Invading The Sacred: An Analysis Of Hinduism Studies In America

Got good reviews from friends so decided to buy this one. Excellent read. I would recommend it for everyone. Thanks to amazon for prompt shipping and ontime delivery.Rajiv Malhotra is top class in his research, analysis and writing. This material belongs to the text books of India for a real understanding of our past and how we can survive in present & future if we can follow Rajivji.

Interested by the title and the overview experience my USA education daughter told about her experience in Hinduism class, I opened the book to read. It is a must read by any English knowing Hindu practitioner. It is must read by the powerful Indian politicians, both right and left. A must read by Congress President - Sh. Rahul Gandhi and his think tank including Sh. Sashi Taroor. Must read by BJP and RSS strongmen and women. Dr. Subramaniam Swamy may provide a clear way to adress some issues raised.Book highlights self-inflicted abuses India and Hinduism has inflicted upon itself. The growing and hardening CASTE system and Caste politics in 70 years of Indepence stands high in the travails of the religion and the country. Compound it with rampant CORRUPTION that is made into a 'right' for development. Identity politics of the system added fuel.Complete negligencce and absence of ACADEMIC STUDIES in 'Religion' perpetuated by the notion of secularity had done its toll.The book fails to place the accountability to the situation of Hinduism in academia on to INDIA firmly and clearly.Unless the politicians and practitioners take the reality seriously, it cannot be changed.It made me wonder, what the rich and powerful GODMEN can do? They are largely millionairs with millions following them. They seldom have qualifications to be rated as standard 'academicians'. May be they should explain the pervading symbolims in Hinduism carefuully. Sadguru Jaggi Vasudev - please note.

This is a difficult book for several reasons: 1. a large part of the discussion is fairly technical. 2. The subject matter is quite revolting for most practicing Hindus. 3. The book is quite large, over 450 big size pages, with a lot of text.However, if you can manage to go through it, the effort would be worth the reward. The prose is crisp, fairly non-emotional, and intellectually engaging. The book is a compilation of essays by different persons, so you get a decent variety in terms of writing styles as well.The book is divided into four main sections. Section 1 deals with the bias in one wing of American Academy of Religions (AAR). Section 2 sets out the Hindu American response to the bias, once the bias was exposed. Section 3 details out the vicious fight that followed. Section 4 provides a snapshot of how the media dealt with the issue. Each section has several chapters, a total of 29 chapters in all. Four appendices are given, followed by copious notes containing references and interesting sidelights.The book has been typeset and bound in India. There are some proofing errors, and other editing goof-ups. For instance, often you can't figure out who has contributed a particular essay (Chapter 11, 12, for instance). Similarly, it is not clear as to what do the notes on pages 469-472 relate to. This is to be expected as Indian publishing is in its infancy, and newer publishing houses do not have access to high quality editorial or proofing services.However, the quality of the discussion is of a very high standard, quite unlike what we found in Eminent Historians by Sh. Arun Shourie, which was also full of repetitions. The arguments are cogent, and mostly have been presented very well. There is some repetition here also, but not too much. Both books, incidentally, deal with essentially the same issue: systematic destruction of a community's cultural or spiritual heritage by a section of intellectuals, and the community's agonized response to it. The book appears to be doing fairly well, considering its relatively difficult subject, and may very well mark a turning of the tide.An interesting feature of the book is the use of comic sheets, which serve to wrap up the broad arguments, and dramatize their implications for one's everyday life. On the one hand, this distracts from the seriousness of the book. On the other hand, it also adds interest and life to a relatively dry book.The book is difficult to put down (though it is fairly difficult to hold it up as well!). It also has the potential to ruin your sleep, and your morning puja, with the kind of images that are discussed in the book. Be warned: if you are young or have newly discovered or rediscovered Hindu heritage, you may get emotionally scarred by some of the vivid and vicious portrayal of Hindu icons by AAR scholars.It would be clear to anyone that in today's world cultural confidence matters as much as economic and military power. Destruction of one's cultural heritage could allow a country to remain theoretically independent, but intellectually dependent and emotionally crippled. Therefore, mutual respect for other's cultures, and an overall committment to intellectual integrity should be an essential feature of the academicians.Unfortunately, some deviants among the modern intelligentsia band together like intellectual cartels. Their professional life depends on digging up (or rigging up) ever more interesting tidbits in order to stay in business. For decades, such academicians have fed off dead cultures such as the Maya, Aztec and the Egyptians, with no one to shoo them away. However, when they attack a living culture such as India or China, a robust response is natural.This response has been late, but going by this book, it seems to be adequate and highly sophisticated, as well as effective. The book also shows that such mercenaries have no staying power - they like to hunt in secrecy and prey on the weak and the undefended. Once challenged, they run away quickly, though they may come back to attack again as a pack. However, all you need to do is to hold your ground and shout, and they will melt away again. One does wish, though that such academicians will apply their considerable talents to something constructive and productive, instead of whiling away their lives pursuing intellectual frivolities.Buy this book if you want some very interesting insights into the ongoing cultural wars. Keep your blood-pressure pills handy, though.

Invading the Sacred arrives at a very important time. India remains in the grips of an upswing in economic and political fortunes, and this has breeded a certain triumphalism amongst our Hindu community, especially the diaspora. It is easy to believe all the headlines, and forget in this context the numerous issues that remain for Indians to confront, both internally--the threat from poverty, a widening income gap, corruption, and political incompetence--and externally--the threat from various other nations, corporations, and nonbusiness organizations determined to use or exploit India to their own ends. This book has done a wonderful job of exploring and highlighting one of these issues.Invading the Sacred tells the story of how American scholars of Hinduism have long been free to write whatever they wish about the religion, with minimal input or feedback from practitioners, until very recently, when the Hindu community began to take notice of what was being written. This book details the sexualizing, trivializing, and even dehumanizing extremes to which Hinduism studies has occasionally gone in describing its "object", and it also details the multivarious Hindu response to these extreme mischaracterizations. It spends most of its time discussing the works of religion professors like Paul Courtright, Jeffrey Kripal, Sarah Caldwell, and above all, Wendy Donniger, who in the 80s and 90s became very influential in their fields while (and perhaps by?) hawking theoroes of Hinduism that emphasized to ridiculous extents (and with fleeting evidence) sexual and fringe practices within the tradition, based largely on discredited Freudian motifs. It also discusses how these motifs were discovered and publicized to the Hindu community worldwide by a variety of diaspora Indians, most notably Rajiv Malhotra, through the medium of the internet, and how this mobilized Hindus to more closely scrutinize the ways in which they were being depicted and respond with interventions ranging from scholarly reviews to diatribes to petitions and townhall meetings.To a practitioner of Hinduism, seeing our practices described in such stark, sordid, and distorted language as used by religion professors is sure to evoke a powerful emotional reaction, but the book wisely does its best to avoid this and focuses its critique on fact and method. Indeed, it succeeds best where it sticks purely to cataloguing deficiencies. One hopes that our community takes heed and learns how to argue its positions more objectively the next time its interests are threatened.The book's greatest simultaneous weaknesses and strength lie in its ability to put this story in the historical context of "othering" the Native Americans before taking their land and killing them. The end comparison is both histrionic and thought-provoking. The thesis that Hindus are being targeted for dispossession, eviction, recolonization and even extermination through an initial "softening" by academic distortion, in much the same manner as the Native Americans before them, is certainly interesting. Indeed, the book draws attention to the similarities in the ways that Native Americans were depicted by those who ultimately colonized them, and the ways in which Hindus are being depicted now. The case is, unfortunately, overstated; the scholars who misrepresent Hinduism hardly seem, even in all the episodes described in this book, to be deliberately trying to hurt Hinduism or Hindu sentiments. The damage they do comes across as the consequence of callousness and contempt rather than an active expansionist or missionary agenda, despite the book's strongest efforts to paint it otherwise. And though this is in fairness not its purpose, the book does not do justice to the criticism elaborated within it that some fault for the current state of affairs certainly lies with Hindus ourselves. We have not treated our religion with importance, and hence our story has been written by others. These others, not connected to our tradition, are free to deduce whatever they wish, and ultimately invent it, because of the lack of voices from within the tradition to critique and counterbalance them, and demand--assertively--the proof for their varied and banal interpretations.In spite of this, the similarities in language and tone between how the Native Americans were described before and during their uprootment and genocide and how we are being described today are striking and, in places, more than a little frightening. It is painful, vexing, and eye opening to realize that scholars of religion and anthropologists actually believe--and are trying to get others to not just believe, but accept as fact--that our cultural respect for the mother is due to an underlying desire (on the part of every man, apparently) to have sex with her, or that our women do not bond with their children, or that we look at everything in life through phallus colored (or shaped!) glasses. This may not all be part of a calculated plot against Hinduism, but it is not hard to see (and the book provides a few warning examples) how this could be used by those who wish Hinduism ill, however the original authors may have intended their statements. The book is an exhortation to us to act, at a minimum by speaking up, and in this it is an extremely valuable resource. It is a must for Hindus who, like I used to be, ask, "who cares what others think?", for it shows how important such opinions--and opinion-making--can be in an open society and climate.This book also documents yet another example of how the internet can decentralize a debate or at least level a playing field. It has been used very effectively by Rajiv Malhotra, Sankrant Sanu, and others to get exposure for their ideas when a more traditional article in an academic journal or book may have been impossible to produce. One lesson from this ongoing debate is thus certainly that alternative media channels can allow for very fertile discussions when the official channels are closed to thoughtful outsiders. The importance of this, demonstrated previously to the Indian community by George Allen's campaign going down in flames post-"macaca", is demonstrated here again.Overall, a very thought-provoking and exciting read. A must for every Hindu who heard about or was involved in the various Hinduism-studies controversies and seeks to understand them better at a temporal and emotional remove. We should look forward to many more books on this controversy and others, and more books besides by these excellent authors. Bravo!

Wendi Doniger, of University of Chicago is a Czarina of Indic studies in the U.S. She, for some reason has created a vision of sex and violence out of all literature on Hinduism from Vedas and Puranas to Upnishadas and Vedanta. She sees in worship of Shiva and Shakti nothing but Sex and Violence, and goes on to leave impression that Hinduism is a weird at best religion and Hindus are to be feared like the fundamentalist Christians and Muslims. Many of her former students now occupy chairs of Indic studies in some of the most prestigious institutions in the U.S. Together they have formed a mutual admiration society. They peer review each other's books and works and shower praises on each other. Their central theme is common. Hinduism is a dirty violent religion and the followers "Hindus" show the traits of their beliefs. They went along mis characterizing the religion and it's followers having no challenge to the quality of their scholarship. Their motives could be to promote each other's career or worse to effect political discourse in India. When the well educated Indians from the diaspora called their scholarship on specific issues and their poor knowledge of languages leading to wrong translations and citations in their books Wendy and her children (her former students and some who need her approval to further their career) have now resorted to make the whole debate about what she calls intolerance of Hindus who question the quality of her and her children's scholarship or lack there of, and cast herself as a victim of right wing "Hindutva" elements.This book peer reviews works of Wendy and her children. Their books were, as I said, peer reviewed by each other mainly and having a tight mutual admiration society got raving reviews from each other of course! These books and their admiration of each other's work has earned them respectable awards and not to mention great financial rewards. But sadly, their poor scholarship and cunning sensationalizing of Hinduism is now becoming a main stream introduction of Hinduism to students from schools to colleges and getting into main stream journalism having even political impact. The issue is not about whether Wendy and her children have a right to freedom of speech! These are gate keepers of knowledge and perceptions of the brightest of America. What Wendy and her children do by misinforming intentionally or by their incompetence is create a very negative picture of Hindus and Hinduism in America.The authors of the books should be congratulated for doing an amazing job of exposing this secret society that was until now cashing in cash and respect from the "academia" which in this case has incestuous relations among themselves. And no Wendy! we who have figured you out are not what you like to call right wing "Hindutva" fanatics. We are Doctors, Lawyers, Psychologists, Psychiatrists, Sanscritists, Writers, Historians and well versed in History and religion of India. We are Darwinist who are calling you out as you should be for promoting your imagined fantasies around Hindu literature. The book is raising questions Ms. Doniger that you must answer - the diaspora will make sure the future will know your poor scholarship and shenanigans you have pulled of for reasons still under investigation by the diaspora.Every Indian must read this book.

I found "Invading the sacred" to be a most engrossing read for a variety of reasons.Firstly, it is about the academic bias against Hinduism and the cabal that has monopolised the research, publication and distribution of literature pertaining to the subject. There are very few books out there that cover this particular subject in such depth. A variety of academics are put under the microscope and their research, their books and their attitude towards the religion theya re studying and the adherents of that religion are put under the microscope. It is a distressing sight to see the unfortunate results. The biases and the colonial attitudes of the academics are laid bare thanks to the diligence of the authors of "Invading the sacred".Secondly, I am appalled to see what is passed off as Hindu studies in universities of the US. Many sections of the book go into this in much detail. There are amusing and satirical comic strips illustrating the central theme of each chapter too. As a practicing hindu, it hurts me to see this willfully bad potrayal of my beliefs by Wendys Children in a way that my religion and texts are now unrecognisable to me. I applaud the authors of "Invading the Sacred" for having the courage to face this mountain of lies and destroying its very foundations.Thirdly, the authors of "Invading the sacred" have been very successful in turning the gaze back upon the pratitioners of Freudian analysis methods of Hinduism and its adherents. The failures of analysis, abusive responses to questions and the excessive obsession with sex are recorded and illustrate the point that the authors of this book wish to make.Overall, I am both glad that this book was written and that i bought and read it. I wish more hindus across the globe read this and understand the challenges that are facing the community. I should warn you that the contents are not for the faint of heart. It is hard hitting and has all the makings of a landmark book in this field.

This book is an eye opener in understanding how morally bankrupt some of these so called "Scholars" in the Western Academic Institutions for Higher Learning are. What a real shame in the name of scholarship. In my opinion, Wendy Doniger and her clan (her students who speak her words) at various institutions don't find any "value or substance" in their own religions (Judaism and Christianity) so they being (pseudo) Scholars can't stand when Hinduism is being talked as one of the oldest religion with so much potential to offer peace and harmony to the world, specially Hinduism's Yoga and Meditation practices being so popular in the West.So to demonize "Hinduism", Wendy Doniger and her clan march on this path of misinterpretation and distortion of Hindu practices and rituals. I really hope all those innocent American students who came in Wendy Doniger's classes and her manufactured Professors' classes to learn abut Hinduism will write to Wendy and her clan and ask questions about their moral and academic integrity, objectivity and neutrality in spewing hate towards Hinduism. Will Wendy and her clan pass this test of moral and academic integrity, objectivity and neutrality ? I do not think so. What do you think? A serious seeker of truth and anyone who is interested in knowing about Hinduism must read this book. A big "thank you" to the authors of this book for their hard work in exposing the filth spread by these hate filled pseudo scholars in the American Academy of Religion.

Every indian should read the book.It clears many things which happen to you in US universities and also why there are so many problems in understating india history written my western authors.It will open your eyes wide open..You will not sleep for few days.Buy it for your future generations