Ok, fairly interesting book. But the price tag is too high for a poor guy like me :-(.
I'd hope it becomes available in the public libraries at the place I stay now at, or I'd have to outsource it from India to here. Having said that, I wonder if there is any service that allows people at USA order books from Indian stores with delivery to the US listed addresses ? -- Bharat On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 3:41 PM, Thaths <tha...@gmail.com> wrote: > http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/26/books/review/Mishra-t.html?pagewanted=print > > Another Incarnation > By PANKAJ MISHRA > > THE HINDUS > > An Alternative History > > By Wendy Doniger > > 779 pp. The Penguin Press. $35 > > Visiting India in 1921, E. M. Forster witnessed the eight-day > celebration of Lord Krishna’s birthday. This first encounter with > devotional ecstasy left the Bloomsbury aesthete baffled. “There is no > dignity, no taste, no form,” he complained in a letter home. Recoiling > from Hindu India, Forster was relieved to enter the relatively > rational world of Islam. Describing the muezzin’s call at the Taj > Mahal, he wrote, “I knew at all events where I stood and what I heard; > it was a land that was not merely atmosphere but had definite outlines > and horizons.” > > Forster, who later used his appalled fascination with India’s > polytheistic muddle to superb effect in his novel “A Passage to > India,” was only one in a long line of Britons who felt their notions > of order and morality challenged by Indian religious and cultural > practices. The British Army captain who discovered the erotic temples > of Khajuraho in the early 19th century was outraged by how “extremely > indecent and offensive” depictions of fornicating couples profaned a > “place of worship.” Lord Macaulay thundered against the worship, still > widespread in India today, of the Shiva lingam. Even Karl Marx > inveighed against how man, “the sovereign of nature,” had degraded > himself in India by worshipping Hanuman, the monkey god. > > Repelled by such pagan blasphemies, the first British scholars of > India went so far as to invent what we now call “Hinduism,” complete > with a mainstream classical tradition consisting entirely of Sanskrit > philosophical texts like the Bhagavad-Gita and the Upanishads. In > fact, most Indians in the 18th century knew no Sanskrit, the language > exclusive to Brahmins. For centuries, they remained unaware of the > hymns of the four Vedas or the idealist monism of the Upanishads that > the German Romantics, American Transcendentalists and other early > Indophiles solemnly supposed to be the very essence of Indian > civilization. (Smoking chillums and chanting “Om,” the Beats were > closer to the mark.) > > As Wendy Doniger, a scholar of Indian religions at the University of > Chicago, explains in her staggeringly comprehensive book, the British > Indologists who sought to tame India’s chaotic polytheisms had a > “Protestant bias in favor of scripture.” In “privileging” Sanskrit > over local languages, she writes, they created what has proved to be > an enduring impression of a “unified Hinduism.” And they found keen > collaborators among upper-caste Indian scholars and translators. This > British-Brahmin version of Hinduism — one of the many invented > traditions born around the world in the 18th and 19th centuries — has > continued to find many takers among semi-Westernized Hindus suffering > from an inferiority complex vis-à-vis the apparently more successful > and organized religions of Christianity, Judaism and Islam. > > The Hindu nationalists of today, who long for India to become a > muscular international power, stand in a direct line of 19th-century > Indian reform movements devoted to purifying and reviving a Hinduism > perceived as having grown too fragmented and weak. These mostly > upper-caste and middle-class nationalists have accelerated the > modernization and homogenization of “Hinduism.” > > Still, the nontextual, syncretic religious and philosophical > traditions of India that escaped the attention of British scholars > flourish even today. Popular devotional cults, shrines, festivals, > rites and legends that vary across India still form the worldview of a > majority of Indians. Goddesses, as Doniger writes, “continue to > evolve.” Bollywood produced the most popular one of my North Indian > childhood: Santoshi Mata, who seemed to fulfill the materialistic > wishes of newly urbanized Hindus. Far from being a slave to mindless > superstition, popular religious legend conveys a darkly ambiguous view > of human action. Revered as heroes in one region, the characters of > the great epics “Ramayana” and “Mahabharata” can be regarded as > villains in another. Demons and gods are dialectically interrelated in > a complex cosmic order that would make little sense to the theologians > of the so-called war on terror. > > Doniger sets herself the ambitious task of writing “a narrative > alternative to the one constituted by the most famous texts in > Sanskrit.” As she puts it, “It’s not all about Brahmins, Sanskrit, the > Gita.” It’s also not about perfidious Muslims who destroyed > innumerable Hindu temples and forcibly converted millions of Indians > to Islam. Doniger, who cannot but be aware of the political > historiography of Hindu nationalists, the most powerful interpreters > of Indian religions in both India and abroad today, also wishes to > provide an “alternative to the narrative of Hindu history that they > tell.” > > She writes at length about the devotional “bhakti” tradition, an > ecstatic and radically egalitarian form of Hindu religiosity which, > though possessing royal and literary lineage, was “also a folk and > oral phenomenon,” accommodating women, low-caste men and illiterates. > She explores, contra Marx, the role of monkeys as the “human > unconscious” in the “Ramayana,” the bible of muscular Hinduism, while > casting a sympathetic eye on its chief ogre, Ravana. And she examines > the mythology and ritual of Tantra, the most misunderstood of Indian > traditions. > > She doesn’t neglect high-table Hinduism. Her chapter on violence in > the “Mahabharata” is particularly insightful, highlighting the tragic > aspects of the great epic, and unraveling, in the process, the hoary > cliché of Hindus as doctrinally pacifist. Both “dharma” and “karma” > get their due. Those who tilt at organized religions today on behalf > of a residual Enlightenment rationalism may be startled to learn that > atheism and agnosticism have long traditions in Indian religions and > philosophies. > > Though the potted biographies of Mughal emperors seem superfluous in a > long book, Doniger’s chapter on the centuries of Muslim rule over > India helps dilute the lurid mythology of Hindu nationalists. > Motivated by realpolitik rather than religious fundamentalism, the > Mughals destroyed temples; they also built and patronized them. Not > only is there “no evidence of massive coercive conversion” to Islam, > but also so much of what we know as popular Hinduism — the currently > popular devotional cults of Rama and Krishna, the network of > pilgrimages, ashrams and sects — acquired its distinctive form during > Mughal rule. > > Doniger’s winsomely eclectic range of reference — she enlists Philip > Roth’s novel “I Married a Communist” for a description of the Hindu > renunciant’s psychology — begins to seem too determinedly eccentric > when she discusses Rudyard Kipling, a figure with no discernible > influence on Indian religions, with greater interpretative vigor than > she does Mohandas K. Gandhi, the most creative of modern devout > Hindus. More puzzlingly, Doniger has little to say about the forms > Indian cultures have assumed in Bali, Mauritius, Trinidad and Fiji, > even as she describes at length the Internet-enabled liturgies of > Hindus in America. > > Yet it is impossible not to admire a book that strides so intrepidly > into a polemical arena almost as treacherous as Israel-Arab > relations. During a lecture in London in 2003, Doniger escaped being > hit by an egg thrown by a Hindu nationalist apparently angry at the > “sexual thrust” of her interpretation of the “sacred” “Ramayana.” This > book will no doubt further expose her to the fury of the modern-day > Indian heirs of the British imperialists who invented “Hinduism.” > Happily, it will also serve as a salutary antidote to the fanatics who > perceive — correctly — the fluid existential identities and commodious > metaphysic of practiced Indian religions as a threat to their project > of a culturally homogenous and militant nation-state. > > -- > "You'll have to speak up, I'm wearing a towel." -- Homer J. Simpson > >