Hermeneutics of Ganesha:

Psychoanalysis, Hindu Wisdom and Transgressive Sacrality

[Part I / Part II / Part III]

RE: Lord GaNeZa caught red-handed in Hugh Heffner’s Chicago penthouse - online petition to revoke his green card? [Rajiv Malhotra]

RE: I’ll post my response along with your original message to the targeted lists [Rajiv Malhotra]

Can Prof. Paul Courtright (and Lord Ganesha) be reduced to his crooked trunk (or upraised single tusk)? Do your homework first! [Sunthar Visuvalingam]

RE: The Scholar’s responsibility [Rajiv Malhotra]

.... [RISA-L] Re: The scholar’s accountability [Ramdas Lamb]

.... [RISA-L] Ganesh and Judaeo-Christian God/Jahweh [Jo Perry]

.... Re: Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability [John Richard Pincince]

.... Re: Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability [William P Harman]

.... Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability [Narasingha Sil]

.... Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability [Gene R. Thursby]

Re: Can Prof. Paul Courtright (and Lord Ganesha) be reduced to his crooked trunk (or upraised single tusk)? Do your homework first! [Loganathan]

Re: Book on Ganesha removed by Publisher [Antonio de Nicolas]

Personal message from Prof. Paul Courtright exhorting us to live up to the traditional standards of debate in (not just Hindu) India [Sunthar Visuvalingam]

Fw: Lord Ganesha [KRNath]

.... Re: Lord Ganesha [Paul B. Courtright]

Re: Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability [Stephen Brown]

.... Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability [Richard Mahoney]

.... Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability [Gene R. Thursby]

.... Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability [Patrick Olivelle]

.... Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability & protective strategies [John Cort]

[RISA-L] Shiv Sena comment on Courtright book [Joyce Flueckiger]

Re: Good Taste, Bad Taste, Hindu Taste - why are art historians more deserving of GaNeza’s (sweet) favor (modakas)? [Anthony Appleyard]

Is Lord Ganesha an ‘African’ God? Yes, in the same sense that Picasso’s art is ‘primitive’! [Sunthar V.]

The elephant-trunk as the representation of Omk�ra - is Ganesha a sexual or a metaphysical concept? [Sunthar Visuvalingam]

Re: Good Taste, Bad Taste, Hindu Taste - why are art historians more deserving of GaNeza’s (sweet) favor (modakas)? [Ram Varmha]

Naked Ganesha cavorting on the cover of (withdrawn) Motilal Banarsidas publication - is Indian culture becoming ‘infantilized’? [Sunthar Visuvalingam]

[RISA-L] Naked Picture [Lance Nelson]

.... Re: [RISA-L] Naked Picture [Swami Tyagananda]

.... Re: [RISA-L] Naked Picture [Patrick Olivelle]

.... To Cavort or Not To Cavort...You Be The Judge [Lady Joyce]

On the infantilization and ‘nazification’ of Hindu culture - a picture is worth a thousand words! [Sunthar V.]

.... [RISA-L] Vinayak [Chaturvedi] on Vinayaka [Shrinivas Tilak]

.... Re: [RISA-L] Judge the book by its cover? [Antonio de Nicol�s]

Celibacies, sexualities, and Yogic eros [Stuart Sovatsky]

Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability [mihira2ooo]

"Telling the Indians what they really are as opposed to who they think they are" - is Indology really ‘psychoanalysis’ in disguise? [Sunthar Visuvalingam]

Re: [RISA-L] Title VI funding [Joanna Kirkpatrick]

.... [RISA-L] Title VI funding [Leslie Orr]

[RISA-L] proposal, re: Courtright lila [Frederick Smith]

Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability [Kathleen Erndl]

.... Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability [Joanna Kirkpatrick]

.... Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability [Herman Tull]

.... Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability [Douglas Berger]

Re: "Telling the Indians what they really are as opposed to who they think they are" - is Indology really ‘psychoanalysis’ in disguise? [Loganathan]

Forms of Siva [Pathmarajah Nagalingam]

Re: Why are all the traditional (castrated?) forms of Shiva and Ganesha depicted without a penis? The scholar’s accountability!  [Anthony Appleyard]

.... Re: Why are all the traditional (castrated?) forms of Shiva and Ganesha depicted without a penis? The scholar’s accountability! [Loganathan]

Identity problem: Hindu American or just Hindu? - Teaching Ganesha versus Worshipping Ganesha! [Sunthar]

.... Re: Identity problem: Hindu American or just Hindu? - Teaching Ganesha versus Worshipping Ganesha! [Raja Mylvaganam]

 

[an offline exchange with Rajiv Malhotra that was forwarded to Abhinava list on 3 Nov 04]

Subject: RE: Lord GaNeZa caught red-handed in Hugh Heffner’s Chicago penthouse - online petition to revoke his green card?

From: Rajiv Malhotra 
Sent: Saturday, November 01, 2003 4:45 PM
To: Abhinavagupta’; Cc: [email protected]; ‘Ontological Ethics’

The issue is not sexuality (which Indic traditions have more than the western counterparts), but language and framework. Freudian western language brings with it value judgments, lenses that are not necessarily authentic to the Indic culture, and certainly a privileging of the gatekeepers in charge of those systems, i.e. the western(ized) English-language “brahmins.” Furthermore, the careless mapping to the dominant culture’s language/framework causes the native systems to atrophy, which, in turn, further exacerbates the appropriation.

So I see the U-Turn processes intertwined with the shift of lenses:

First justified as market expansion to “help” the native culture get better appreciated;

Second “hybridized” in Bhabha style to shift identities of a few privileged brown sahibs over as “white”;

Third digesting the native intellectual property as “new” discoveries of the dominant culture—where awards and other high profile recognition plays an important role;

Fourth, allowing the native framework to quietly atrophy—a subtle example being how the Urdu-Hindi program at Harvard takes a freshman class that is 90% Hindu Indians, tells them that Urdu is a simpler version of Hindi and hence the way to learn it, then phases out the Hindi component while going deep into Urdu literature with the corresponding shift in worldviews.

Fifth, denigrating the source as anti-women, anti-social, abusive, primitive...

Finally, pre-empting any honest research to expose all this by branding any attempts as being fascist, chauvinist, nostalgic, etc. Here one must criticize the Hindutva for making this job simple by providing plenty of ammunition, such that any Indic worldview now runs the risk of being so branded.

This has been one of the greatest achievements of the dominant civilization and a major factor for its success. It appropriates others’ intellectual capital into its own, thereby turning them into shudras (= people without capital).

So this is why Freudianism analysis is problematic, NOT because of sexual content.

Regards,

Rajiv 

-----Original Message-----
From: Rajiv Malhotra
Sent: Sunday, November 02, 2003 12:28 PM
To: Sunthar Visuvalingam
Subject: RE: Good Taste, Bad Taste, Hindu Taste - why are art historians more deserving of GaNeza’s (sweet) favor (modakas)?

Sunthar – did my post make it on your e-groups? I think it responds to VV Raman’s comment – he seems to think that the complaint is about sexuality; whereas I point out that it is about authenticity. Regards,

Rajiv 

-----Original Message-----
From: Sunthar Visuvalingam
Sent: Sunday, November 02, 2003 1:51 PM
To: ‘Rajiv Malhotra’
Subject: I’ll post my response along with your original message to the targeted lists

Hello Rajiv,

No, it did not, and I’m not sure why as you are member of ‘my’ several groups and, I believe, of Akandabaratam as well. You might want to check your email and other member settings on these lists.

 I agree with you and your point is well-taken. If you can hold on for a while, I was planning to respond constructively, along with your own post, to all the lists you targeted. Laurie also got back to me as well on my previous post on GaNeza’s ‘green card’... 

Regards,

Sunthar

P.S. I don’t think Raman was responding to your post but it seems that sexuality is indeed what many of the petitioners are fuming about...

-----Original Message-----

Subject: RE: I’ll post my response along with your original message to the targeted lists

From: Rajiv Malhotra
Sent: Sunday, November 02, 2003 4:33 PM
To: Sunthar Visuvalingam

Agreed. But there needs to be a clarity of issues between: (A) those Hindus who are anti-sexuality period, when sexuality is applied to devas/devis, and (B) those who have no such problem but have other reasons for criticizing various mis-portrayals.

 Those who attack on grounds of A and those who patronize (i.e. suck up) to these scholars by saying, “lets be open about sex,” such as V. V. Raman, are in need of being explained about B. For, they deflect the issue to a simpler one which the other side can dismiss.

 Those who argue based on “our hurt feelings” are locating the Hindu as a child with the westerner as parent and begging for better parenting. This is nonsense.

 Those who attack the scholar suggesting violence are upgrading him to Salman Rushdie status and the criticism as fanatical fatwa.

My hope has been to identify the deeper issues that do not slip down any of these slopes listed above.

 Regards,

 Rajiv


Subject:  Rajiv’s responses to “Lord Ganesha caught red-handed in Hugh Heffner’s Chicago penthouse / Good Taste, Bad Taste, Hindu Taste”

From:  Sunthar Visuvalingam
Date:  Mon Nov 3, 2003  3:05 pm [Abhinava msg #1221 order of thread has been inverted]

 

I’ll follow up on the very valid issues that Rajiv has raised in due course...it’s impossible to do justice to them in a couple of posts! – Sunthar

 

Subject:  Can Prof. Paul Courtright (and Lord Ganesha) be reduced to his crooked trunk (or upraised single tusk)? Do your homework first!

From:  Sunthar Visuvalingam [Abhinava msg #1216]
Date:  Sun Nov 2, 2003  10:52 pm

 

All these essentially comic figures of symbolic violation like P�zupata, GaNeza and Vid�Saka have for their sacred syllable the inarticulate (anirukta) Omk�ra because, like the ‘vacarme’ of explosive laughter, it signifies chaotic non-differentiation in the acoustic/linguistic code. In a traditional culture sharing a depreciative, repressive attitude to profane laughter, the P�zupata’s ‘sacred’ laughter in imitation of the aTTah�sa of his elect divinity Rudra can only further signify transgression. The recoding of these P�zupata notations into the nonsensical poetic humor (k�vya-h�sya) of the laughing Vid�Saka is only the profane spectacle of that archaic shamanic inspiration dramatically objectivizing itself through the aesthetic creation of the ‘poet’ (kavi) under this inscrutably familiar guise of folly that psychoanalysis must appropriate at its own risk.

 

Sunthar V., Divine Purity and Demoniac Power: A Semiotic definition of Transgressive Sacrality (1989)

 

I find it rather intriguing that this whole ‘discussion’ of Courtright’s book revolves around “the flaccid trunk” and little else. We just got back from the University of Chicago, where I was able to flip through the book for a few minutes at the Seminary Coop (before rushing off to listen to a Hindustani concert by Ram Narain, sarangi, and his son Braj Narain, sarod...), and I get the impression that the book talks about so many other topics as well. I wonder just how many people have read the book from cover to cover, much less attempted a thorough-going critique....?

 Let me, however, state categorically that:

 

�         like the vid�Saka’s crooked staff (kuTilaka) the trunk is undoubtedly (among other things) a “limp” phallus

�         however, he is definitely not ‘impotent’ (in the normal sense) because his single tusk (like the upraised kuTilaka) represents the upright phallus

�         which raises the question as to how Courtright reconciles these two contradictory characterizations...is he even aware of the problem?

�         does anyone on these lists have a ‘twisted’ (vakra) phallus (even when limp!)? Otherwise, why is this ‘crookedness’ so emphasized in both?

�         these traits are evidently ‘overdetermined’ (as any psychoanalyst worth his snake-oil should know...)—what are his creators trying to tell us?

�         can anyone offer more convincing explanations (than Paul’s piecemeal and ad hoc ‘Freudian’ speculations) that could stand on their own feet?

 

Maybe if someone took the trouble to read the book and attempted to refute Paul’s arguments more systematically, we’d make some more progress here..... As things stand, I have the distinct impression that this mischievously playful brat (Pillaiy�r in the case of the Tamil GaNeza - the vid�Saka is always called baTuka, as in BaTuka-Bhairava) is making a laughing-stock of us all!

Sunthar

 

P.S. I’ve appended the current state of this thread from the RISA-L listserv that is reserved for ‘professional’ Indologists.

 


Subject: RE: The Scholar’s responsibility

From: Rajiv Malhotra
SentSunday, November 02, 2003 12:28 PM

 

The debate has advanced into a higher caliber territory with the post of Prof. De Nicolas below, which was put on RISA-L and other places by him. Please see the following posts on RISA-L:

 

http://www.sandiego.edu/theo/risa-l/archive/msg07212.html

 

http://www.sandiego.edu/theo/risa-l/archive/msg07213.html

 

http://www.sandiego.edu/theo/risa-l/archive/msg07214.html

 

http://www.sandiego.edu/theo/risa-l/archive/msg07215.html

 

http://www.sandiego.edu/theo/risa-l/archive/msg07216.html

 

>

 


Subject: [RISA-L] Re: The scholar’s accountability

To: risa-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

From: Ramdas Lamb 

Date: Sun, 02 Nov 2003 11:12:51 -1000


Regarding the issue of Paul Courtright’s text on Ganesha, I question how beneficial and relevant to Hindu scholarship its chosen methodology of depicting Ganesha is. I cannot help but believe that the vast majority of Hindus would be appalled at such an approach, which seems to say far more about the writer and his focus than about the way Ganesha has been historically understood by Hindus. If the text was simply meant to take a Freudian approach to Ganesha, with the inevitable outcome of such a tact, then maybe it was successful. However, if it was meant to provide good historical scholarship on Ganesha, then I do not see where such depictions accomplish that, unless they have been integral in the development and understanding of Ganesha within the Hindu tradition. Is it wrong to suggest scholarly understanding should take historical reality into consideration?  While I am sure that there are currently, and may have long been, some Indians who may view Ganesha in that way, but when have such views been characteristic of Hindu thinking with respect to Ganesha? Just because we are scholars, does that mean we can say and write whatever we wish, irrespective of its accuracy or impact?

Ramdas Lamb


Subject: [RISA-L] Ganesh and Judaeo-Christian God/Jahweh

To: risa-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

From: Jo Perry

Date: Sun, 2 Nov 2003 15:48:40 EST


Despite the gracious response of Gene Thursby, I will add this response:

Antonio de Nicolas wrote:

The Bible is very explicit. The creation myth (history) says very clearly that the Creator created the world by ejecting his semen (ruh = pron. ruah) and mingling it with the waters. In other words, the creator created through masturbation. And if you stretch the story all the way to Jesus and follow the patrilineal lines given to him turns out that Yaweh is his father. Can you be more gross? And would any Ph.D. in Religion be able to answer this attack?

Aware of this myth among ancient Egyptians, I find all this repl(a)y fascinating and worth circulating (among scholars who are likely to read such stuff, just as Courtright might expect of his own writings) although I would appreciate some fuller explication of the Biblical text.  Given Courtright’s presumed audience (as indicated above) I see no problem with his using Freudian ideas for a similar exposition of Hindu belief systems.  Freudian thinking has, after all, penetrated even the apparently dim and “different” {Other? unable to be scholarly, only sensitive to slight} minds of scholars in India (the dim and different and othering goes on, it would seem, in Courtright’s critics’ minds).

Did I offend anyone by using the Tetragrammaton above?  OOOPs! Sorry, but that’s the nature of scholarly discussion, Nothing can be held sacrosanct and free from analysis.  

ATB JOPerry

(Dr.) John Oliver Perry (Prof. English, Emeritus, Tufts University)

 


Subject: Re: Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability

To: RISA Academic Discussion List

From: John Richard Pincince 

Date: Sun, 02 Nov 2003 12:00:26 -0500


Dear List:

I must have missed posts previous to that of Mr. de Nicolas’ missive against Prof. Courtright—not certain when the issue arose (perhaps not the proper word re: a “limp” Ganesha:), but I have take the liberty to include below the wonderful ‘petition’ against Prof. Courtright, enjoy:

-----------------------------------------------------

Against the Book insulting Lord Ganesha and Hinduism

Sign the Petition

To: President James W. Wagner of Emory University, Governor Sunny Perdue of Georgia, President George W Bush of U.S.A, Prime Minister Atal B. Vajpayee of India, Members of India’s Parliament, Members US-India Congressional Caucus, and US Attorney General, Ashcroft.

 

There is a Book titled: “Ganesa - Lord of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings” by Professor Paul Courtright, Department of Religion, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. First Edition in USA published in 1985 by Oxford University Press, Inc. First Indian Edition, Published in 2001 by Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Ltd., with a nude cover picture and insulting interpretations directly from the book.

For nude cover picture of the 2001 edition of the book please visit: http://photos.yahoo.com/hsc_ul (Please copy and paste the link)

Here are some of the author’s vulgar interpretations:

  • “Its (Ganesa’s) trunk is the displaced phallus, a caricature of Siva’s linga. It poses no threat because it is too large, flaccid, and in the wrong place to be useful for sexual purposes.” (Page 121)
  • “He [Ganesa] remains celibate so as not to compete erotically with his father, a notorious womanizer, either incestuously for his mother or for any other woman for that matter.” (Page 110)
  • “So Ganesa takes on the attributes of his father but in an inverted form, with an exaggerated limp phallus—ascetic and benign—whereas Siva is a “hard” (�rdhvalinga), erotic and destructive.” (Page121)
  • “Both in his behavior and iconographic form Ganesa resembles in some aspects, the figure of the eunuch, ……. Ganesha is like eunuch guarding the women of the harem.” (Page 111)
  • “Although there seems to be no myths or folktales in which Ganesa explicitly performs oral sex; his insatiable appetite for sweets may be interpreted as an effort to satisfy a hunger that seems inappropriate in an otherwise ascetic disposition, a hunger having clear erotic overtones.” (Page 111)
  • “Ganesa’s broken tusk, his guardian’s staff, and displaced head can be interpreted as symbols of castration” (page 111)
  • “Feeding Ganesa copious quantities of modakas, satisfying his oral/erotic desires, also keeps him from becoming genitally erotic like his father.” (Page 113)
  • “The perpetual son desiring to remain close to his mother and having an insatiable appetite for sweets evokes associations of oral eroticism. Denied the possibility of reaching the stage of full genital masculine power by the omnipotent force of the father, the son seeks gratification in some acceptable way.” (Page 113)

There are plenty of other insidious passages in this book aimed at tarnishing not only the image of Ganesha, but Shiva and Parvati as well:

“After Shiva has insulted Parvati by calling her Blackie [Kali], she vows to leave him and return to her father’s home and then she stations her other son, Viraka—the one Siva had made—at the door way to spy on her husband’s extramarital amorous exploits.” (Page 105-106).

We believe these are clear-cut examples of hate-crimes inflicted on innocent Hindus who worship Ganesha, Shiva and Parvati.

We the undersigned strongly ask you to take the necessary actions to achieve the following:

1) The author and the publisher(s) to give an unequivocal apology to Hindus.

2) The author expunges the above and other offensive passages and revises the book with clarifications and corrections.

3) Publisher(s) to immediately withdraw this book from circulation and the author to stop use of this book in academics.

 

Sincerely,

 

The Against the Book insulting Lord Ganesha and Hinduism Petition to President James W. Wagner of Emory University, Governor Sunny Perdue of Georgia, President George W Bush of U.S.A, Prime Minister Atal B.

Vajpayee of India, Members of India’s Parliament, Members US-India Congressional Caucus, and US Attorney General, Ashcroft. was created by Hindu Students’ Council - University of Louisiana, Lafayette and written

by Devendra Potnis, President HSC-ULL. This petition is hosted here at www.PetitionOnline.com as a public service. There is no endorsement of this petition, express or implied, by Artifice, Inc. or our sponsors.

For technical support please use our simple Petition Help form.

 

John Pincince

Ph.D. candidate South Asian History and Politics

Department of History

University of Hawai’i

 


Subject: Re: Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability

To: risa-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

From: William P Harman

Date: Sun, 02 Nov 2003 00:43:18 -0500


Dear Risa Colleagues,

I fear I cannot be quite so charitable (nor alas, quite so elegant) as Gene Thursby has been in his response to Antonio de Nicolas’ attack on Professor Courtright’s book on Ganesh. De Nicolas has assumed that he and he alone knows “the Truth” about Ganesh and about how the culture that reveres Ganesh “thinks.” In fact, I know many Indians who much appreciated Courtright’s meticulous scholarship, and who felt that it represented an affectionate, provocative, and exploratory study into the nature of this wonderfully protean Hindu deity. To suggest that Courtright should be censored by the academic community for daring to suggest variant interpretations of Ganesh that could possibly offend the orthodox is to impose on scholarly work a standard that de Nicolas himself has denounced in print. Specifically, de Nicolas presumes to present himself as the defender of orthodoxy. About that issue he wrote in an article in THE WORLD AND I (May, 1989) the following:

“Orthodoxy operates in someone else’s name; it is a mask and, under its protection, even the weakest among us become daring, passionate heroes. It makes little difference if such orthodoxy appears in the name of religion, psychotherapy, science, humanism, progress, the church or the state. Orthodoxy separates the liberated and the non-liberated, those who are in and those who are out”

In proposing to cast Courtright out of the academic community, and in doing so from behind the mask of what he himself calls in that same article “the imagined monster of orthodoxy,” de Nicolas invites us to judge his comments about Courtright in light of his earlier and more wisely considered written words.

William Harman, Head

Department of Philosophy and Religion (# 2753)

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

 


Subject: Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability

To: RISA Academic Discussion List 

From: Narasingha Sil 

Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2003 20:42:22 -0800


November 1, 2003

Professor Courtright’s depiction of Ganesha reflects his idealization of a particular state of the male organ and we need not exercise ourselves unnecessarily on Ganesha’s proboscis seen as a limp phallus.  I have seen (so have many others) limp phallus of most of the male nude statuary sculpted by the Greeks and even by the Renaissance Italians.  Nobody has interpreted the statue of a young David or a muscular Adam (the perpetrator of the “Adamic” sin!) with a small and limp phallus in Florence or in the Sistine Chapel as something to be excited or exercised about.  Let Ganesha have his phallus limp when he is not shown as gawking at a divine female.  If Courtright intends to insinuate impotence of Ganesha (which I sincerely doubt he does), then that may be an instance of his personal anxiety about a male organ to be ever up and ready for action. 

The interesting and intriguing point to underscore here is that Ganesha being a “pagan” god, with juicy legends about his origin, is an object of curiosity to those who really have no stake in stuff Hindu.  I, for one, would neither castigate Courtright for his disappointment with or disapproval of the state of Ganesha’s trunk (or phallus) nor applaud the professor’s critics, but I really give a damn to the <Siddhidata’s> trunk with the conviction that he being a Hindu god and especially related to his ithyphallic father Shiva, would surely rise to the occasion with his virility at the appropriate time.

 

Bastante!

Narasingha Sil     

 


Subject: Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability

To: RISA Academic Discussion List 

From: Gene R. Thursby

Date: Sat, 01 Nov 2003 22:08:39 -0500


RISA Colleagues,

I deeply respect the contributions of Antonio de Nicolas to global or at any rate international and intercultural philosophy and as a historian and theorist of education. I welcome the catalyst to discussion that he posted today under the topic of the scholar’s accountability. What he wrote today is a model of clarity (indeed a kind of manifesto) without ambiguity that leaves no room to doubt where responsibility lies and what kind of responsibility it is.

He addresses a perennial issue concerning the formulation and reception of scholarly (or at any rate academic or even official administrative) writing. He does so under the long shadow of courts of law, guild courts, and the court(s) of public opinion. Equally relevant is the much shorter shadow of post-colonial studies. One could call this a “hangover” issue that affects some peoples and cultures more than others, but in the end affects everyone—except perhaps for an imaginary Aryan or two.

The explicit center of this current version of the controversy is the deva [god] Ganesa, and so it may be inevitable that the efforts of his contemporary respecters, devotees, and partisans recall to mind earlier “self-respect as Ganesa-respect” movements such as the well-known one sparked by B. G. Tilak (see, among many available sources: Richard G. Cashman, The Myth of the Lokamanya: Tilak and Mass Politics in Maharashtra, Berkeley, 1975) under the conditions of colonialism.

Let us consider the several points of the analysis and proposal offered by Dr. de Nicolas.

(A) The Enlistment or “Rise Up” Section

We might consider what Antonio de Nicolas today proposed is the responsibility of “the court of Indic studies scholars and the Universities we serve.”

(1) We cannot be silent in “the case of Dr. Paul Courtright and his thesis on Ganesha”

[Comment: Please refer to Robert C. Solomon, The Passions, 1976; 1993 for a creative discussion that connects the adversarial, juridical model and the passion of anger.]

(2) “is it our obligation as such scholars to call into question the scholarship of Dr. Paul Courtright and demand a corrective of some kind?”

[Comment: This is a rhetoric question that entails or implies only an answer in the affirmative.]

(3) “did he act irresponsibly and unscholarly in such a manner that both his freedom of speech and his freedom to teach are both in jeopardy?”

[Comment: There is hardly a higher price that could be paid in a world constituted by speech and writing. It is the symbolic equivalent of a death penalty.]

(B) The Axiomatic or Self-Evident Section

(1) “The first responsibility of a scholar in describing, writing, speaking, teaching other cultures is to present those cultures or the elements of those cultures in the same manner those cultures are viewed by themselves and by the people of those cultures.”

[Comment: This is one of the root questions in the field of Religious Studies and several humanities and social sciences disciplines. Among the many ways this question has been argued, each RISA member may have their own favorites. I repeatedly reread W. Brede Kristensen, The Meaning of Religion; Lectures in the Phenomenology of Religion (tr. by John B. Carman), 1960; Wayne Proudfoot, Religious Experience, 1985; and Russell T. McCutcheon, Critics Not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion, 2001—an admittedly provincial if not parochial set of sources.]

(2) “If not, then the scholar is using those cultures in name only and his goal is their destruction, if not in intention at least in fact.”

[Comment: Here is the law of excluded middle at work. What is excluded? Too much I think, even without adverting to Martin Buber.]

(3) “‘The flaccid phallus of Ganesha’ is an invention of the author when this is not the only depiction of Ganesha, since He appears in other statues with large erection.”

[Comment: Analogically, at the human level it is an up and down process due to circadian rhythms of activity even without external stimulation. With reference to Ganesa, Dr. de Nicolas is surely correct. Moreover, it is unwise to attribute to others whether human or extrahuman and whether male or female a “flaccid phallus.” At this point I agree fully with the potent observation put forward by Antonio de Nicolas about the inappropriate or at least incautious formulation. Besides, Lord Ganesa already had suffered enough—alien head, only one surviving tusk, etc. —which in no wise diminished his potency, attractiveness, nor authority.]

(4) “A scholar who does not know how to present other cultures by their own criteria should not be allowed to teach those cultures. His freedom of speech is not guaranteed by his ignorance.”

[Comment: Having been myself foolish and ignorant many times in the classroom for more than 30 years, I should refrain from comment. However, I wish to claim that the weight of cases concerning “academic freedom” seems to be in the direction of protection for mistaken but not maliciously intended, unwise, and unpopular forms of speech and other expression. I agree with Dr. de Nicolas that “know how to [re]present other cultures by their own criteria” is at the least an ideal, and approximation of it is a requirement in order to earn the compliment of “competent” but this not a simple, unequivocal, non-complex standard. Why? In the first instance because “a culture” is in part a given and in part a construct. In the second instance because it is rare that a human being would live, love, work, and reflect strictly within the range of a monocultural existence. In the third instance because the range and boundaries of a culture are perhaps inevitably and in fact most often matters of contest or contention (please refer to published lectures by a great contender and psychoanalytic anthropologist - Gananath Obeyesekere, The Work of Culture: Symbolic Transformation in Psychoanalysis and Anthropology, 1990).

(C) The Action-toward-Resolution Section

(1) “Freedom stops here.”

[Comment: It is important to me that freedom does not stop. Obvious, even dire, consequences may begin at some point. In any case, the best consequence of the current controversy so far is represented by Antonio de Nicolas. He brought this matter to a suitable forum for discussion and has presented it with a clarity and force of expression sufficient to win attention for it. My thanks go to him for this excellent public service.]

(2) “Who is the Western Scholar that can use his freedom of speech (but not his responsibility to know better) in order to destroy, dethrone, or laugh at a God made naked for that purpose or consequence?”

[Comment: Socrates maybe? Please refer to the Euthyphro, probably Plato’s earliest dialogue.]

(3) “Emory University and the AAR should investigate this and similar cases and keep an investigating body available to make sure this does not happen again.”

[Comment: This is a well-stated and worthy proposal. It would not, of course, prevent unforeseen consequences such as cease-and-desist orders directed toward protesters, etc. Law courts have been known for centuries in Indic or Hindu culture (I am not proposing that they are one and the same) to perpetrate frauds, miscarriages of justice, and a huge amount of time-wasting. Once a dispute is institutionalized, many of its participants may face institutionalization, too.]

In all good faith and without irony, my thanks to Antonio de Nicolas and my hope that a discerning discussion may follow.

Gene Thursby
University
of Florida

Subject:  Re: Can Prof. Paul Courtright (and Lord Ganesha) be reduced to his crooked trunk (or upraised single tusk)? Do your homework first!

From:  Dr. K. Loganathan [Abhinava msg #1217]
Date:  Mon Nov 3, 2003  1:56 am

 

Dear Sunthar

I am glad you are trying to bring to attention the metaphysics of laughter, smile and so forth which also figure in Tamil Saivite thinking. Appar speaks eloquently of the Pun Cirippu BEING as Siva Nadarajah wears on His lips. Tirumular attends to the same in the context of his Mantrayana study of Dance of Bliss which includes laughter. The following verse may interest you.

 

There are a few more at the following address:

 

http://arutkural.tripod.com/tolcampus/mantrayana/mantrayana-3.htm

 

Loga

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

910

 

aananatam aanantam onRu enRu aRaintida

aanantam aanantam aa-ii-uu-ee-oom enRu aRaintu idam

aanantam aanantam anjcumatu aayidum

aanantam aanantam am-hriim am-ksam aam aakumee

 

Meaning:

When the anma transcends even the thousand petalled Lotus, it will be non alien with BEING, the Ever Blissful and the flooding bliss in the interior of the soul with give rise to spontaneous outpourings of divine laughter. Such lyrics will be agitated by the aksaras aa-ii-uu-ee-oom. At this point the mantras na-ma-si-vaa-ya that have been ruling the mind will coalesce with the above establishing only the state of immense bliss. Then as further experiences of this Divine Bliss are continued, there will come to prevail the asaba mantras am-hiriim and am-ksam-aam that will install the Bliss of Deep Silence

 

Comments

The higher reaches of the inward metaphysical journey are one of joy and happiness and hence full of laughter and NOT at all one of sufferings and sadness. BEING is Wholly Blissful and the anma becomes blissful only by being one-with such a BEING. This is what happens as one recites the subtle version of the mantra na-ma-si-vaa-ya with the understanding of how they configure the mind by regulating the cognitive processes. The untamable stream of consciousness forever creating an inner stress with implanting an unchanging flow of the the-tic consciousness, is transcended when the anma attains the mantra world described as the Sahasra TaLam, the location of the thousand petalled Lotus, the originating source of everything divine. When the soul transcends even this, it liberates itself completely from the phenomenal world and at which point it has only BEING as the GROUND to be with and sustain itself.

 

The Bliss of Sivaanantam comes to flood the soul and which also become the substance of moving divine lyrics such as Tiruvaacakam and so forth and in which there is NO ego at all but only an egoless spontaneity.

 

Then comes to prevail the asaba mantras, the mantras that lift up the soul even to higher grounds, the Tillai Ambalam itself and where, impossible of speech of whatever kind, the anma enjoys the Supreme Bliss of being totally one-with BEING and in Deep Silence.

Subject:  Re: Book on Ganesha removed by Publisher

From:  Antonio de Nicolas [Abhinava msg #1219]

Date:  Mon Nov 3, 2003  9:16 am

 

11/3/2003 10:01:19 AM Eastern Standard Time

From: [email protected]

Reply-to: [email protected]

To: [email protected]

Sent from the Internet (Details)


Dear Dr. Rao,

Thanks for your mail of  29th October 2003 regarding  the book: GANESHA by PAUL B.COURTRIGHT.

Firstly, I am obliged that you have gone through the book and made us aware about the extremely objectionable passages including the cover of the book. In fact, the book was published in 1985 by OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS and we never heard any adverse comments, hence without getting that reviewed we undertook the publication since it was originally published by an internationally established publisher. We did not care to go through the book thinking that this would be academically well acceptable.

We are extremely sorry that the content of the book has hurt the sentiments of our beloved readers and the community at large. We offer our SINCEREST APOLOGIES to all our readers.

We have already withdrawn the circulation of the book from the market and discontinued the sale. Further, we ensure that no such lapse shall ever occur in future. This need not be reiterated that MLBD has ever published any such offensive matter knowingly in the entire history of their publication for the last 100 years. Being one of the best known publishers devoted to Hinduism and ancient Indian culture we would never think to tarnish the image of any religion. This has been an omission on our part and we are really apologetic to the readers for its publication.

May we request you to kindly circulate our letter of apology to various religious organisations, centres, and the Hindu community at large. A press release for the withdrawal of the circulation of the book has already been issued. We are also sending copies of this mail to various people around the world and would also like to have the E-mail addresses of other organisations, who we can inform for further circulation of this mail.

ONCE AGAIN WE REGRET FOR THE PUBLICATION OF THE AFORESAID BOOK AND THANKS FOR INFORMING US OF SUCH OBJECTIONS.

With kind regards,

Sincerely,

Rajeev Jain

---------------------------------------------
Motilal Banarsidass Publishers

41, U.A. Bungalow Road, Jawahar Nagar

Delhi-110007, (India)

Tel: (011) 23974826, 23918335, 23911985, 23932747

      (011) 25795180, 25793423, 25797356

Fax:(011) 23930689, 25797221

Email: [email protected] , [email protected]

Website: www.mlbd.com , www.newagebooksindia.com

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
CELEBRATING 100 YEARS OF PUBLISHING (1903-2003)
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Subject:  Personal message from Prof. Paul Courtright exhorting us to live up to the traditional standards of debate in (not just Hindu) India

From:  Sunthar Visuvalingam [Abhinava msg #1220]
Date:  Mon Nov 3, 2003  10:41 am

 

I have thought it appropriate to preface this second installment from the RISA-L listserv (reserved for ‘professional ‘Indologists’, i.e., those who make their living by telling Indians [what] they really are as opposed to who they think they are...) with this personal message from Prof. Paul Courtright (his reply to a member of the Navya-Shastra forum), that I wholly endorse.

�          pay close attention to the manner in which what is a burning question for Hindus, and potential threat to the whole establishment (our unfortunate author is just a small fish...a scapegoat?), is becoming gradually drowned in a sea of bibliographic references and cross-references.

�          how is it that (not just Indian) publishers (like Motilal Banarsidas) circulate a book without first having read it and then withdraw it from the market without any due process? The problem is that even ‘respectable’ American institutions like SUNY Press are guilty of such censorship (going against even the wishes of the editors of their books...)—it’s just that the ‘Indology’ business here operates far more insidiously...

Sunthar

 

[rest of this thread at Antonio de Nicol�s, Re: Book on Ganesha removed by Publisher]

 


Subject:  Fw: Lord Ganesha

From:  KRNath
Date:  Sun Nov 2, 2003  8:35 pm

 

 

This reply came from Mr. Courtright in reply to my letter protesting about
his observations on Ganesha.


KRNath

----- Original Message -----

Subject: Re: Lord Ganesha

From: Paul B. Courtright
To: KRNath
Sent: 3 November 2003 Monday 03:49

Under the circumstances of the vicious distortions and attacks on my work, I can only respond to those who have read my work. Don’t let others think for you; read and then draw your own conclusions. If you have specific questions about my interpretation after having read the book I will try, as time and energy permit, to correspond with you.

Regards,

 

Paul B. Courtright, Professor and Interim Chairperson, 2003-04

Department of Religion, Emory University 


Subject: Re: Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability

To: “RISA Academic Discussion List” 

From: Stephen Brown

Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 02:10:35 -0500

 

Friends;

De Nicolas, while admittedly making his points quite succinctly, fails (in my opinion) to make a particularly convincing argument. There is one issue in this argument however upon which I am compelled to comment. 1st) The insider perspective is the only valuable, indeed the only reasonable perspective one may use to approach an issue. He states this clearly: “The first responsibility of a scholar in describing, writing, speaking, teaching other cultures is to present those cultures or the elements of those cultures in the same manner those cultures are viewed by themselves and by the people of those cultures. If not, then the scholar is using those cultures in name only and his goal is their destruction, if not in intention at least in fact.”

By whom is this determined? It strikes me that the anthropology community and the portions of the religious studies community whose work is best categorized as “religious anthropology” have long discussed the relative value of “etic” (observer) and “emic” (insider) perspectives. Historically, in western religious scholarship on eastern religions the Etic perspective has won out. We have been observers of another’s physical practice and textual tradition. Even though the field has been rife with would-be observers turned practitioners who write profusely and often well on the subject of Asian religious practices and ideas, the etic has won the day. Regardless of the nature of any scholar’s work, be it etic or emic, it can do little more than offer a well reasoned opinion and interpretation. The main reason, it seems, for this debate is developing a discipline-wide agreement on which presents the most “accurate perspective”, which would seem at first glance to echo De Nicholas’ idea, but to my mind has quite a different result. In accepting as valuable the etic perspective we have accepted the validity of presenting another culture’s ideas and theologies from a perspective which is intentionally different from its own. That perspective has no imperative to agree with the observed community on its actions.

That being the case, who in fact is the scholar responsible to in presenting his opinion? De Nicholas would have us think that we are first responsible to the community observed, and second to the academic community at large. In this, I am compelled to agree with De Nicholas in spirit, but not in application. Indeed it is the case that we have a duty as scholars to present what we see accurately, but my disagreement with De Nicholas lies in the interpretation of the word accurately. He would have us think, as I said above, that the insider opinion is the only valid one. Interpretive scholarship, however, has no room for the restriction of agreeing with every insider on how to describe and interpret what one sees in studying and observing any given culture and its textual/iconic legacy. Description, as the scholar sees it, and interpretation in logical and careful ways are the imperatives of the field. To present a perspective which the scholar has good reason to believe is correct is his/her charge, not towing the party line. Furthermore, it is not the job of any university or academic body to castigate and censure a scholar for presenting his/her well argued and supported argument simply because they are politically unpopular. De Nicholas’ statement that to present a perspective on a culture which runs counter to the way that culture perceives itself is either intentionally or unintentionally destructive stands as just that, a statement, unsupported by evidence. Why should we presume that any disagreement is harmful? Is it not our job as scholars to entertain opinions of all colors, and to better inform ourselves better by expanding our horizons? I agree that academia and universities have the responsibility of maintaining the general quality of scholarship, and should not allow vicious and vituperative political and religious opinions to bear the name academia. There is absolutely no reasonable argument, in my opinion, to support the opinion that honest and careful scholarship which is politically unpopular fits into that category of vitriol.

De Nicolas would have us publicly censure Professor Courtright for his volume on Ganesh first published in 1985. For what purpose? What has Courtright done that merits such a reproach? Some may find his interpretation of the Ganesha myth as a reinterpretation and resolution (not historically, but theoretically) of the Freudian Oedipus complex incompatible with modern mainstream Hindu understandings of that same myth. However, that fact makes his argument neither dangerous nor inaccurate. In the same way, the presence of statuary of Ganesha with an erect phallus does not disprove nor invalidate the presence of statuary displaying a flaccid phallus. The Courtright volume does not insert sexuality into a sexuality devoid matrix, themes of sexuality are prominent not only the literature of Ganesh, but also many of the other Hindu gods. Courtright does not, in my reading of the volume, ridicule nor devalue the devata Ganapati, nor any of his manifold manifestations.

Thank you;

Stephen Brown


Subject: Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability

To: RISA Academic Discussion List 

From: Richard Mahoney 

Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 22:58:14 +1300

On Sat, Nov 01, 2003 at 06:40:12PM -0500, [email protected] wrote:

[snip]

Point number one: The first responsibility of a scholar in describing, writing, speaking, teaching other cultures is to present those cultures or the elements of those cultures in the same manner those cultures are viewed by themselves and by the people of those cultures.

[snip]

But even if this was one’s intention, how hard it would be to accomplish! For comments on the complex and difficult process of (textual) interpretation see:

 

Ruegg, D. S., “Some reflections of the place of philosophy in the study of Buddhism,” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies (Madison, Wisconsin), vol. 18:2 (1995), pp. 145-181.

Griffiths, P. J., “Buddhist Hybrid English: Some notes on philology and hermeneutics for buddhologists,” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies (Madison, Wisconsin), vol. 4:2 (1981), pp. 7-32.

Tuck, A. P., Comparative Philosophy and the Philosophy of Scholarship: On the Western Interpretation of N�g�rjuna (New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990).

G�mez, L., “Unspoken paradigms: Meanderings through the metaphors of a field,” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies (Madison, Wisconsin), vol. 18:2 (1995), pp. 183-268.

Tillemans, T. J. F., “Remarks on philology,” Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies (Madison, Wisconsin), vol. 18:2 (1995), pp. 269-277.

Steinkellner, E., “The logic of the ``svabh�vahetu’’ in Dharmak�rti’s ``V�dany�ya’’,” in: Steinkellner, E., ed., Studies in the Buddhist Epistemological Tradition: Proceedings of the Second International Dharmak�rti Conference, Vienna, June 11-16, 1989 (�sterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Dekschriften, 222 Band., Wein: Verlag der �sterreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1991), vol. 8 of Beitr�ge zur Kultur- und Geistesgeschichte Asiens, pp. 311-324.

Best regards,

Richard Mahoney


Subject: Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability

To: RISA Academic Discussion List 

From: Gene R. Thursby

Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2003 07:34:52 -0500

The clamor for a “case against Courtright” proceeds from a claim that his writing (which merits repeated and close reading as one basis for assessing the appropriateness of that claim) has had or could have an effect or result of perpetrating “hate-crimes” (source: the petition as cited earlier in this thread by John Richard Pincince of the University of Hawaii) because his book supposedly contains “falsehood, or opinions” that at some point risk the result that it could “inflict enormous pain on believers” who will have their feelings hurt and their religion demeaned if Ganesha is not described with scrupulous accuracy as they believe him to be and without the addition of any opinion (source: de Nicolas who contributed the first posting to this thread and who added that “Freedom stops here. Opinions are not the food of the classroom at the hands of Professors.”—Incidentally I think of that restriction on opinion as the basis for the “Hokey Pokey” theory of education for which see the National Institutes of Health site at

http://www.niehs.nih.gov/kids/lyrics/hokey.htm ).

 

The posts from Brown and Mahoney move the discussion toward a key issue entailed in the current clamor but that also should be of interest beyond this current flap. This key issue Stephen Brown has posed in terms of Kenneth Pike’s distinction between “‘etic’ (observer) and ‘emic’ (insider) perspectives.” The distinction, although now widely employed, was the subject of intense discussion between Pike and the late Marvin Harris, a discussion that went so far as to draw in the esteemed Willard Van Orman Quine

(http://www.ethnologue.com/show_serial.asp?name=Frontiers+of+Anthropology).

Brown, at any rate, proposes: “In accepting as valuable the etic perspective we have accepted the validity of presenting another cultures ideas and theologies from a perspective which is intentionally different from its own. That perspective has no imperative to agree with the observed community on its actions.”—or its beliefs or its own sources. Mahoney, writing from New Zealand, adds a list of useful sources in general attesting to the complexities and difficulties and ambiguities inherent in the tasks involved in textual interpretation.

My earlier post to this thread cited but three sources that have influenced how I look at this key issue which I now see in terms of the question: what sources of authority are involved in academic scholarship in Religious Studies in addition to Self and Other or Us and Them. For all his emphasis on persons and the interpersonal dimensions of Religious Studies, and for all of his reservations about method, the last Wilfred Cantwell Smith certainly acknowledged sources of authority in addition to persons—but not with quite the objectivism (if it may be put that way) of Antonio de Nicolas.

Among the three sources I cited, only the first—W. Brede Kristensen—claimed that the Other should be regarded as the (sole?) authority. (For brief mention of Kristensen in an otherwise relevant context, see

http://www.multifaithnet.org/mfnopenaccess/research/online/seminar/pgphenom.htm .)

Wayne Proudfoot proposed a two-step approach. In the first step the scholar demonstrates her or his competence by showing herself or himself capable of representing some religious ‘X’ as its experiencer or proponent or believer would have it to be. In the second step, moving beyond phenomenology to critical analysis which Proudfoot supposes is the real test of scholarly acumen one is free from that responsibility to “the Other” that is subjected to study and interpretation. Without the movement from step one to step two, according to Proudfoot “The subject’s identifying description becomes normative for purposes of explanation, and inquiry is blocked to insure that the subject’s own explanation of his [or her] experience is not contested.” (For context and quote, see

http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/gthursby/0000/pdfoot.htm).

Russell T. McCutcheon (http://www.as.ua.edu/rel/mccutch.html) in his book Critics Not Caretakers and elsewhere, shifts the ground without remainder to Proudfoot’s second step and turns almost everything and everyone into data or grist for the mill, giving no quarter to religious “special pleading.”

But in addition to the Self/Other or Us/Them dimension that receives focal attention in Kristensen, Proudfoot, and McCutcheon, there are other factors (some of them highlighted by Wilfred Cantwell Smith and not peculiar to Religious Studies) that make claims on the scholar’s allegiance or loyalty. One of them, for better or worse, is a research tradition or genealogy of scholarship. Among these is a Freudian or psychoanalytic tradition, to which Stephen Brown referred and on which some of Courtright’s interpretive proposals were based.

This kind of issue—how to contextualize the scholar’s research projects (beyond a rote or mirroring objectivist model)—merits repeated discussion on this list.

The current flap itself mirrors earlier ones. For instance the complaint a decade ago that Harjot Oberoi ought not occupy a “community” chair of Sikh Studies because his book The Construction of Religious Boundaries represented Sikh history inaccurately and inappropriately. Ironic in the context of the current flap since in a way Oberoi had done too much historical study and it is claimed that Courtright has done too little. Too much or too little? Apparently people can find their feelings hurt (or inflamed) either way. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of efforts to silence scholars whose work does not neatly bridge the emic-etic gap or remain safely within the realm of the emic as “theology” rather than Religious Studies.

As it happened, there was an attempt to have Oberoi’s book proscribed in India on the basis of a system very much colonial in its origins. On this see N. Gerald Barrier, Banned: Controversial Literature and Political Control in British India, 1907-1947 (Missouri, 1974). Perhaps we are living through a period of anti-colonial reversals nowadays; ones that no less reflect efforts at asserting political control?

Gene Thursby

University of Florida


Subject: Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability

To: RISA Academic Discussion List

From: Patrick Olivelle 

Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 08:44:34 -0600

This “storm” over Paul Courtright’s book is baffling, given that it was originally published by Oxford University Press in 1985, almost twenty years ago! A point that has not been made in the conversation. I assume that it came to the attention of certain people only when a re-print was issued by Motilal.

Some say that the book is not “historical”, not “accurate”—with the implication that all scholarly books need to be both. The scholarly controversies surrounding a variety of subjects—in the sciences, social sciences, and the humanities—show that some scholars do not think that the works of other scholars are either historical or accurate. But that is the marketplace of ideas, that is why free expression of scholarly opinion is so exhilarating. If we were not to “offend” any believer of any religious persuasion with what we write, then we may as well give up the academic study of religion. Let those who feel that Paul’s book is inaccurate, then write rebuttals or “accurate” histories. That would be most welcome. But to shut people up through “signature campaigns” aimed at influencing institutions and intimidating scholars is beneath contempt.

Thanks.

Patrick Olivelle


Subject: Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability & protective strategies

To: RISA Academic Discussion List 

From: John Cort 

Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2003 09:50:31 -0500

Wayne Proudfoot in his excellent 1985 Religious Experience (U Cal Press) devotes an entire chapter to issues of explanation in the study of religion. Of particular relevance here is his discussion on pp. 199-209 of what he calls “protective strategies,” arguments “that all accounts of religious experience must be acceptable to the subject.” Proudfoot argues, “This requirement gains its appeal from the consideration that a religious experience, belief, or practice must be identified under the description employed by the subject; but it exhibits confusion when it is extended to preclude explanatory hypotheses that differ from those of the subject.” I recommend the remainder of his lucid discussion to everyone.

in peace -- John Cort 


Subject: [RISA-L] Shiv Sena comment on Courtright book

To: RISA Academic Discussion List

From: Joyce Flueckiger 

Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2003 10:01:42 -0500

For our collective information: I just received this from a friend in India—what looks like a press release. Joyce

From: Narula, Vikas

Sent: Monday, November 03, 2003 5:49 PM
To: NDLst_PressDist_Broad
Subject: RELIGION-GANESH-BUSH-SHIV SENA
Importance: High

PRIO
RELIGION-GANESH-BUSH-SHIV SENA

Shiv Sena shoots letter to Bush over Ganesha’s obscene picture New Delhi, Nov 3 (UNI) Offended by a nearly naked depiction of Lord Ganesha on the cover of a US publication, the Shiv Sena has dashed off a letter to American President George W. Bush, demanding its immediate withdrawal from the circulation and an unqualified apology by the author.

“Amori University Professor Paul Courtright’s book - ‘Ganesha, Lord of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings’ - contains not only a naked depiction of the popular Hindu deity on the cover but also contains reprehensible misrepresentation of facts about Him,” Shiv Sena Delhi unit Vice-President

Abhimanyu Gulati complained in his letter. The letter alleges that the author has included “fictitious accounts of Lord Ganesha in the book which is also embellished with a naked, obscene photograph” of the deity.
“This is an affront to popular Hindu sensibility and an assault on the Hindu religion, which cannot be tolerated by us,” Mr Gulati said.

The Shiv Sena leader also pointed out that it was not the first incident of its kind in the US. “Earlier also, attempts have been made to depict Lord Ganesha on footwear and toilet seats, in an apparent attempt to present the Hindu religion in a poor light.”

Mr Gulati said another outrage against the Hindu feeling was committed in Canada where a newspaper published a naked photograph of Goddess Durga.

“We, therefore, appeal to you to ensure that the academician’s publication is immediately withdrawn from circulation,” he said in his letter to the US President.

“Besides, the author must be asked to tender an unqualified apology to the billions of Hindus for hurting their faith and religious sensibility.

Subject:  Re: Good Taste, Bad Taste, Hindu Taste - why are art historians more deserving of GaNeza’s (sweet) favor (modakas)?

From:  Anthony Appleyard
Date:  Tue Nov 4, 2003  2:44 am [Abhinava msg #1224 - order of thread inverted]

 

Sunthar wrote:

...the underlying meaning: why did the Indians invest so much of their creativity, and over so many centuries, into producing such ‘grotesque’ figures as the ‘lord of the (disfigured) hosts’ (gaNa-pati)? ...

It could be that originally Ganesha was thought of being completely an elephant, and his human parts came later. Similar happened to some of the gods of Ancient Egypt: originally many of them were thought of as being animals (ibis, jackal, scarab beetle, crocodile, etc), and later they changed into human shapes with animal heads.

[response to Sunthar’s post at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Abhinavagupta/message/1213]


Subject:  Is Lord Ganesha an ‘African’ God? Yes, in the same sense that Picasso’s art is ‘primitive’!

From:  Sunthar Visuvalingam
Date:  Tue Nov 4, 2003; 11:37 am [Abhinava msg #1224]

 

Hello Anthony,

Though practically all cultures have cherished fantastic (including half-human) animals in the bestiary of their imagination, ‘Hindu’ India seems have offered a fertile soil for such ‘exotic’ iconography to not only flourish but find a pride of place in the religious system, and this already from the Indus-Sarasvat� civilization. In fact, S. Kalyanaraman has recently posted here (the image of) a terra-cotta elephant that could well have been a prototype of Lord GaNeza. This and other, even more extravagantly hybrid, animal (including entirely non-human) representations probably go back to the African substratum of the ‘Dravidian’ presence in North-West India. A few months ago at the Louvre Museum, I saw such ‘animals’ on pottery, depicted along with Harappan-type boats, from the Nilotic Kerma culture dating back to before 2500 BC. Ancient Egypt has likewise inherited its ‘animism’ and its obsession with mortuary rites from the heart of Black Africa with Nubia as the lifeline. An amateur Indian art-historian (Yuva Khisha?), whom we got to know in Benares, had already developed your insight more elaborately.

 However, the specifically Egyptian (i.e., ‘human’) developments of this imagery have been attributed to the admixture, especially in the Nile Delta, of dominant influences from Mesopotamia that, likewise, made themselves felt very strongly on the Sindh-Gujarat coast from at least around 2500 BC if not earlier. It seems to me that these developments took a unique turn in India because of the presence of other ethnic cultures such as the Munda and Tibeto-Burman (which explains why Ananda Coomaraswamy has been able to make such pertinent comparisons between Vedic and Amerindian religions...). Not only did classical Greece completely ‘humanize’ (its indebtedness to) the Egyptian statuary, the subsequent post-Alexander Hellenization of North Africa laid the foundations for the eventual demise of the Egyptian worldview, well before the imposition of imperial Roman power (even to the extent of forbidding the worship of Egyptian deities). The Hindu assimilation of the Greek genius (for example, through Buddhist Gandhara art) had the opposite effect of transforming our theriomorphic (and anthropomorphic) gods into highly aesthetic creations that exhibit endless variation while adhering to strict (though often implicit) iconographic conventions with a ‘stereotyped’ repertoire of motifs. Most noteworthy is that this uniquely ‘Indian’ taste is already reflected in the hybrid ‘unicorn’ of the Indus seals...

What is the advantage of depicting a deity in half-human/half-animal form? L�vi-Strauss has noted long ago, in what has become (yet another inane) ‘structuralist’ clich�, that, for the natives of the Americas, animals are not only good for eating (I’m sure Lord GaNeza would drop his modaka for just a second here to trumpet a resounding ‘YES’!) but for *thinking*: Hindu esotericism works through symbolic strategies whereby several layers of (even conflicting) meaning are superposed within a single ‘overdetermined’ image. For example, in the Mah�bh�rata, the “Burning of the Forest” (Kh�NDava D�ha) episode suddenly interrupts the seemingly unconnected narrative of the dalliance of Arjuna-Krishna with the innumerable beautiful women of the royal harem. It is in this context that Agni appears in the form of a voracious brahmin (GaNeza or Vid�Saka?) to devour the entire forest (kh�NDava = modaka). What is being expressed through this ‘lawful irregularity’ in the plot is the ‘tantric’ idea that the Krishna/Arjuna couple (Coomaraswamy’s ‘bi-unity’) are universalizing their fiery Consciousness though sexual ‘union’ (yoga). Unlike the single-horn of the real-life rhinoceros (which seems to be the visual inspiration behind the Harappan unicorn....), GaNeza’s single tusk (eka-danta, like the eka-zRnga boar ViSNu) ‘puzzles’ our understanding, at least at an ‘unconscious’ level (if not confounding it altogether at the ‘conscious’ level at which our slick ‘Freudian’ Indologists operate...), even while seducing our sensibilities. The sophisticated synthesis of the animal and the human in Hinduism thus reflects not only the historical evolution of religio-aesthetic norms in India, but is also a canonized ‘alliance’ with the ‘unconscious’ (i.e., the bestial) to ensure that we do not close in upon ourselves into the (false) ‘coherence’ of ‘humanism’.

 So now you know why Lord GaNeza has taken refuge from old manuscripts rotting away in (the censored Indian ‘pornography’ section of?) some god-forsaken libraries (frequented only by inquisitive young Hindus like Sathia?) to the more hospitable climate of Amsterdam (and Chicago?).

Sunthar

 

[rest of this thread at Re: iconography of Ganesha - why not start by comparing him with the Vid�Saka (a real ‘gourmet’ if there was one...)?]

 

Subject:  The elephant-trunk as the representation of Omk�ra - is Ganesha a sexual or a metaphysical concept?

From:  Sunthar Visuvalingam
Date:  Wed Nov 5, 2003; 1:11 pm [Abhinava msg #1226]

 

....bearing the very form of (the sacred syllable) AUM-k�ra, O crooked-trunked!

praNava-svar�pam vakra-tuNDam (Muttuswami Dikshitar, V�t�pi GaNapatim bhaje’ham - “I worship Lord GaNeza of V�t�pi”)

 

Brahm� laughed scornfully: “How could the Brahman, free of all attachment, lustily sport with his wife in the company of his troop of deformed churn-goblins (pramatha)?” However, Rudra’s supremacy was finally reconfirmed by the esoteric sound-syllable, Omk�ra, quintessence of the Veda and most condensed symbol of Brahman, who pointed out that Shiva’s wife is not adventitious to her husband but on the contrary embodies his own blissful essence. [ Despite its general associations with ritual purity, the formless Omk�ra, who assumes (human) form to laughingly reconfirm the eternal sexual biunity (mithuna) or twin (y�mala) nature of Siva, is itself already identified as a Mithuna (sexed couple) in Ch�ndogya Upanishad (I.1.6); cf. note 115 infra. For the transgressive significance of Omk�ra’s laughter, see S. Visuvalingam, notes 6 and 7, in this volume.] Just then an immense pillar of flame manifested itself in their midst, within which was recognized the towering figure of the three-eyed Rudra bearing his trident, serpents and crescent moon. But the fifth head of Brahm� taunted him: “I know who you are, Rudra, whom I created from my forehead. Take refuge with me and I will protect you, my son!”

Elizabeth Visuvalingam, The Origin-myth of the Brahmanicide Bhairava (1989)

 

Concealment of his ‘purified’ ritual(ized) speech (IV.3: g�Dha-pavitra-v�Nih) and behavior (IV.2: g�Dha-vratah) by the erudite ‘Brahman par excellence’ (mah�-br�hmaNa), who thereby seeks to transform his knowledge into consummate penance (III.19, IV.1), suggests that much of his incoherent rambling was only the comic disguise assumed by the enigmatic br�hman, whose “purest” essence was Omk�ra (V.27: v�g-vizuddhah). The deformed (Mah�-)GaNapati, ‘Lord of the PramaThas,’ who presides over the comic sentiment (h�sya) in the Sanskrit drama, is himself born from Omk�ra’s bi-unity (mithuna). Issuing thunderously from the sacrificial stake in the form of the cosmic linga, Omk�ra’s mysterious laughter, while affirming the supremacy of Rudra, is indistinguishable from the violent laughter (aTTah�sa) of the ‘Great God’ (Mah�deva) himself.

Sunthar V., Divine Purity and Demoniac Power: A Semiotic definition of Transgressive Sacrality (1989)

 

 

Dear Loga, Varmhaji and cousin Rajan,

It seems to me that Loga has taken us into the crux of the problem of GaNeza by attempting to integrate the ‘psychoanalytic’ dimension of the ‘homely’ Pur�nic myth with the metaphysical notion of ‘autonomy’ (sv�tantrya—the very core of Abhinavagupta’s teaching!) through the notion of the Son becoming independent of (both Father and) Mother. Varmhaji has given us all a helping hand by pointing out that not only is GaNeza (like the P�zupata and the Vid�Saka) an embodiment of AUM-k�ra, but that the privileged glyph for the latter, though consisting of a stylized union of the letters for A U M, does indeed resemble (at least for anyone who has developed the Hindu eye for abstractionist art) the shape of GaNeza: a pot-belly surmounted by a head in profile with a gracefully curved trunk reaching out for a bowl containing a modaka

The question before us now is whether this invocation of OMk�ra helps redeem our innocent Pillaiy�r (who, like the clownish P�zupata, seems to be courting ridicule and abuse from every side...) of any sexual symbolism and implications. First of all, with the elephant-trunked god so securely ensconced at the ‘root support’ (m�l�dh�ra) at the base of the spinal column, would it be at all surprising if this formless supreme (Mah�-)Brahman found it (in-?) appropriate to assume the external form of whatever else might have been hanging around there? Whereas, as we have already seen, the fascination with the symbolic possibilities of the elephant (rhino, bull, etc.) already goes back to the Indus-Sarasvat� civilization, its infusion with the idea of sexual union (mithuna) goes back at least to the Ch�ndogya UpaniSad. In subsequent Pur�nic mythology, OMk�ra divides into a mating couple of elephants that reunite to form the god GaNeza (if my memory of Wendy isn’t playing tricks with me here...). In the glyph for OMk�ra, the ‘bowl with the modaka’ is called the bindu (‘point’ ) which is also the Sanskrit word for what Alice Getty euphemistically calls the ‘germ of life’ (which does not exclude the metaphysical meanings related to ‘sound’ as in n�da, bindu, kal�, etc.)

 What then is the relation between sexuality and autonomy that have been condensed into the single figure of GaNeza, the embodiment of AUM? If the root cause of bondage and all its discontents is eros—that in Freud’s pessimistic materialist view of the human organism, civilization would never be able to escape—then tantricism affirms freedom only by diving into its depths (like the serpent Ahir-Budhnya?) and transmuting its ‘unconscious’ nature by illuminating its darkness with the light of Consciousness (Cit). Whether this amounts to a rejection of incest, or the violation of this fundamental taboo upon which all societies are founded (and upon which L�vi-Strauss builds his entire ‘anthropological’ edifice), or rather the ‘neutralization’ of its invisible hold upon the psyche through its inward (symbolic) assumption...you are free to pick your choice!

Thanks to Rajan for bringing some clarity into this discussion by throwing his ‘humanist’ spanner into Loga’s metaphysical works...

Sunthar

P.S. The problem with Courtright’s ‘father-castrates-son’ interpretation of the broken-tusk is that Bhairava also decapitates his father Brahm�...

 

[rest of this thread at Is Lord Ganesha an ‘African’ God? Yes, in the same sense that Picasso’s art is ‘primitive’!]

 

 


Subject:  Re: Good Taste, Bad Taste, Hindu Taste - why are art historians more deserving of GaNeza’s (sweet) favor (modakas)?

From:  Ram Varmha
Date:  Wed Nov 5, 2003  11:19 am

 

Dr. Loganathan,

Your explanation of the shape of Ganesha’s body is partly true. Actually, it is the entire body of Ganesh that is considered to be in the form of OM. This would be obvious, if one looks at the form (roopam) of a sitting Ganapathi. Ganesha is worshipped as Para Brahman, Who is eternal and attributeless. Om (Pranava) is the sacred Universal/Cosmic sound associated with Para Brahman. A famous prayer to Ganapathi goes like this:

 “Omkara Roopam Ganesham Bhajema,
Pranava Swaroopam Ganesham Bhajema,
Para Brahma Roopam Ganesham Bhajema”.

Regards,

Ram

 



“Dr. K.Loganathan” wrote:

 

[Loga’s full post at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Abhinavagupta/message/1222]



Dear Thurairaja

4. This is what Siva CURES by replacing the human head of such a victim with
elephant head. But why the elephant head?

The elephant head is a natural object that comes closest to resembling the
shape of Ongkaram and for which reason Ganapati is the Muulaathara Muurtti, the
Icon that regulates the Siddhies and Buddhies. When the normal head is replaced
with the elephant head what happens is the transmutation of the personality of
the son into one who would be dominated in the head i.e. in thinking about
METAPHYSICAL matters and as prompted by Ongkaram, the Primordial Logos.

This means that when the son becomes Metaphysical, he becomes autonomous and
frees himself from being a victim of his mother’s substitution behavior, an
irrational clinging onto him instead of her husband and which is the proper
thing to do. The Om, even in the crude form of an elephant head, provides the
metaphysical illuminations that would destroy the abnormal attachment and make
him function as an individual on his own right and push ahead in his
metaphysical sojourn and enjoy more and more real freedom. This also restores
the Mother and puts her back with the authentic relationship between a man and
woman and which remains essentially sexual till the ardhanar� [androgyne] icon form is
attained and the anma [�tm� = ‘Self’] is transmuted to that shape.

Loga

[response to Rajan’s post at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Abhinavagupta/message/1218]

 

[My comments are on the following RISA-L exchange on the cover photo of Courtright’s book]

Subject:  Naked Ganesha cavorting on the cover of (withdrawn) Motilal Banarsidas publication - is Indian culture becoming ‘infantilized’?

From:  Sunthar Visuvalingam
Date:  Wed Nov 5, 2003; 10:35 pm [Abhinava msg #1229]

 

“Amori [sic] University Professor Paul Courtright’s book - ‘Ganesha, Lord of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings’ - contains not only a naked depiction of the popular Hindu deity on the cover but also contains reprehensible misrepresentation of facts about Him,” Shiv Sena Delhi unit Vice-President Abhimanyu Gulati complained in his letter. The letter alleges that the author has included “fictitious accounts of Lord Ganesha in the book which is also embellished with a naked, obscene photograph” of the deity. “This is an affront to popular Hindu sensibility and an assault on the Hindu religion, which cannot be tolerated by us,” Mr Gulati said. The Shiv Sena leader also pointed out that it was not the first incident of its kind in the US. “Earlier also, attempts have been made to depict Lord Ganesh on footwear and toilet seats, in an apparent attempt to present the Hindu religion in a poor light.” Mr Gulati said another outrage against the Hindu feeling was committed in Canada where a newspaper published a naked photograph of Goddess Durga. “We, therefore, appeal to you to ensure that the academician’s publication is immediately withdrawn from circulation,” he said in his letter to the US President.

At home as a kid in Kuala Lumpur, there was tall cupboard with vertical mirror the bottom half of which was occupied by a lovely picture of the naked Baby Krishna seated on a lotus leaf with his foot pulled up so that he could keep merrily sucking on his big toe. It has never occurred to me (till now...) nor to any one else in the family nor to (even Chinese and Muslim) visitors that there might be something ‘indecent’ about this portrayal. You see infants crawling around nude all over India, and it is no doubt such a heart-warming sight that has inspired such an icon of the Baby GaNeza (Pillaiy�r). But even granted that our ‘Shiva Sena’ (Shiva’s Army) folk in metropolitan Bombay are far more ‘Victorian’ in their sensibilities than the lewd (zRng�raNa...) hosts (gaNa) of their P�zupata forbears, have we become so obtuse as to miss the point here?

 Indeed, what was the point of splashing such an (admittedly) atypical image of the God of Wisdom on the cover of a book that purports, through a ‘psychoanalysis’ (of an elephant?), to draw sweeping generalizations on the (dysfunctional?) Hindu family that even Christians find objectionable? Regardless of what we think of the Shiva Sena (and ‘fascists’ like V.S. Naipaul who have spoken up for them...), can ‘Indologists’ who are unable (or unwilling?) to read (not merely) between the lines of the above statement, be entrusted with interpreting our culture?

Sunthar


Subject: [RISA-L] Naked Picture

From: Lance Nelson 

Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2003 08:10:48 -0800

Re the cover of the MLBD edition of Paul Courtright’s Ganesha book, I have seen similarly revealing “naked” images of the baby Krishna dancing. Is this depiction of Ganesh likewise part of the tradition?

Lance

----------------------

Lance Nelson

Theology & Religious Studies

University of San Diego


Subject: Re: [RISA-L] Naked Picture

From: Swami Tyagananda 

Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 12:08:33 -0500

 

Lance, this is the first time in my life that I saw the image/picture of the naked Ganesha. Which is not to say that Paul Courtright’s book has invented it. But a naked Ganesha is certainly not a “tradition” the way a naked baby Krishna is part of the popular culture expressed through songs, pictures and images.


Swami Tyagananda
Vedanta Society
Boston


Subject: Re: [RISA-L] Naked Picture

From: Patrick Olivelle 

Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 11:26:20 -0500

Indeed, I have a bronze statue of a naked baby Ganesha in the crawling position, right next to my baby Krishna statue in the same position! This was bought in Pune twenty-five years ago.

Patrick


 

Subject: Re: [RISA-L] Naked Picture

To: “RISA Academic Discussion List” 

From: “jkirk” 

Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 12:17:59 -0700

 

Yes, well nowadays one cannot even take photos of one’s own naked babies

without being turned into the police as a child molester by the persons

developing the films. This is here.....not in India.

JK

[Joyce’s response, along with visual commentary, to my post on the discussion above – check out the photo]

Subject:  To Cavort or Not To Cavort...You Be The Judge

From:  Lady Joyce
Date:  Thu Nov 6, 2003;  10:59 am [Abhinava msg #1231 – thread presented in reverse order]

Much like pornography,

 as defined by the US Supreme Court,

“you know it when you see it”

 

http://www.omshaantih.com/Courtcavort.html

 

Ganesha saranam

saranam Ganesha...

Joyce

 


Subject:  On the infantilization and ‘nazification’ of Hindu culture - a picture is worth a thousand words!

From:  Sunthar Visuvalingam
Date:  Fri Nov 7, 2003; 6:53 pm [Abhinava msg #1240 – check out the appended posts from the RISA-L list]

 

Hello “Lady Joyce”,

Thanks for the link to the lovely image of the toe-sucking Baby Krishna that ought to have accompanied my post on the GaNeza cavorting on the cover of the withdrawn Motilal Banarsidas book (that Antonio, below, has now obligingly posted on the RISA-L list). However, the one that adorned our home didn’t have any clothes on (though retaining some ornaments like the peacock-feather) and not in the sort of pose that might have been assumed by a Michelangelo sculpture intended to grace the Vatican. Nor was it as ‘provocative’ as Courtright’s GaNeza.

 When I asked “is Indian culture becoming infantilized?,” I chose my wording carefully to suggest that to some extent Indians were indeed beginning to live up to the stereotyped image(s) being projected upon them, just as Muslims the world over are now starting to identify themselves with Al Qaida (itself largely a co-creation of American foreign policy...), and the “black is beautiful” movement here has internalized, through defiance, suburban white stereotypes of inner city culture (and ‘delinquent gypsies’?). How is it that American specialists of Islam bend over backwards, even after 9/11 (and perhaps rightly so?), to dissociate ben Laden from the Quran (despite its conditional advocacy of jihad), whereas the Indologists have no hesitation in plastering the Nazi manifesto onto the iconography of GaNeza and reading back its ideology into (Krishna’s role in) the Bhagavad G�t� (despite the fact that the same Song of God has also inspired apostles of non-violence like Gandhi)?

 Glad to have you with us!

 

Sunthar

 

[rest of this thread at Rabbi Shabazi’s attempt to hijack the Roma heritage - is Orientalism a form of identity-theft?]

 

[Check out Joyce’s response at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Abhinavagupta/message/1244]


Subject: [RISA-L] Vinayak [Chaturvedi] on Vinayaka

To:  RISA-L 

From: Shrinivas Tilak

Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2003 17:03:26 +0000

 

Paul Courtright wrote: 

“were I writing that book today I would, hopefully, be more aware of how it might be read by some Hindu readers in both India and its diasporas... I hope we will think carefully about the methodological applications of the sorts of concerns Professor Rambachan articulates and develop more nuanced hermeneutical approaches to our research and writing. Indeed, this might [be] one threshold to which Ganesha is leading us.”

This should be one positive outcome of the present controversy. Those who have read Vinayak Chaturvedi’s article “Vinayak and me: Hindutva and the politics of naming” (Social History, vol. 28, no 2 (May 2003): 155-173) will agree that such rethinking has been long overdue.

I particularly found the cover illustration of Social History of that number very offensive. The illustration is by James Ferguson which first appeared in the Weekend Edition of the Financial Times of May 4, 2002. It shows a very mean looking seated Ganesha wearing Nazi style boots. In one hand he carries a staff which looks like a stop sign with a Christian cross. A line runs through it striking the cross. Across from this sign at the bottom left is Ganesha’s cushion. It has a star and crescent sign on it with the end of Ganesha’s ‘angavastra’ running through it (and crossing it out as it were). The fist of another hand is tightly closed ready to hit. The palm of the third hand is open and about to strike. By the side of Ganesha lies an open book showing a page with the swastika.

Shrinivas Tilak

 


Subject: Re: [RISA-L] Judge the book by its cover?

To:  RISA-L 

From:  Antonio de Nicol�s 

Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 14:55:02 EST

Here it is:

http://www.omshaantih.com/I%20rest%20my%20case.html 

and now that you know yath� icchasi tath� kuru (do as you wish) [from Krishna’s concluding lines to Arjuna in the Bhagavad G�t� - SV].

 

Subject:  Celibacies, sexualities, and Yogic eros

From:  Stuart Sovatsky
Date:  Fri Nov 7, 200311:59 am [Abhinava msg #1237]

 

I have found it helpful to consider that the term “sexuality” refers to the multitude of erotic practices and interpretive concepts pertaining mainly to the capacities awakened via (what we call) “genital puberty.” The various modes of celibacy (brahmacarya, eunuchism, iconic ardha-n�ri androgyny) point to less appreciated (at least since Freud and the ensuing language of “sexual liberation”) puberties of thymus-heart, spine (kundalini, tumo, ntum, thxiasi num), and pineal (with its light-generating, bliss-inducing, proven to be rejuvenating secretions: melanin/melatonin and endorphin: soma-amrita.)

I believe that all spiritual traditions that speak of states of (embodied) consciousness that are filled with light, love-bliss, immortality are fathoming inklings of these “other” puberties, which, like adolescent genital puberty, entail profound changes in identity- sense, gender-sense, purpose-of-life-sense, hormonal production, postgenital bodily tumescences (spinal uju kaya, hypoglossal khecari mudra, celibate-ithyphallic tumescences), potentials for immortality (via fertility, via extreme Yogic longeivty, or “soul- identification.”)

What offends us regarding a genitalized (cover-photo of) Ganesha or a Freudian interpretation of Indian icons is that they stick these Beings who are manifesting these “other puberties” back into their favored contexts and hermeneutics of genital puberty. Thus, the (postgenital) mysteries of ardha-n�ri, urdhva-retas, amrita, the mudras of kundalini (and of course) ithyphallic Sivas or Ganeshas get masked and lost once more behind the bold, yet false, confidence of Psychoanalytic “truth.” Foucault saw this and fashioned his concept of ars erotica to be able to view more accurately (culture-syntonically) such post-Freudian (postgenital?) mysteries of body/soul and the traditions that map them.

Stuart Sovatsky

Subject:  Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability

From:  “mihira2ooo” <[email protected]>
Date:  Mon Nov 10, 20035:10 pm [Abhinava msg #1260]

 

Just thought I would pass along a communication received from a colleague. Commentary and my own letter to follow.

 **********************************************************

Mr. Ramesh Jain Motel Benares Bookstore Delhi

 

Dear Mr. Jain,

I deeply regret your recent decision discontinue publication of Paul Courtright’s book on the pagan God Ganesha. Employing psychoanalytical methods is an old tradition in the English speaking academia: but how can an unwashed coolie like you know about such things? These methods reveal a great deal about the person doing the analysis, much like a Roshak test. That is another little psycho-babble concept that you don’t know about.

So let me explain it to you. I will speak very slowly for your benefit. Paul Courtright’s limp phallus imagery is clearly derived from his own lack of fertility as a scholar. He tends to see limp phalluses everywhere. In fact, the limp phallus is a good symbol for the state of Indology in general. That is why we are all obsessed with phalluses, limp or otherwise. Where would we be as a field without our little limp phalluses? You have seriously tarnished your good name (in my opinion) by missing such an obvious point. It is our right as scholars to publish anything we like. It is your duty to publish everything we ask you that has been peer reviewed. No real (i.e., European) publisher ever considers the marketability of a book. Am I speaking slow enough for you?

May I ask for the current status of the books I sent to you to publish because I could not find a real (i.e., European) publisher for them? Are AT PLAY WITH PAUL and WENDY: GODDESS OF INDIA still in print? I know I am striking terror into your heart, by threatening in my devilishly clever and subtle way, to withdraw these books from your care. Take that and add that to your curry!

yours sincerely

John Yes, Holy

The one and Only

 *********************************************************************

Cheers

MW

===================================================================== = =====

Michael Parody Witzel

witzel@f... www.fas.hahvahd.edu/~parodywitzel/mpwpage.htm

Dept. of Asanskrit & Anti-Indian Studies,

Hahvahd University

Bow to No One Street

Cambridge MA 02138, USA

phone: 1- 617 - 555 3295 (telepathy & messages

 -------------------------------------------------------------------- -- -----

my direct line from God almighty (via Martin Luther) : 617- 555- 2990

[response to Antonio’s post at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Abhinavagupta/message/1209]

Subject:  "Telling the Indians what they really are as opposed to who they think they are" - is Indology really ‘psychoanalysis’ in disguise?

From:  Sunthar Visuvalingam
Date:  Sat Nov 8, 2003  2:06 pm [Abhinava msg #1243 – order of thread has been reversed]

 

This "storm" over Paul Courtright’s book is baffling, given that it was originally published by Oxford University Press in 1985, almost twenty years ago! A point that has not been made in the conversation. I assume that it came to the attention of certain people only when a re-print was issued by Motilal.

Patrick Olivelle, "Re: The scholar’s accountability," 3 Nov 2003 (to RISA-L)

 

"Ganesa, is a son of the great god Siva, and many of his abilities are comic or absurd extensions of the lofty dichotomies of his father. [...] Ganesa’s potbelly and his childlike love for sweets mock Siva’s practice of austerities, and his limp trunk will forever be a poor match for Siva’s erect phallus." Paul Courtright as cited in

["Asian Art in The Walters Art Gallery: A Selection," by Hiram W. Woodward, Jr. Publisher: The Trustees of The
Walters Art Gallery, 600 North Charles Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21201, page 20.], courtesy of Rajiv Malhotra

 

Though I too find some of the citations from ‘GaNeza’ in the petition quite atrocious—not because the wealth of symbolic connections he embodies are false or illegitimate but because they have been worded by his American ‘advocate’ in such a tendentious manner—it is wholly true that the psychoanalytic approach to culture was not invented by Courtright but goes back to the founder himself. In fact, not only did Freud’s pioneering attempt to formulate the universal ‘unconscious’ rely heavily on what he knew of the anthropology of totem and taboo in ‘primitive’ societies, he went on to risk the wrath of his co-religionists (especially at a time when the Judaic faith was already being demonized as a prelude to its extirpation...) by applying his theoretical model not only to the monotheistic foundations of his own Jewish childhood shaped by Mosaic law, but also, and above all, to the self-destructive malaise of modern man to which he could see no clear and definitive resolution. Despite the Western ethnocentrism that inevitably informs his theoretical model, like those of so many ‘Jewish’ intellectuals both before and after him, the thrust of Freud’s insights and thinking was not only revolutionary in its implications but also subversive of reigning paradigms.

The problem with (especially American) Indologists, those self-styled ‘disciples’ who often seem to be confused on account of frequenting too many competing gurus (ma�tres � penser), is that India seems to contribute very little, if anything at all, towards critically extending, deepening and reformulating psychoanalytic theory (let alone, the practice...). An instructive ‘exception’, in this regard, is Jeffrey M. Masson to whose book on the ‘sentiment of peace’ (z�nta-rasa), I owe my happy discovery, in the mid-to-late-seventies, of Abhinavagupta’s philosophy of aesthetics, and thus eventually of his tantric worldview. Starting with the spiritual zeal of a new convert to Advaita Ved�nta, he studied Sanskrit both at Harvard and with Indian pandits in Poona. Gradually confronted with the bewildering complexity of Hinduism as it is lived (like myself for a long time in Benares...), he became disillusioned and wrote, as an exercise in self-exorcism, the Oceanic Feeling that attributes the origins of the religious sentiment in ancient India to a Freudian ‘escape’ into the maternal womb. Consequently, armed with ‘Oedipal’ knowledge of Hindu mythology, this self-proclaimed Don Juan embraced psychoanalysis with undiminished proselytizing zeal and cast his charming spell over Anna (the daughter of) Freud herself. Unfortunately, the Hindu ghost seems to have kept haunting him for he then came up with the brilliant ‘insight’ that what was really central to psychoanalysis was the ‘seduction of the daughter’ (Brahm�’s incest with Sarasvat�) that our venerable Fraud would have deliberately covered up (because he couldn’t face up to the truth of his own daughter?). Naturally, the psychoanalytic mafia, who were a far more tightly-knit group (what with all the ‘initiatic’ transmissions and transferences...) than our RISA-L ‘assembly’ (sabh�) of contemporary anglo-brahmins, promptly excommunicated him from the profession of faith. Now, in retirement, Masson has been ferreting out ‘anti-Semitism’ in (particularly Indological) scholarship, with occasional bonanzas of buried treasure in folks with German-sounding names, like Heinrich Zimmer (whose deep sympathies for Indian culture are thereby also rendered naturally suspect...). Would it be going too far to suggest that this personal itinerary, presented here in the raw, might shed some valuable light on the inner dynamics of the vocation of the Indologist? 

Kathleen Erndl, on the contrary, has published a remarkable study entitled "Rapist or Bodyguard, Demon or Devotee? Images of Bhairo in the Mythology and Cult of VaiSNo Dev�" (in Hiltebeitel’s Criminal Gods), where she explores the meaning of Bhairava’s decapitation by the Goddess, after he pursues her through a cave in the mountain at Jammu that is explicitly identified with her ‘virgin’ womb (garbh-joon). What better confirmation of Masson’s thesis on the hidden wellspring (a local version of Mother Gang� is also integral to this pilgrimage circuit) of the Indian urge to spiritual emancipation. Erndl’s hermeneutic however resists the temptation to psychoanalyze and focuses on how these meanings are reworked into the two different faces of bhakti, the orthodox VaiSNava attitude of purity, chastity and devotion, versus the radical Tantric one of violating socio-religious taboos. For contextualizing the latter, she refers instead to the indigenous Indian traditions of transgressive sacrality as conceptualized in our own contributions to the same volume (Elizabeth had, in fact, dropped the section of her own paper dealing with this very popular pilgrimage in Kashmir, that we had also undertaken, so as to let Kathleen take full ‘ownership’ of the topic...). It seems to me that any sincere attempt at interpreting and ‘re-presenting’ the religious life of any community has to start with the (even if often mutually conflicting) self-representations of the (variety of) worshippers themselves and then draw upon the entire resources of the native hermeneutic tradition(s), both as made explicit in the relevant textual corpus and as implicit in the entire symbolic system, before attempting to introduce external methodologies (with their own cultural and invariably ‘ethnocentric’ baggage...) to clarify whatever remains obscure. Otherwise, the larger (especially Western) community of scholars is denied the possibility of evaluating for themselves whether we are doing GaNeza justice.

Is psychoanalysis, even assuming that it is being ‘correctly’ applied as an ‘explanatory’ (rather than ‘interpretative’) framework, the real culprit in distorting the otherwise well-intentioned and legitimate discipline called ‘Indology’? Foucault has shown how the whole (trihedral) framework of the ‘human’ sciences is actually constantly ‘advancing’ towards the ‘unconscious’: thus, (South Asian colonial) history can claim to have unearthed the (Harappan) roots of ‘Indian’ ethnicity to a people whose only ‘archaeology’ had consisted of digging into the yellowing pages of their Pur�nas; (Durkheimian) sociology reveals how the religious life of the (e.g., hierarchical Newar) community is explicable in terms of conflicts and rules that are mediated through rituals and refracted within mythology; positivist psychology armed with sophisticated mapping tools (like fMRI) claims to know more than the yogins themselves of their ‘paranormal’ experiences because it can look directly into the underlying physics (not to speak of the physiology) of their brains; linguistics (especially in its ‘deconstructionist’ prolongations...) revels in demonstrating that (not just) Indians do not even ‘own’ the meaning of what they say for the signification of their words derives from an invisible semiotic system that has been deposited all around, and despite, their field of awareness. We, the ‘subjects’ (or should I say ‘objects’?) of all these (often overlapping and conflicting) disciplines, are presumed, like Freud’s patients, to be ignorant of who we are. The only real difference is that these (themselves insecurely ‘founded’) ‘sciences’ approach the ‘unconscious’ backwards as it were whereas psychoanalysis is, by definition, a direct assault on what we do not (and cannot ever fully?) know about ourselves. It is therefore not at all surprising if ‘Indologists’ of every stripe and whatever (in-)competence are tempted to indulge in a ‘psychoanalysis’ of sorts. After all, the fact of the matter is that Indian religious traditions themselves (whether Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Muslim, etc.) affirm that we do not know what we really are. This is why Indians (and increasing numbers of less pretentious Westerners) have been willing to surrender their jobs, wealth, family, their very ego and even their lives (like Naciketas descending into the realm of Yama) to a guru who could restore to them their true identity, their (Non-) Self! What has been implicitly challenged in this controversy is whether the subhuman GaNeza represents the collective Hindu ‘patient’ just begging to be diagnosed by rich all-knowing Americans, who have just graduated from ‘playing doctor’ (with their brothers and sisters?): after all, like (the kuTilaka of) that other infantile ‘polymorphous pervert’ (duSTa-baTuka—the clown of the Sanskrit theater whom he so resembles), his ‘flaccid trunk’ seems to been trumpeting forth his right to court (and not just from Courtright!) a likewise ‘crooked’ (vakra!) treatment!

Patrick Olivelle, a respected scholar of Hindu monasticism, religious law and other subjects besides, had struggled single-handedly in the early 80s, against the apathy of the Hindi diaspora, to establish the Chair of Hindu Studies at Indiana University (so much so that when the Tagore position finally materialized, he was originally the candidate of choice...). As such, his bewilderment, more than anyone else’s, deserves a satisfactory answer. The book started receiving adverse publicity here primarily after its ‘Freudian’ (?) speculations on GaNeza’s ‘flaccid phallus’ were reproduced as ‘gospel’ truth in the catalog of the Walters Art Gallery (cited above). It was an Indian Christian, Alex Alexander, who took it upon himself to bring the matter to the attention of Rajiv Malhotra, who consequently lodged, at this Abhinavagupta forum, his message of protest with the subject-heading "Paul Courtright’s limp phallus enters US museums" (26 June 2003). No one, including myself, responded to this veritable ‘can of worms’ perhaps because of an intuitive apprehension of the complexity of the underlying ‘civilizational’ issues and dread of the possible ramifications. The only exception was a reasoned debunking from Carl Vadivelle Belle of (the unstated ‘racist’ underpinnings of) such "wild" psychoanalysis (that Freud himself might have found most objectionable...) that was, however, addressed privately to Rajiv and myself. It is only when the seething controversy over the book boiled over into the online petition, that I have begun releasing my own reflections, dating back from my Ph.D. research in Benares (i.e., well before the publication of Courtright’s book in 1985), into the public domain.

In short, this is a ‘civilizational conflict’ that has been in the making since a very long time (since when?)...anyone who attempts to pin the blame on a single individual, whether Courtright or Rajiv, or makes it a problem simply conjured up by either of the ‘warring’ parties (that it would be likewise simplistic to reduce to Hindus versus the West...), is in no position to help us get out of this spiraling mess...

May Lord GaNeza grant us the wisdom to grasp his true nature and thereby partake in the enjoyment of his modakas (kh�b mast raho)!

Sunthar

 

 

[rest of this thread at On the infantilization and ‘nazification’ of Hindu culture - a picture is worth a thousand words!

 

Rajiv Malhotra, Paul Courtright’s "limp phallus" enters US museums (26 June 2003)

 

Jeffrey Masson and Abhinavagupta on aesthetic vis-�-vis spiritual experience (24 Nov 2001)]

 


Subject: Re: [RISA-L] Title VI funding

To: "RISA Academic Discussion List"

From: [Joanna Kirkpatrick]

Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 09:40:37 -0700

Kurtz’s website is revealing: http://www-hoover.stanford.edu/bios/kurtz.html

He’s at the Hoover Library at Stanford; he’s also a contributing editor to

_National Review_ online. I always had reservations about his thesis in _All

the Mothers Are One_. This sort of reduction seems strange if more broadly

applied, e.g., All the Leaders are One, All the Children are One, etc.

Joanna Kirkpatrick

 


Subject: [RISA-L] Title VI funding

To: RISA Academic Discussion List

From: Leslie Orr 

Date: Fri, 07 Nov 2003 09:24:11 -0500

 

Thanks to Tim Cahill for bringing the proposed legislation concerning Title VI funding to our attention. This is indeed quite a troubling situation. As a development unfolding at the same time as the series of attacks on Paul Courtright and his book, I find it particularly noteworthy (not to say rather astonishing) to see the leading role being played by Stanley Kurtz in mobilizing Congressional support for the policing of area studies in the academy. This is the same Stanley Kurtz who authored the book _All the Mothers are One_, published in 1992, which offered a psychoanalytic perspective on Hindu goddess mythology. Kurtz’s book attracted considerable scholarly attention and critique, but I do not believe that it was found objectionable by members of the Hindu community, either in North America or in India. I wonder if any of you can shed light on the turn of events that brought about the transformation of Professor Kurtz into a vociferous anti-Saidian and prophet of "patriotic scholarship."

 

best wishes --Leslie Orr


 

Subject: [RISA-L] proposal, re: Courtright lila

To: risa-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

From: Frederick Smith

Date: Fri, 7 Nov 2003 00:22:28 -0600

 

RISA-jan�h

I have been looking recently at Michael Brown’s new book, Who Owns Native

Culture (Harvard Univ. Press, 2003). As Constantina pointed out, this

proprietary stance towards the study of religion is not something indigenous to

recent South Asia. Brown’s book (reviewed recently in the NYTimes) addresses

Native american religion, though the ramifications clearly go much further. To

set our own situation in a broader academic context, I would like to suggest a

series of interrelated panels at next year’s AAR, dealing with these issues in

different regional and conceptual areas of religious discourse (e.g., South

Asian religion, Japanese or African religions, gay and lesbian issues, etc.). I

have no idea how to go about organizing this, but it seems like a timely

undertaking. Maybe Philip or Tracy, the heads of the RISA and Hinduism steering

committees can communicate such a thought to those in parallel positions or just

up the AAR bureaucracy, depending, of course, on whether they (and others) think

this is a good and feasable idea...

Fred Smith


Subject: Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability

To: "RISA Academic Discussion List" 

From: Kathleen Erndl

Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 12:58:48 -0500

 

Thank you Patrick, for a breath of fresh air! Whatever the merits or

demerits of certain types of analysis and interpretation may be, they ought

to be debated in an informed, scholarly (and dare I suggest) civil manner.

There will always be differences of opinion about the best way to approach

religious texts and phenomena. I would bet that the vast majority of

petition signers and other opponents have not actually read the book in its

entirety. If they had, they would realize that the quotations have been

taken out of context, and that the book as a whole employs a variety of

methods and approaches (historical, textual, contextual, etc.); the

psychoanalysis is only a small part of a more comprehensive study.

I have always enjoyed the collegiality and supportive atmosphere of RISA

and RISA-L, even when there are areas of disagreement.

Kathleen

Kathleen M. Erndl

Associate Professor

Department of Religion

Florida State University

Tallahassee, FL 32306-1520


Subject: Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability

To: "RISA Academic Discussion List"

From: [Joanna Kirkpatrick]

Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 09:41:22 -0700

 

Yes, the list is very long indeed, including such scholars as Carstairs on

the Rajputs, much of Doniger’s and Kakar’s work, many many others. There is

absolutely nothing new in Freudianizing, and so I wonder where de Nicholas

has been all these years.

Joanna Kirkpatrick


Subject: Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability

From: Herman Tull

Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2003 11:27:02 -0500

For those of you who may not be aware of this, Prof. Courtright’s discussion of Ganesha’s psychosexual history is hardly without precedent.  Edmund Leach raised these issues long ago in his "Pulleyar and the Lord Buddha" in Psychoanalysis and the Psychoanalytic Review (1962): 80-102; they have been repeated by many other scholars.

 

Herman Tull

 


Subject: Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability

To: RISA Academic Discussion List, Patrick Olivelle

From: Douglas Berger 

Date: Mon, 03 Nov 2003 10:22:48 -0600 (CST)

 

Hi all,

I completely agree with Patrick’s post. When we put our

scholarly, and sometimes not-so-scholarly, findings in the public

forum through publication, those findings are subject to

the criticism, correction, and judgment of the community

of experts in our field. The fact that Freud’s, Courtright’s

or anyone else’s evaluation of the religious phenomena they

study may or may not be grossly inaccurate, historically, socially,

psychologically, religiously, or in any other way, does not vitiate

anyone’s right to put ideas forward. In a democratic exchange

of views, the right to speak is paid for by the price of provoking disagreement and inviting critique. Scholars do indeed have special responsibilities, but they also have the right to

speak and be wrong, just like everyone else. Taking away that

right from one threatens the rights of all, and taking away

the right to speak only eliminates the responsibility for what is said. Should Courtright’s representations of Ganesha be inaccurate, then these will be discredited by his peers,

and he will be held intellectually responsible for his views. I am saddened that anyone should be censored for putting views of any kind forward, and while I understand MB’s stated decision about the book in a certain way, I am equally saddened by that. Thanks,

Doug

 


Subject:  Re: "Telling the Indians what they really are as opposed to who they think they are" - is Indology really ‘psychoanalysis’ in disguise?

From:  Dr. K. Loganathan
Date:  Sat Nov 8, 20036:47 pm [Abhinava msg #1246]

 

Dear Sunthar

I am surprised to hear that psychoanalysis is dying out. I think it should be rephrased as: the Freudian Psychoanalysis is dying out ( but not without having influenced philosophy itself) On the basis of Agamic Psychology which is a modernization of the psychoanalysis available in Tamil Siddha and related literature, I have confronted Jungian Analytical Psychology in a number of essays the first of which is given below. The rest are available at the following address:

http://ulagank.tripod.com/psyreflect.htm

What the Indologists have to do is to deconstruct the psychoanalysis of Freud and Jung ( even though unlike Freud he was quite sympathetic towards Indian psychological thinking). I also believe that what I say below may also be agreeable to those studying Kashmir Shaivism or at least Siva Sutras.

 

Loga

[Loga’s complete post at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Abhinavagupta/message/1246]

 

Subject:  Forms of Siva

From:  Pathmarajah Nagalingam
Date:  Tue Nov 11, 2003; 11:14 am [Abhinava msg #1267]

In our scriptures we are introduced to 64 forms of Siva; for each of which there is a meaning and concept behind that form, as well as a Puranic myth as to how they came to be. These are the traditional icons of Siva to be installed and worshipped in the temples and homes, not any other.

It is curious that none of these forms depict a penis, erect or flaccid. If ‘regeneration’, ‘creation’ and ‘union’ are such important themes, why, they would have been depicted in a majority of the icons of Siva. But that is not the case. NOT ONE depicts that (a penis)!

The same with the 32 traditional forms of Ganesha. NOT ONE shows Him with an erect or flaccid penis!

Anyone?


Regards all.

 

[response??? to O you simpleton! This is your ‘Harvard alumni’ (= �rya) svAbhinava - don’t you know the crookedness of his speech?]


Subject: Re: Why are all the traditional (castrated?) forms of Shiva and Ganesha depicted without a penis? The scholar’s accountability!

From: Anthony Appleyard

To: Akandabaratam

Sent: Wednesday, November 12, 2003 6:54 AM

 

Pathmarajah Nagalingam wrote (Subject: Forms of Siva):-

In our scriptures we are introduced to 64 forms of Siva;... It is curious that none of these forms depict a penis,

Perhaps in some cases the God or Goddess is assumed to be wearing a close-fitting garment which hides his/her genitalia.

And there are likely some people, as among many cultures, who do not want to see realistic pictures of genitalia.


Subject:  Re: Why are all the traditional (castrated?) forms of Shiva and Ganesha depicted without a penis? The scholar’s accountability!

From:  Dr. K. Loganathan

Date:  Tue Nov 11, 2003; 9:51 pm [Abhinava msg #1272]

 

Dear Anthony

I think you are right but only partially. The close-fitting garments which
only suggest genitalia but do not depict them explicitly is only part of the
story. There is a fundamental difference in ART as approached in India and
the West. I see it as follows.

The Icons are Double-Texts, representations in which the Deep Structure is
made also present within the Surface Structure and because of which there
are transformations of the natural itself. For example in Greek sculptures
the veins of the muscular arms are shown very clearly while in Indian
sculptures including in the Buddhist sculptures of Ghandara school where
there was Greek influence, we do not find this. The muscular contortions are
NOT depicted but instead we have only smooth contours in that also the
spiritual dimensions of Santhi and so forth. The Inner World of spiritual
depths are made VISIBLE through the flesh with such transmutations.

The same happens when the genitalia are covered up and their presence is
only indicated but NOT shown in the best of Icons. The physical sexuality
is backgrounded in order to show LOVE (may still be sexual) between the
deities. When in some sculptures Civa gazes with LOVE at Uma, what we have
is LOVE and in which sexuality is transmuted to spirituality.

This is also the difference between the Kamattup Paal of TiruvaLLuvar and
the Kama Sutra or Kokkoha Sastras which deal with the acrobatics of coitus.
In KuRal what we have is LOVE with sexual desires not suppressed but
backgrounded, made less important than Love.

I think this hermeneutic notion that Indian sculptures are Double-Texts
while the Western is simply the mono-texts that depicts only the physical,
may be the real difference between the two cultures and because of which
there are many misunderstanding.

I shall develop this theme later.

Loga


From:  Sunthar Visuvalingam
Date:  Tue Nov 11, 2003; 11:54 am
Subject:  Why are all the traditional (castrated?) forms of Shiva and Ganesha depicted without a penis? The scholar’s accountability!

 

I think Prof. John Yes, Holy (The One and Only), has already largely answered your (typically Indian?) confusion on this matter...

 Enjoy,

 Sunthar

 

[rest of this thread at Michael Witzel, Re: [RISA-L] The scholar’s accountability]

Subject:  Identity problem: Hindu American or just Hindu? - Teaching Ganesha versus Worshipping Ganesha!

From:  Sunthar Visuvalingam
Date:  Fri Nov 21, 2003; 8:27 am [Abhinava msg #1336]

 

Up to a point, anyone can study non-boundary traditions, just like a man who never tasted ice cream could understand it to some extent by reading and interviewing people to get third-person accounts. So we cannot say that all external knowledge is false. But such a person does not have the experience of tasting it. Conversely, there are things that an outsider sees, which are not about the experiencing of it, but about how it comes across from the outside. That too is knowledge of a certain kind. How a pork-eater smells to others can only be known from the outside by others, as the man himself won’t know how others find his smell. So both inside and outside perspectives convey knowledge. It boils down to what one wants out of that knowledge. Another point is this: There are no real outsiders standing on neutral objective ground. One who is outside of Hinduism is inside of Christianity, or Marxism, or Feminism, or Eurocentrism, or whatever. Nobody is ideology and bias free. So one replaces the Hindu bias with a different kind of bias, but still it is not value-free or neutral as claimed to be by the scholars.

Rajiv Malhotra, RISA Lila - 2 - Limp Scholarship and Demonology (comment of Nov 20, 2003)

In his provocative (in the best sense of the term!) talk at the Divinity School last Thursday on “Make-Believe: Teaching Religion and Being Religious,” Prof. Paul J. Griffith made the case, that I fully endorsed, that it was about time that those who taught religion to undergraduates ‘came out of the closet’ by openly assuming their own personal faith (even if it were only in Freud!) instead of pretending that it didn’t exist or, worse still, didn’t matter to what they were teaching and the formative role they were playing in the still malleable minds of young Americans. He also pointed out that (not just Christian) students who were the most vociferous in championing their faith were often the least informed about its traditions and their significance (like many of the adult Hindus taking up arms in defense of Ganesha?).

After outlining the ongoing Ganesha controversy and the challenge it poses to his theses (that I personally found most welcome...), I concluded by asking whether the professor could simply remain ‘neutral’ by walking on a pedagogical tightrope between ‘objective’ descriptions (psychoanalysis says this about Ganesha, sociology this, and history that...you get the picture!) and the traditional representations of the faithful. Or should the ‘teacher’ assume his full responsibility (and just how many have the competence to live up to this calling?) by nudging his/her students to fresh perspectives that would go beyond, even while initially embracing (� la Hegel), these ‘civilizational’ oppositions? 

It seems to me that many a young ABCD (American-Born ‘Confused’ Dez� = Indian/Hindu) reveals far greater perspicacity as to what ‘Hinduism’ has been really all about than their more ‘informed’ adult counterparts, whether Indologist or Hindu.....

Enjoy!

Sunthar

 

[response to Kalyan’s post of Aditi Banerjee’s article at

 

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Abhinavagupta/message/1324]


Subject:  Re: Identity problem: Hindu American or just Hindu? - Teaching Ganesha versus Worshipping Ganesha!

From:  Raja Mylvaganam
Date:  Sun Nov 23, 2003; 3:44 am [Abhinava msg #1344]

 

The posts by Sunthar and Rajiv Malhotra on the teaching of religion in the U.S.A. may gain another perspective if seen in the context of a Theological School (Seminary) on the one hand, and the Department of Religion in a University on the other. In the former case students are taught how to foster and encourage their respective faith traditions. There is, of course, no single understanding of Christianity. There are, for example, 9 independent Christian seminaries, and countless other formal and informal religious groups that sell their particular brand of Christianity in Chicago alone. In some private universities which began as Church based institutions there is a fine balance between the Chapel and the Department of Religion. Two of the issues that separate them are trying to meet the requirements to receive Federal funds (separation of Church and State), and being subservient to the views of the more orthodox private contributors. University based theological schools (Harvard, Chicago, etc.) have inclined towards ‘subversion’ of faith. The right of Gays to be clergy and Emerson’s Divinity School Address are cases in point. Theological differences caused a split at the Harvard Divinity School which resulted in the formation of the Andover Newton Theological Seminary by the departing group.

It seems to me that the time has come for the establishment of a Hindu Theological School in the U.S.A. In the fine US tradition those who fund the institution can to a large degree and within the laws of the country dictate what is taught. If one is wealthy enough one can even lobby sufficient legislators to change the laws. I believe there is a sufficient number of wealthy Hindus in the U.S.A. who can associate (it is after all a nation of associations when all is said and done) to make this seminary a reality immediately.

There is a long history of Indian Hindu influence in the USA. Rammohun Roy and the Brahmo Samaj, Vivekananda, Meher Baba and many others have made, and continue to make an impression, in the U.S.A. More recently there have been many neo-hippy communities where an American Hinduism is flourishing with devotees taking names of Hindu gods (much like I was given by my parents). These American Hindus take their faith seriously even though it makes my mother, a 77 year old Ceylon Tamil Hindu, wince when I describe their practices! The point here is that the American approach to religion is one of ‘buyer beware’. It is really up to the students to choose the school they like, and jump through the hoops to secure admission. I agree that it is important for every migrant group to re-visit these questions and provide leadership. But one must be cognizant of the value in the USA, and in the context of the discussion here, the buyer and the person to be sold is the student. Most other efforts will do little good. As the Arabs say, “The dogs bark but the caravan moves on.”. The greater fear is that if we restrict free-thought, and I agree there are many attendant concerns, the solution may be worse than the problem. In any case I do not think we need take seriously those who claim that there is ‘objective truth’ in matters religious!

Rajan

[Part I / Part II / Part III]