http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-09-08/all-that-matters/41873144_1_hinduism-caste-system-ideas
Wendy Doniger: Hinduism’s openness will carry it through present danger Malini Nair<http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toireporter/author-Malini-Nair.cms> , Sep 8, 2013, 05.05AM IST *Professor at the Divinity School, University of Chicago, Wendy Doniger's rather radical works on Hinduism, its scriptures and icons have provoked huge debates. Her latest book, 'On Hinduism', too questions established ideas about the religion and its contemporary face. She tells Malini Nair that Hinduism <http://timesofindia.speakingtree.in/topics/beliefs/hinduism> lives through its liberal followers* *Your book arrives at a time when Hindutva seems to be back on the agenda of some political parties. But you maintain that the Hinduism of the future will have to be multi-cultural and pluralist and "light years ahead of fundamentalists of all religions". What makes you so optimistic?* I do watch with growing apprehension as the right-wing , Hindutva-driven factions gain increasing power in India, but the responses I've had to my books, in both personal notes and published reviews, have been enormously encouraging. The kind of people whose texts I found throughout the history of Hinduism — open-minded , intellectually omnivorous people, capable of self-irony and generous to views other than their own — are still alive and well and living in India. I do believe that the great strength of Hinduism — its openness to contradictory ideas — will prevail and carry it through this present danger. *However, in the book you also demolish the popular theory that Hindus are a tolerant community.* I think the paradox becomes clearer when you become more specific about what people are tolerant about. Hindus have generally been very tolerant about ideas; they did not persecute people whose beliefs about the gods were different from their own. This is the source of their quite justifiable pride in Hindu tolerance. But Hindus have not always been tolerant about behaviour — about what people ate, touched, or wore — and this, of course, makes for trouble with Muslims and Sikhs. What worries me most about the Hindutva brigade is that they are just as intolerant of behaviour as Hindus have often been, but now they are also intolerant of ideas, engaging in censorship of a fundamentalist nature that has never infected Hinduism until now. *You trace the 'dark shadows' of Hinduism — the way women and lower castes are treated — to Manu's diktats. Are you saying that Hindus haven't evolved? * I don't think that Manu is the source of mistreatment of women and lower castes, but he is a particularly brilliant and detailed example of it. The Manusmriti has been the canonical text for those who would enforce those aspects of Hinduism. I wouldn't call Manu's diktats particularly primitive or regressive; almost all the cultures I know have been, and often still are, sexist and classist; we all have a long way to go in social evolution. The caste system is a fairly extreme case of the classist abuse of human rights, but when you look at apartheid and the treatment of African-Americans under slavery, and still in America today , who can cast the first stone? *You point out that ancient Hindu texts, myths and epics happily allowed for some riotous "gender boundary jumping" between the gods and other divine figures. This tolerance was vastly different from the prudishness we see now, isn't it?* ** Alas, the contemporary Hindu attitude to alternate sexual behavior is indeed far more repressive than the attitudes of the ancient texts. Even then, there was an official disapproval of such behaviour, in the dharma texts, but there were important departures from that conventional stance in such texts as the Kamasutra and in the imaginative literature of ancient India. The real prudishness, toward joyous heterosexuality, came in with the British and the Bengal Renaissance, and has now been taken up by Hindutva. You have a different take on the Kamasutra. You see it as less of a "how to" manual and more as great literature on human nature, pro-women and compassionate. In fact you draw parallels between its content and contemporary dating scene. It's such a pity that people continue to misread the Kamasutra, even after Sudhir Kakar and I provided such a clear translation of it. The "how to" part is just a small fraction of it. The rest has such an intimate and often hilarious understanding of how women feel about inadequate husbands and jealous co-wives . In the case of courtesans, it talks about how they choose between lovers of different advantages and shortcomings . The text also tells you how to meet possible partners, how to tell when someone likes you or doesn't like you, how to furnish your house, what to plant in your garden, games to play at parties, and so much else! *You have done a lot of very unusual delving into the place of animals, particularly dogs, in the Hindu society and mythology. What pulled your thoughts in that direction?* Well, of course, it began simply with my own great affection for dogs, but then I noticed how often dogs played critical roles in Hindu texts, first as symbols of impurity (because they are scavengers , eating garbage) and then as symbols of devotion (because there is no one as devoted as a devoted dog). And that contrast seemed to me to epitomize the broader contrast between the caste-bound aspect of Hindu dharma , so fixated on purity, and the compassionate aspect of Hindu bhakti, which transcends ideas of purity. -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
