Part 2 of 3 of the Culture Wars of Hinduism

Contd.... Part 2 of 3

Culture Wars of Hinduism:

There is however one truly strange thing about the supposedly liberal vision of Hinduism that has been offered by writers crusading against the Hindu right. Their worldview seems to have little respect, if not consideration, for how Hindus themselves see their religion in the first place. Consequently, a whole contemporary era of writing about South Asia has come to answer the Hindu right’s distortions of myth and history not by engaging with Hinduism as it is lived and understood by Hindus (which would mean acknowledging at least some grievances felt by them), but by a narrow and selective promotion of its own normative fantasy about what liberal, secular Hindus ought to believe. On the face of it, the elements of this fantasy seem like logical responses to the positions advanced by the Hindu right, but in reality, they reveal something more insidious. To the Hindu right’s claim that India is essentially a Hindu nation, they have answered that there really is no such thing as Hinduism. To the claim that India was hurt by Islamic invasions, they respond that Hindus were invaders too, and they destroyed the shrines of other faiths too. To the claim that the gods mean something more to Hindus than sex-oriented academic theories propose, they respond that this is a puritanical fantasy which violates Hinduism’s rich erotic traditions like the Kamasutra and Khajuraho. To the belief that Rama and Krishna are gods, they respond that they are merely fictional characters, and that it is just as valid to talk about them as villains, because in some obscure versions, they are depicted as such.

The most troubling thing about these positions is not that they have proved offensive to the positions of the Hindu right, but that they insult, more broadly, the everyday sensibilities of devout Hindus as well. After all, if the only prescription for contesting the Hindu right is to disavow all feelings of sanctity for the gods and embrace a hollow postmodern academic view of Rama and Krishna as literary characters, then most Hindus have already ended up as Hindutva-extremists. It may not be an exaggeration to say that this has already happened, especially in the United States, where academic experts on Hinduism have fought numerous battles against people they describe as “Hindu extremists,” but who are for the most part law-abiding Hindu parents and children concerned about the lack of their own voices being heard in the American curriculum.

In recent years, serious questions have been raised by the Hindu-American community about errors, if not outright prejudices, in the work of many Western expert commentators on Hinduism (the book Invading the Sacred discusses these issues from a very different perspective from those mentioned earlier). At times, this process has not been civil, and has even escalated beyond angry emails and comment board chatter. On one occasion during a talk in London, a poorly aimed egg was thrown at Wendy Doniger by an audience member upset about her views on Hinduism: it missed not only its target, but perhaps also the point that Hinduism does not condone either attacks on scholars or the flinging of food! But apart from this spate of extremist fervor, the fact remains that a more fundamental, pressing, and valid set of questions has been glossed over in the writings we have seen on the Hindu culture wars. Can writers who fail to show the slightest sympathy, respect, and indeed understanding for the views of Hindus truly hope to influence Hindus against extremism? Or have they been merely talking to each other, unchallenged in the narrow realm of letters and publishing, unable to acknowledge that their normative fantasy has little to do with everyday, unprivileged reality, not just the mythic beliefs of the devout? Simply put, do writers who write about India and Hindus today feel accountable to the community that their readers, especially those in the West, believe they are representative of, or have they excused themselves from accountability for such a privilege?

Finally, since these views come in the wake of many centuries of colonial derision and mockery towards “Hindoo superstition”, one might also ask if the misplaced response to Hindutva actually constitutes the continuation of Hinduphobia by other means, and through other agents.