God's Own Eye

Wendy Doniger, author of the newly released Hindus: An Alternate History, is the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago, and holds doctorates in Sanskrit and Indian Studies from Harvard and Oxford. She has also taught at the School of African and Oriental Studies in London and the University of California at Berkeley. Among others, her publications include Hindu Myths: A Sourcebook, The Rig Veda: An Anthology, The Laws of Manu (with Brian K Smith), Siva: The Erotic Ascetic, The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology, and a new translation of the Kamasutra (with Sudhir Kakar).

In an email conversation with Salil Tripathi, Doniger discusses her newest book and explains why she feels so strongly about Hinduism. Excerpts:

ST. What attracted you to study Hinduism? 

WD: First, I became interested in ancient languages and learned Latin and Greek, and then discovered Sanskrit; and then my mother had rubbings from Angkor Wat in Cambodia in the house, and wanted to go there, and she gave me a copy of EM Forster’s novel A Passage to India, and finally, I discovered that I liked Indian food better than American food. You could eat with your fingers, too!  I always hated knives and forks! And I loved Indian painting and sculpture, and architecture and clothing – you could wear purple and orange together, which no one would let me do when I dressed in western clothing – and music.  

Eventually, when I lived in Calcutta, Ali Akbar Khan taught me to play the sarod, which is still my favourite instrument. And then, best of all, I loved the stories, which I first learned from a book by Rumer Godden. 

ST. At what point did you have this idea of writing a comprehensive volume on Hinduism? 

WD: Publishers have been asking me to do it for many years, but I only decided to do it when I got fed up with the wrong things that people kept saying about Hinduism, particularly but not only on the internet, and I wanted to clear the air. 

ST. Was it always meant to be an alternate reading, or did recent political events influence your approach to the subject? 

WD: Recent political events added an important element to it — the need to counteract the Hindutva misinterpretations of the Ramayana, for instance — but the idea of writing about dogs and horses, and about women and dalits, was there from the start. 

ST. To what extent are the attacks on western scholars of Hinduism new? I have in mind the treatment of Paul Courtright, yourself, Michael Witzel and James Laine (even though, strictly speaking, one could argue that’s a ‘Maratha’ issue and not a ‘Hindu’ issue).  

WD: I think they are very new indeed. Paul Courtright’s book on Ganesha was much appreciated for 20 years before anyone objected to it, as were my books on Hinduism until very recently. 

ST. In your lifelong engagement with Hindu thought, what are the key lessons that you've drawn? 

WD: I have learned so much, where to begin! I’ve learned so much about dealing with the darker side of life, with death, with violence, which I think Hindu mythology and theology deals with in a manner infinitely more realistic and profound than the western monotheisms do. I’ve learned a lot about animals, about ways of thinking about them and living with them. I’ve learned to appreciate chaos and the unexpected, in ways that were hard for me to deal with when I was younger.    

ST. Hinduism continues to have an appeal among a particular group of Westerners – those seeking "spiritualism" over the "material” world, going back to the 1960s, but in fact, much beyond. What do you see in that ‘search’ for gurus, through Hare Krishna, through meditation, through yoga? 

WD: I think this is genuine in many, many people, but I am wary of the great power that some gurus have over the people in their groups, as I don’t think anyone should hand over his or her spiritual life so completely to another person, and indeed some gurus have betrayed this trust, though others are entirely genuine.  

Meditation and yoga are very precious praxes that have done countless people enormous good, and they have the advantage of not requiring a spiritual leader, let alone a guru with full powers over everyone in the group. It doesn’t matter that the American brands of meditation and yoga often bear very little resemblance to their Indian sources; they are useful things, and all religions adapt when they are moved to new cultures. I do wish, however, that people would realize that they are not encountering Hinduism in all of its power and glory when they go to an exercise class.