals like dogs and cows mean to Hinduism? Why do are Hindus have conflicting ideas of Ahimsa? The book also gives readers an understanding of how and under what conditions a religion that embraces a plethora of cultures and races also promotes intolerance on so many levels. The book culminates with a string of autobiographical essays by the author. On Hinduism is a convincing study of one of the greatest faiths in the world. The book gives readers a better grip on the ancient and multifaceted religion that is Hinduism.


682  Pages

RUPA PUBLICATIONS INDIA PVT LTD

Publication date  2013
===

Content

Introduction: Foreword into the Past

A Chronology of Hinduism

ON BEING HINDU

1. Hinduism by Any Other Name
2. Are Hindus Monotheists or Polytheists?
3. Three (or More) Forms of the Three (or More)-Fold Path in Hinduism
4. The Concept of Heresy in Hinduism
5. Eating Karma
6. Medical and Mythical Constructions of the Body in Sanskrit Texts
7. Death and Rebirth in Hinduism
8. Forgetting and Re-awakening to Incarnation
9. Assume the Position: The Fight over the Body_of Yoga
10. The Toleration of Intolerance in Hinduism
11. The Politics of Hinduism Tomorrow

GODS, HUMANS AND ANTI-GODS

1. Saguna and Nirguna Images of the Deity.
2. You Can't Get Here from There: The Logical Paradox of Hindu Creation Myths Together Apart: Changing Ethical Implications of Hindu Cosmologies
3. God's Body, or, the Lingam Made Flesh: Conflicts over the Representation of Shiva 
4. Sacrifice and Substitution: Ritual Mystification and Mythical Demystification in Hinduism 
5. The Scrapbook of Undeserved Salvation: The Kedara Khanda of the Skanda Purana

WOMEN AND OTHER GENDERS

1. Why Should a Brahmin Tell You Whom to Marry?: A Deconstruction of the Laws of Manu Saranyu/Samjna: The Sun and the Shadow
2. The Clever Wife in Indian Mythology.
3. Rings of Rejection and Recognition in Ancient India The Third Nature: Gender Inversions in the Kamasutra Bisexuality and Transsexuality_Among the Hindu Gods
4. Transsexual Transformations of Subjectivity and Memory in Hindu Mythology.

KAMA AND OTHER SEDUCTIONS

1. The Control of Addiction in Ancient India
2. Reading the Kamasutra: It Isn't All About Sex
3. The Mythology of the Kamasutra
4. From Kama to Karma: The Resurgence of Puritanism in Contemporary India

HORSES AND OTHER ANIMALS

1. The Ambivalence of Ahimsa
2. Zoomorphism in Ancient India: Humans More Bestial than the Beasts
3. The Mythology of Horses in India
4. The Submarine Mare in the Mythology of Shiva
5. Indra as the Stallion's Wife
6. Dogs as Dalits in Indian Literature
7. Sacred Cows and Beefeaters

ILLUSION AND REALITY IN THE HINDU EPICS

1. Impermanence and Eternity in Hindu Epic, Art and Performance Shadows of the Ramayana Women in the Mahabharata The History of Ekalavya

ON NOT BEING HINDU

1. 'I Have Scinde'; Orientalism and Guilt Doniger O'Flaherty on Doniger You Can't Make an Omelette The Forest-dweller

===



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Product details
Publisher ‏ : ‎ RUPA PUBLICATIONS INDIA PVT LTD (1 March 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 682 pages


Customer reviews
4.2 out of 5 stars
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Top reviews from other countries

roberto
5.0 out of 5 stars an easy readReviewed in Canada on 11 October 2022
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instructive, to the point, and makes for an enjoyable read.

One person found this helpfulReport

laurasd
5.0 out of 5 stars Great for studies.Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 January 2017
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A really fascinating book, which is highly detailed.

One person found this helpfulReport

Satya Chari
5.0 out of 5 stars It is only through inquisitive mind, curiosity and an inviting disposition to all points of view that we better our understandinReviewed in the United States on 5 April 2015
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Born and raised as a Hindu Brahmin, as a young boy, I was often irritated by the relentless demands of rituals and insistence on acceptance without any perceived rationale or evidence. I pacified myself with the bribe of "Prasaad", which invariably accompanied every ritual, the Prize.

Growing up, reading a little, and a little more wider, I was increasingly amused by the labyrinth colours of myth and accompanying stories and any number of versions, from each elder who was eager to paint his or her own inference. I generally thought of these as juicy stories, but harmless with some moral strand underneath, not a bad mechanism to transmit ethics and values.

Moving on with life, I have observed the excesses and naked race to money and power by the religion and the self-appointed religious leaders, a wholly different and disturbing experience. This was no more benign, but potent and dangerous.

In the country which takes pride in Her plurality and tolerance, I have witnessed intolerance of the highest order, in the name of tradition, history and self-righteousness - "Pramparaa".

As the author rightly identifies, the ugly head of self righteousness, intolerance and exclusion is on the rise in India.

I put it that, banning of this book in India is a clear evidence of failure by the authority or leadership, who do not seem to have the confidence in their own history and ways of life.

I earnestly believe that, prescription is only for the sick; where information and accompanying freedom of choice is the right diet for the inclusive, harmonious and healthy society.

Great Book and a terrific effort by the Author. Thank you Ms. Doniger.
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17 people found this helpfulReport

Kailash Kumar
5.0 out of 5 stars Only if they had spent their time googling Schools of Hindu Philosophy instead of trolling Doniger they would know better. ThisReviewed in India on 10 February 2016
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One thing that becomes clear after reading the book is that Wendy Doniger knows more about Hinduism than the chest thumping pseudo-nationalist internet trolls. Perhaps because their source of education is those WhatsApp forwards asking you to forward that post to many other dim wits and feeling PROUDD. Only if they had spent their time googling Schools of Hindu Philosophy instead of trolling Doniger they would know better. This book is one of the best scholarly works on Hinduism.Covers almost all aspects of Indian way of interpreting life and religion . U dont have to follow any order of chapters.Just dip in and dip out of any chapter feeling enlightened about our complex past.And this book is not a result of a foreign author on a six month book writing holiday.This book is an distillation of all the thoughts that Wendy has gathered and processed over her career of 40-50 years as an scholar of India and Hinduism. Ignore the dim wits who label the author a Leftist and rate the book with one /two star.Read it to understand Hinduism better.As some one said it..and may be is right...Hinduism needs to be saved from Hindutva. Good luck

34 people found this helpfulReport

Amazon Customer
4.0 out of 5 stars Good reference on religion.Reviewed in India on 14 January 2017
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I like it because of the author's expansive knowledge of the subject. Shows her experience and research. Where it falters is in her opinions when it comes to translating or deducing human psyche based on historical or religious stories. She comes out very opinionated in favour of feminism and sometimes her deductions do not refer the culturally or generally accepted beliefs in Indian society.

5 people found this helpfulReport

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Nandakishore Mridula

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October 29, 2018

I came to know of Wendy Doniger in 2014, after Penguin decided to withdraw her book The Hindus: An Alternative History from publication and pulp the remaining copies in India. This was after a lawsuit filed by the ‘Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samithi’ (Committee for the Struggle to Save Education) against the book arguing that the work was "riddled with heresies” and that the contents were offensive to Hindus. My antennae went up immediately – controversy to me is like the proverbial spot of honey to the fly! Since I was in the UAE at the time, I immediately obtained a copy and read it.

I was a bit surprised. Instead of a controversial polemic dismantling Hinduism, Ms. Doniger had written a scholarly yet accessible book. The only fault I could find with her (other than her non-traditional reading of Hinduism: for me, not a fault at all) was her snarky humour, the constant effort to make fun of everyone and everything. So I resolved to read her other books too.

This was the second book I picked up – and I must say that I was a tad disappointed. The essays in this volume are of variable quality and lack focus; many of them are too Freudian, with the sexual angle being played for all it’s worth. (Not that this is in itself a bad thing – sex was one very important aspect of ancient Indian culture. But it was only one part. The other diametrically opposing aspect – asceticism – is given short shrift in this work, even though the author mentions the dichotomy as one defining aspect of Indian culture.)

The Essays have been arranged in the following seven sections, loosely based on theme:

1. On Being Hindu: This section sets out define what being Hindu means – not an easy task, as there is no definition (other than self-serving ones of interested parties). Ms. Doniger discusses polytheism; the concept of trivaga, the three-fold path, the concept of heresy and the difficulty in defining it in a culture where “everything goes”; death and rebirth... and so on: the key concepts which have informed the Indian culture. In the last two essays, she touches upon tolerance in Hinduism (which she correctly calls a belligerent pluralism of competing philosophies rather than the benign tolerance it’s taken to be) – and the danger of it being subsumed under the often violently intolerant Hindutva narrative of today.

2. Gods, Humans and Anti-gods: The concept of God, or Gods are the subject of these essays. While the author gives a fascinating insight into the Vedic cosmogonies and the evolution of Hindu religious thought over the years, the philosophical tradition of the Upanishads is hardly touched on. It seems Ms. Doniger is more interested in dissecting the mythology than going beyond it.

3. Women and Other Genders: This section was pretty predictable as far as the woman part was concerned – we all know she didn’t have such a good time in the ancient world. But the stories about the clever wife were interesting, as well as the exhaustive analysis of homosexuality (something which India seems to sweep under the carpet), bisexuality and the ‘third gender”.

4. Kama and Other Seductions: This section is essentially about sex in ancient India concentrating mainly on (yes, you guessed it!) the Kama Sutra; also, the ongoing tussle between asceticism and eroticism in Indian culture. The last essay, From Kama to Karma: the Resurgence of Puritanism in Contemporary India, analyses the attack on India’s open culture by the self-styled moral police of the latest strain of puritanical Hinduism, something the Hindu elite adopted from British Protestantism.

5. Horses and Other Animals: The ambivalence of Hindus between Himsa and Ahimsa, and the significance of various animals in Hindu mythology – the pride of place going to the horse, ironically a non-indigenous animal – are the highlights of this section. The essay on the fire-breathing submarine mare at the bottom of the sea was a fascinating one, I must say. But the essay, Dogs as Dalits, was a bit on the polemical side: too political for my taste – and there was also the obligatory one on the sacred cow, about how Hindus used to be beef-eaters at one time, and how many still are: nothing new, we see these arguments every day on various oped columns.

6. Illusion and Reality in the Hindu Epics: This section contains most probably the best essay of the collection - Impermanence and Eternity in Hindu Epic, Art and Performance - about the ephemeral nature of Indian art, as well as the fluidity of the country’s epics. This is a subject especially dear to my heart, and it was nice to see my views echoed in the words of a person from another culture – how the ephemeral art forms appearing as part of various rituals still maintain eternal existence in the psyche of the artists. The concept of shadows in the Ramayana was intriguing, as well as the analysis of the women of Mahabharata: but the essay on Ekalavya as the persecuted Adivasi was rather old hat.

7. On Not Being Hindu: This section makes it clear why the Hindutva-vadis hate Wendy Doniger (she openly says it). It lays bare the politics behind her studies. After making the case for the honesty of some Orientalist scholars, she says that throwing out Orientalism per se would be like discarding the baby with the bath-water. If this is not enough to set the Hindu Right foaming at the mouth, she has this to say in her penultimate essay, You Can’t Make an Omelette:

As I made the selections, I became more and more aware of the need to provide even more substantial textual evidence for the Hinduism that the Hindutvavadis would deny and censor; and what better way to do it than with an anthology of texts? Such a collection would provide ammunition for the Hindu voices of reason that continue to speak out against the Hindutva domination of the Internet. And so, after rounding up the usual suspects, the texts usually presented as representative of Hinduism, I added a number of lesser known texts, including texts from Dalits and Tribals, from ancient women poets and modern women novelists, that reveal the strength and beauty of the other Hinduism that I continue to celebrate.

So it seems that the right-wingers are justified in saying that Wendy Doniger has an agenda. It’s an agenda that I wholeheartedly approve – as I am sure, would thousands of liberal Hindus.

So, though this book did not meet my expectations as far as the content was concerned, I laud the intention behind it – the celebration of the pluralistic culture of my country, though often flawed and fragmented.

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Cynic

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March 15, 2016

This is a summary of my longer review on Amazon, where I get into specific examples and details of poor scholarship.

The collection of essays over the years offers more insight into Ms Doniger's evolution as an Indologist than as an authentic description of Hinduism. It is easy to see, based on just specific examples, that some of the more interesting interpretations of Hindu epics and concepts are more fanciful than factual. It is also clear that there is a Freudian undercurrent in all the analysis and interpretations. There is nothing covert about this influence, the author acknowledges it openly.

Of the 43 essays, 10 are explicitly about sex. Another 12 are somewhat about sex – the topics are benign but the interpretations are sexual. Nineteen essays cover perceived oppressors (always Brahmins) and the oppressed (animals, women, dalits). Eight are on other topics (polytheism, Nirguna / Saguna, Ramayana etc). (The numbers add up to more than 43 because some essays are in multiple categories). The thrust is quite clear.

It is also evident that Ms Doniger's sanskrit skills are quite weak. In her public speeches, it is obvious that she has not mastered the diction or learned to pronounce words properly. The book offers plenty of evidence that her ability to translate is very suspect. Ms Doniger appears to have completed some courses in Sanskrit at Harvard where she has been taught sanskrit from a text book and the ability to find other translations. The essays rely way too much on secondary sources.

In the Introduction, she states that she spent a year in India. It appears to have been a lost opportunity. For someone who is so keen on India, she could have sought out the greats who were alive at that time – the Shankaracharyas, the residents of Ramanashram or the monastic order of Ramakrishna. Ms Doniger does not seem to have reached out even to western authors like Paul Brunton who could have given her great insights.

Instead she seems to have visited Konark, Khajuraho and such parts (as Seinfeld would say.. not that there is...). But all the available evidence points to a focus on the fringes of Hindu practice (the legend of cImantini? Really?). Ms Doniger's 'On Hinduism' is exactly what it says: Ms Doniger on hinduism; not actual Hindus or Hindu texts on Hinduism.

With the overemphasis on Freud, the mistranslations, the literal analysis of mythology in a Freudian framework, the book fails at both her stated goals: it neither illustrates Hinduism for a western audience, nor does it illuminate Hinduism for a Hindu audience.

It most closely resembles another myth from India: the svarga created for King Trisankhu by Sage Viswamitra. Illusory projections from a bright mind that has no basis in reality that ends up pissing off more people than it pleases.

One last word on the reviewers who have turned in glowing reviews: they seem to have been taken in by the quantity assuming the quality had to be there. Or, not knowing sanskrit themselves they have been bedazzled by her seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of original sanskrit texts. The examples I have cited are but some of the more egregious ones. The essays have lots more of the same kinds of mistranslations and unsupportable assertions and an inordinate focus on sex / lust etc. In one sense I am quite grateful for Ms Doniger having produced this work - I am able to look at her complete body of work and state with confidence: this empress is wearing no clothes.

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Sarasvatī

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May 20, 2018

Want to read? Not anymore! On the list only to avoid its purchase. This book is a mockery of the Sanatana Dharma. Due to its attention on sex, lust, etc., it will only lead you astray from uniting with the Divine.

As Cynic elaborates:

"This is a summary of my longer review on Amazon, where I get into specific examples and details of poor scholarship.

Suppose someone from India wrote a big fat book called "Christianity in America" describing the life and teachings of Jim Jones of the People's Temple, the suicidal cult in Waco, the under-the-radar polygamy practiced by some Mormons, the dancing with poisonous snakes in some Pentecostal Churches, the practice of exorcism that are reported once every few years, and the widespread sexual abuse of children by some priests over decades and tolerated by Catholic Church elders, and presenting these as principal examples of the practice of Christianity. The mirror image of this is what Prof Wendy Doniger has done in her book "On Hinduism." She is notorious for similar writings. When a group in India filed a lawsuit claiming an earlier book by her to contain vulgar misrepresentations, her publisher withdrew the book from circulation in India essentially conceding the charge. Doniger could be the reincarnation of Katherine Mayo who was compared to a drain inspector by Gandhi after publication of her book in 1927.

The collection of essays over the years offers more insight into Ms Doniger's evolution as an Indologist than as an authentic description of Hinduism. It is easy to see, based on just specific examples, that some of the more interesting interpretations of Hindu epics and concepts are more fanciful than factual. It is also clear that there is a Freudian undercurrent in all the analysis and interpretations. There is nothing covert about this influence, the author acknowledges it openly.

Of the 43 essays, 10 are explicitly about sex. Another 12 are somewhat about sex – the topics are benign but the interpretations are sexual. Nineteen essays cover perceived oppressors (always Brahmins) and the oppressed (animals, women, dalits). Eight are on other topics (polytheism, Nirguna / Saguna, Ramayana etc). (The numbers add up to more than 43 because some essays are in multiple categories). The thrust is quite clear.

It is also evident that Ms Doniger's sanskrit skills are quite weak. In her public speeches, it is obvious that she has not mastered the diction or learned to pronounce words properly. The book offers plenty of evidence that her ability to translate is very suspect. Ms Doniger appears to have completed some courses in Sanskrit at Harvard where she has been taught sanskrit from a text book and the ability to find other translations. The essays rely way too much on secondary sources.

In the Introduction, she states that she spent a year in India. It appears to have been a lost opportunity. For someone who is so keen on India, she could have sought out the greats who were alive at that time – the Shankaracharyas, the residents of Ramanashram or the monastic order of Ramakrishna. Ms Doniger does not seem to have reached out even to western authors like Paul Brunton who could have given her great insights.

Instead she seems to have visited Konark, Khajuraho and such parts (as Seinfeld would say.. not that there is...). But all the available evidence points to a focus on the fringes of Hindu practice (the legend of cImantini? Really?). Ms Doniger's 'On Hinduism' is exactly what it says: Ms Doniger on hinduism; not actual Hindus or Hindu texts on Hinduism.

With the overemphasis on Freud, the mistranslations, the literal analysis of mythology in a Freudian framework, the book fails at both her stated goals: it neither illustrates Hinduism for a western audience, nor does it illuminate Hinduism for a Hindu audience.

It most closely resembles another myth from India: the svarga created for King Trisankhu by Sage Viswamitra. Illusory projections from a bright mind that has no basis in reality that ends up pissing off more people than it pleases.

One last word on the reviewers who have turned in glowing reviews: they seem to have been taken in by the quantity assuming the quality had to be there. Or, not knowing Sanskrit themselves they have been bedazzled by her seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of original Sanskrit texts. The examples I have cited are but some of the more egregious ones. The essays have lots more of the same kinds of mistranslations and unsupportable assertions and an inordinate focus on sex / lust etc. In one sense I am quite grateful for Ms Doniger having produced this work - I am able to look at her complete body of work and state with confidence: this empress is wearing no clothes. "

From Amazon's review:

"Mayo had no scholarly standing but Doniger cannot be dismissed so easily - she is on the faculty of the University of Chicago. After spending five decades studying ancient Sanskrit texts, she has learned a lot of dirty facts but doesn't know the essential truth. She is like an American sports journalist in England describing the English game of cricket as a poor imitation of American baseball. She is unable to cross the cultural divide - she does not realize that these are different games. During the course of human evolution, several civilizations with their own world views flourished in different regions of the earth. The Abrahamic concept of religion that developed in the Middle East 1400 to 3000 years ago and the ancient Indian concept of Dharma developed thousands of years earlier are different. The Sanskrit word "Dharma" is derived from the verb "dhri" - to hold. What holds you is your Dharma. It is more personal. Some Indian scholars have taken to calling the Abrahamic religions as "organized religions."

This confusion is natural and understandable in scholars not specializing in the study of religions. In July 1930, there was a meeting between two intellectual giants when the Indian polymath Tagore visited Einstein in his home near Berlin. Einstein is known as the greatest theoretical physicist of all time. Tagore was called Gurudev - Great Teacher - by Mahatma Gandhi. During the meeting, Tagore explained his point of view in response to Einstein's questions. Transcript of this conversation is available on the web, and also in the book, "Science and the Indian Tradition" by David Gosling. In this brief conversation, Tagore explained the essence of the Hindu point of view that Doniger has never understood. Near the end of the conversation, Einstein made a curious comment that he is more religious than Tagore. On the face of it, this seems absurd. Tagore got his Nobel Prize because of his collection of devotional poems and songs (Gitanjali in Bengali, Songs Offerings in English) based on ancient Indian religious philosophy What Einstein meant is that Tagore's spirituality originating in his individual mind did not conform to the Judeo-Christian concept of organized religion. But Einstein was not a religious scholar; he was not familiar with Eastern philosophy. This ignorance is unforgivable for Doniger who professes to be an expert on Hinduism.

Doniger would do well to study this transcript till she gets it. Tagore was talking to Einstein; the elegant formulation he used may be unintelligible to Doniger. With apologies to Tagore, let me present the same ideas in simplified form.

Start with a simple question: What is Reality? We live in a real world but a little thinking shows that each of us has our own perception of Reality. They are sufficiently similar so that we can interact with one another without confusion most of the time. But there can be occasional disagreements on specific issues even among close friends - their perceptions may be different. Some unfortunate people perceive Reality in a totally different way than others all the time - we call them mad. Actually we are all mad when we dream in our sleep, become delusional reacting to some event or hallucinate under the influence of some substance. Reality is relative.

Next think of a specific real person - call him John. He is well known to several dozen people - his parents, his uncles and aunts and their families, his siblings and cousins and their families, his wife and children, his teachers and bosses and coworkers and subordinates, his close friends and golfing buddies, and so on. Each of them knows John well but there are distinct differences in the way they think about him - their perceptions of John are different. Which one is real? The only meaningful answer is that all of these are. For each person, his perception of John is the correct one, even though it may evolve with time.

Now consider an abstract concept: God, or Truth, or Beauty. What Tagore said to Einstein is that like Reality in the first example, like everyone's individual perceptions of the person called John in the second example, the perceptions of God, Truth and Beauty are in our minds. It is impossible to see or describe God. In Abrahamic religions, the religious teachings prescribe a specific way to think of Him. In ancient Indian philosophy, we have the right and duty to form His perceptions in our own minds. (We also have the right to ignore His existence - as Buddha did.) So, there can be a whole host of them. Growing up in Bengal, I used to hear the expression that there are 33 Koti (330 million) inhabitants of India and 33 Koti Gods (the current population is around a Billion each.) This is not polytheism any more than the different perceptions of the person called John is poly-John-ism. It is also common for important Hindu Gods (e.g. Krishna) to have 108 names describing 108 aspects, and someone somewhere may worship any one of these as his personal God (for some reason, 108 is a sacred number.) The Krishna Consciousness Society that has developed primarily in this country worships Krishna as a lover; young Krishna was a heartthrob and a playboy. The Krishna described in Gita was a wise counselor who pronounced the best and earliest theory of Just War over 5000 years ago when civilization had not yet started in the rest of the world. Doniger writes about a shrine that most Hindu households have in their homes, but she does not know why it is there. It expresses the family's personal relationship with God.

Because of this freedom of thought and belief, Hindus tend to allow others to follow their own conscience; unlike in the Abrahamic religions, sectarian violence is virtually unknown among the Hindu sects - nothing like the Catholic-Protestant, or Sunni-Shia conflicts. Gandhi's son, in youthful rebellion, had converted to Islam; Gandhi was nonplussed, the son came back to the family after some time. The greatest Hindu sage in the last few centuries was Ramakrishna - one of his favorite sayings was, in Bengali, "Jawto Mawt, tawto pawth," meaning, as many opinions (religions), so many paths (to God.) He had converted to Islam and to Christianity for brief periods, because, as he said, he wanted to experience God in different ways. Another example of Doniger's ignorance is that in this 700 page book, she has only one paragraph on Ramakrishna, that too in a negative portrayal. (She could start to educate herself by reading "Life of Ramakrishna" by the French philosopher-author, Romaine Rolland.) Other people are crossing the cultural divide. The resident monk of the Hindu Vedanta Center of Greater Washington DC is an American Jew. The senior minister of the Cedar Lane Unitarian Church in Bethesda, MD is a practicing Hindu from India; his mother was Hindu, his father Muslim.

The University of Chicago is in violation of its social compact to maintain a rigorous level of scholarship; it owes an apology to the students misled by Prof Doniger over the years. Ironically it was in Chicago that the Hindu monk Vivekananda electrified the audience in 1893 at the Parliament of Religions. There is a little story behind this. Vivekananda was in Boston and Prof John Henry Wright of Harvard invited him to give a lecture at the university. Impressed with what he heard, Prof Wright suggested that Vivekananda attend the Parliament of Religions as a delegate in Chicago. When Vivekananda said the he did not have the credentials that the Parliament required, Prof Wright said, "To ask you for credentials is like asking the sun to state its right to shine in the heavens." Prof Wright arranged for Vivekananda to be a delegate and the rest is history. The Harvard professor recognized something in a few days that the Chicago professor has failed to understand in fifty years to studies and research. Shame on Chicago."

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Aditya Patil

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November 30, 2016

Reading this book was a task! but a task I wanted to complete. A good non-fiction always makes you work extra hard. It challenges your views, gives you new perspectives and makes you realize that how shallow are the trumpet-beating-pseudo-specialists who exist in the society. When Doniger throws proofs after proofs for each theory she states, it isn't to prove you wrong but to make you see that more than one ways could exist to interpret ancient history and culture. I have always been skeptical and critical about fundamentalists, whichever religion/political party/cult they might be from. Accepting an established norm just numbs your thinking power and blinds you with rage against whoever tries to dispel your views. In my opinion, one should check everything he/she holds with such belief.

This book must have been hard work. After more than 40 years of research of Indian mythology/history, Doniger presents this book like a boss. It was worth putting this much effort in this book.

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J

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November 17, 2020

Wendy Doniger has come out with yet another gigantic volume on Hinduism as a self-proclaimed historian and expert. Like her other books, the author displays strong bias against mainstream Hindu ideas and mythological interpretations. But more disturbing is her willingness to compromise integrity at the cost of pushing her biases forward. The entire work seems like a mild denigration of Hinduism at best and blatant fact-bending at worst. Many of her statements have no substantial sources provided and she blithely tends to view every "God" and every mythological story from the lens of sex, hedonism, abuse, and violence.

Stay away from works by this author. She is biased and although comes armed with a plethora of "information", completely misses the essence and doctrine of Hinduism. There are better works on Hinduism out there!!

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Leslie Jonsson

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June 5, 2015

I don't understand the other bad reviews of this book-however, I don't understand much about Hinduism, perhaps the point. This book will add and not take away from the mystery of the third largest religion on the planet.

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Tamoghna Pramanick

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March 23, 2016

This books is not at all a good guide that can give true representation of what Hinduism really is all about. The author here continuously keeps on defaming Hinduism and criticising it's values. This book is a total misinterpretation of facts and it's distortion. I as a Hindu is very hurt while reading the book. I swear! And these type of biased, paid authors should be unmasked. She misquoted and misinterpreted the Vedas, the Puranas and the Upanishadas shamelessly.

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Sajith Kumar

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January 1, 2017

Wendy Doniger dropped a bombshell on Indian intellectual circles with her 2009 book ‘The Hindus – An Alternative History’. Blowing up the sexuality and inconsistencies present in any ancient religious text out of all proportions, Doniger published the book as if to offer an alternative history against the established wisdom of the times. Widespread condemnation of the abominable references to Hinduism’s most revered characters ensued in India and abroad. That volume was banned in India and the publishers destroyed all copies in the country. Doniger claims that this book, which came out in 2013, is written with the Indian audience in mind, whereas the previous text was for an American scholarly readership. The writer argues that she didn’t expect Hindus would read it and thought that they wouldn’t take information on their religion from an American woman. In this regard, this book is an apology in place of the censure contained in the previous one. Whereas the earlier book was a structured one – whatever charges one may bring up against the content – this book is simply a collection of essays the author had composed over the years on Hinduism. 63 out of the 140 essays on the author’s thoughts on Hinduism are included in this book. The chapters were thus written beforehand over a span of decades and this breaks the chain of continuity running across the chapters. On the other hand, readers get a golden opportunity to sample the varied sources of stories they had only a brief exposure to, from other publications. Interested readers can find my earlier review of ‘The Hindus – an Alternative History’ here.

What differentiates Hinduism from other modern world religions is its polytheism and primacy of tolerance to differing creeds. Doniger develops both ideas in some detail. The religion’s most sacred book is the Rig Veda, which is also the oldest extant work of literature of any kind in India. The Veda is polytheistic, but with a monistic hue. Numerous gods are mentioned and praised in it, but the devotees could select among the pantheon and pray to a particular god at a time suited to his present need. Each god was considered to be supreme as far as the devotee is concerned. Even with so many gods on call, so to say, the substance that pervades the universe is thought to be divine and inherently unitary, which is called brahma (not to be confused with the creator god). This vague monism discernible in the Rig Veda was sharpened by the systematized monism of Vedanta. Doniger claims that a polytheistic religion is inherently tolerant as compared to a monistic one. At the same time, a monistic religion is more tolerant than a monotheistic one! But there is also an undeniably intolerant strain in Hinduism, which the author attributes to the intellectual and philosophical ascendancy of the monistic ideals of Vedanta. If only Hinduism, or any religion for that matter, was rather simple for such easy categorizations! The book also states that what western intellectuals have thought the Hindus have done has given rise to the idea of Hindu tolerance, without much evidence on the ground. The Hindu fundamentalists are aping Protestant evangelical strategies. In spite of all these, we see many people following the benevolent practices and rituals of other religions like Islam or Christianity, though Doniger chides them with the sarcastic remark that those syncretists keep the feasts of both religions and the fasts of neither! The Hindu pluralist world was not orthodox, but primarily orthopraxy, as it didn’t insist on doctrine (doxis) as long as ritual and social behaviour (praxis) satisfied the standards of the particular group.

The book is just a collection of essays written over a period of several years and has not much interconnection between the themes of succeeding chapters. There is an interesting observation made by Doniger in one of these articles. Any discussion on Hindu society invariably touches upon Manu Smriti, the dharmashastra attributed to a pseudonym author. This book is at the heart of the controversy between upper and lower castes in contemporary India. The lower castes put all blame for their historical backwardness at the doors of Manu on account of the repressive measures suggested in his law book against them. However, Doniger raises doubt on the primacy of Manu Smriti in Indian jurisprudence of the ancients. The goal of Manu’s laws, like Hindu culture, is not consistency, but totality. There are several instances of doctrinal inconsistency in it. There are nine commentaries on Manu, but none of them was used as a legal system. Rural panchayats decided legal disputes based on local custom and rules of precedence. The current prominence of Manu is ascribed to the British. The administrators of British India, beginning with Warren Hastings, wanted to use Manu as the basis of a legal system, though he himself doesn’t claim so, and adds that Manu lives on in the darker shadows of Hinduism. Doniger puts undue stress in developing the varied concepts of sexuality that can be expected in a book as ancient as the puranas. Some of the titles are selected with gross insensitivity to the sentiments of the targeted audience like ‘Bisexuality and trans-sexuality among the Hindu gods’. Passages from the Kama Sutra which are sexually explicit are reproduced in the book. Narrative imagination has produced many examples of gender transformation in the puranic stories that are in fact to be taken as just a myth, but the author does extensive pedantry on the stories and brings out exaggerated philosophical analyses. The coverage is also narrow and boring at times. What are we to make of titles like ‘Changing ethical implications of Hindu cosmologies’ and ‘The Scrapbook of undeserved salvation – the Kedara Khanda of Skanda Purana’?

Two aspects of ancient India that finds exceeding interest from Doniger are Kamasutra and (non)-vegetarianism. Truly, the author attests Kama Sutra to be the only sophisticated text produced by India. This is the only work that elicits favourable response from her, who also claims that this text embarrasses Hindus to no end. Richard Francis Burton published the first translation of it in 1883, at a time when Hindus were disheartened at the scorn of Protestant proselytizers and wanted to keep the Kama Sutra under the Upanishadic rug. What Burton did to Kama Sutra was what Max Muller earlier did to the Rig Veda and Upanishads. But here, a crucial Indian contribution goes overlooked. Burton used Forster Arbuthnot’s text, which in essence relied upon the work of Bhagavanlal Indrajit and Shivram Bhide. The attribution came out unintentionally, when Arbuthnot claimed that the text was translated by two Indians to get the censors off his back. Indians always put forward the Upanishadic speculations over any non-religious text and for them, it was the fall of Kama and the rise of Karma as noted in the Upanishads.

Though most of the Hindus eat meat except beef today, the author argues that flesh-eating was much more common in the past. People ate flesh, including that of sacrificial animals. Contrary to popular belief, it was the rise of Buddhism and Jainism that was instrumental in the slow transition to vegetarianism, at least for the upper castes. These religions promoted ahimsa (non-violence). Ashoka’s inscriptions shed some light on this, but what he did have in mind was avihimsa (absence of desire to kill). Ashoka continued the system of capital punishment and torture of criminals. Moreover, killing animals for the royal kitchen continued with reduced numbers. Manu Smriti is ambivalent on non-vegetarianism. It says that “The eater who eats creatures with the breath of life who are to be eaten does nothing bad, even if he does it day after day; for the Creator himself created creatures with the breath of life, some to be eaten and some to be eaters” (p. 421, Manu 5:28-30). His comment against meat eating is “You can never get meat without violence to creatures with the breath of life, and the killing of creatures with the breath of life does not get you to heaven; therefore you should not eat meat” (p.422, Manu 5:48-53). The references against meat-eating are more prominent in Manu’s law book that has three pro- and twenty-five anti-meat verses. There are some instances cited in the book which shows the cow was also eaten. “The Brahmanas say that a bull or cow should be killed when a guest arrives, a cow should be sacrificed to Mitra and Varuna, and a sterile cow to the Maruts, and that twenty-one sterile cows should be sacrificed in the horse sacrifice. The grammarian Panini, who may have lived as early as the fifth or sixth century BCE, glossed the word go-ghna (literally, cow killer), as one for whom a cow is killed, that is, a guest” (p. 502).

The book is a huge one, but with a fine collection of notes, bibliography and index. The narration veers totally off track at some points, particularly when the author argues that the finer details of Mahmud of Ghazni’s sacking of Somanatha and what he did to the idol kept there are just mythologizing. This tramples upon the hurt feelings of the victim rather than readjusting a medieval wrong in the glow of the enlightenment of a future era. Doniger also inadvertently promotes a commercial product manufactured by Kottakkal Arya Vaidya Sala in Kerala with her offhand comment that the organization manufactures Chyavanaprasha with scrupulous care and attention as if the other companies are not that attentive to the quality of their products.

The book is recommended.

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Pranav Mutatkar

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October 27, 2019

Didn't finish but a sort of dry look at Hinduism some interesting tidbits here and there but I couldn't finish the whole thing

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Multis

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August 3, 2019

This book is a collection of essays on Hinduism by the author Wendy Doniger. She is an American Indologist with dozens of publication under her name. Unlike her previous work this was specifically aimed at the Indian audience.

It has seven sections based on the different themes. I found it noteworthy out of 44 essays 10 are explicitly about sex, 12 are related to sex. Sex is the only adequately covered topic here. Add to it, various passages in other essays and you have a lot of it. This work tried to establish Hinduism as a sex crazed society until the arrival of foreigners who solidified the Puritan strain.

It is written in a descriptive manner. She is not a scholar in Sanskrit hence mistranslates words, meanings. Many myths are taken at face value. Various points are in fact contrary to other scholarly work I read.

Her arguments may sound persuasive to newcomer to the faith but upon reading the wider scholarships it fails to hold ground. For instance, Rammohun Roy of the Brahmo Samaj is credited with the ban on Sati (burning of widows). While true, it is only a half truth. Many kingdoms earlier have banned the practice. It was mostly practiced by the Upper castes. The prevalence was high if land,money was at stake. It is a disservice to hide the complexity of the practice. She also misunderstands Nagarjuna's concept of samsara=nirvana. Though I give this a pass because she is not a Buddhist and many Buddhist themselves have trouble with it.

In another instance she contradicts herself in the next paragraph itself. The chapter "Death and Rebirth in Hinduism" (Theme: On Being Hindu) has this quote "Like the Brahmanas, the Upanishads speak of a re-death(punar mrityu) long before they begin speaking of rebirth (punar janma). The Buddha, preaching at roughly the same time, taught that misery (dukkha) is not so much suffering as the inevitable loss of happiness, a chaos from which nirvana (the Buddhist equivalent of moksha) offered deliverance.

While the next paragraph "the first explicit discussion of the doctrine of rebirth in Indian literature occurs in the Upanishads"

There is big problem with this. There are no detailed explanations for re birth in Upanishads. It only had mentions of re death which was unexplained. Buddha on the contrary gives a detailed explanation of punabbhava in Sangutta Nikaya 163.

Apart from this, dukkha is not misery. Though it is commonly translated as suffering/stress it fails to capture the full meaning behind it. Joseph Goldstein beautifully explains this as The word dukkha is made up of the prefix du and the root kha. Du means “bad” or “difficult.” Kha means “empty.” “Empty,” here, refers to several things—some specific, others more general. One of the specific meanings refers to the empty axle hole of a wheel. If the axle fits badly into the center hole, we get a very bumpy ride. This is a good analogy for our ride through saṃsāra

Later in the book Nathuram Godse the infamous assassin of Mohandas Gandhi is linked to RSS. It is evident here this essay was meant to non-Indian audience cause Nathuram's fall out with RSS is well known. He criticized RSS for the softening stance on communals. He left RSS in 1946 while remaining a member of Hindu Mahasabha and Hindu Rashtra Dal simultaneously during the assassination in 1948.

Christianity is credited to developing social movements in defence of human rights, women and lower castes. This betrays the countless examples of forced conversions, slave trade, kidnapping, criminalizing tribes, encouraging tensions along castes, stratifying the caste system, etc. carried out by Church in collaboration with the colonizers. Their interest in lower castes and women was limited to harvesting souls. Despite this, Christianity failed to eradicate castes. Christianity from the arrival to India till today is riddled with caste system.

Some sexist passages from Buddhist scriptures which are clearly later addition is inserted. It was unnecessary.

I expected it would be very derogatory to Hinduism judging by the backlash for her earlier book. I was pleasantly surprised with her unbiased attitude towards controversial issues surrounding today. I feel Hindus would learn a great deal from this work.

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Displaying 1 - 10 of 19 reviews

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Displaying 1 - 10 of 19 reviews

Nandakishore Mridula

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October 29, 2018

I came to know of Wendy Doniger in 2014, after Penguin decided to withdraw her book The Hindus: An Alternative History from publication and pulp the remaining copies in India. This was after a lawsuit filed by the ‘Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samithi’ (Committee for the Struggle to Save Education) against the book arguing that the work was "riddled with heresies” and that the contents were offensive to Hindus. My antennae went up immediately – controversy to me is like the proverbial spot of honey to the fly! Since I was in the UAE at the time, I immediately obtained a copy and read it.

I was a bit surprised. Instead of a controversial polemic dismantling Hinduism, Ms. Doniger had written a scholarly yet accessible book. The only fault I could find with her (other than her non-traditional reading of Hinduism: for me, not a fault at all) was her snarky humour, the constant effort to make fun of everyone and everything. So I resolved to read her other books too.

This was the second book I picked up – and I must say that I was a tad disappointed. The essays in this volume are of variable quality and lack focus; many of them are too Freudian, with the sexual angle being played for all it’s worth. (Not that this is in itself a bad thing – sex was one very important aspect of ancient Indian culture. But it was only one part. The other diametrically opposing aspect – asceticism – is given short shrift in this work, even though the author mentions the dichotomy as one defining aspect of Indian culture.)

The Essays have been arranged in the following seven sections, loosely based on theme:

1. On Being Hindu: This section sets out define what being Hindu means – not an easy task, as there is no definition (other than self-serving ones of interested parties). Ms. Doniger discusses polytheism; the concept of trivaga, the three-fold path, the concept of heresy and the difficulty in defining it in a culture where “everything goes”; death and rebirth... and so on: the key concepts which have informed the Indian culture. In the last two essays, she touches upon tolerance in Hinduism (which she correctly calls a belligerent pluralism of competing philosophies rather than the benign tolerance it’s taken to be) – and the danger of it being subsumed under the often violently intolerant Hindutva narrative of today.

2. Gods, Humans and Anti-gods: The concept of God, or Gods are the subject of these essays. While the author gives a fascinating insight into the Vedic cosmogonies and the evolution of Hindu religious thought over the years, the philosophical tradition of the Upanishads is hardly touched on. It seems Ms. Doniger is more interested in dissecting the mythology than going beyond it.

3. Women and Other Genders: This section was pretty predictable as far as the woman part was concerned – we all know she didn’t have such a good time in the ancient world. But the stories about the clever wife were interesting, as well as the exhaustive analysis of homosexuality (something which India seems to sweep under the carpet), bisexuality and the ‘third gender”.

4. Kama and Other Seductions: This section is essentially about sex in ancient India concentrating mainly on (yes, you guessed it!) the Kama Sutra; also, the ongoing tussle between asceticism and eroticism in Indian culture. The last essay, From Kama to Karma: the Resurgence of Puritanism in Contemporary India, analyses the attack on India’s open culture by the self-styled moral police of the latest strain of puritanical Hinduism, something the Hindu elite adopted from British Protestantism.

5. Horses and Other Animals: The ambivalence of Hindus between Himsa and Ahimsa, and the significance of various animals in Hindu mythology – the pride of place going to the horse, ironically a non-indigenous animal – are the highlights of this section. The essay on the fire-breathing submarine mare at the bottom of the sea was a fascinating one, I must say. But the essay, Dogs as Dalits, was a bit on the polemical side: too political for my taste – and there was also the obligatory one on the sacred cow, about how Hindus used to be beef-eaters at one time, and how many still are: nothing new, we see these arguments every day on various oped columns.

6. Illusion and Reality in the Hindu Epics: This section contains most probably the best essay of the collection - Impermanence and Eternity in Hindu Epic, Art and Performance - about the ephemeral nature of Indian art, as well as the fluidity of the country’s epics. This is a subject especially dear to my heart, and it was nice to see my views echoed in the words of a person from another culture – how the ephemeral art forms appearing as part of various rituals still maintain eternal existence in the psyche of the artists. The concept of shadows in the Ramayana was intriguing, as well as the analysis of the women of Mahabharata: but the essay on Ekalavya as the persecuted Adivasi was rather old hat.

7. On Not Being Hindu: This section makes it clear why the Hindutva-vadis hate Wendy Doniger (she openly says it). It lays bare the politics behind her studies. After making the case for the honesty of some Orientalist scholars, she says that throwing out Orientalism per se would be like discarding the baby with the bath-water. If this is not enough to set the Hindu Right foaming at the mouth, she has this to say in her penultimate essay, You Can’t Make an Omelette:

As I made the selections, I became more and more aware of the need to provide even more substantial textual evidence for the Hinduism that the Hindutvavadis would deny and censor; and what better way to do it than with an anthology of texts? Such a collection would provide ammunition for the Hindu voices of reason that continue to speak out against the Hindutva domination of the Internet. And so, after rounding up the usual suspects, the texts usually presented as representative of Hinduism, I added a number of lesser known texts, including texts from Dalits and Tribals, from ancient women poets and modern women novelists, that reveal the strength and beauty of the other Hinduism that I continue to celebrate.

So it seems that the right-wingers are justified in saying that Wendy Doniger has an agenda. It’s an agenda that I wholeheartedly approve – as I am sure, would thousands of liberal Hindus.

So, though this book did not meet my expectations as far as the content was concerned, I laud the intention behind it – the celebration of the pluralistic culture of my country, though often flawed and fragmented.

---

Cynic

1 review

March 15, 2016

This is a summary of my longer review on Amazon, where I get into specific examples and details of poor scholarship.

The collection of essays over the years offers more insight into Ms Doniger's evolution as an Indologist than as an authentic description of Hinduism. It is easy to see, based on just specific examples, that some of the more interesting interpretations of Hindu epics and concepts are more fanciful than factual. It is also clear that there is a Freudian undercurrent in all the analysis and interpretations. There is nothing covert about this influence, the author acknowledges it openly.

Of the 43 essays, 10 are explicitly about sex. Another 12 are somewhat about sex – the topics are benign but the interpretations are sexual. Nineteen essays cover perceived oppressors (always Brahmins) and the oppressed (animals, women, dalits). Eight are on other topics (polytheism, Nirguna / Saguna, Ramayana etc). (The numbers add up to more than 43 because some essays are in multiple categories). The thrust is quite clear.

It is also evident that Ms Doniger's sanskrit skills are quite weak. In her public speeches, it is obvious that she has not mastered the diction or learned to pronounce words properly. The book offers plenty of evidence that her ability to translate is very suspect. Ms Doniger appears to have completed some courses in Sanskrit at Harvard where she has been taught sanskrit from a text book and the ability to find other translations. The essays rely way too much on secondary sources.

In the Introduction, she states that she spent a year in India. It appears to have been a lost opportunity. For someone who is so keen on India, she could have sought out the greats who were alive at that time – the Shankaracharyas, the residents of Ramanashram or the monastic order of Ramakrishna. Ms Doniger does not seem to have reached out even to western authors like Paul Brunton who could have given her great insights.

Instead she seems to have visited Konark, Khajuraho and such parts (as Seinfeld would say.. not that there is...). But all the available evidence points to a focus on the fringes of Hindu practice (the legend of cImantini? Really?). Ms Doniger's 'On Hinduism' is exactly what it says: Ms Doniger on hinduism; not actual Hindus or Hindu texts on Hinduism.

With the overemphasis on Freud, the mistranslations, the literal analysis of mythology in a Freudian framework, the book fails at both her stated goals: it neither illustrates Hinduism for a western audience, nor does it illuminate Hinduism for a Hindu audience.

It most closely resembles another myth from India: the svarga created for King Trisankhu by Sage Viswamitra. Illusory projections from a bright mind that has no basis in reality that ends up pissing off more people than it pleases.

One last word on the reviewers who have turned in glowing reviews: they seem to have been taken in by the quantity assuming the quality had to be there. Or, not knowing sanskrit themselves they have been bedazzled by her seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of original sanskrit texts. The examples I have cited are but some of the more egregious ones. The essays have lots more of the same kinds of mistranslations and unsupportable assertions and an inordinate focus on sex / lust etc. In one sense I am quite grateful for Ms Doniger having produced this work - I am able to look at her complete body of work and state with confidence: this empress is wearing no clothes.

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Sarasvatī

48 reviews

May 20, 2018

Want to read? Not anymore! On the list only to avoid its purchase. This book is a mockery of the Sanatana Dharma. Due to its attention on sex, lust, etc., it will only lead you astray from uniting with the Divine.

As Cynic elaborates:

"This is a summary of my longer review on Amazon, where I get into specific examples and details of poor scholarship.

Suppose someone from India wrote a big fat book called "Christianity in America" describing the life and teachings of Jim Jones of the People's Temple, the suicidal cult in Waco, the under-the-radar polygamy practiced by some Mormons, the dancing with poisonous snakes in some Pentecostal Churches, the practice of exorcism that are reported once every few years, and the widespread sexual abuse of children by some priests over decades and tolerated by Catholic Church elders, and presenting these as principal examples of the practice of Christianity. The mirror image of this is what Prof Wendy Doniger has done in her book "On Hinduism." She is notorious for similar writings. When a group in India filed a lawsuit claiming an earlier book by her to contain vulgar misrepresentations, her publisher withdrew the book from circulation in India essentially conceding the charge. Doniger could be the reincarnation of Katherine Mayo who was compared to a drain inspector by Gandhi after publication of her book in 1927.

The collection of essays over the years offers more insight into Ms Doniger's evolution as an Indologist than as an authentic description of Hinduism. It is easy to see, based on just specific examples, that some of the more interesting interpretations of Hindu epics and concepts are more fanciful than factual. It is also clear that there is a Freudian undercurrent in all the analysis and interpretations. There is nothing covert about this influence, the author acknowledges it openly.

Of the 43 essays, 10 are explicitly about sex. Another 12 are somewhat about sex – the topics are benign but the interpretations are sexual. Nineteen essays cover perceived oppressors (always Brahmins) and the oppressed (animals, women, dalits). Eight are on other topics (polytheism, Nirguna / Saguna, Ramayana etc). (The numbers add up to more than 43 because some essays are in multiple categories). The thrust is quite clear.

It is also evident that Ms Doniger's sanskrit skills are quite weak. In her public speeches, it is obvious that she has not mastered the diction or learned to pronounce words properly. The book offers plenty of evidence that her ability to translate is very suspect. Ms Doniger appears to have completed some courses in Sanskrit at Harvard where she has been taught sanskrit from a text book and the ability to find other translations. The essays rely way too much on secondary sources.

In the Introduction, she states that she spent a year in India. It appears to have been a lost opportunity. For someone who is so keen on India, she could have sought out the greats who were alive at that time – the Shankaracharyas, the residents of Ramanashram or the monastic order of Ramakrishna. Ms Doniger does not seem to have reached out even to western authors like Paul Brunton who could have given her great insights.

Instead she seems to have visited Konark, Khajuraho and such parts (as Seinfeld would say.. not that there is...). But all the available evidence points to a focus on the fringes of Hindu practice (the legend of cImantini? Really?). Ms Doniger's 'On Hinduism' is exactly what it says: Ms Doniger on hinduism; not actual Hindus or Hindu texts on Hinduism.

With the overemphasis on Freud, the mistranslations, the literal analysis of mythology in a Freudian framework, the book fails at both her stated goals: it neither illustrates Hinduism for a western audience, nor does it illuminate Hinduism for a Hindu audience.

It most closely resembles another myth from India: the svarga created for King Trisankhu by Sage Viswamitra. Illusory projections from a bright mind that has no basis in reality that ends up pissing off more people than it pleases.

One last word on the reviewers who have turned in glowing reviews: they seem to have been taken in by the quantity assuming the quality had to be there. Or, not knowing Sanskrit themselves they have been bedazzled by her seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of original Sanskrit texts. The examples I have cited are but some of the more egregious ones. The essays have lots more of the same kinds of mistranslations and unsupportable assertions and an inordinate focus on sex / lust etc. In one sense I am quite grateful for Ms Doniger having produced this work - I am able to look at her complete body of work and state with confidence: this empress is wearing no clothes. "

From Amazon's review:
"Mayo had no scholarly standing but Doniger cannot be dismissed so easily - she is on the faculty of the University of Chicago. After spending five decades studying ancient Sanskrit texts, she has learned a lot of dirty facts but doesn't know the essential truth. She is like an American sports journalist in England describing the English game of cricket as a poor imitation of American baseball. She is unable to cross the cultural divide - she does not realize that these are different games. During the course of human evolution, several civilizations with their own world views flourished in different regions of the earth. The Abrahamic concept of religion that developed in the Middle East 1400 to 3000 years ago and the ancient Indian concept of Dharma developed thousands of years earlier are different. The Sanskrit word "Dharma" is derived from the verb "dhri" - to hold. What holds you is your Dharma. It is more personal. Some Indian scholars have taken to calling the Abrahamic religions as "organized religions."

This confusion is natural and understandable in scholars not specializing in the study of religions. In July 1930, there was a meeting between two intellectual giants when the Indian polymath Tagore visited Einstein in his home near Berlin. Einstein is known as the greatest theoretical physicist of all time. Tagore was called Gurudev - Great Teacher - by Mahatma Gandhi. During the meeting, Tagore explained his point of view in response to Einstein's questions. Transcript of this conversation is available on the web, and also in the book, "Science and the Indian Tradition" by David Gosling. In this brief conversation, Tagore explained the essence of the Hindu point of view that Doniger has never understood. Near the end of the conversation, Einstein made a curious comment that he is more religious than Tagore. On the face of it, this seems absurd. Tagore got his Nobel Prize because of his collection of devotional poems and songs (Gitanjali in Bengali, Songs Offerings in English) based on ancient Indian religious philosophy What Einstein meant is that Tagore's spirituality originating in his individual mind did not conform to the Judeo-Christian concept of organized religion. But Einstein was not a religious scholar; he was not familiar with Eastern philosophy. This ignorance is unforgivable for Doniger who professes to be an expert on Hinduism.

Doniger would do well to study this transcript till she gets it. Tagore was talking to Einstein; the elegant formulation he used may be unintelligible to Doniger. With apologies to Tagore, let me present the same ideas in simplified form.

Start with a simple question: What is Reality? We live in a real world but a little thinking shows that each of us has our own perception of Reality. They are sufficiently similar so that we can interact with one another without confusion most of the time. But there can be occasional disagreements on specific issues even among close friends - their perceptions may be different. Some unfortunate people perceive Reality in a totally different way than others all the time - we call them mad. Actually we are all mad when we dream in our sleep, become delusional reacting to some event or hallucinate under the influence of some substance. Reality is relative.

Next think of a specific real person - call him John. He is well known to several dozen people - his parents, his uncles and aunts and their families, his siblings and cousins and their families, his wife and children, his teachers and bosses and coworkers and subordinates, his close friends and golfing buddies, and so on. Each of them knows John well but there are distinct differences in the way they think about him - their perceptions of John are different. Which one is real? The only meaningful answer is that all of these are. For each person, his perception of John is the correct one, even though it may evolve with time.

Now consider an abstract concept: God, or Truth, or Beauty. What Tagore said to Einstein is that like Reality in the first example, like everyone's individual perceptions of the person called John in the second example, the perceptions of God, Truth and Beauty are in our minds. It is impossible to see or describe God. In Abrahamic religions, the religious teachings prescribe a specific way to think of Him. In ancient Indian philosophy, we have the right and duty to form His perceptions in our own minds. (We also have the right to ignore His existence - as Buddha did.) So, there can be a whole host of them. Growing up in Bengal, I used to hear the expression that there are 33 Koti (330 million) inhabitants of India and 33 Koti Gods (the current population is around a Billion each.) This is not polytheism any more than the different perceptions of the person called John is poly-John-ism. It is also common for important Hindu Gods (e.g. Krishna) to have 108 names describing 108 aspects, and someone somewhere may worship any one of these as his personal God (for some reason, 108 is a sacred number.) The Krishna Consciousness Society that has developed primarily in this country worships Krishna as a lover; young Krishna was a heartthrob and a playboy. The Krishna described in Gita was a wise counselor who pronounced the best and earliest theory of Just War over 5000 years ago when civilization had not yet started in the rest of the world. Doniger writes about a shrine that most Hindu households have in their homes, but she does not know why it is there. It expresses the family's personal relationship with God.

Because of this freedom of thought and belief, Hindus tend to allow others to follow their own conscience; unlike in the Abrahamic religions, sectarian violence is virtually unknown among the Hindu sects - nothing like the Catholic-Protestant, or Sunni-Shia conflicts. Gandhi's son, in youthful rebellion, had converted to Islam; Gandhi was nonplussed, the son came back to the family after some time. The greatest Hindu sage in the last few centuries was Ramakrishna - one of his favorite sayings was, in Bengali, "Jawto Mawt, tawto pawth," meaning, as many opinions (religions), so many paths (to God.) He had converted to Islam and to Christianity for brief periods, because, as he said, he wanted to experience God in different ways. Another example of Doniger's ignorance is that in this 700 page book, she has only one paragraph on Ramakrishna, that too in a negative portrayal. (She could start to educate herself by reading "Life of Ramakrishna" by the French philosopher-author, Romaine Rolland.) Other people are crossing the cultural divide. The resident monk of the Hindu Vedanta Center of Greater Washington DC is an American Jew. The senior minister of the Cedar Lane Unitarian Church in Bethesda, MD is a practicing Hindu from India; his mother was Hindu, his father Muslim.

The University of Chicago is in violation of its social compact to maintain a rigorous level of scholarship; it owes an apology to the students misled by Prof Doniger over the years. Ironically it was in Chicago that the Hindu monk Vivekananda electrified the audience in 1893 at the Parliament of Religions. There is a little story behind this. Vivekananda was in Boston and Prof John Henry Wright of Harvard invited him to give a lecture at the university. Impressed with what he heard, Prof Wright suggested that Vivekananda attend the Parliament of Religions as a delegate in Chicago. When Vivekananda said the he did not have the credentials that the Parliament required, Prof Wright said, "To ask you for credentials is like asking the sun to state its right to shine in the heavens." Prof Wright arranged for Vivekananda to be a delegate and the rest is history. The Harvard professor recognized something in a few days that the Chicago professor has failed to understand in fifty years to studies and research. Shame on Chicago."

no-thank-you

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Aditya Patil

88 reviews6 followers

November 30, 2016

Reading this book was a task! but a task I wanted to complete. A good non-fiction always makes you work extra hard. It challenges your views, gives you new perspectives and makes you realize that how shallow are the trumpet-beating-pseudo-specialists who exist in the society. When Doniger throws proofs after proofs for each theory she states, it isn't to prove you wrong but to make you see that more than one ways could exist to interpret ancient history and culture. I have always been skeptical and critical about fundamentalists, whichever religion/political party/cult they might be from. Accepting an established norm just numbs your thinking power and blinds you with rage against whoever tries to dispel your views. In my opinion, one should check everything he/she holds with such belief.
This book must have been hard work. After more than 40 years of research of Indian mythology/history, Doniger presents this book like a boss. It was worth putting this much effort in this book.

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J

56 reviews

November 17, 2020

Wendy Doniger has come out with yet another gigantic volume on Hinduism as a self-proclaimed historian and expert. Like her other books, the author displays strong bias against mainstream Hindu ideas and mythological interpretations. But more disturbing is her willingness to compromise integrity at the cost of pushing her biases forward. The entire work seems like a mild denigration of Hinduism at best and blatant fact-bending at worst. Many of her statements have no substantial sources provided and she blithely tends to view every "God" and every mythological story from the lens of sex, hedonism, abuse, and violence.

Stay away from works by this author. She is biased and although comes armed with a plethora of "information", completely misses the essence and doctrine of Hinduism. There are better works on Hinduism out there!!

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Leslie Jonsson

730 reviews2 followers

June 5, 2015

I don't understand the other bad reviews of this book-however, I don't understand much about Hinduism, perhaps the point. This book will add and not take away from the mystery of the third largest religion on the planet.

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Tamoghna Pramanick

1 review

Currently reading

March 23, 2016

This books is not at all a good guide that can give true representation of what Hinduism really is all about. The author here continuously keeps on defaming Hinduism and criticising it's values. This book is a total misinterpretation of facts and it's distortion. I as a Hindu is very hurt while reading the book. I swear! And these type of biased, paid authors should be unmasked. She misquoted and misinterpreted the Vedas, the Puranas and the Upanishadas shamelessly.

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Sajith Kumar

625 reviews111 followers

January 1, 2017

Wendy Doniger dropped a bombshell on Indian intellectual circles with her 2009 book ‘The Hindus – An Alternative History’. Blowing up the sexuality and inconsistencies present in any ancient religious text out of all proportions, Doniger published the book as if to offer an alternative history against the established wisdom of the times. Widespread condemnation of the abominable references to Hinduism’s most revered characters ensued in India and abroad. That volume was banned in India and the publishers destroyed all copies in the country. Doniger claims that this book, which came out in 2013, is written with the Indian audience in mind, whereas the previous text was for an American scholarly readership. The writer argues that she didn’t expect Hindus would read it and thought that they wouldn’t take information on their religion from an American woman. In this regard, this book is an apology in place of the censure contained in the previous one. Whereas the earlier book was a structured one – whatever charges one may bring up against the content – this book is simply a collection of essays the author had composed over the years on Hinduism. 63 out of the 140 essays on the author’s thoughts on Hinduism are included in this book. The chapters were thus written beforehand over a span of decades and this breaks the chain of continuity running across the chapters. On the other hand, readers get a golden opportunity to sample the varied sources of stories they had only a brief exposure to, from other publications. Interested readers can find my earlier review of ‘The Hindus – an Alternative History’ here.

What differentiates Hinduism from other modern world religions is its polytheism and primacy of tolerance to differing creeds. Doniger develops both ideas in some detail. The religion’s most sacred book is the Rig Veda, which is also the oldest extant work of literature of any kind in India. The Veda is polytheistic, but with a monistic hue. Numerous gods are mentioned and praised in it, but the devotees could select among the pantheon and pray to a particular god at a time suited to his present need. Each god was considered to be supreme as far as the devotee is concerned. Even with so many gods on call, so to say, the substance that pervades the universe is thought to be divine and inherently unitary, which is called brahma (not to be confused with the creator god). This vague monism discernible in the Rig Veda was sharpened by the systematized monism of Vedanta. Doniger claims that a polytheistic religion is inherently tolerant as compared to a monistic one. At the same time, a monistic religion is more tolerant than a monotheistic one! But there is also an undeniably intolerant strain in Hinduism, which the author attributes to the intellectual and philosophical ascendancy of the monistic ideals of Vedanta. If only Hinduism, or any religion for that matter, was rather simple for such easy categorizations! The book also states that what western intellectuals have thought the Hindus have done has given rise to the idea of Hindu tolerance, without much evidence on the ground. The Hindu fundamentalists are aping Protestant evangelical strategies. In spite of all these, we see many people following the benevolent practices and rituals of other religions like Islam or Christianity, though Doniger chides them with the sarcastic remark that those syncretists keep the feasts of both religions and the fasts of neither! The Hindu pluralist world was not orthodox, but primarily orthopraxy, as it didn’t insist on doctrine (doxis) as long as ritual and social behaviour (praxis) satisfied the standards of the particular group.

The book is just a collection of essays written over a period of several years and has not much interconnection between the themes of succeeding chapters. There is an interesting observation made by Doniger in one of these articles. Any discussion on Hindu society invariably touches upon Manu Smriti, the dharmashastra attributed to a pseudonym author. This book is at the heart of the controversy between upper and lower castes in contemporary India. The lower castes put all blame for their historical backwardness at the doors of Manu on account of the repressive measures suggested in his law book against them. However, Doniger raises doubt on the primacy of Manu Smriti in Indian jurisprudence of the ancients. The goal of Manu’s laws, like Hindu culture, is not consistency, but totality. There are several instances of doctrinal inconsistency in it. There are nine commentaries on Manu, but none of them was used as a legal system. Rural panchayats decided legal disputes based on local custom and rules of precedence. The current prominence of Manu is ascribed to the British. The administrators of British India, beginning with Warren Hastings, wanted to use Manu as the basis of a legal system, though he himself doesn’t claim so, and adds that Manu lives on in the darker shadows of Hinduism. Doniger puts undue stress in developing the varied concepts of sexuality that can be expected in a book as ancient as the puranas. Some of the titles are selected with gross insensitivity to the sentiments of the targeted audience like ‘Bisexuality and trans-sexuality among the Hindu gods’. Passages from the Kama Sutra which are sexually explicit are reproduced in the book. Narrative imagination has produced many examples of gender transformation in the puranic stories that are in fact to be taken as just a myth, but the author does extensive pedantry on the stories and brings out exaggerated philosophical analyses. The coverage is also narrow and boring at times. What are we to make of titles like ‘Changing ethical implications of Hindu cosmologies’ and ‘The Scrapbook of undeserved salvation – the Kedara Khanda of Skanda Purana’?

Two aspects of ancient India that finds exceeding interest from Doniger are Kamasutra and (non)-vegetarianism. Truly, the author attests Kama Sutra to be the only sophisticated text produced by India. This is the only work that elicits favourable response from her, who also claims that this text embarrasses Hindus to no end. Richard Francis Burton published the first translation of it in 1883, at a time when Hindus were disheartened at the scorn of Protestant proselytizers and wanted to keep the Kama Sutra under the Upanishadic rug. What Burton did to Kama Sutra was what Max Muller earlier did to the Rig Veda and Upanishads. But here, a crucial Indian contribution goes overlooked. Burton used Forster Arbuthnot’s text, which in essence relied upon the work of Bhagavanlal Indrajit and Shivram Bhide. The attribution came out unintentionally, when Arbuthnot claimed that the text was translated by two Indians to get the censors off his back. Indians always put forward the Upanishadic speculations over any non-religious text and for them, it was the fall of Kama and the rise of Karma as noted in the Upanishads.

Though most of the Hindus eat meat except beef today, the author argues that flesh-eating was much more common in the past. People ate flesh, including that of sacrificial animals. Contrary to popular belief, it was the rise of Buddhism and Jainism that was instrumental in the slow transition to vegetarianism, at least for the upper castes. These religions promoted ahimsa (non-violence). Ashoka’s inscriptions shed some light on this, but what he did have in mind was avihimsa (absence of desire to kill). Ashoka continued the system of capital punishment and torture of criminals. Moreover, killing animals for the royal kitchen continued with reduced numbers. Manu Smriti is ambivalent on non-vegetarianism. It says that “The eater who eats creatures with the breath of life who are to be eaten does nothing bad, even if he does it day after day; for the Creator himself created creatures with the breath of life, some to be eaten and some to be eaters” (p. 421, Manu 5:28-30). His comment against meat eating is “You can never get meat without violence to creatures with the breath of life, and the killing of creatures with the breath of life does not get you to heaven; therefore you should not eat meat” (p.422, Manu 5:48-53). The references against meat-eating are more prominent in Manu’s law book that has three pro- and twenty-five anti-meat verses. There are some instances cited in the book which shows the cow was also eaten. “The Brahmanas say that a bull or cow should be killed when a guest arrives, a cow should be sacrificed to Mitra and Varuna, and a sterile cow to the Maruts, and that twenty-one sterile cows should be sacrificed in the horse sacrifice. The grammarian Panini, who may have lived as early as the fifth or sixth century BCE, glossed the word go-ghna (literally, cow killer), as one for whom a cow is killed, that is, a guest” (p. 502).

The book is a huge one, but with a fine collection of notes, bibliography and index. The narration veers totally off track at some points, particularly when the author argues that the finer details of Mahmud of Ghazni’s sacking of Somanatha and what he did to the idol kept there are just mythologizing. This tramples upon the hurt feelings of the victim rather than readjusting a medieval wrong in the glow of the enlightenment of a future era. Doniger also inadvertently promotes a commercial product manufactured by Kottakkal Arya Vaidya Sala in Kerala with her offhand comment that the organization manufactures Chyavanaprasha with scrupulous care and attention as if the other companies are not that attentive to the quality of their products.

The book is recommended.

religion

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Pranav Mutatkar

55 reviews5 followers

October 27, 2019

Didn't finish but a sort of dry look at Hinduism some interesting tidbits here and there but I couldn't finish the whole thing

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Multis

15 reviews5 followers

August 3, 2019

This book is a collection of essays on Hinduism by the author Wendy Doniger. She is an American Indologist with dozens of publication under her name. Unlike her previous work this was specifically aimed at the Indian audience.

It has seven sections based on the different themes. I found it noteworthy out of 44 essays 10 are explicitly about sex, 12 are related to sex. Sex is the only adequately covered topic here. Add to it, various passages in other essays and you have a lot of it. This work tried to establish Hinduism as a sex crazed society until the arrival of foreigners who solidified the Puritan strain.

It is written in a descriptive manner. She is not a scholar in Sanskrit hence mistranslates words, meanings. Many myths are taken at face value. Various points are in fact contrary to other scholarly work I read.

Her arguments may sound persuasive to newcomer to the faith but upon reading the wider scholarships it fails to hold ground. For instance, Rammohun Roy of the Brahmo Samaj is credited with the ban on Sati (burning of widows). While true, it is only a half truth. Many kingdoms earlier have banned the practice. It was mostly practiced by the Upper castes. The prevalence was high if land,money was at stake. It is a disservice to hide the complexity of the practice. She also misunderstands Nagarjuna's concept of samsara=nirvana. Though I give this a pass because she is not a Buddhist and many Buddhist themselves have trouble with it.

In another instance she contradicts herself in the next paragraph itself. The chapter "Death and Rebirth in Hinduism" (Theme: On Being Hindu) has this quote "Like the Brahmanas, the Upanishads speak of a re-death(punar mrityu) long before they begin speaking of rebirth (punar janma). The Buddha, preaching at roughly the same time, taught that misery (dukkha) is not so much suffering as the inevitable loss of happiness, a chaos from which nirvana (the Buddhist equivalent of moksha) offered deliverance.
While the next paragraph "the first explicit discussion of the doctrine of rebirth in Indian literature occurs in the Upanishads"

There is big problem with this. There are no detailed explanations for re birth in Upanishads. It only had mentions of re death which was unexplained. Buddha on the contrary gives a detailed explanation of punabbhava in Sangutta Nikaya 163.

Apart from this, dukkha is not misery. Though it is commonly translated as suffering/stress it fails to capture the full meaning behind it. Joseph Goldstein beautifully explains this as The word dukkha is made up of the prefix du and the root kha. Du means “bad” or “difficult.” Kha means “empty.” “Empty,” here, refers to several things—some specific, others more general. One of the specific meanings refers to the empty axle hole of a wheel. If the axle fits badly into the center hole, we get a very bumpy ride. This is a good analogy for our ride through saṃsāra

Later in the book Nathuram Godse the infamous assassin of Mohandas Gandhi is linked to RSS. It is evident here this essay was meant to non-Indian audience cause Nathuram's fall out with RSS is well known. He criticized RSS for the softening stance on communals. He left RSS in 1946 while remaining a member of Hindu Mahasabha and Hindu Rashtra Dal simultaneously during the assassination in 1948.

Christianity is credited to developing social movements in defence of human rights, women and lower castes. This betrays the countless examples of forced conversions, slave trade, kidnapping, criminalizing tribes, encouraging tensions along castes, stratifying the caste system, etc. carried out by Church in collaboration with the colonizers. Their interest in lower castes and women was limited to harvesting souls. Despite this, Christianity failed to eradicate castes. Christianity from the arrival to India till today is riddled with caste system.

Some sexist passages from Buddhist scriptures which are clearly later addition is inserted. It was unnecessary.

I expected it would be very derogatory to Hinduism judging by the backlash for her earlier book. I was pleasantly surprised with her unbiased attitude towards controversial issues surrounding today. I feel Hindus would learn a great deal from this work.

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Hinduism Misinterpreted 

Encyclopaedia Britannica insults Hinduism 

Amit Raj DHAWAN 

amitrajdhawan@gmail.com 

This work has been released under Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported licence 

on May 5, 2009. For details visit: http://creativecommons.Org/licenses/by-nd/3.0/. 

This article will highlight some of the misinterpretations of Hinduism in EncyclopEedia Britannica, many of which are very offend- 

ing to any Hindu reader and those who know and respect Hinduism. The author has based this article on the contents of [1]. Text 

quoted from Encyclopcedia Britannica 2009 Student and Home Edition is in slanted red typeface. In the following lines an argu- 

ment is presented, which shows and questions the biased intentions of a popular reference source like Encyclopsedia Britannica. 

Information conveyed by an encyclopedia should be unbiased, impartial, based on facts, true to the greatest extent, and not any- 

body's personal opinion. In this light, the article on Hinduism in Encyclopaedia Britannica has been examined. The absurd choice of 

contributors of an article on Hinduism by the authorities of Encyclopaedia Britannica will also be analysed. It is felt that Britannica's 

article on Hinduism is written in a sense that ill-disposes a reader towards Hinduism, whereas this is not the case with Britannica's 

articles on other religions like Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. After thought and analysis, I have been left with an impression 

which can be best summarized in the following question: Why is EncyclopEedia Britannica hostile towards Hinduism? 

A Master's level physics text written in English 

can be read, at least most part of it, by a person 

who has a Bachelor's in English. But reading a 

text does not mean that it has been understood! 

To understand such a text on physics, at least 

one is required to have adequate knowledge of 

physics. Generally, a linguist is not a physicist. In 

this sense, what this person (who does not know 

physics) would infer from a physics text cannot be 

relied upon, and of course, before his or her find- 

ings are published, they have to be scrutinized. 

Religion is based on belief, and reliable informa- 

tion on any particular religion can be conveyed by 

a person who believes in it, has good knowledge 

about it, and therefore realises it. Authorities of 

EncyclopEedia Britannica had forgotten this fact 

when they had to publish about Hinduism, but 

they had well-remembered it when they had to 

publish material on Christianity, Islam, and Ju- 

daism. On the one hand they have chosen people 

like Rev. Henry Chadwick to write on Christian- 

ity, Fazlur Rahman, an alim, to write on Islam, 

and Rabbi Lou Hackett Silberman to write on Ju- 

daism, and on the other hand they have chosen 

Wendy Doniger, who is criticised for her nega- 

tive portrayals of Hinduism ([2], [3]), as a writer 

and editor of Hinduism. From the stated writers 

or editors of Hinduism in Encyclopaedia Britan- 

nica ([1]), none of them is a Hindu, or of Indian 

origin, or a holder of Hindu scholarship, e.g. an 

acharya. To write on Christianity, Encyclopaedia 

Britannica chose a Reverend (a priest of the Chris- 

tian church), for Islam, an alim (a Muslim learned 

in religious matters) was selected, to describe Ju- 

daism, a Rabbi (a religious leader and teacher in 

the Jewish religion) was opted, but for informa- 

tion on Hinduism they had to choose people who 

have been criticised by Hindus and academia. 

Why has Encyclopaedia Britannica been partial in 

its choice on religious matters? 

The lengthy article on Hinduism (approx. 

51 000 words) in Encyclopaedia Britannica ([1]), 

does not depict Hinduism in a positive man- 

ner, in general. It looks more of a critique of 

Hinduism, where several concepts — fairly clear 

to an average Hindu — have been predicted as 

tensions and confusions. Britannica has misrep- 

resented the concept and message of Hinduism, 

and Hindu values have been disparaged. The 

articles on Christianity, Islam, and Judaism have 

been written in a very good sense, and the evils 

of these religions have been subjugated by the 

way of presentation of those themes. In almost 

every section of [1], unnecessary contradictions 

and tensions have been mentioned with exag- 

geration. Why? It seems that the ambition of 

Encyclopaedia Britannica is to show Hinduism 

inferior to Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, but 

even then the question is: Why? 

Britannica disrespects more than 800 million 

Hindus by publishing mendacious statements 

about their religion. Some of these statements 

are extremely false, concocted, and rude. How 

painful they are to a Hindu heart, there is no 

account of that. About Lord Krishna, who is 

respected and revered by all Hindus, the article 

says ([1]): 

Krisiina was worshipped with his adulterous consort, 

Radha. 

According to reputed dictionaries [4] and [5], 

the word adulterous is related to adultery, and 

adultery refers to sex between a married man or 

woman and someone who is not their wife or hus- 

band. Consort means an associate ([5]). Neither 

through Hindu history nor through any reliable 

Hindu belief it can be stated that Lord Krishna 

had an illicit sexual relationship with Radha. 

They are symbols of pure divine love. How could 

the writers of this text, Arthur Llewellyn Basham, 

J. A. B. van Buitenen, and Wendy Doniger pub- 

lish such nonsense? How could authorities of 

Britannica allow this menace to Hindu belief? 

Amit Raj DHAWAN 

Hinduism Misinterpreted 

2/4 

Instead of mentioning the exemplary virtues of 

Lord Ram and Lord Krishna, their righteousness 

has been critically examined. Moreover, insane 

and illusionary fiction has been presented as a 

fact. In [1], it is stated: 

The story of Rama, like that of Krishna, also has a 

shadowy side. 

and 

The benevolence and beneficial activity of these fig- 

ures (Rama, Krishna, et al.) is, however, occasionally 

in doubt. Vishnu often acts deceitfully, selfishly, or 

helplessly; . . . 

And then starts the critical examination of virtues 

of Lord Ram, Lord Krishna, and Lord Vishnu. Is 

criticism the job of an encyclopedia? The sole 

task of the writers of [1] was to tarnish the image 

of Hinduism, its principles, its beliefs, its revered. 

Has Britannica examined the shadowy sides of 

Jesus, Mohammad, or Abraham? 

The preposterous imagination of the writers 

of [1] has presented an unacceptable statement 

which shows their lack of knowledge of Sanskrit 

language and Hinduism, past and present. The 

compound word shivlingam is composed of words 

shiv and lingam. Here shiv means Lord Shiv, and 

lingam means symbol. Therefore, shivlingam 

means the symbol of Shiv. Shivlingam is known 

to all Hindus as a symbol of Lord Shiv. In San- 

skrit language, it is common that one word has 

two or more meanings. Reference [6] provides 

more than 10 meanings of the word lingam. I 

state two other meanings: 1) gender, and 2) the 

male sex organ. Suppose a Sanskrit language 

student is asked to fill a medical form in San- 

skrit. There it is required to tick or cross the 

box called lingam. Common sense says that in 

the form to be filled, the word lingam means 

gender. It would not make any sense to adapt 

the second meaning (male sex organ) for this 

purpose, certainly not for female applicants. To 

clarify further, an example from English language 

will be discussed. In English language, the word 

PETER can be used in at least three different 

ways ([4]). PETER can mean: 1) name of a per- 

son, 2) to gradually stop or disappear, and 3) a 

penis. What would it mean if you ask a person, 

"Are you PETER?"? The answer is obvious, and 

so is the meaning of shivlingam. In [1], it is 

stated: 

Yet another epiphany is that of the lingam, an up- 

right rounded post, usually of stone, representing a 

phallus, in which form he is worshipped throughout 

India. 

and 

One of the most common objects of worship, whether 

in temples or in the household cult, is the lingam 

(phallus). Often much stylized and representing the 

cosmic pillar, it emanates its all-producing energy to 

the four quarters of the universe. As the symbol of 

male creative energy it is frequently combined with 

its female counterpart (yoni), the latter forming the 

base from which the lingam rises. 

Symbols can be given many meanings, but not all 

are accepted meanings. The accepted meaning of 

shivlingam is the the symbol of Shiv, and not the 

phallus. It is weird that the foundation on which 

the shivlingam rests could look like a vagina to 

the writers of [1]. The meaning of shivlingam as 

asserted by Britannica is not accepted by Hindus, 

then why has Britannica misinformed the reader, 

and hurt Hindus worldwide? Encyclopedia is not 

a stage to display insanity. The authors of [1] 

should restrict their epiphany only to themselves. 

If shivlingam represents a phallus then all cylin- 

drical objects like pens or lipsticks represent a 

phallus. 

The article does not hesitate to mention 

Hindus "killing" people of other religions, but it 

never mentions that Hindus were brutally mas- 

sacred by people of other religions. At this point, 

three excerpts from [1] have been quoted in the 

following lines. 

From time to time Hindus, especially Shaivites, took 

aggressive action against Buddhism. At least two 

Shaivite kings — the Hephthalite invader Mihirakula 

(early 6th century) and the Bengal king Sasanka 

(early 7th century) — are reported to have destroyed 

monasteries and killed monks. 

and 

These strands converged at the end of the 20th cen- 

tury in a campaign to destroy the mosque built in 

1528 by a lieutenant of the Mughal emperor Babur in 

Ayodhya, a city that has traditionally been identified 

as the place where Rama was born and ruled. In 

1992 Hindu militants from all over India, who had 

been organized by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP; 

"World Hindu Council"), the Rashtriya Swayamsevak 

Sangh (RSS; "National Volunteer Alliance"), and the 

Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; "Indian People's Party"), 

destroyed the mosque in an effort to "liberate" Rama 

and establish a huge "Rama's Birthplace Temple" 

on the spot. In the aftermath, several thousand 

people — mostly Muslims — were killed in riots that 

spread across North India. 

and 

It is hardly the case that Muslim rule was generally 

loathsome to Hindus. 

In [1], there is no mention of genocide of Hin- 

dus and demolition of Hindu temples by the 

Mughals [7], or sabotage of Hindu schools {gu- 

rukuls) during the British rule. Did Muslims, 

Christians, or Jews inflict any acts of ethnic 

cleansing ever? According to the articles of Is- 

lam, Christianity, and Judaism in Encyclopaedia 

Britannica — No! There is no mention of Hindu 

suffering during the Mughal empire, neither in 

the article on Hinduism ([1]) nor in the article 

on Islam ([8]) in Britannica. In recent affairs, as 

the 1992 Ayodhya episode has been mentioned, 

there is no mention of hundreds of thousands of 

Kashmiri Hindus who have been forced to leave 

their homeland by Islamic militants ([9], [10]). 

Ethnic cleansing of Hindus is not an issue for Bri- 

tannica. If one consults an encyclopedia to know 

about a religion, then he or she is interested 

in the concept of the religion. Other details, as 

Amit Raj DHAWAN 

Hinduism Misinterpreted 

3/4 

stated above in this paragraph, are not required. 

Still, if Britannica wants to publish such mate- 

rial then the publishing should be fair, and all 

religions should be treated in the same way. But 

this is not the case! In Britannica's article on 

Judaism ([11]), the atrocities imposed on Jews 

have been well-mentioned. Given below is a text 

from [11]. 

In the 20th century, particularly after the events sym- 

bolized by Auschwitz (a Nazi death camp in Poland, 

where approximately one million Jews were killed) 

The Struggle of Hindus in surviving the attacks of 

Muslim invaders in the past, and the present day 

pain of Kashmiri Hindus has not been mentioned 

anjTvhere by Britannica. Do Hindus feel pain 

without pain? 

There is no good mention of good deeds 

of Hindus or Indians in Britannica's article. It 

seems that Britannica wants to make sure that 

no Hindu feels proud after reading about his or 

her religion in Britannica, and people who would 

like to know about Hinduism from Britannica get 

the worst possible impression about Hinduism. 

The wisdom of Hindu thought has been kept in 

dark by Britannica, forget highlighting it. Words 

are very playful, little adjustment and toning can 

make a great difference. The language used to 

write Hinduism in Britannica is English but this 

English has a different "sense" than the English 

used to write Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. 

The editors of [1] have ridiculed Hinduism. They 

have mentioned, to a great extent maligned, 

Hindu history with such confidence as if they 

were witnessing the events themselves. Britan- 

nica's article ([1]) talks about one of the greatest 

spiritual orders in the world — Hinduism — but 

there is no reference to spirituality in a spiritual 

way. Britannica has well propagated the essence 

of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, but in case 

of Hinduism, it has not. As an example of usage 

of language, an excerpt from Britannica's article 

on Islam ([8]) has been stated. 

In Baghdad the tomb of the greatest saint of all, 'Abd 

al-Qadir al-JItani, is visited every year by large num- 

bers of pilgrims from all over the Muslim world. 

In the above mentioned excerpt, the phrase: the 

greatest saint of all, sounds very positive. There 

is nothing wrong in stating your beliefs with 

pride, especially when it is a presentation of your 

core, your culture, your true self. But Britan- 

nica did not give Hindus a chance to present 

their religion, and the ones who were given the 

privilege to speak, have vilified and traduced 

Hinduism. 

Mahatma Gandhi is called father of the na- 

tion by Indians. About present-day obedience of 

his teachings, Britannica says ([1]): 

Although the memory of Gandhi continues to be 

revered by most Indians, his policies and principles 

carry little weight. The great bulk of social service 

is performed by government agencies rather than by 

voluntary bodies, whether Gandhian or other. 

From the above mentioned statement what does 

one learn about Hinduism? The statement is not 

required at all in an encyclopedia article on Hin- 

duism. Though it would be interesting to know 

if Britannica had conducted a nation wide survey 

in India to find out to what extent are Gandhi's 

policies followed there. There are many organiza- 

tions in India (too many to name) that have been 

inspired by Gandhi and are propagating his poli- 

cies and principles even today. There are many 

Indian non-governmental organizations that con- 

duct considerable social service, esp. at the time 

of national calamities. Indians have generously 

donated to the Prime Minister's National Relief 

Fund (PMNRF) to help humanity I fail to com- 

prehend on what grounds Britannica has made 

these claims. At this point, it should be adduced 

that Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS; "Na- 

tional Volunteer Alliance") that has been termed 

as a "militant" organization by Britannica, is very 

much respected in India and is known for its so- 

cial services. If it would have been a militant or- 

ganization then it would have been permanently 

banned by the Indian court of law. Fundamen- 

talist nature of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh 

(RSS; "National Volunteer Alliance") has been 

elaborated in [1] but there no mention in [1] 

or [8], how the want for an only-Muslim state 

led to the partition of India. This resulted in the 

creation of Islamic state of Pakistan in 1947. Does 

not this show the intolerant face of Islam? One 

can say that there is no need criticise a religion 

in an encyclopedia article about it. Fine, but this 

rule should be applied equally to all religions. 

Britannica has failed to do this. 

The Christian church has been very well 

mentioned in Britannica's article on Christianity. 

In [12], an entire section with subsections has 

been written on Church and social welfare. It is 

mentioned how the Christian church has healed 

the sick, taken care of widows and orphans, and 

done good to society. Article [12] also elabo- 

rates Christian beliefs in charity and prosperity 

of all. Some excerpts from [12] are mentioned 

below. 

The Christian church has responded to the matter of 

human illness both by caring for and healing the sick 

and by expressing concern for them. 

and 

In the early church, the care of the sick was carried 

out by the deacons and widows under the leadership 

of the bishop. This service was not limited to mem- 

bers of the Christian congregation but was directed 

toward the larger community, particularly in times of 

pestilence and plague. 

and 

The Christian congregation has traditionally cared 

for the poor, the sick, widows, and orphans. 

In the above mentioned lines there is nothing 

to impugn; it is generally true. The contrast is 

Amit Raj DHAWAN 

Hinduism Misinterpreted 

4/4 

striking when one reads Britannica's view on Hin- 

duism. There is no mention of the social work 

done by Hindu organizations, e.g. provision of 

free schoohng and medical care, helping the 

needy, etc. There are many temples in India that 

offer all visitors a complete meal for free, but 

writers of [1] are blind to see the good done by 

Hindu organizations and temples. In everything 

they have tried to find a sexual angle. What was 

guiding them? About Hindu temples, all they 

have to mention is erotic art of Khajurao, where 

they have once again misinterpreted the details, 

and not to mention again, they have ridiculed 

Hindu customs and beliefs with their false asser- 

tions. In strict sense, the term devadasis, is used 

for a lady who has surrendered herself to God. 

About them [1] states: 

The god's handmaidens (devadasis) performed before 

him at regular intervals, watched by the officiants 

and lay worshipers, who were his courtiers. These 

women, either the daughters of devadasis or girls 

dedicated in childhood, may have also served as 

prostitutes. The association of dedicated prostitutes 

with certain Hindu shrines can be traced back to 

before the Christian era. 

Are these words trying to prove the connec- 

tion between Hindu shrines and prostitution? 

Several cases of sexual abuse and sex scan- 

dals concerning Christian clergy have been ex- 

posed ([13], [14], [15]). Does [12] mention these 

cases? Of course, not! Well, these things are not 

"religion" and need not to be mentioned in an 

encyclopedia article on religion. But is it fair that 

when Britannica mentions Hinduism, it spurts 

whatever ugly it feels, and when it mentions 

Christianity, it hides whatever ugly it wants? 

In the lines above, only a few of the many 

objectionable statements of [1] have been men- 

tioned and analysed. In general, Britannica's ar- 

ticle on Hinduism ([1]) is absolutely deplorable. 

The intention of my work is not to encourage 

religious rivalry. This writing is about Hinduism; 

it does not intend to show other religions in 

bad light. It was the reprehensible treatment 

of Hindu sentiments by Britannica that inspired 

this work. Academia and related works should 

endorse equality of all religions. EncyclopEedia 

Britannica has been very unjust and despicable 

in its writing on Hinduism. This can be felt very 

strongly by anyone who knows about Hinduism. 

Comparison of Britannica's articles on Hinduism, 

Christianity, Islam, and Judaism explicitly asserts 

that it has treated Hinduism unevenly and ab- 

horrently. It is strongly needed that Britannica 

replaces its mal-information about Hinduism with 

information and facts that are true, honest, and 

in which Hindus believe. After all, it is about 

their belief. Only in this way religion, which is 

based on belief, can be interpreted with the be- 

lief that it is truly interpreted and not maliciously 

misinterpreted. 

References 

[1] "Hinduism," Encyclopedia Britannica 2009 

Student and Home Edition, 2009. 

[2] K. Ramaswamy, A. de Nicolas, and A. Baner- 

jee. Invading The Sacred: An Analysis of Hin- 

duism Studies in America. New Delhi: Rupa 

& Co., 2007. 

[3] A. M. Braverman, "The interpretation of 

gods," vol. 97, no. 2, December, 2004. [On- 

line]. Available: http://magazine.uchicago. 

edu/0412/features/index.shtml [Accessed: 

May 4, 2009]. 

[4] Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary. 

[CD-ROM]. Cambridge University Press, 

2003. 

[5] Merriam-Webster 11th Collegiate Dictionary. 

[CD-ROM]. Merriam-Webster, Incorporated, 

2003. 

[6] VS. Apte, The Practical Sanskrit-English Dic- 

tionary, 3rd ed. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 

1965. 

[7] H. Mukhia, The Mughals of India. Maiden, 

MA: Oxford: Blackwell Pub., 2004. 

[8] "Islam," Encyclopedia Britannica 2009 Stu- 

dent and Home Edition, 2009. 

[9] "Islamic terrorism and genocide of Kashmiri 

Pandits," [Online]. Available: http://www. 

kashmiri-pandit.org/sundry/genocide.html 

[Accessed: May 4, 2009]. 

[10] K. P S. Gill, "The Kashmiri Pandits: An eth- 

nic cleansing the world forgot," [Online]. 

Available: http://www.satp.org/satporgtp/ 

kpsgill/2003/chapter9.htm [Accessed: May 

4, 2009]. 

[11] "Judaism," Encyclopedia Britannica 2009 

Student and Home Edition, 2009. 

[12] "Christianity," Encyclopedia Britannica 2009 

Student and Home Edition, 2009. 

[13] "Timeline: US Church sex scandal," Septem- 

ber 7, 2007. [Online]. Available: 

http://news.bbc.co.Uk/2/hi/americas/ 

3872499. stm [Accessed: May 4, 2009]. 

[14] Jesmi, Amen - Oru Kanyasthreeyude At- 

makatha (Autobiography of a Nun). Kot- 

tayam: Di. Si. Buks, 2009. 

[15] C. Landau, "Sex abuse by nuns: the 

unknown story" October 2, 2007. [On- 

line]. Available: http://news.bbc. co.uk/2/ 

hi/americas/7022694.stm [Accessed: May 

4, 2009].