To follow up on my review of The Hindus: An Alternative History, here are links to two other reviews:
Doniger Imagined History
The Hindu American Foundation poses two questions to Doniger and the Academy:
1) Do academics that study religion as non-believers share a responsibility to consider or respect the religious beliefs ascribed by adherents to their scripture?
2) Is Freudian psychoanalysis relevant to deconstructing scripture, its divine and human characters (the latter now dead) and its earliest believers (also now dead) from several millenia ago, and what, if any value do these interpretations offer?
Oh, But You Do Get It Wrong!
Aditi Banerjee fisks (deconstructs) the points that Doniger made in an interview with Outlook India. Banerjee writes in her introduction:
[Doniger] (1) falsely and unfairly brands all of her critics as right-wing Hindutva fundamentalists, and (2) grossly mischaracterizes (and misquotes) the text of the Valmiki Ramayana, calling into question her “alternative” version not just of the Ramayana, but also of Hinduism and Hindu history as a whole.
Ms. Banerjee notes that Doniger plays "both the sex card and the race card" to claim that her critics ("the Hindutva types") are discriminating against her. More accurately, Doniger plays three cards: religion (she's not Hindu), caste (she's not Brahmin, which follows from her not being Hindu), and gender (she's a woman).
The second part of Ms. Banerjee's opinion piece is a lengthy descontruction of Doniger's interpretation of Valmiki's Ramayana. Doniger's interpretation is rife with inaccuracies, error, and of course, her obsession with sex.
1 comment:
While it is easy to criticize the author for the errors, we would need to reflect what we have done for our own religion and scriptures. We do not have enough books that can
1. Explain our literatures in logical sense to current generation. In fact I have seen more books that refers to our scriptures by Germans and other nations.
2. Even where the books are available, they focus on emotions and at time cross refer other scriptures.
3. Every mythology has meanings and message that are beyond the words.
4. I am yet to find books in market that can be read by common men.
Secondly we must consider the interpretations within a contextual framework not emotions. The rationalization of scriptures and religion is a constant process. The very Upanishads are creation of rationalization and commentary on Vedas by different scholars at different point in time.
This is the strength of Hinduism and Hindu Scriptures
Subramaniam
Post a Comment