On 14 January 2016,
the Editor of the FIRSTPOST has referred in passing to the petitioners of the
Scheme Suit in a most disparaging manner in an article titled “SC has shown great foresight in striking against proxy PILs as instruments of intimidation”. As
an admirer of this website, which has dared to take on the likes of Wendy Doniger, it is strange that it has now decided to support one of “Wendy’s
children” – Peter Heehs (read this post). But I hope I can attribute this error
to factual ignorance and unfamiliarity with the recent problems in Sri
Aurobindo Ashram. If that be the case, I would like to point out a few outright
errors in the write-up for the clarification of the larger readership connected
with the FIRSTPOST, which hopefully would set the record right or at
least give us a chance to give our version of events on its website. I quote
from the article:
Showing posts with label Wendy Doniger. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Wendy Doniger. Show all posts
28 Jan 2016
22 Jul 2015
Campaign to censor Rajiv Malhotra proves that Dinanath Batra was right – by Govind Nishar
The attack against
Rajiv Malhotra is being portrayed as a kind of revenge for the court case
against Wendy Doniger’s book “The Hindus” that led to its withdrawal from the
Indian market. The implicit assumption behind this view is the hypothesis that
had Doniger’s book not been withdrawn, Rajiv Malhotra’s enemies in the US &
India would have rolled out the red carpet for his books. No proposition could
be further from the truth.
The coordinated
attack against Malhotra, initiated by followers of Sheldon Pollock & led by
Richard Fox Young, an internet troll consumed by an anti-Malhotra obsession,
has come at this time solely to prevent the launch of his forthcoming book “The
Battle for Sanskrit” which has the explosive potential to seriously hurt future
funding & thus endangering the work of those who Malhotra refers to as
“American Orientalists” and who he has exposed as seeking to dominate global
discourse about the ancient traditions of the Hindus.
19 Apr 2015
Comment by an Ashram inmate who has been deeply pained by the Heehs Affair
The problem is not so
much with the likes of Heehs and Doniger. Born in an alien culture, fed by the
staple diet of Freudianism or else serving the cause of a militant Church, they
are true to their dharma not caring about what the world may say about them.
But what about us Indians who neither read nor think for themselves? Look at what
happened with the Heehs issue.
17 Apr 2015
“The Hindus: An Alternative History” by Wendy Doniger ― Review by Ali Sheikh
There you have it.
Weird Hindu doomsdays. Sex-crazed kings. Cruel gods. Men marrying dogs.
Phalluses everywhere—some erect and some flaccid. Ladies and gentlemen, we
finally have an alternative history of Hinduism. And yes, left uncontested, in
all likelihood these are the “insights” a whole new generation of students and
researchers might learn, internalize, and cite in future scholarly works. [Extract – read full review below]
16 Sept 2014
7 Mar 2014
Colonial Hegemony of Indology – INDIA FACTS
[Another excellent article on Wendy Doniger,
the negative type of Western research she represents, the colonial hangover
Indian intellectuals suffer from apart from the economic interests behind this
exercise of deconstructing Indian culture. – Bireshwar Choudhury]
INDIA FACTS
THE FINAL WORD / Posted by Anirban Ganguly / 23 February, 2014
Those who are at the forefront of
expressing their disgust and anguish at the act of withdrawing Wendy
Doniger’s snigger of a book on the Hindus are a very distinct and
peculiar type. They are a type which, because they have been the
beneficiaries of the munificence of the “outsiders” can hardly ever come round
to accept that the “insiders” may one day speak and talk back at “outsiders”
who had hitherto been the sole arbiter and definer of their image. It
was, most certainly, one of these types who must have peer-reviewed Doniger’s
stuff on behalf of her publishers – surprisingly that act and
actor has so far managed to avoid being discovered and discussed. This
type has modeled itself “on its departed counterpart” and has always viewed
“any emphasis on the ‘glories of ancient India’ as an act of Hindu
Fundamentalism.”[1]
1 Mar 2014
Why the Wendy Doniger episode is not a free speech issue? – By Sandeep Balakrishna
[There are some excellent articles
on the Wendy Doniger issue in email circulation now. This is one of those which
I would like to share and even aggressively propagate to our readers because
it indirectly explains the Peter Heehs issue from a larger perspective. – Bireshwar Choudhury.]
FIRSTPOST
INDIA Feb 13, 2014
Before we begin we need to set two critical aspects in
the proper perspective:
The episode of Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus: An
alternative history is not a ban of the book. It is a voluntary withdrawal of
the book by its publisher, Penguin Books.
The episode is not an issue of free speech. Neither
Penguin nor the petitioners acted outside the boundaries of the law concerning
free speech in India.
The outrage over Penguin withdrawing Doniger’s book
has emanated mostly from the section that calls itself secular and liberal,
among other things. And this outrage cleverly sidesteps the valid and vast
critiques of Wendy Doniger’s scholarship and frames the issue as one of a book
ban and Hindu fundamentalism. The kind of arson and violence that erupted
across the world in the wake of the Danish cartoons fits the definition of
religious fundamentalism. It is clear that the petitioners simply took to legal
recourse in this case. Besides, it was Penguin’s decision to voluntarily
withdraw the book in an out-of-court settlement for reasons best known to it.
Therefore, raising the din that freedom of expression is under threat by
Hindutva forces is off the mark.
24 Feb 2014
Objectionable Extracts from Wendy Doniger's book, Hindus: An Alternative History – Bireshwar Choudhury
Wendy Doniger, who of
late is very much in the news, is the intellectual grandmother of Peter Heehs.
Wendy Doniger begat Jeffrey Kripal, who did his “research” on Sri Ramakrishna
for his P.H.D. dissertation under her guidance at the University of Chicago.
Jeffrey Kripal wrote the blurb on the back of the Lives of Sri Aurobindo (2008) by Peter Heehs, who gave a soft copy
of his book to his “venerable guide” prior to its publication – Kripal’s book
on Esalen (2007) contains references to the MS of the Lives. Esalen is an institution founded by Michael Murphy, who is
more or less in the same business of misinterpreting spirituality. He in fact
paid for the trips of both Richard Hartz and Peter Heehs to America in order to
attend a conference in California. This is the lineage of the so-called
scholarship that we are presently dealing with, and of which most of the disciples,
followers and intellectual admirers of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are totally
unaware. Now that Wendy Doniger, the grandmother of falsehood (she has a
veritable brood of children who have followed the path of outright denigration and
erotic misinterpretation of Hinduism) has been exposed and her publisher Penguin Books has capitulated to a humble
headmaster (hats off for Dinanath Batra, the octogenarian hero and his courageous
lawyer Monica Arora), it is time that the followers of Sri Aurobindo rethink and take stock of the situation at the
Ashram: Why did the Managing Trustee of the Ashram encourage Peter Heehs in his
denigration of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother? Why did Manoj Das, the award
winning writer justify this incomprehensible action of the Managing Trustee,
who will certainly go down in history as perhaps the only Trustee who has gone
against the interest of the spiritual institution he was entrusted with?
Meanwhile, it is
time to rejoice a great victory for all those who stand for the spiritual values
embodied in Hinduism. We publish below a few objectionable extracts from Wendy Doniger’s book,
The Hindus: An Alternative History in order to give the readers an idea of her so-called
scholarship and the academic tag attached to her erotic misinterpretations of the
sacred symbols of India. The extracts along with critical comments on them are
part of an online petition that was circulated for canvassing against her book.
The petition at one point of time fetched 11009 signatures as opposed to the meagre 3500 claimed by a group of
leftist scholars fighting for her cause. The full petition, which also has a
list of factual errors, can be accessed at:
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