Hinduphobia in American academe, vending porno as scholarship

http://www.india-forum.com/articles/10325/1/From-Academic-Freedom-to-Intellectual-Crap
From Academic Freedom to Intellectual Crap by Shree Vinekar

Invading The Sacred

http://www.littleindia.com/news/135/ARTICLE/1832/2007-08-17.html
Questioning the accuracy and objectivity of research on Hinduism at U.S. universities.

By: Krishnan Ramaswamy, Ph.D.

Elevating the Sacred

http://www.littleindia.com/news/135/ARTICLE/1857/2007-09-03.html
The university is not an ashram; it is a location of critical and appreciative study of many religions: their texts, histories,
practices, art, and politics.

By: Paul Courtright

Turn of the Turds

http://www.littleindia.com/news/157/ARTICLE/1893/2007-10-02.html
Scholars have a professional obligation to engage dissenters, just as their critics are obligated to unequivocally deplore
threats against those with whom they disagree.

By: Achal Mehra

Parsing The Sacred

http://www.littleindia.com/news/135/ARTICLE/1914/2007-10-02.html
An award-winning book on Ganesa by an Emory University professor has factual inaccuracies in its claims on the Puranas,
the ancient Hindu texts.

By: Achal Mehra

Comment By Paul Courtright

Comment By Vishal Agarwal, Kalavai Venkat & Krishnan Ramaswamy

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Invading Te Sacred
http://www.littleindia.com/news/135/ARTICLE/1832/2007-08-17.html
Questioning the accuracy and objectivity of research on Hinduism at U.S. universities.

By: Krishnan Ramaswamy, Ph.D.

America's relationship with Indian culture is a complex one. Many people embrace Indian ideas like vegetarianism, yoga, mediation,
etc., but the American establishment remains wary. The classic image from history is that of Martin Luther King Jr, who admired and
adopted Indian political methods, such as satyagraha, while the establishment of his time saw "passive resistance" as hypocrisy and
unmanly.

How does America imagine and create images of India that are simultaneously positive and negative? As a cultural and religious
minority this is an important question for Indian Americans to ponder. Our future in this country is affected by what others believe about
us.

America, unlike Europe, is a deeply religious land, and many Americans see the world through a religious lens. What they think of your
religion influences at least in part what they think of you. The academic study of religion in the USA is a major discipline involving over
8,000 university professors, most of whom are members of the American Academy of Religion (AAR). The study of Hinduism is an
important and influential discipline within this group.

The academic study of religion informs a variety of disciplines, including International Studies, Women's Studies, Sociology,
Anthropology, History, Literature, Journalism, Education and Politics. Thus the research and writings of religion scholars go beyond the
discipline's boundaries, penetrating the mainstream media, and directly impact the American public perception of India via museum
displays, films and textbooks.

For instance, the famous Walters Museum in Baltimore featured the following description of
Ganesha below a large and beautiful 11th century carving: "Ganesa, is a son of the great
god Siva....Ganesa's potbelly and his childlike love for sweets mock Siva's practice of
austerities, and his limp trunk will forever be a poor match for Siva's erect phallus." Since
such a description of Ganesha, is not found anywhere in the richly varied Hindu tradition,
one has to wonder why such trivialized portrayals of Indian Divinity are acceptable in a
prestigious American forum. Such public explanations are important, the writer Alex
Alexander has noted, because many school tours visit the museum, and through art, kids
learn about Asian culture. Scholars have traced this idiosyncratic and misleading
characterization of Ganesha to an award-winning book by Prof. Paul Courtright, who claims
to use Freudian psychoanalysis and "evidence" from Hindu texts to arrive at his conclusions.

Peer-Review versus Censorship

Before reacting to scholarship on India or Hinduism as being "hurtful," "insensitive" or

"biased," one has to examine a work and see if it passes reasonable tests of scholarship.
Just because one disagrees with or dislikes a particular scholarly conclusion, does not mean
that the scholarship is invalid or must be "stopped." That is dangerous and can rob us of
cherished freedoms.

The only way of determining whether a particular work passes the test of scholarship is to
review it in detail, taking into account the data, the evidence, the methodology and the matrix
of assumptions on which its conclusions are based. This is what scholars do when they
conduct a peer review, before the publication of scholarly papers and books. This is a vital
quality-control step designed to prevent bias and fraud. Academic freedom, enormously vital in the human quest for understanding, is
different from artistic license, as it is always balanced by a fealty to facts, ethical norms and
to quoting one's sources accurately.

So are these checks and balances working in academic studies of Hinduism? The Indian
American intellectual Rajiv Malhotra believes that the process is broken. As someone who
has worked closely with American academics for over ten years and has funded them to the
tune of several million dollars, he should know. Because many scholars are closely inter-
related and actively exclude the voices of practicing Hindus, the peer-review process has
been compromised by a closed, culturally insular cartel. Thus powerful scholars, with the
power to promote or harm careers, ensure that their work or the work of their students
cannot be questioned by others. This has disastrous consequences for original thinking
about India and Hinduism, because it limits the diversity of perspectives, silences scholars
who do not conform to the academic orthodoxy and promotes shoddy scholarship.

For instance, an independent scholarly review by Vishal Agarwal and Kalavai Venkat of
Courtright's book Ganesa: Lord of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings found literally page after

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page of major errors, unverifiable citations and even evidence of invented data. Just a couple of examples: Courtright claims, for
example, that Hindu scriptures look upon human beings as the excrement of God: "Some Puranic sources maintain that demons and
human beings have come from the divine rectum"(page 53). He cites passages from the Linga Purana and Bhagavata Purana (and his
mentor Prof. Wendy Doniger's papers) as his hreferences for this demeaning claim. But Agarwal and Venkat show that there is no such
passage in either text; instead human beings in the Purana are born from the mind of God. Thus Courtright simply perpetuates
Doniger's unfounded allegation. Little wonder that Christian missionary groups in the United States use such works to claim that
Hinduism is a "dirty, dignity destroying religion."

Even more egregiously, Courtright claims that the Devi Bhagavata Purana records an incestuous rape by Daksha of his own daughter,
the Goddess Sati: "[Daksha] made love to his daughter Sati in the manner of a mere beast. This shameful action drove her to burn her
own body, that is is, commit sati..." (page 37). This is in conformity with a favorite academic theme of an allegedly deep-rooted sexual
pathology and depravity in Hinduism. Again, independent peer review would have exposed this claim as being totally fabricated. There
is no such passage in the Purana.

These are not minor errors. Imagine what would happen to the career and reputation of a scholar who claimed that passages in the
Bible record that the Virgin Mary was raped by her own father and then was unable to produce proof of this? Even though there are
numerous other stories of patriarchs committing incest in the Bible, such a "discovery" about a major figure would be examined very
closely. The peer-reviewers would have checked and double-checked before allowing this defamation of Christian texts to pass into
academic literature. But apparently, the peer review process was easily short-circuited in the case of an Indian religion.

Just as journalists are hauled up by their peers for manufacturing data and inventing
sources, so should academics. But as our book Invading the Sacred documents, so far
Courtright has never had to answer to academic watchdogs for these numerous inaccurate
claims. Nor has he ever hrefuted point-by-point the scores of disturbing findings of the
independent peer-review. Instead with the help of powerful colleagues in the religious
studies establishment, he has succeeded in crushing dissent by claiming that his critics are
"Hindu radicals" or prudish "puritans" who threaten academic freedom. A few isolated angry
postings threatening Courtright by anonymous persons claiming to be Hindus on the Internet
have been very effectively used to deflect attention from a serious debate on substantive
issues and his factual inaccuracies. While threats can never be excused, does the academy
not have a responsibility to investigate issues of ethics, quality and bias? It is important to
note that Courtright's work is far from an isolated instance of shoddy and biased scholarship.

Old wine in new bottles

Scholars surveying how Indian culture is viewed in the West (as well as by highly
westernized Indians) have noticed a pattern. With some variations, these portrayals have
had, in a relatively unchanging way, the following features familiar to many of us from much
of international media and colonial and missionary literature: Indian culture is defined by a
series of abuses, such as caste, sati, dowry murders, violence, religious conflict, instability,
immorality, grotesque deities and so forth. The problems in India are not seen as historical
and economic in origin, but as essences of the traditions, cultures and civilization of India,
making it a "chaotic and even desperate country." In other words, India's problems are in its DNA. Indian culture's own ongoing
responses and solutions to these problems are rarely taken seriously, even though Indian history is filled with self-correcting hreform
movements from within and this process is actively at work today. In its most insidious form, this view implies that unless Indians are
rescued from their culture by external intervention, they are doomed. What is startling is that these ideas, which formed the keystone of
moral rationalizations offered by the British for colonialism and exploitation, continue to enjoy wide academic respectability in the West
today. What has changed over time, as the noted anthropologist Balagangadhara of the University of Ghent has noted, "is the
intellectual jargon that clothes these 'analyses.'"

Thus, while psychoanalysis has become passé and suspect in most disciplines, Dr. Alan
Roland, an American scholar and noted psychologist who has studied Indian culture, finds
that it is used willy-nilly in the interpretation of Indian texts, myths and symbols. Cultural
differences are ignored and bizarre interpretations based on western cultural chauvinism are
imposed on Indian themes. Prof. Kapila Vatsyayan, doyen of India Studies, also finds it
troubling that "some academics in some departments have chosen to undertake such
studies with a single-minded pursuit of reading myth and symbol at particular level, i.e.
sexual."

This happens because all the richness and complexity of Hinduism is filtered "through a
single perspective of a Freudian psycho-analytical approach applied to the exclusion of the
others." Vatsyayan is dismayed by the narrowing of the American mind with respect to
Hinduism based on this excessive reliance on a questionable methodology. An additional
problem is that even leading American scholars are often poorly trained in Indian languages
and cultural nuances, but this does not stop them from writing authoritatively about the
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"evils" of Indian culture.

Certain Hinduphobic evangelical groups feed off this shoddy research environment and use this "evidence" to teach American
churchgoers about the dangers of Hinduism. Prof. Jeffery Long, chairman of the department of religious studies at Elizabethtown
College, has voiced concerns about the consequences of such misinformation: "How many children will grow up believing Hinduism is a
'filthy' religion, or that Hindus worship the devil? When they grow up, how will such children treat their Hindu co-workers and neighbors?
Will they give them the respect due to a fellow citizen and human being?"

The American academy needs a serious debate on the shoddy and questionable scholarship of so-called eminent Hindu scholars,
which for too long has been blocked by insular academic cartels.

This article is adapted from Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America, edited by Krishnan Ramaswamy, Antonio
de Nicolas and Aditi Banerjee, Rupa & Co, 2007.

www.invadingthesacred.com

Shoddy Research Leads to Bias

While at the level of University research, factual errors, fabricated sourcing and theoretical biases need to be identified and combated
by academe, the problem is slightly different in schools and undergraduate textbooks. Since these textbooks tend to be overviews, not
in depth studies, the core issue is what gets emphasized and what gets left out.

Infinity Foundation's Rajiv Malhotra argues that this bias, which he calls Hinduphobia, is widespread in school and college textbooks.
Thus, a popular and basic undergraduate textbook, Awakening: An Introduction to the History of Eastern Thought, tells students that
Shiva temples are strange places, whose primary meaning is sexual. "Linga/yoni veneration was not the whole of it... Young women,
known as devadasis, were commonly connected with Shiva temples... In a degraded form the devadasi became nothing more than
temple prostitutes." Then the book casually informs students that some Shiva temples were "notorious [for] ritual rape and murder".

The imagery of these "strange and terrible things" gets filtered through the students' Eurocentric lenses, and consciously or
unconsciously, remains a part of the students' life-long mythic view of Indic cultures.

At the introductory stage of an American student's learning, depictions and stories about Hinduism should be carefully put into proper
context. For instance, discussions of Shiva/Shakti can explore symbolic ideals, such as the transcendent meeting of the male and the
female. It is more accurate for students to understand and remember Shiva as Divinity encompassing both male and female - a primary
teaching about Shiva shared across India - rather than exotic obscurities about Devadasis that are not central to the religion's practice.

Let us reverse the situation to make the point: consider a hypothetical book titled Introduction to the History of Western Thought that
presented a similar discourse about pathologies inherent in Christianity in a non-Christian country like India or Pakistan? The
hypothetical textbook would certainly hrefrain from blithely dwelling on the historically not infrequent occurrences of sex, rape and
unwanted pregnancies in nunneries or the recently exposed epidemic of pedophilia among Catholic priests and evangelical ministers.

Devadasis, who are married to God, and nuns who are married to Christ are interesting analogs of each other. Of course, one was
expected to be cultured, vivacious, non-celibate and altogether a local superstar, while the other was often hidden away, self-denying,
theoretically celibate and withdrawn. But our hypothetical textbook would hardly include statements. such as, "Being the bride of Christ
and crucifix-veneration was not the whole of it. In a degraded form, some nuns were little more than church prostitutes, available to the
powerful among the priesthood as well as the laity."

Nor would one condone a statement like, "Catholic churches are notorious for all kinds of extreme practices from rape of children to
official protection for the rapists over decades." Objectively, this could be backed by data. In the United States alone, hundreds of
Christian priests have been implicated in molesting children. The victims are in the thousands and the problem stretches back at least a
half century. I think we can all agree that such information has little place in an introductory work on Christianity.

Yet, in an introductory college textbook on Hinduism for American students they are nonchalantly and without credible evidence
informed that Shiva temples "became notorious for all kinds of extreme practices, including ritual rape and ritual murder." One has to
wonder at the asymmetry and the Hinduphobia that allows such asymmetry. -KR

Editor's Note

Little India sought a response from Professor Paul Courtright, who was traveling in Japan, to the article. He vigorously disputes Vishal
Agarwal and Kalavai Venkat's characterization of his research and expresses puzzlement that supposedly scholarly critiques of his
book descend into personal attacks on his motivations. He writes: "I do not regard my book as demeaning Hinduism. The book has
received scholarly appreciation by both Indian and Western Indologists. I have spent my 35 year career supporting India studies at
three universities and among national organizations." Little India will publish Professor Courtright's fuller response in the September
issue of the magazine.

Elevating the Sacred

http://www.littleindia.com/news/135/ARTICLE/1857/2007-09-03.html
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The university is not an ashram; it is a location of critical and appreciative study of many religions: their texts, histories,
practices, art, and politics.

By:
Paul Courtright

I thank Little India for the opportunity to respond to Krishnan Ramaswamy's article in the last issue on his edited collection, Invading the
Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America. Much of his article in the magazine focused on my 1985 book, Ganesha: Lord of
Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings, alleging that many textual citations were inaccurate and that the book's use of psychoanalytic theory in
the interpretation of Ganesha denigrated Hinduism and was part of an overall hostile presentation of Hinduism in America by scholars,
colleges and universities, publishers, and the media.

Vineeta Kalbag, in her review of Invading the Sacred titled "Tresspassers Will Be Persecuted" in The Hindustan Times, noted, "It is an
angry book, but one where the anger is neither focused nor fair."

Before expressing my own view of Invading the Sacred, let me address a couple of
allegations in Ramaswamy's article. He claims that my citations of Puranas regarding
humans and demons being "born from the divine rectum" is an error. I don't have all the
texts I consulted in my book available as I write this, but let me quote at greater length one
of the sources I did use, from the Linga Purana (1.70.197-200). "Thereafter he [Brahma] was
desirous of creating the four groups, viz. Devas, Asuras, Pitrs and human beings. He infused
himself in the wasters. Even as he did so, even as he assiduously meditated on creations,
the particles of darkness grew up in excess. Then out of his buttocks were produced the
Asuras. O Brahmins, the word 'asu' means vital breath. Those born of the vital breath are
called Asuras." (The Linga Purana, translated by A Board of Scholars. Delhi: Motilal
Banarsidass, 1973, p. 322-23).

Another allegation Ramaswamy makes is that I falsely claim that Daksha committed incest
with his daughter Sati. Again, let me quote the source from the Devibhagavata Purana (7.26-
27), edited by B. D. Vasu. Vyasa is telling relating the story to the Emperor Janamejaya.

"O King! Hear. I am describing to you the ancient history of the burning of Sati. Once on a
time, the famous Risi Durvasa went to the bank of the river Jambu and saw the Devi there.
There he remained with his senses controlled and began to repeat silently the root Mantra of
Maya. Then the Goddess of the Immortals, the Bhagavati was pleased and gave the Muni a
beautiful garland as her Prasada that was on her neck, that emitted the sweet fragrance of
Makaranda (juice of flowers: Jasmine). Where upon the bees were about to cluster. The
Marharsi took it quickly and placed it on his head. He then hurriedly went to see the Mother
to the place where Sati's Father, the Prajapati Daksa was staying and bowed down to the
feet of the Sati. The Prajapati then asked him: -'"O Lord! Whose extraordinary garland is
this? How have you got this enchanting garland, rare to the mortals on this earth!' The
eloquent Maharsi Durvasa then spoke to him with tears of love flowing from his eyes:-'"O
Prajapati! I have got this beautiful garland that has no equal, as the Prasada (favour) of the
Devi.' The Prajapati asked that garland then from him. He, too, thinking that there was
nothing in the three worlds that cannot be given to the devotee of the Sakti, gave the garland
to the Prajapati. He took that on his head; then placed it on the nice bed that was prepared
in the bedroom of the couple. Being excited by the sweet fragrant smell of that garland in the
night, the Prajapati engaged in a sexual
intercourse! O King! Due to that animal action,
the bitter enmity arose in his mind towards
Sankara and His Sati. He then began to abuse
Siva. O King! For that offence, the Sati resolved
to quite here body that was of Daska, to preserve
the prestige of the Sanatan Dharma of devotion
to Her Husband burnt Her body by the fires
arising out of Yoga. The Sri Mad Devi
Bhagavatam. New York: AMS Press, 1974, p.
697-98.

The context of the story makes it clear that

Daksa's intercourse could only be with Sati, as
she is the only female mentioned. Other versions
of the stories of Daksa and Brahma's seduction
of Sandhya - stories told in succession in the
Shiva Purana and other collections of narratives -
sets a wider context for the primal incest. The
point of discussing the story is not to denigrate
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Hinduism, but to call attention to how the text presents the story of a "divine" violation to create the precondition for a religious and
moral teaching about the dangers of erotic desire (symbolized by the garland) and how the audience of the story can learn from the
mistakes of gods and heroes.

Now, I am not interested in engaging in footnote-wars over a book that was published 25 years ago. If there are errors, I regret them.
They were not intentional and they were certainly not part of a larger pattern of denigrating Hinduism.

Beyond the question of "sloppy scholarship" there is the issue of my applying psychoanalytic theory to Hindu stories. What seems to
have incensed the critics is not the book as a whole - for indeed, they do not engage the argument of the book as a whole - but a few
fragments from a few sentences from a 13-page discussion of psychoanalytic interpretations of Ganesha's birth and beheading story,
which several Indian scholars had already taken up. The other 261 pages are about Ganesha's mythologies, ritual traditions, the
festival in Maharashtra, and one non-Hindu's attempt to bring an informed and appreciative interpretation of this deity to his readers.

Of course, psychoanalytic theory is controversial in some circles, but it also continues to be drawn upon by scholars across a range of
disciplines from anthropology, film studies, history, philosophy, religion, and literature. Many books have been published since Freud on
interpretations of Christian, Jewish, and Buddhist traditions from psychoanalytic perspectives. Some people think psychoanalysis as a
theory is ludicrous and unscientific; other people think it is insightful and illuminating. Indeed, one of the most distinguished
contemporary psychoanalytic writers, Sudhir Kakar, is Indian and has a large following internationally of appreciative readers.

Why psychoanalytic theory and Ganesha? When you have a story like that of Ganesha - told for a couple of millennia from ancient texts
to contemporary comic books - a story of a child created by his mother with her own hands from the surface of her body, placed in the
doorway to protect her from intruders, confronted by a stranger who turns out to be his father who cuts his head off and restores it with
that of an elephant, it would be irresponsible for a scholar not to ask the (psychoanalytic) question: what is this story about? Could the
story offer an insight into the fundamental dynamics of mother-child-father relations as they have been imagined in India, and perhaps
offer new perspectives to those beyond its land of origin? Of course, the story has many other meanings that may be drawn from the
deep reservoir of Vedic sacrificial tradition and rites of initiation - the upanayana - of Hindu boys. I discuss some of these angles of
interpretation in the book as well.

All this fury that the critics have directed against this small portion of my book strikes me as a case of - to quote Shakespeare - "thou
dost protest too much." There is something about a discussion of sexuality in relation to Ganesha that has really gotten these critics
burning red hot. One psychoanalyst friend of mind quipped, "If they are that upset, you must be onto something." I can't help but think,
Ganesha, with his puckish sense of humor, is finding all this quite amusing.

Ramaswamy raises the question about peer-review, implying that my book was published without adequate scholarly scrutiny. When I
sent the manuscript to Oxford University Press the editor sent it out for scholarly appraisal. The anonymous reader made a number of
helpful suggestions and corrections. A year later a separate panel of scholars reviewed the book when it was awarded a "best first
book" prize by the American Council of Learned Societies, a national umbrella group of academic societies. My book was further
reviewed in conjunction with my tenure and promotions at my university.

What is Invading the Sacred so angry about? The book articulates a frustration stemming from a few ideologically committed Hindu
chauvinists failure to leverage influence in how Hinduism is taught in American colleges and universities. The book is parallel to the
efforts last year in California by some Hindu organizations to re-write social science textbooks in the state school system, or efforts in
India to re-write Indian history textbooks to conform to Hindu nationalist constructions of India's past.

It is simply false to claim that Hindus are excluded from the academic study of religion in American universities. More and more young
Hindu American scholars are applying to our programs. This is a good thing. But, the university is not an ashram; it is a location of
critical and appreciative study of many religions: their texts, histories, practices, art, and politics. In their admissions procedures
American graduate schools do not admit students on the basis of their religious commitment and sentiments, but on their academic
achievement and potential. It is simply false to assert that Hindu scholars are excluded from academic associations in the United
States. The American Academy of Religion has a special section on the study of Hinduism, the steering committee of which has
included many Hindu scholars, including Professor S.N. Balagangadhara, whose preface is included in Invading the Sacred. It is simply
false to claim that there is a conspiracy to protect privileged non-Hindu scholars.

The allegation that Hindus in America are having their sacred tradition trashed in American universities is a convenient untruth to
buttress an effort on the part of a number of Hindu-chauvinist organizations and leaders to create a sense of victimization. The
allegation is baseless and unworthy. In my case, a few years ago, several persons claiming to speak for the Hindu community met with
my dean (I urged him to meet with them) and insisted that members of their community should be involved in faculty recruitment in the
teaching of Hinduism at my university. Simply on the principle of academic freedom and institutional autonomy no dean in her or his
right mind would concede such authority to any group alleging hurt sentiments around any subject being taught.

Will the book generate the sort of debate and revolution in the study of Hinduism that it asserts for itself? I have my doubts. The claims
at the base of the book are so bogus that no reasonable person - Hindu or non-Hindu - will find them persuasive. What and how
Hinduism is taught in colleges and universities in this country is not a state secret. Many course outlines are available on the Web and
course descriptions appear in college and university catalogues.

Stepping back a bit from the heat emanating from this angry book, there is something important to notice. Second generation Hindu
Americans - those who were born here and have grown up here - face important questions about how they will embrace their Hindu
identity. America is not India. The landscape for religious practice and affiliation is very different here. The temples that have grown up
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around America offer important centers for Hindu practice, and help non-Hindus get a better and less exoticized understanding of their
Hindu friends and neighbors. Scholarly organizations like DANAM: The Dharma Association of North America (www.danam-web.org/)
offer new venues for philosophical and theological conversation and publication.

In my own career I have been fortunate to witness and participate in an extraordinary transformation. When I began teaching courses
on Hinduism in 1970, there were no Indian Americans in my classes - indeed, not until the mid-1980s. Over the years, more and more
students of Hindu heritage have taken courses with me. Last year I taught a seminar of 13 students in which I was the only "white guy."
It was one of my most enjoyable courses. In the 36 years I have been teaching I have never received a complaint from a Hindu student,
nor has one come to my department chair or other faculty member or university official to express distress that her or his religion was
being devalued, denigrated, or damaged. Indeed, quite the opposite. Students of Hindu backgrounds appreciate that their tradition is
taken seriously in the curriculum, and they embrace the opportunity to study texts, rituals and arts of their own religion in the context of
the university. They find the application of various theoretical approaches valuable and it gives them a deeper appreciation of the
heritage they share with other Hindus.

I hope that the current inflammatory rhetoric of Invading the Sacred, and similar polemical perspectives on Web sites will burn out and
more thoughtful readers will see behind the book's claims to be a "fair and balanced" analysis and see it for what it is: propaganda
masking as scholarship.

We live in an age of identity politics and the politics of sentiment. Religion often connects people with deep-seated and volatile moods
and motivations. Religion matters. A more worthy enterprise for scholars and practitioners to engage in is an open and generous
discussion about religion, in this context Hinduism. The university struggles to be a free space for such open inquiry. Scholars struggle
to be genuinely fair and balanced. Practitioners seek respect and recognition. These are each good things. Let's lower the rhetorical
temperature and get busy doing some constructive and real work on understanding and representing this extraordinarily rich, diverse,
and complex religious tradition.

Paul Courtright, professor of religion at Emory University, is author of Ganesha: Lord of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings.

Editor's Note: Little India will analyze the competing representations of the passages in the Puranas in the essays by Krishnan
Ramaswamy and Paul Courtright in a forthcoming issue of the magazine.
Turn of the Turds
http://www.littleindia.com/news/157/ARTICLE/1893/2007-10-02.html
Scholars have a professional obligation to engage dissenters, just as their critics are obligated to unequivocally deplore
threats against those with whom they disagree.

By:
Achal Mehra

This month Little India undertook an exercise journalists usually loathe -- seek to referee a festering public dispute. Our report, "Parsing
the Sacred," determined that Paul Courtright's 1985 book, titled Ganesa: Lord of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings, which has been fiercely
criticized for several years now, has inaccurate references on the Puranas.

We are astonished that the religious studies community resisted addressing these factual disputes for so long. The arrogance and
disdain with which some scholars have treated their non-academic critics is nothing short of astounding.

Wendy Doniger, a leading Hinduism scholar at the University of Chicago, for instance, ridiculed one of her critics for hanging around
academic conferences "where real scholars gather as jackals hang about the congregations of lions." Instead of engaging the critiques
of her scholarship, she taunted him as an "aufgestllte Mausdrek, a mouse turd standing up on end. You do not even know enough to
know how much you do not know."

Turns out the mouse turds knew a thing or two the academic Brahmans didn't. Ganesa must be chortling.

Even worse, some critics were publicly bullied. An author of Invading the Sacred, a book critical of several religious scholars, for
example, was threatened with exposure to his employer for using the company's email server for posting his critiques.

Such street epithets and intimidation tactics by scholars, of religion, no less, to silence their pesky critics is appalling and downright
bizarre.

That said, Hindus must also respect the traditions of intellectual freedom and inquiry in an academic setting. We reject the proposition
that scholars should be sensitive in their treatment of religious subjects. Scriptures in the Hindu tradition are living, breathing
documents, open to reinterpretation and reinvention by Hindus and non Hindus alike.

The Puranas are uncharacteristically honest in exploring the deepest taboos and Hindus need not be touchy about perceived slights,
offensive treatments and departures from narrow literal interpretations. Few Hindus have any familiarity with the Puranas, precisely
because they have become fossilized by mechanical textual readings.

Notwithstanding the identified weaknesses in the scholarship, Courtright's book on Ganesa is a valuable contribution to the literature on
one of Hindu's most important deities. Likewise, Doniger's sometimes playful, sometimes acerbic, often lurid discourses on Hindu
scriptures have engaged a generation of scholars and opened new vistas in Hinduism studies. Attempts to suppress such scholarship
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or intimidate these scholars, as occurred with Courtright, whose book on Ganesa was withdrawn under pressure from Hindu radicals by
its Indian publisher, must be denounced and resisted.

The public discourse cannot be surrendered to loonies and extremists, who have a chilling effect upon scholars. But surely the one
arena where it should be possible to conduct a nuanced, even if occasionally caustic, debate on passionately held views is the
academy.

Courtright in his response last month in Little India rightly noted that a university is not an ashram. But nor ought it to be a fortress to
hold back dissenters. A commitment to intellectual freedom demands that the academic community step up to its professional
responsibilities by engaging and embracing dissent, just as it makes it incumbent upon their critics to unequivocally deplore and counter
threats against scholars with whom they disagree.

Parsing The Sacred

http://www.littleindia.com/news/135/ARTICLE/1914/2007-10-02.html
An award-winning book on Ganesa by an Emory University professor has factual inaccuracies in its claims on the Puranas,
the ancient Hindu texts.

By:
Achal Mehra

An award-winning book on Ganesa by an Emory University professor has factual inaccuracies in its claims on the Puranas, the ancient
Hindu texts.

Paul Courtright's 1985 book, Ganesa: Lord of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings has been the subject of intense criticism by several
Hinduism scholars and Hindu religious groups during the past several years. The book, which won a national award from the committee
for the History of Religion of the American Council of Learned Societies in 1985, is sharply critiqued in a new book titled Invading the
Sacred, which questions the accuracy and objectivity of several leading Hinduism scholars in the United States, most notably
Courtright and University of Chicago's Wendy Doniger.

Little India undertook an investigation of two passages in Courtright's book, whose authenticity was questioned by Krishnan
Ramaswamy, one of the editors of Invading the Sacred, in an article in the August issue of Little India. Courtright responded to the
criticism in the following issue of the magazine, which subsequently invited the two sides to present evidence to resolve the factual
disputes. Little India traded the evidence between the parties before arriving at the conclusions presented here. They were both given
an opportunity to respond to these findings.

Little India focused exclusively on the factual accuracy of the two passages ascribed to the
Puranas in Courtright's book. It neither considered, nor was influenced by, criticisms by
several Hindu groups, as well as the authors of Invading the Sacred, that sections of the
book are offensive or demeaning.

Courtright admitted he erred in asserting in his book that the Linga Purana stated that
humans "come from the divine rectum."

"I stand corrected on the Linga Purana text, which only mentions demons," Courtright
acknowledged.

An examination of the relevant passage in the Linga Purana shows that demons emerged
from the divine rectum, "Then out of his buttocks were produced the Asuras (demons)." A
subsequent passage in the Purana reveals that human beings are born from the mind of
God.

In his book, Courtright also cites the Bhagvata Purana for the claim, but that passage too does not ascribe such an origin to human
beings. Finally, he cited Doniger's book, Hindu Myths, but that citation does not reference the creation of human beings or the divine
rectum at all.

Courtright was also challenged on his claim in the book that Daksa committed incest with his daughter Sati. He wrote: "[Daksa] made
love to his daughter Sati 'in the manner of a mere beast.' This shameful action drove her to burn her own body, that is, commit sati...."

Courtright cites a passage in the Devi-Bhagavata Purana in support of the claim: "[Prajapati] took [the garland] on his head; then
placed it on the nice bed that was prepared in the bedroom of the couple. Being excited by the sweet fragrant smell of that garland in
the night, the Prajapati engaged in a sexual intercourse! O King! Due to that animal action, the bitter enmity arose in his mind toward
Sankara and his Sati. He then began to abuse Siva. O King! For that offence, the Sati resolved to quit her body that was of Daksa ..."

While the passage does not explicitly state that incest occurred, Courtright insists Daksa's intercourse could only be with Sati through a
contextual reading of the passage as she is the only woman mentioned in the passage. He also claimed in his article in Little India,

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"Other versions of the stories of Daksa and Brahma's seduction of Sandhya -- stories told in succession in the Siva Purana and other
collections of narratives -- sets a wider context for the primal incest."

Little India's examination of Devi-Bhagavata Purana passage found that while there is no direct reference to incest, a strained
reading of such a rape is possible from the text. Such a reading would be more compelling if other versions of the story hinted at or
supported such a context, as Courtright claimed.

However, a review of the Daksa and Sati story in multiple Puranic sources by Little India, including Siva Purana, Vayu Purana, Linga
Purana, Brahma Purana, Kurma Purana, Matsya Purana and Bhagavata Purana found that they all ascribed Sati's self-immolation
to her dismay at her father's insult of her husband Siva.

Courtright did not offer any Puranic source that might provide context for the primal incest. He cited, what he described as a "back
story," in which Siva cut off Brahma's head because Brahma raped his daughter Sandhya. "In the Siva Purana the story of Danksa is
told right after the story of Brahma and Sandhya," Courtright said, noting from the sequence: "It seems to me a plausible reading that
the story of Daksa is a transformed retelling of the story of Brahma's incest. What does Siva do when he learns of Sati's immolation?
He comes to the sacrifice, in some versions in his form as Bhairava, and beheads Daksa, just as he had beheaded Brahma in the other
story."

A Little India review of the Siva Purana, however, found that the Brahma story follows the Daksa story rather than the other way
around. The story immediately preceding the Danksa episode is Tripurasura. The Brahma story relates Brahma's explicit lust for his
daughter Sandhya and it has allusions to Brahma's pursuit of Sandhya in the form of a deer, during which the deer is beheaded by
Siva.

The original Sanskrit text in the Daksa story alludes to "pashukarma." Courtright noted: "Literally, 'pashukarma' means 'animal act.' That
could mean forcible sex, it could mean 'doggie style,' who knows? That's where the context is important."

Nonetheless, he acknowledged: "I'm not sure I would say explicitly, 'Daksa raped Sati.' But I am persuaded that the story is, among
other things, about family relations, father-daughter relations, incestual desire, and that it is a profound story about things that are so
powerful and below the level of consciousness that they cannot be named.

"Who knows what Daksa did, he is such an archetypal villain in the puranas I would not put it past him. Daksa was a control-freak, he
did not want Siva to have what he could not have in relation to Sati.... I think the storytellers are trying to tell us something by not telling
us everything. The project of interpretation is to try to get at not only what is said, but what is not said. Naming these unconscious
desires is, of course, the project of psychoanalysis. I understand that people may be offended. People were offended by Freud -- some
still are -- but to paper over the story because it is uncomfortable to us is to dishonor the story."

Little India limited its examination to these two passages in Courtright's work. A chapter by Vishal Agarwal and Kalvai Venkat in
Invading the Sacred alleges scores of other factual inaccuracies in the book. Little India has not evaluated the validity of these other
criticisms.

Several of their criticisms of Courtright's book center on interpretations, which do not lend
themselves to factual assessments. Other critiques by Ramaswamy in the Little India article
focused on Courtright's application of psychoanalysis to Hindu scriptures. However, such
theories are widely used by scholars in a wide range of disciplines and we do not consider
their application by Courtright inappropriate. New and creative interpretations of old texts
give them life and the use of different theoretical approaches, such as psychoanalysis, is
legitimate, and indeed, as Courtright pointed out, "Psychoanalytic questions give us another
set of lenses through which to look."

We also reject the argument by some of his critics, including some in Invading the Sacred,
that scholars should be especially sensitive to religious subjects. Critical inquiry does not
lend itself to consideration of such sensitivities. The standards and measures for scholarship
and research are independent of the subject matter.

Nevertheless, Little India's independent analysis of the two passages based on the Puranas
in Courtright's book does lead to the conclusion that one of the claims is clearly erroneous,
which he acknowledges, and the second is strained at best and unsupported by any of the
many other versions of the story in the Puranas.

In our opinion, there is nothing fundamentally objectionable about Courtright's theoretical

techniques or even his observations and interpretations, however offensive they might seem
to some, so long as they are framed as interpretations. It is representation of these
interpretations as flowing from specific Puranic sources, without qualification, and that are
unsupported by the citations, that we found problematic.

In his response, Courtright said: "The bottom line is that I wrote the book a quarter of a
century ago. If I missed things that I should have noticed, or would notice now, is moot. I'm
not in a position to re-write the book. I hope I've learned a few things about textual precision
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in my current work.... If I was wrong, then I was wrong. I acknowledge that. Scholars sometimes make errors. Beating up on an old
book seems like a waste of everyone's time."

In our opinion, however, on the basis of the two examples investigated by Little India, that the many other inaccuracies in the book
alleged by Venkat and Agarwal deserve examination as they go to the scholarly integrity of an award winning work, however old.

Comment
By Paul Courtright

I have two brief notes to offer on Krishnan Ramaswamy's critique of my comments in the last issue of Little India.

First. Ramaswamy is correct. The Linga Purana does not specifically say that humans were created from the divine anus. I stand
corrected. As best I can remember from the time I was writing the book, I was struck by the larger notion of the cosmos as an all-
inclusive digestive and circulatory system in which all beings are emitted by the divine purusha. There are, of course, many creation
stories in the puranas and a full answer to the question of the variety of ways human beings are created would require further research.
I should have been more careful. It was an error.
Second. The question is whether the Devibhagavata Purana asserts that Daksa raped his daughter. Here the issue is more complex,
and will require a bit of background. Most of the many versions of Daksa's sacrifice in the Puranas say that Daksa does not invite Siva,
his son-in-law, to the sacrifice because Siva is a kapalin or kapalika - one who belongs to a sect of radical ascetic practitioners who
meditate in cremation grounds and reject the authority of the Vedas and their ritual traditions. Daksa has other objections as well: Siva
has no lineage, he does not treat Daksa with proper respect. Why does Daksa emphasize Siva being a kapalin, and that being one
disqualifies him from inclusion in the sacrifice?

Here there is a 'back story' that has to be kept in mind. Why did Siva become a kapalin? At a prior time Siva cut off Brahma's head (or,
in earlier texts, Prajapati's head) and carries it on the end of his trident. Why did Siva cut off Brahma's head? Because Brahma raped
his daughter, Sandhya. The gods asked Siva (or, in earlier texts, Rudra) to punish Brahma. In the Siva Purana the story of Daksa is
told right after the story of Brahma and Sandhya. In a temple pamphlet in Hindi that I collected in Kankhal, just next to Haridwar, at the
Daksheshwar Temple, the place believed to be where the sacrificed took place, the story is told in the same sequence. Why are these
two stories linked?

So, when Sati confronts her father about why Siva was excluded from the sacrifice and says that she is going to abandon the body she
received from him and proceeds to immolate herself in the sacrificial fire, or in her yogic fire, as some versions tell it, it seems to me a
plausible reading that the story of Daksa is a transformed retelling of the story of Brahma's incest. What does Siva do when he learns of
Sati's immolation? He comes to the sacrifice, in some versions in his form as Bhairava, and beheads Daksa, just as he had beheaded
Brahma in the other story.

Whether the term, pashukarma, "acting like a beast" means "rape" or something else, whether the other person in the Devibhagavata
Purana story is Sati or someone else (Ramaswamy supplied a Hindi gloss indicating it was Daksa's wife, but the Sanskrit does not
specify. Is the Hindi commentator simply clarifying the matter, or is he steering the reader from the less palatable reading that the
Devibhagavata version left ambiguous?), these are areas where readers might disagree. Clearly, Ramaswamy and I do interpret the
text differently.

So, where does this leave us? As to the first point, I made a mistake. I misread the text. As
to the second text, I did what all translators must do: interpret a particular passage in the
light of the larger framework of the narrative. Here there is room for multiple readings and
meanings. A story as complex and multi-layered as the Daksa story must be read, in my
view, with the possibility of a number of meanings. The linkage between the story of Daksa
and Shiva and Brahma/Prajapati and Siva/Rudra led me to the interpretation I offered in the
book.

I have no confidence that my response here will be satisfactory to all readers . On further
research I might draw different conclusions. But, for the moment, I'll stand by my reading.

My critics will continue to insist that I am dishonest, incompetent, and venal. There is nothing I can do about that. My best hope is that
people who take an interest in these issues will read the book for themselves and draw their own conclusions.

Comment
By Vishal Agarwal, Kalavai Venkat & Krishnan Ramaswamy

As the Little India report has noted, an extensive examination of the evidence revealed that all four citations that Paul Courtright used
to bolster specific allegations about Hindu scriptures were found to be spurious or misleading. This raises important questions about the
integrity of the current peer review process in academic Hinduism studies. It also shows the value of including in Hinduism studies as
equals, scholars and critics from the community who may not be "licensed" as academics, but are very capable of doing valuable
scholarly and critical work. The report also argues for a serious and public examination by impartial scholars of the numerous other
substantive issues raised about Courtright's work by Agarwal and Venkat.

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 In Ganesa, Courtright alleged that the Linga Purana 1.70.199 and the Bhagavata Purana
2.6.8 look upon human beings as born of the divine rectum i.e. God's excrement. The cited
verses in the Linga Purana talk of how Brahma successively created four classes of beings:
devas, asuras, pitrs and human beings in that order. Sequential Verses 212-215 explicitly
discuss the birth of Manava ("human-beings") and Praja ("people") from the mind of Brahma.
The claim about Bhagavata Purana was likewise spurious.

Confronted with the evidence, Courtright now finally admits that he never had evidence
about anal origins. But he has not explained why he felt justified in suppressing the explicit
Linga Purana verses about human origins from the mind of God.

Courtright claims that the Devibhagvatham records the following: "[Daksa] made love to his
daughter Sati in the manner of a mere beast. This shameful action drove her to burn her
own body, that is, commit Sati...".

There is no incestuous rape in that narrative. Courtright responded by claiming that Devi is
the only specific female mentioned in the narrative, and since Daksa is shown indulging in a
sexual intercourse, it could only have been with her.

However, Daksa's wife is clearly mentioned. The Sanskrit original uses the word "dampati"
clearly implying Daksa and his wife in his private chamber ("nijamandire"). Sanskrit
dictionaries such as V S Apte's, and the Cologne Digital Sanskrit Lexicon, attest to the
fact that "dampati" is a married couple -- a compound word made of two parts: jaaya (wife)+
pati (husband). Courtright's response claims that no wife is mentioned in the Sanskrit original
and insinuates ulterior motives to the acclaimed scholar Ramtej Pandeya for translating it as "'Pati-Patni."'

In the absence of clear or plausible evidence to make such a radical claim about a major religious figure, it was incumbent on Courtright
to look for a preponderance of evidence from multiple primary sources. The story of Daksa and Sati (or Devi) is narrated in numerous
Hindu scriptures. Everywhere, the invariants are the destruction of an arrogant Daksa's Yajna by Siva, birth of the Devi in the home of
Daksa as his daughter Sati, her marriage to Siva against Daksa's wishes and Daksa organizing a grand yajna in which Siva is not
invited (or is insulted). Finally, unable to bear the insult of her husband, Sati immolates herself to destroy her body born of Daksa. As
listed in Little India's report, not one of the seven Puranas (Vayu, Siva, Linga, Kurma, Bhagavata, Brahma and Matsya) and the
Ramayana consulted by us even suggest anything about a rape. Otherwise, the Devibhagavata Purana or other Puranas would have
clearly stated defilement of her body by Daksa as the cause of her self-immolation.

Yet Courtright, ignoring this mountain of evidence directly relating to Sati, Siva and Daksa, invents an incestuous rape. He tries to bring
in a story about two entirely different characters and argues: "Other versions of the stories of Daksa and Brahma's seduction of
Sandhya, stories told in succession in the Siva Purana and other collections of narratives -- sets a wider context for the primal incest."

The Puranas distinguish clearly between Daksa-Prajapati (father of Sati), and the other Prajapati (Brahma) who lusted after his
daughter Sandhya. Later, Courtright claimed that in the Siva Purana, the Brahma-Sandhya narrative precedes and sets the context the
for Daksa's objections to Siva. Additionally, he claimed similarity of detail in the two stories such as Siva beheading Brahma for raping
Sandhya, therefore Sati must have been raped too. In reality, Brahma lusts after Sandhya (who is not raped in the Siva Purana as
claimed by Courtright) and is censured in the entire length and breadth of the Hindu sacred literature, which discuss even troubling
sexual topics bluntly. Had Daksa really raped or lusted after Sati, the Puranas would have censured him for that. Brahma is not Daksa
(but his father instead), and Sandhya is not Sati -- with both having different individualities and lives. Courtright's logic is similar to
saying that if some African -Americans commit violent crimes, the same guilt can be extended to any particular African -American who
happens to be nearby.

Finally, Courtright is quoted in the report as assertings that the word "'pasukarma"' might well mean rape, 'doggie-style' or 'forcible-
sex.'" This conveniently suppresses the Pasupata cultural context within which the Daksa-Sati narratives first appear. Klaus
Klostermaier (1991) and Annemarie Marten (1998,) explain that the story is essentially of Pasupata origin (pasu = humans, pasupati =
Shiva). In this system of philosophy, "pasukarma" is taken as a technical term implying sexual intercourse, and other acts such as liquor
consumption, meat/fish eating, etc. Courtright's interpretations are merely forced insertions.

What is most troubling (as noted in the Little India report) is that Courtright in Ganesa, by not laying out these arguments, strained and
contrary to the evidence as they may be, misleads the reader by presenting the "rape" as an established fact in a Puranic text.

Denigrating and biased interpretations by scholars about religious figures in the absence of compelling evidence are not a non-issue.
We aren't objecting to the "offense" caused to sentiments -- there is a very real context of hate-speech and discrimination against
minority religions like Hinduism. In 2007, a Christian Fundamentalist group claimed that Hinduism was "a pig-pen from the east", and
was "filthy" and "sexually perverted." Clearly basing itself on Courtright's description of Ganesa, it characterized Hindu religious practice
thus: "'The penis, (particularly if flaccid), may be adored as Ganesha's trunk".' As Prof. Jeffrey Long has noted, such misinformed hate
groups, produce consequences:- "Indeed Hate speech and false information can create a climate in which violence is to be expected...
So how long before a crazed gunman attacks a Hindu temple believing Hindus are possessed by demons?...How many children will
grow up believing that Hinduism is a "filthy" religion...?" Hindu temples are already fairly routinely vandalized in America. All we are
saying that scholars should have hard evidence on an issue before they add to the fund of Hinduphobic hatred in this country.

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Little India is to be thanked for its signal contribution to the integrity of academic Hinduism studies, by forcing a focus on the
substantive issues raised by non-academic scholars. The current exchange, by exposing serious errors, shows the value of books like
Invading the Sacred that take a comprehensive and critical look at the academia from the inside as well as the outside.

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