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HDFNewsBot
06 July 2007, 05:07 AM
Redefining Hinduism (http://news.google.com/news/url?sa=T&ct=us/0-0&fd=R&url=http://desicritics.org/2007/07/06/001842.php&cid=0&ei=aRSORpzUC4bG0QGUtOydDA)
Desicritics.org, India - 4 hours ago
Tavleen Singh wrote a great piece in Indian Express a few days back titled, “A dark, distorted Hinduism“. In that article, Tavleen talked about how “in ...


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satay
06 July 2007, 01:04 PM
namaskar,

This is really amazing...

We have seen this type of attitude even on HDF where people start jumping and screaming at a hindu for just thinking of talking about hinduism and label him fanatic!

The pity is that the other so called hindus are the first ones to label those who want to stand up for hinduism 'fanatics' as if to impress the seclurists?




As Tavleen writes, “Hindu gods and religious symbols have been put through Freudian analysis to establish such bizarre conclusions as Ganesha’s trunk representing a “flaccid phallus” and his love of sweets as a desire for oral sex….This Freudian analysis goes beyond the gods to actual Hindu religious practices, and it is then that these scholars show not just their abysmal ignorance but their deliberate distortion of reality.

They teach students in American universities that Brahmins drink menstrual blood and other human fluids and that this is Tantra. They teach that Shiva temples are dens of vice where priests routinely murder and rape unsuspecting pilgrims.”

Thankfully, Rajiv has decided to do something about this and “the result of his efforts is Invading the Sacred", a book that I am looking forward to reading sometime soon (Karigar has reproduced the foreword here).

Tavleen also points out that “the reason why dodgy scholars from a distant land have succeeded in becoming ‘experts’ on our civilisation is because our own scholars do not tread in this territory for fear of being branded with that much reviled word — Hindutva.”

This fear of being branded a “Hindu fascist” keeps most people away from any serious discussion about Hinduism, Sanatan Dharma, its relevance to current India and the fear of secular fundamentalists is what shuts most serious scholars up.

As we know, of course, the fastest way to lose credibility in India today is to get branded a “Hindu fundamentalist” - which is ironic considering that the “fundamentals” of Hinduism are ideals which one can hardly find fault with.

But the real pity is not even that there are not enough indigenous scholars studying Hinduism, Sanatan Dharma and Indology…the real pity is that “these so-called experts …(are)…aided and abetted by Indians like Amartya Sen, who attend their conferences and support their ignorant theories.”

Rajiv mentions in his book a recent “conference at the University of Chicago, where, along with Hinduism ‘experts’ like Wendy Doniger and Martha Nussbaum, [Amartya Sen] backed the idea that Hindu fanatics were a bigger threat to Indian democracy than the Islamists.”



http://desicritics.org/2007/07/06/001842.php