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Notes -
I thought Wendy Doniger’s book was pretty good when I first read it.
Wendy Doniger is the kind of person who reads about Zarte Piet and sees that as proof that chattel slavery of black men dates back 1000 years in the Netherlands. Her 'fit my observations onto my own western priors' approach leads to conclusions that would confuse even the most illiterate Indian.
It would be like an Indian studying Abrahamic religion saying that Jesus, Moses and Muhamed were all avatars of the same person, who reincarnated in different space-times to enlighten that space-time of the dharmic way. The Indian would say: "They believe in a similar system Trimurti system as us. The creator is God who is Brahma. The one who interacts with the humans, is the son, who is Vishnu. However, because they do not have the same cyclic system as us, they've replaced the destroyer: Shiva with a Holy Spirit which feels kinda redundant."
Now imagine if this commentary was considered the preeminent scholarship on Abrahamic religions...... that's Wendy Doniger. She isn't malicious, it's simply that she isn't capable.
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I find it very hard to take Wendy Doniger seriously as an expert of Hinduism. It is very apparent to people born and brought up in Hindu tradition to see the inherent misunderstandings in her view regarding Hinduism.
For example, she wrote a book Shiva trying to reconcile how he is viewed as both a householder and ascetic in India. She theorized that tribes in war to attain peace adopted both opposite elements to describe the same deity, completely ignoring not only the available literature and tye depth of this contradiction. Ignoring the fact that all mythology invloving Shiva has depicted him always of being a walking contradiction, destroyer of the world acting as a protector of creation by consuming the poison with the threatening the existence of the universe, an ascetic with ash smeared all over his body despite adorning the holy river Ganga and the Moon on his head, with a nature described as calmness and yet having a fiery (would be an understatement) temper. All commentaries on Hindu thought historically starting from Vedas points to this and yet her academic assumption ignores this widely accepted fact.
Yeah. I was expecting someone to mention that at some point. I’m aware of what makes her controversial. But aside from an orthodox book like “What Is Hinduism?” or “Dancing with Siva” that’s trying to induct you into the religion, there isn’t much I could point to to recommend to a westerner that has zero familiarity with it.
I get that completely, I would point someone towards S Radhakrishnan, a respected scholar who also served as president of India.
The whole CW surrounding Hinduism in this current era is very fascinating and I hope I would be able to cover that in future threads.
I would love to read it.
I appreciate your and @screye's replies on the culture war aspects. As an American I am used to reading western history with the bias of the author in mind. But that's hard to do for parts of the world where I don't have the context; I can sometimes intuit the author's biases, but their implications are not clear to me.
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