Thanks to the Hindus of America, Lord Ganesha lands on the front page of The Washington Post, a slot never allocated to any visiting Indian President or Prime Minister.

BY L K SHARMA
DH NEWS SERVICE, WASHINGTON

Hindu Gods and Goddesses may be relieved to know that the believers in America are defending them on the internet against attacks in books by religious scholars.

A report in The Washington Post lists the abuses and threats the Hindu defenders fling at the authors who interpret or misinterpret mythological stories associated with Hindu Gods.

“Wrath Over a Hindu God: US Scholars’ Writings Draw Threats From Faithful” highlights another facet of Indians at a time when the focus has been on the money-making CyberIndians.

The threats and abuses come not from the kind of Hindus who parade the streets and demolish places of worship but the computer-friendly NRIs.

They have taken up virtual arms on the internet, borrowing deadly phrases from the members of other faiths. The words such as “kill the bastard” directed against an American scholar of Hinduism reflects the combined influence of the violent American culture and militant Islam.

Considering the number of Hindu Gods and Goddesses, there will be no shortage of provocations by scholars or miscreants.

The present agitation among the NRI Hindus has been caused by a 19-year-old book by a professor of religion at Emroy University, Paul Courtright.

After the controversy began on an India-related website, the professor received threats from Hindu militants who want him dead.

The Washington Post says that other academics writing about Hinduism have encountered similar hostility, from tossed eggs to assaults to threats of extradition and prosecution in India.

The argument that Hindus have long been denigrated by the Western authors resonates among many of the roughly 1.4 million Hindus in North America.

The latest controversy originating in New Jersey centres on Courtright’s, “Ganesha: Lord of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings” and the forward to the book written by Chicago University professor Wendy Doniger.

A New Jersey entrepreneur Rajiv Malhotra argued that Dongier and her students had eroticised and denigrated Hinduism.

An Atlanta Hindu group demanded that Courtright be fired by the university.
The professor said the quotes had been taken out of context and his critics ignored the uplifting lessons he had drawn from Ganesh’s story.

At least one Hindu living in America, Dwarakanath Rao, a psychoanalyst in Ann Arbor, defends Doniger.

He says she has written moving interpretations of Hindu texts that made them accessible for the first time in North America.

“I just do not hear disrespect, I hear a woman who, frankly is in love with India,” he said.

Curiously, Hindu nationalists and those who care about the image of India Inc have joined in the campaign against the scholars of Hinduism, who they feel are denigrating their religion and Gods.

Some insist that only the insiders from the faith and believers should write about a given faith.

Dongier argues that in that case it does not matters whether the article published under her name was right or wrong.

“The only important thing about it was that I wrote it and someone named Sharma did not,” she said.