by Krishnan Ramaswamy, Antonio de Nicolas & Aditi Banerjee
2007, pp. 558, ISBN : 978-8129111821, Price Rs. 595 or US$ 14.88 (Postage extra)
India, once a major civilizational and economic power that suffered centuries of decline, is now newly resurgent in business, geopolitics and culture. However, a powerful counterforce within the American Academy is systematically undermining core icons and ideals of Indic Culture and thought. For instance, scholars of this counterforce have disparaged the Bhagavad Gita as “a dishonest book”; declared Ganesha's trunk a “limp phallus”; classified Devi as the “mother with a penis” and Shiva as “a notorious womanizer” who incites violence in India; pronounced Sri Ramakrishna a pedophile who sexually molested the young Swami Vivekananda; condemned Indian mothers as being less loving of their children than white women; and interpreted the bindi as a drop of menstrual fluid and the “ha” in sacred mantras as a woman's sound during orgasm. Are these isolated instances of ignorance or links in an institutionalized pattern of bias driven by certain civilizational worldviews? Are these academic pronouncements based on evidence, and how carefully is this evidence cross-examined? How do these images of India and Indians created in the American Academy influence public perceptions through the media, the education system, policymakers and popular culture? Adopting a politically impartial stance, this book, the product of an intensive multi-year research project, uncovers the invisible networks behind this Hinduphobia, narrates the Indian Diaspora's challenges to such scholarship, and documents how those who dared to speak up have been branded as “dangerous”. The book hopes to provoke serious debate.
Contents :
SECTION I : Exposing Academic Hinduphobia - Pandita Indrani Rampersad
1. Why this Book is Important
2. Religious Studies : Projecting One's Shadow on the Other
3. Targeting Sri Ramakrishna
4. The Hindu Goddess Reinterpreted as a Symbol of Sex and Violence
5. Abusing Ganesha and Shiva
6. Targeting Hindu Mothers and 'Hijackers"
7. Challenges to Wendy Doniger's Sanskrit
8. De-Spiritualizing Tantra
9. Chakra Hermeneutics
10. It's All About Power
SECTION II : Storming the Fortress
11. The Floodgates of Criticism are Opened
12. Balagangadhara on the Biblical Underpinnings of 'Secular' Social Sciences
13. The Children of Colonial Psychoanalysis - Yvette C. Rosser
14. Is the Fight Between Siva and Ganesa an Episode of Oedipal Conflict - Yvette C. Rosser
15. Kripal on the Couch in Calcutta - Yvette C. Rosser
16. Is there Prejudice in Hinduism Studies? A Look at Encarta - Sankrant Sanu
17. Paul Courtright's 'Ganesa, Lord of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings': An Independent Review - Vishal Agarwal & Kalavai Venkat
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