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by cubancigar11 4500 days ago
What seems scholarly to you looks extremely offensive to most Hindus. And ultimately it should be Hindus who get to decide the meaning of Hinduism. The over-the-top reaction to what is effectively a caricature in the likes of 'Innocence of Muslims' is enabled because such treatment of Hinduism by Christians has a history, a history that still plays its part in everyday life of Indians (not just Hindus). Point in case, the article talks about the 'criminalization of homosexuality', but fails to mention that it was criminalized by British-raj. Indian judiciary just rejected to get involved into executive branch, a very sensible approach IMHO.

The article itself refers to such treatment by naming Edward Said, for example. But then swoops in with personal judgements, calling Rajiv Malhotra's essay as a right-wingist parody and trying to link everything with rise of business-friendly nationalist Modi.

This is to be expected. Economical rise of any non-western country has historically correlated with doom-and-gloom about it in articles in western media, whether it is liberal or conservative. Even now it is hard for me to read an article about China in The Economist. Just today I saw an article about Chinese government cracking down on sex-racket, and how it is fomenting unrest and civil disobedience among Chinese.

1 comments

>What seems scholarly to you looks extremely offensive to most Hindus

Um... I am Hindu. I don't practice folk Hinduism too much but Hinduism and it's history are one of my areas of interest. I really want to discuss with some others who have read this book and find out what exactly put them off. Have you?

I have read the book and its criticism. TL;DR: The book suffers from cherry-picking for telling a story. It ought not to be taken seriously as an endeavour in study of Hinduism. I mean, its in the title - An ALTERNATE History. Otherwise it is a fun read. (Imagine a book called - 'Nazism - An alternate history' based on Inglourious Basterds.)

The criticism comes from people who are taking the book seriously. :)