A bit of comic verse is among the reasons the Hindu extremist Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti wants another book by American Indologist Wendy Doniger withdrawn.
In a notice served on Aleph Book Company on Saturday, the Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti said that Doniger's book On Hinduism had hurt the sentiments of Hindus and had presented Hindu deities in a disrespectful way. Last month, the same group had prevailed upon Penguin India to withdraw the scholar's book, The Hindus: An Alternative History.
These are among the passages their notice claims are "distortions of history":
Page 580
A Hindu who didn’t like kama
Refused to take off his pajama,
When his bride’s lustful finger
Reached out for his linga
He jumped up and ran home to Mama.
Page 121
Indian children in Gandhi’s days used to chant a popular poem: ‘Behold the mighty Englishman / He rules the Indian small, / Because being a meat-eater / He is five cubits tall.' The playing fields of Eton had made the English frightfully brave, as Noel Coward pointed out, but so had a regimen of exercise that they now imported into India.
Page 510
Unbelievers and infidels, Dalits and women, were forbidden to learn Sanskrit, the sacred language, because they might defile or injure the magic power of the word.
Page 573
The three primary advocated of Hindutva ideologies are the Rashtirya SwayamsevakSangh (RSS, National Volunteers’ Organisation or National Corps of Volunteers), the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP, World Hindu Council), and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP, peoples’ Party of India or National People’s Party), often known collectively as the Sangha (with perhaps unfortunate, perhaps intended, resonances with the Sangha as the ancient tern for Buddhism), and sometimes called the Hindutvavadis.”
Page 577
Ancient Hindu texts wisely divide life into three basic stages of life: in the first, you study; in the second, you marry and become a householder; and in the third, you go and live in the forest. (It has similarly been said about dogs that in the first stage, they play; in the second, they eat; and in the third, they sleep.)
Page 137
Swami Vivekanand claimed, wrongly, that "India is the only country where there never has been a religious persecution.”
Page 137
Here it is perhaps appropriate to recall that it was an RSS man who killed Gandhi.
Dinanath Batra, head of the Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, said that the group has given Aleph a week to respond, failing which it will file a case in court.
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In a notice served on Aleph Book Company on Saturday, the Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti said that Doniger's book On Hinduism had hurt the sentiments of Hindus and had presented Hindu deities in a disrespectful way. Last month, the same group had prevailed upon Penguin India to withdraw the scholar's book, The Hindus: An Alternative History.
These are among the passages their notice claims are "distortions of history":
Page 580
A Hindu who didn’t like kama
Refused to take off his pajama,
When his bride’s lustful finger
Reached out for his linga
He jumped up and ran home to Mama.
Page 121
Indian children in Gandhi’s days used to chant a popular poem: ‘Behold the mighty Englishman / He rules the Indian small, / Because being a meat-eater / He is five cubits tall.' The playing fields of Eton had made the English frightfully brave, as Noel Coward pointed out, but so had a regimen of exercise that they now imported into India.
Page 510
Unbelievers and infidels, Dalits and women, were forbidden to learn Sanskrit, the sacred language, because they might defile or injure the magic power of the word.
Page 573
The three primary advocated of Hindutva ideologies are the Rashtirya SwayamsevakSangh (RSS, National Volunteers’ Organisation or National Corps of Volunteers), the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP, World Hindu Council), and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP, peoples’ Party of India or National People’s Party), often known collectively as the Sangha (with perhaps unfortunate, perhaps intended, resonances with the Sangha as the ancient tern for Buddhism), and sometimes called the Hindutvavadis.”
Page 577
Ancient Hindu texts wisely divide life into three basic stages of life: in the first, you study; in the second, you marry and become a householder; and in the third, you go and live in the forest. (It has similarly been said about dogs that in the first stage, they play; in the second, they eat; and in the third, they sleep.)
Page 137
Swami Vivekanand claimed, wrongly, that "India is the only country where there never has been a religious persecution.”
Page 137
Here it is perhaps appropriate to recall that it was an RSS man who killed Gandhi.
Dinanath Batra, head of the Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, said that the group has given Aleph a week to respond, failing which it will file a case in court.
