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[Wendy Doniger’s review of David Gordon White, Kiss of the Yoginî: “Tantric Sex” in its South Asian Contexts,
was published under the title “Tantric Bodies” in the Times Literary Supplement in late May 2004;
an exact copy of
this review was posted to the
See also Amy M. Braverman's feature in the University of Chicago Magazine (Vol. 9 no. 2, Dec. 2004)
"The interpretation of gods: Do leading religious scholars err in their analysis of Hindu texts?"
and the ongoing dialogue at svAbhinava on
"Wendy Doniger and the Interpretation of Hindu Mythology: Krishna in the Mahâbhârata"
[The following thread in chronological (i.e., inverse) order—which consists of Rajiv’s preliminary critique followed by Jeffrey S. Lidke’s defense of White—serves to introduce Rajiv’s subsequent 3-part piece]
What is the 'political' agenda behind American studies of
South Asian Tantra?
(David White’s book undermines claims of Indian
Spirituality)
-----Original Message-----
From:
Sent:
To: openrisa@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [openrisa] Wendy, Tantra, BJP: What does scholarship have to do with
anything?
SUBJECT: Wendy, Tantra, BJP: What does scholarship have to do with
anything these days?
A new academic book that is sure to stir up controversy is "KISS OF THE YOGINI: "Tantric sex" in its South Asian context," by David Gordon White.
Wendy Doniger's glorifying review of it
(see: [http://www.the-tls.co.uk/this_week/story.aspx?story_id=2107312 - substituted link - SV])
demonstrates the "assembly-line process" by which "theories" get used to spin new "theories" by those enjoying power over distribution channels. (In this instance, my use of marketing metaphors will be tough to condemn because both White's book and Wendy's review of it use marketing metaphors.)
White's book's core thesis is that Tantra was intended as South Asian decadent sexuality, without spiritual purpose, and that this decadence was the result of sociological suffering of Indian subaltern (lower castes) in classical times.
However, he offers no textual proof of this (and
he is the one who should have the burden of proof, not his critics). Since his
thesis on Tantra claims to demolish centuries of writings by Kashmir Shaivites
and other thinkers from within the tradition, he asserts (without proof) that
scholars like
So once again, the natives are not to be trusted in their own interpretations, including their eminent thinkers who have been studied by westerners for centuries. Bottom line: Tantra is not a legitimate spiritual process.
Coming from one of Wendy's Children, this is not a surprise, but it raises other issues. A Kashmir Shaivism and Tantra scholar who finds this book "disgusting" in methodology, conclusion and demeaning tone, tells me privately that he does not believe that the pandits in India under whose feet White did his research since 20 years ago have any clue that this is how scholars (who once respected them with gifts and namaskars) have twisted their translations.
My main purpose in writing this short piece is to focus on Wendy's use of the book review for political purposes:
1)
Wendy simply gives the book the benefit of doubt without seriously
challenging its presuppositions – not a surprise. Her review in prestigious
journals facilitates the brand value and credibility of the book – that's how
the game is played. A new theory is born, namely, "Tantra == sex
only." Period.
2)
It was "Hindu chauvinists," Wendy and White claim,
who repackaged Tantra as spirituality. This was to make Hinduism look good.
Victorian values of the colonialists get "blamed," to make Wendy's
analysis appeal to Indian postcolonialist scholars. Furthermore, ideas that Tantra
as having a spiritual purpose was a fraudulent construction produced by
"Hindu nationalists," "fascists," "right-wingers"
and so forth, there would be a big market of gullible takers among Indian
intellectuals who (i) have virtually no knowledge of Sanskrit or its texts to
be able to inform themselves except via Westernized interpretations accessible in
English, and (ii) resonate with the anti-Hindutva politics.
3)
White does #1 above, and Wendy takes it to #2. So what do we
have here? Indians who continue to think of Tantra as spiritual are to be seen
as nationalists/right-wingers.
4)
Furthermore, Wendy cites Schweder's popular new theory that native
societies do not own their culture – again uncritically assumed by Wendy even
thought this is unproven and simply one point of view in an undecided debate.
She alleges that "Hindu diaspora" and other "Hindu right-wing
chauvinists" have claimed exclusive rights of their culture's
interpretation, whereas Schweder tells us that they have no such ownership rights.
5)
The process unfolding here illustrates the assembly-line of knowledge
production going through three "theories," each unproven and
arbitrarily selected out of the toolbox of pop-theories. Here are the three
stages: (I) White constructs his thesis that Tantra is sex- only and devoid of
any spiritual purpose. (II) Wendy adds that Hindu right-wingers removed the
sexuality in Tantra and fabricated that "Tantra == a spiritual
process." (III) Wendy then cites Schweder's unproven political position to
claim that this scholarship is being prevented by chauvinistic Hindus when in
fact nobody has ownership claim over a native culture.
6)
Implication: Nobody can dare challenge the White/Wendy scholarship
on the grounds of its lack of merit for fear that any challenger shall be a
branded a BJP chauvinist. What a defense strategy, indeed! What a tragedy for
the academy that it works!
7)
Per Z. Sardar, "the realities of [non-western
cultures]...are for sale in the supermarket of postmodern nihilism." What
White does is akin to a product manager introducing a new product in the postmodern
"bazaar of realities" (Sardar), and what Wendy does as follow-up is
to cut-and-paste, reconfigure and produce yet another derivative
"product", i.e. that claiming Tantra has spiritual purpose is a sign
of being a BJP member. The choice our youth have is to face more Hindu shame or
stop claiming Hindu identity.
8)
This merely strengthens my U-Turn Theory as yet another case
study in my database. White makes the U-Turn for reasons that I have not
uncovered. The stages may be summarized as follows.
9)
Stage 1 was when White studied Tantra with great respect, along
with many western followers of Swami Muktananda, using various Indian pandits.
10)
Stage 2 was by scholars repackaging it into some
"generic" psycho- spiritual theories in the guise of helping Hinduism
become more "universally accepted."
11)
Stage 3 was a bifurcation between two streams: those who
wanted to harvest Tantra and claim it based on "western science" made
careers by producing research in which the source tradition is hidden or
downplayed.
12)
The other branch of scholars went directly to stage 4: that
is White/Wendy's product management of mockery of Hinduism, along with a whole
army of scholars specializing in different aspects of mockery of Hinduism.
13)
Stage 5 is to neocolonize elitist Indians who only know
English- based Enlightenment and Post-Enlightenment "theories" and
who eat out of the western institutions' hands. (I shall defer going into my
"pets, patients and children theory" of how these Indians may be segmented.)
This is where the asymmetric power of western travel grants, visas, PhDs, jobs,
and stamps of approval are the carrots to buy out armies of stage 5 Indians -
who, ironically, like to see themselves as fighters on behalf of nativity
against western imperialism!
14)
Product managers are of two kinds, negative and positive: In
this example, White/Wendy are product managing the process of constantly burdening
Indian culture's symbols, traditions, rituals and leaders with negative associations.
In parallel, other product managers (not mentioned here) facilitate the
appropriation of Indic culture to embellish western cultural capital and soft
power.
This presents a political problem for Wendy's Children vis-à-vis Tibetan Buddhism. After all, that tradition shares Tantra with Hinduism, and Tantra is at the very heart of advanced Tibetan Buddhism. Hinduism is vast beyond Tantra, and would survive even in the worst case if Wendy's Children were to succeed in delegitimizing tantric spirituality. But Tibetan Buddhism is heavily dependent upon Tantra.
The fight back from Buddhist scholars is yet to begin and could produce interesting fireworks. They know very well that if the core thesis against Hindu Tantra becomes mainstream Buddhism would become vulnerable to similar attacks. Given Buddhism's clout in the intellectual world, Wendy's Children have been wise in focusing on the softer target of Hinduism.
Furthermore, in light of the above, one may see why recent RISA-L posts suggest that bhakti of Krishna and others should also be interpreted via the Tantra lenses: It allows the scholars to superimpose "Tantra == sex" on to all forms of bhakti, and be able to claim the prize for hammering yet another nail into Hinduism.
Once Tantra's legitimacy as spirituality has been secured, it would further the agendas that seek to undermine Sri Ramakrishna, Ganesha (also being "tantricized"), Hindu Goddess (i.e. Caldwellism), and so forth. The Children might not be in a conspiracy, but it resembles a grand narrative production from the Queen.
Finally, let it be noted that the interpretation of Tantra has been turned into a political issue by Wendy Doniger, whereas she is known to proclaim the status of being a "victim" of politics. The issues should have remained strictly matters of scholarship, with alternative views debated in open forums. Wendy has once again done a disservice to her academic credibility by using modern politics as her silver bullet to hit and as her fig leaf to cover.
A few days ago, I emailed this to the moderator of RISA-L, who thanked me for it and promptly announced Wendy's review on RISA-l, but declined to post my side of it. So much for intellectual freedom and objectivity.
Regards,
From: Jeffrey S. Lidke
Sent:
To: openrisa@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [openrisa] Response to Rajiv: know the Purvapaksa
Dear Rajiv,
As a student of White's I have had the pleasure
not only of reading nearly all his works on Tantra (published and unpublished)
but also several years of classes and mentorship at UC Santa Barbara during the
period that I was working on my dissertation on Sakta Tantra in the Katmandu
Valley. For this reason, I feel I have a decent grasp of White's understanding
of Tantra and so it with no small amount of confidence that I express to you,
Rajiv, that your representation of his most recent work is not only vastly
oversimplified but considerably off.
I don't have any thing to write about your general
critique of the field of Indology as I believe that much of that critique is generally
worth sound consideration. Instead I have focused below solely on your 2
paragraph representation of White's work because that representation is in fact
a mis-representation--and a gross one at that--and because such misrepresentations
undermine your efforts to bring about dialogue on the important issues you seek
to address. As I share your interests in dialogue, I hope my comments are of
some value.
You write:
"White's book's core thesis is that Tantra was intended
as South Asian decadent sexuality, without spiritual purpose, and that this decadence
was the result of sociological suffering of Indian subaltern (lower castes) in
classical times."
Your inaccurate synopsis of White's thesis makes
two claims. First, that White identifies the purpose of Tantra as 'decadent
sexuality'; second, that this 'decadence' arises from sociological causes. Given
that the second hinges on the first, both collapse when the first is disproven.
Nonetheless, I begin with the second, dependent, claim. It is true that White
interprets certain aspects of the rise of Tantra in sociological terms, however
it is by no means the case that he reduces Tantra to socio-economic factors. As
a student of Eliade and Smith he is an historian of religions and not a
sociologist. Ultimately, White does not reduce the origins of Tantra to any
thing other than the sphere of religion and it is in this sphere that White identifies
the true origin and purpose of Tantra: as those practices, traditions, and
peoples who sought power, not power in a Foucaultian sense, but true,
ontological power harnessed within the body and its products, particularly
sexual fluids. Tantric sex was not, White argues, 'decadent'. Rather, it was a
primary means by which yogins and yoginis ultimately became immortal. Much more
could be written about this argument, but for now, suffice it to say that
White's actual thesis is entirely different from what you wrote, Rajiv.
After misrepresenting White's
thesis, you then go on to write:
However, he offers no textual proof of this (and he is the one
who should have the burden of proof, not his critics). Since his thesis on Tantra
claims to demolish centuries of writings by Kashmir Shaivites and other
thinkers from within the tradition, he asserts (without proof) that scholars
like
Again, this entire paragraph is deeply flawed. First
of all, White's works--be it the book under consideration or _Alchemical
Body_ or any of his numerous articles—are among the most highly annotated
in the business. _Kiss of the Yogini_ contains well over a hundred pages
of citations from a variety of sources, including hundreds of primary and secondary
texts, inscriptions, and field research. No serious scholar of Indology would
ever say of White's work that he offers no proof. They may disagree with his
final conclusions, but that he basis his argument on solid evidence is
indisputable. Second, White makes no claim to demolish the writings of Kashmir
Shaivites. That you would write this only underscores the fact that you must
not have carefully read _Kiss_ or any of White's other works. White has demonstrated
high regard for the likes of
My strong suggestion is that you carefully read
both _Kiss of the Yogini_ and _Alchemical Body_ (including the
notes) before continuing any further critique of David White. After doing so,
if you still have a problem with his work, then your arguments—as long as they contain
a fair and accurate summation of White's thesis (accurate articulation of the pûrva-pakSa [opposing
argument - SV] is, as you know, a prerequisite of valid critique in Nyâya
[‘Hindu logic’ – SV]) will then bear more power and
more likely earn the respect of the scholarly world.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey S. Lidke
Chair of the Interfaith Council at Berry College
Assistant Professor of World Religions
Department of Religion and Philosophy
Berry College
What is the 'political' agenda behind American studies of
South Asian Tantra?
(David White’s book undermines claims of Indian
Spirituality)
by
I begin with an anecdote that explains the
practical importance of the issues discussed in this essay. An Indian friend
living in
My friend felt intimidated about the assault on her identity. It bothered her even more that her disgust was being seen as a sign of defensiveness and chauvinism. Had my friend not been a mature self-assured woman, but a typical South Asian naïve and gullible student, she could easily have given in to being “treated” by the academic doctors to “cure” her identity of “cultural diseases.”
For almost a decade I have been researching the
mechanisms of knowledge production about
My analysis of the recent book on Tantra by David White, and of its review by Wendy Doniger, is part of my research to shed some light on the processes of stereotype manufacturing from very high places in the Western intellectual apparatus.
Such books, while presented as having a limited scope that is of interest only to a few technical scholars (of Tantra in this case), actually have far-reaching sociopolitical consequences that are adverse to Indians and to Hindus-Buddhists everywhere.
While I shall focus on my stated area of interest only, I am neither denying that many scholars are also doing good work in parallel, nor criticizing scholarship on the basis that it deals with Indian sexuality.
Book’s thesis: spirituality became a cover-up for wild sex
White’s thesis is largely explicit, but also partly covert, as I shall explain. According to White and Doniger, there were roughly two stages in Tantra’s history:
Stage 1: Tantra
was a system of sexual magical acts that were not spiritual:
“In David Gordon White's account, the distinguishing characteristic of South Asian Tantra in its earliest documented stage is a ritual in which bodily fluids—sexual or menstrual discharge—were swallowed as transformative "power substances". (Doniger)
(There were intermediate stages before stage 2, which I shall skip here.)
Stage 2:
“A significant reform took place in the eleventh century, when
certain elite Brahmin Tantric practitioners, led by the great theologian
Doniger refers to
Doniger writes:
“In this way the earlier, unreconstructed form of Tantra, the hard-core, persisted as a kind of underground river, flowing beneath the new, bowdlerized, dominant form.”
The transition from #1 to #2 is a discontinuity, the scholars claim, describing it as “reform” by “elite Brahmins” that “sublimated” the past practice of “sexual fluid exchange.”
However, my contention is that since Hinduism was
never enforced by centralized institutional authorities, there is no historical
evidence of any such political watershed event that could have occurred so
dramatically across all of
Furthermore, in the export of Tantra from
Let me also quote directly from White’s book to elaborate his thesis further:
“In about the eleventh century, a scholasticizing trend in
Kashmirian Hindu circles, led by the great systematic theologian
White explains that until then the heart of the
practice had been the “oral consumption of sexual fluids as power
substances,” and that it had not been practiced for the spiritual expansion
of consciousness. He alleges that
If the book’s thesis were true, there would be no
spiritual legitimacy in the systems that flowed from
This is quite a bombshell dropped on any serious
spiritual practitioner of Kashmir Shaivism, Tantra and many other
White’s claim: wild-sex origins of mantras, bindi and Srîvidyâ
Citing prior claims by Paul Muller-Ortega, David White asserts that sexual magical practices are the genesis of many popular Hindu symbols and practices.
For instance, White argues that because the Tantrics lacked access to complex Sanskrit mantras, they
“derived their mantras of nonsense syllables from the inarticulate moans that the Goddess made during intercourse...” (Doniger)
More specifically, White elaborates that
“is the sound a woman makes while enjoying sexual intercourse—a barely articulated ‘ha, ha, ha.’” (p.245.)
White goes on to interpret the origin of the sounds used in meditation:
“in other words, the ‘ha’ sound of the visarga is the semanticization of sex in
White’s explanation of the meaning of the bindi is that “the image of a drop (bindu) that recurs, across the entire gamut of Tantric theory and practice,” was originally referring to a physical drop of sexual fluid, but was later explained using the language of mantras and yantras so as to be seen as abstract symbolism about speech and divine consciousness. This re-packaging, says White, was done for the “high Hindu” consumer market.
Furthermore, White contends, many popular Hindu
systems of symbolism emerged as the result of this intellectual whitewash done
by
This scholarship is loaded with political consequences: For instance, it provides theoretical legitimacy to the Christian appropriations of meditation techniques in which they remove Hindu/Buddhist mantras and replace them with either meaningless words (as in Herb Benson’s “Relaxation Response”) or with Christian words like “Christ” or “Amen” to claim the techniques for Christianity. Christian appropriators would rationalize that the Hindu mantras are in any case made of meaningless sounds, and besides, who wants to meditate on sounds of a woman having orgasms: White supplies the “tools” to feed this appropriation.
Courtright’s misinterpretation that Ganesha symbolizes a “limp phallus” was reported to cause a mental block to many Hindu kids in their Ganesha pujas. Hindus have also felt embarrassed wearing the Ganesha symbol around their necks for fear that they would be seen as weird “phallus worshippers.”
In the same manner, the deployment of White’s
theory of the “real” origins of certain Hindu mantra
sounds would disturb many meditators, because repeating these sounds would
evoke images of women having orgasms. All it would take would be one student in
a meditation class to raise his/her hand and point out that the mantra being taught was documented by scholars
as signifying the sound of orgasms. The typical teacher is not expert enough to
refute high-class academic scholarship, and would feel safer modifying the
teaching to erase the
Doniger further explains the meaning of the word “mudrâ” in the texts:
“White argues that mudrâ...refers to ‘the technique of urethral suction by means of which the Tantric yogin, having ejaculated into his partner, draws his semen together with her sexual emission back into his penis’ (the so-called fountain-pen effect). In this interpretation mudrâ signifies the practitioner's consort's vulva, and, by extension, the fluids from the vulva.”
White further alleges that Abhinavagupta’s
pseudo-spiritual system (a sham by implication from the nature of its origin)
was also a tool used for political control in various parts of
“later came to be seized upon by high-caste Hindu householders
throughout medieval
White claims that this ploy was “a means to do what one said one was not doing...” (p.159, emphasis supplied). Multiple identities, secret rituals and metaphysical hyperbole enabled political control via crafty mechanisms which White compares with espionage:
“A comparison with the world of espionage is a useful one: only those of the privileged inner circle (the heart of the Tantric mandala) have the highest security clearance (Tantric initiations) and access to the most secret codes (Tantric mantras) and classified documents (Tantric scriptures).” (p.150)
Lower castes, as per White, emulated these pseudo-spiritual practices “as a means to social uplift” (p. 261). In other words, the political history of a vast continent is framed in a way to show that pseudo-spiritual shams have been a key mechanism for power and control.
An overall methodological problem with much scholarship is that it arbitrarily classifies as “Hindu” what may have been a “secular” practice or may even have been merely a text that was not practiced. Or there may have been many entirely unrelated spiritual traditions from which the scholar indulges in cut-and-paste engineering to fit the narrative. (By analogy, a thousand years from now, some historian of 21st century America could study a random selection of today’s obscure fiction that does not reflect mainstream American society or pertain at all to Christianity or relate to one another, but the future historian could combine excerpts from such texts as free-floating elements in a postmodernist bazaar to construct theories about 21st century American Christianity.)
Scholarship versus tradition
Let me explain how the book’s thesis delegitimizes
the claims to spirituality of a wide range of
Abrahamic religions claim their legitimacy based
on history-centrism, i.e. that they are the (exclusive) custodians of
prophecies and canons that document unique historical events. On the
other hand, Indic adhyâtmika (inner
science) spirituality tends to be non history-centric and emanates from
enlightenment experiments of luminaries, of which
Therefore, White’s allegations that
Defendants of the academic fortress have tried to protect its system of duplicity by claiming that White does not overtly charge “decadence”. I agree that this is not the exact term he uses.
However, what matters is how the typical reader of today sees the “soft-core High Hindu” acts that are described by White. I have informally tested a set of passages where some of these scholars describe Hindu rituals/symbols, without telling the persons surveyed that they pertain to Hinduism. I asked the individuals (who included NRIs and non-Indians from well-educated upper/middle demographics) to describe their reactions to such a culture. I heard reactions like “hedonism,” “scandal” and “smut,” but never “spirituality” or even “religion.” Of course, such public surveys must be conducted with larger samples and under more rigorous conditions in order to get quantifiable statistics on the prejudices being spread by certain scholarship. (Infinity Foundation has been sponsoring professional surveys of Americans’ attitudes on India-related things, and preliminary data shows considerable ignorance and prejudice.)
Scholars’ intellectual products appear harmless at
first, but eventually work their way through the distribution systems of
knowledge and opinion into the hands of evangelists and other Hinduphobics. The
Aryan theory was once just an academic theory but later got deployed
politically to cause divisiveness in
While academic scholars like to evaluate their
work in isolation, my project mandates locating them in the context of
Politics and scholarship
Doniger’s gaze sees what she calls the double life of the Brahmins:
“And, finally, a system of "overcoding" permitted high-caste, conformist householder practitioners to have it both ways, to lead a double life by living conventionally while experimenting in secret with Tantric identities. Such people might put on a public face of Hindu orthodoxy...”
However, reversing the gaze, I find that the scholars themselves have been busy producing a system of academic “overcoding.”
This means that certain scholars live double lives. They can publicly position themselves in appropriate audiences as being very Hindu-friendly: (i) with pandits in India on whom they are dependent for translations; (ii) with NRI [non-resident Indian, i.e., living in the USA, UK, etc. – SV] gullible students to cleverly re-engineer them away from Hindu identities and towards Hinduphobia; and (iii) with NRI parents for fund-raising. But this overcoding masks their secretly building “ideological products” to show patterns of what average Americans would see as Hindu decadence, violence, immorality and abuse.
It is no coincidence that academic writings by David White, Hugh Urban, Sarah Caldwell, Jeffrey Kripal and many others apply the “theory” of high-caste Hindu “double lives” to a massive array of case studies which encompass Sri Ramakrishna, Swami Muktananda, Swami Vivekananda, Sri Aurobindo, Hindu Goddess, etc. Some of these case studies are filled with so much “data” that they are declared closed and have already won their awards. Others are at various stages of construction with flying-squads of scholars funded for their hectic data hunting-gathering. Rewards can be big for those who deliver “proofs” to nail any specific Hindu spiritual leader or deity. Naturally, the bigger the target nailed, the greater is the reward.
Furthermore, as my
Sulekha exchanges with Kripal and Caldwell elaborated, these scholars also
love to superimpose the alleged moral “transgressions” by Hindus onto a wider
socio-political context. Kripal claims that Hindu mystics lack ethics (or
something equivalent—I forget the specific words, but they are in my essays).
Caldwell, likewise, calls for use of these “transgression theories” of Hinduism
as a lens with which to study modern Hindu society’s human rights problems. The
violence or hedonism or sexism or whatever else the Hindu rituals are
misinterpreted to signify is then superimposed to interpret modern Hindu
society at large. Bottom line: Hinduism gets blamed as the cause of all sorts
of issues facing modern
Given this meta-narrative under which they operate, such scholars document (using every stretch of imagination they can get away with) alleged instances of sexual abuse of women by swamis, alleged sexual abuse of Vivekananda by Sri Ramakrishna, etc. They then theorize this as being an essential part of what Hinduism allows and even encourages, meaning that this is all part of or the result of what Doniger calls “soft-core High Hinduism.”
These academic theories allege that Hindu spiritual leaders secretly do weird things to women and children while publicly adopting an abstract philosophical system of practices under which the rituals and symbolism get presented as spiritual metaphysics.
Of course, as the movie, “Monsoon Wedding,” brings out forcefully, Indian society unfortunately has its share of abuses like any other society does. My problem is only when Hinduism is specifically given as the cause for any and all social evils. I do not see other religions being problematized to the same extent as “criminal enterprises.” For instance, Abu Ghraib has not been framed by the media as