India - The Banistan

I had not  heard of Wendy Doniger till yesterday, just as I had not heard of Sulman Rushdie till the Satanic Verses was banned nor of  James Laine, till the news of vandalizing of the Bhandarkar  Institute in Pune & the Maharashtra Government banned his book on Shivaji.

The common thread that educated me of all these beings was the ban on their works. But for that there would have been thousands like me in India who would not have been aware of the existence of these individuals and like those many other commoners like me would not have kindled an interest in what was the ban all about.

The latest ban became the last straw on the camel’s back so to say, for one to go and read at least about the bans and the reasons about it. In all instances it turns out that some handful of people of vague groups again of whom, you have never heard of, were the reason for the bans! None of these were mass protests like the ones we recently witnessed in Delhi during the Anna andolan or Nirbhay rape.

If you really look at it, how many in sheer numbers really read such books? None of these books if not banned would have given even a percentile competition to the Chetan Bhagat’s of this world. Then what makes a motley group of people to go around and impose their will on the rest & more importantly why do Governments of the day buckle under? What all this gives is bad press to the Government and the democratic values which they are supposed to hold up.

The only one who gain brownies & their 15 minutes of fame are these vague groups & their representatives who invariably have the so called hurt feelings of their community as their calling card.  

The only books  I have read of among all these now famous authors is Shalimar the Clown & one more by Mr. Rushdie.  Both were interesting reads. Since Rushdie’s banned book was more to do with Islam of which one has little or no knowledge, the viewpoints do not include him. But being a born Hindu & who is a faithful, one can talk of Hinduism or what one thinks it is.

Unlike Rushdie the other two authors are scholastic intellects, teaching Hinduism at well known Universities in America.  Having read reviews, extracts & gone thru some of their interviews, one can safely say that these two have been making a living out of studying Indian culture & Hinduism in particular & whatever has been written cannot be termed blasphemous.  At best one may disagree or call it a stupid interpretation.

The fact that Hinduism is an amalgamation of many thoughts, has evolved over the centuries & has survived for thousands of years is itself because of its readiness to absorb different views and ideas over the centuries. Even the Gita  has been interpreted and written about many authors over centuries and all those stay harmoniously on the book stands of those interested.

Much before the birth and advent of Christianity or Islam, one should not forget that Hinduism went through the Ashokan wave of Buddhism. Even after that, with a great deal of work by Adi Shankara, Hinduism has remained largely intact & flourished.

It would be of interest to read more about the current sensation on the University of Chicago web page on her and the links within.

The groups of people who go about propagating bans on things which they don’t agree upon are rightly described by Wendy Doniger herself in her article The Battle over Hindu History  

She says:

 “Some of the British, especially in the early colonial period, admired and celebrated the sensuality of Hinduism. Others, particularly but not only the later Protestant missionaries, despised what they regarded as Hindu excesses. Unfortunately, many educated Hindus took their cues from the second sort of Brit and became ashamed of the sensuous aspects of their own religion, aping the Victorians (who were, after all, very Victorian), becoming more Protestant than thou…”

It is exactly this mindset which has distorted Hinduism and radicalized many over the past century and people who are real believers are left confounded and confused of whether they should be proud of the Hindu Culture of the yore or should support this straight jacketed view of Hinduism these small groups purport.

One only hopes that this old vibrant culture of pluralism doesn’t denigrate in to a narrow rigid way of thought where it is either my way or the highway.