Fascinating article in The University of Chicago Magazine about the conflict between Hindu intellectuals and American academics. Here’s a selection from the article, but I recommend reading the whole thing.
Malhotra notes that “a peculiar brand of ‘secularism’ has prevented academic religious studies from entering [India’s] education system in a serious manner.”? Therefore, unlike other religions, he writes in an e-mail interview, “there is a lack of Indic perspective that would…provide equivalent counter balance”? to Western scholars’ theories, creating an “asymmetric discourse.”? Further, he says, most of the Hinduism scholars are “either whites or Indians under the control of whites. One does not find Arabs, Chinese, blacks, Hispanics, etc., engaged in this kind of Hinduphobia racket.”? He’s begun to research “whiteness studies,”? which analyzes the “anthropology of white culture and uncovers their myths. … I am researching issues such as white culture’s Biblical based homophobia, deeply ingrained guilt of sex (Garden of Eden episode) and condemnation of the body. … I posit that many white scholars are driven into Hinduism studies by their own private voyeurism or fantasy, or an attempted escape from white culture’s restrictions….”
The Indian/white, or insider/outsider, issue has been debated in both academia and the Hindu community. […] For Sharma, author of Classical Hindu Thought: An Introduction (Oxford, 2000), the debate has shades of gray. “Both the insider and the outsider see the truth,”? he writes in an e-mail interview, “but genuine understanding may be said to arise at the point of their intersection. At this intersection one realizes that the Shivalinga [the icon of the god Shiva] is considered a phallic symbol by outsiders but rarely by Hindus themselves, or that the Eucharist looks like a cannibalistic ritual to outsiders but not to Christians.”? He continues, “If insiders and outsiders remain insulated they develop illusions of intellectual sovereignty. Each is required to call the other’s bluff.”?
There’s a fine line, some scholars say, between legitimate Hindu concerns and the right-wing political wave that has recently hit India. Although Malhotra, for example, condemns the violence and threats, he has acknowledged in a Washington Post article that the Hindu right has appropriated his arguments. Just as he points to certain Western academics, arguing they perpetuate what he calls the “caste, cows, curry, dowry” stereotypes, in India, says Vijay Prashad, AM’90, PhD’94, a Trinity College assistant professor of international studies, “the Hindu right has taken education as an important field of political battle,” trying, for instance, to install conservative textbooks in schools.
Malhotra’s goal is to “rebrand India,”? says Prashad, a self-described Marxist who studied history and anthropology, not religious studies, at Chicago, and who has debated Malhotra in online forums. But “scholars, to me, are not in the business of branding.” Malhotra and others “have created the idea that there is one Indic thought,”? Prashad says, but “there are so many schools of thought within Hinduism.” […]
For Doniger it’s a matter of considering multiple explanations. Both Courtright and Kripal, she says, “applied psychoanalysis in a limited way, and they found something that is worth thinking about. They said this could be one of the things that’s going on here, not the only thing.”? She understands that Indians are sensitive to postcolonial threats to their culture. “For many years Europeans wrote anything they wanted and took anything they wanted from India,”? she says. “Even now so much of Indian culture is influenced by American political and economic domination. And India is quite right to object to that.”? The protesters, however, have transferred that concern to an intellectual level, arguing “that Western scholars have pushed out Indian views the same way Coca-Cola has pushed out Indian products.”? But, she argues, “it’s a false model to juxtapose intellectual goods with economic ones. I don’t feel I diminish Indian texts by writing about or interpreting them. My books have a right to exist alongside other books.”?
Very interesting article – thanks for bringing it to our attentions.
It’s a hard issue, as it is understandable why religious people would feel that this kind of scholarship is an affront to their religion, yet I am of the opinion that such scholarship should exist, as long as there it is done with an open mind.
Interesting.
I agree with Kristjan, that I can see how academic study of a religion or a religious culture could be taken as an insult to practioners of that religion, but that the scholarship should happen. There’s gotta be some sort of common ground.
I do have a problem with part of the article though…. not wholly comfortable with the “opposite” of “Hinduism studies” being “whiteness studies”. Rather, say that I’m not comfortable with “whiteness studies” – which assumedly includes me as a white person – is directly equated with Christianity. To my view, that’s much as if Hinduism academics equated all things Hindi to anyone with brown skin, rather than to anyone who practices a particular religion.
Yeah, I realize that my discomfort is probably the point, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. It does uncover and make apparent a fair amount of “white privilege” – i.e., what it would be like if we had units in public school to cover “White history” the same way we spent 2 weeks each on Native American history, Asian American history, and Hispanic American history when I was in jr. high.
…Definitely. I suppose it’s a good measure of my own anglocentrism that it hadn’t occurred to me that “whiteness studies” could mean anything other than a cover for neo-nazi apologists.
As an atheist, I understand what you’re saying about Christianity and its marginalized discontents; there’s enough of that in this country, after all. But I don’t think it’s inaccurate to say that Christianity has been a defining influence on Western culture, or that Christian faith has been tied into both nationalism and racism. To use your analogy, a comprehensive study of Hinduism would probably have to touch on the intersections of “Hindu” and “Indian” and on the elisions of race, ethnicity, national identity, and religious belief inflicted upon Hindus and Indians.
Yes, well I think the point is not that every white person is a Christian, but that every white person has been influenced, directly or indirectly, by Christianity, like it or not. Many of the attitudes that we might feel are “secular” or “common sense” actually do have their roots in religion. And yes, that probably does include some influence from pre-Christian European religions as well. But analysis of Christianity’s influence is perfectly valid.
Since when does one have to practice a religion to be influenced or affected by it?
I am not denying that genuine errors exist in the accounts of Hinduism given by Courtwright, Doniger, et, but I think that this isn’t really the reason for the attacks on them — it’s an excuse.
No, creationists aren’t interested in the subtleties of various errors in evolutionary textbooks, either. It’s just an excuse because evolution (they believe, and I do too, though some, like the Catholic Church, would disagree) challenges their religious views.
If the Indian right (including the BJP, of course, but also a distressing portion of the Congress party that want to “move to the right on values” — sound familiar?) wants to portray all Muslims as marauding villains, portray all historical Hindus as heroes, subject secular moderates and leftists to threats, and condemn all scholarship of Hinduism that deviates from their interpretation, then there’s not much we can do about that, but we can at least place the blame where it belongs, rather than apportioning it equally between them and the victims of such nationalist bravado.
Okay, that was a bit overblown. Malhotra hasn’t threatened anyone (though his more extreme followers have). Still, I think conservatives who plead, “why isn’t academe more faaair to us?” wear thin very easily, lately. Malhotra may not be much like Horowitz, but, y’know, the cat who sits on a hot stovetop also avoids cold ones.
Malhotra may have a point but there is one more point of view .
After all the law of Karm may not exist. The Hindu Gods may be limited in power whichs contradicts the infinte concept of God