Ah Kiran, I knew before that Doniger and Pankaj Mishra are both generally well criticized writers. Mishra's posts have been criticized and proved to be hollow before and these are the types of writers who along with Martha Nausbaum try to write carefully as to make their side of argument stand out.
Ramachandra guha is another example. He would cleverly filter out non-Nehru and non-congress stuffs from his books. So I would pick a low priced copy of this book just for the reading fun :-) -- Bharat On Wed, Apr 29, 2009 at 7:57 AM, Kiran K Karthikeyan <kiran.karthike...@gmail.com> wrote: > 2009/4/29 Bharat Shetty <bharat.she...@gmail.com> > >> Ok, fairly interesting book. > > > Looks like Doniger is somebody whose scholarship disputed and has a fairly > strong inclination to favor a sexual interpretation of Hindu texts. But as > the article below points out, this malaise has spread throughout US Hinduism > studies. > > http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Hinduism/2004/06/U-S-Hinduism-Studies-A-Question-Of-Shoddy-Scholarship.aspx?p=1 > > This particular excerpt from the article was enough to convince me that she > should be read with a pinch of salt - > > [University of Chicago professor Wendy Doniger has been quoted in the > Philadelphia Inquirer calling the Bhagavad Gita, a sacred Hindu text, "a > dishonest book" that "justifies war."] > > I'm no scholar of the Gita, but I have read 4 > versions/translations/interpretations, and I'm confused on how she arrived > at this conclusion. The wikipedia article doesn't speak too highly of her > either (though it is disputed), so you if you are reading it, you might want > to check out the talk section for it too. > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendy_Doniger > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wendy_Doniger > > But if you do manage to find a lower priced India copy, do let me know. I'm > poor too :) > > Kiran >