The Wendy Incident: A View from Europe–SN Balagangadhara
Original [Context: Note though that this piece merely expresses my irritation…] I am from Bangalore, India, but work as a professor in Belgium, Europe. My name is not Batra but…
Read moreCurrent state of Scholarship about India: outlook articles
Jakob de Roover’s Untangling the knot Sufiya Pathan’s No Alternative Jakob’s Disturbing Story Jakob’s How Free are We? Jakob’s The Indian Jews Balagangadhara’s What can India offer?
Read moreHindering the emergence of alternative explanations: Colonialism
1. Earlier, I suggested that the psychoanalytical explanations (like the transformation of Linga into a penis as a fertility symbol etc.) not only trivialize and distort but also deny access…
Read moreOn Patrick Hogan’s ‘Why Hindus should be grateful to Wendy Doniger’—S.N.Balagangadhara
Dear Patrick Hogan, It is jolly good of you, as the British say, to contribute to the ‘literary landscapes’ column in Sulekha at this particular juncture. I am glad too…
Read moreHow to produce knowledge about people and their cultures?—S.N. Balagangadhara
1. Let us begin in a very intuitive way and ask ourselves this question: where do we encounter ‘cultural differences’? In human contacts, of course. What kind of human contacts?…
Read moreWhy Social sciences are not providing knowledge, including the likes of Wendy Doniger and her children?
1. The general pattern that has come to the fore is that Wendy and her children (including Jeffrey Kripal) systematically portray the Indian traditions in an unfavorable light, even when…
Read moreDenying Experience: Do Hindus ‘worship’? Do they do Pooja to phallus (linga)?
Someone, let’s say her name is Wendy Doniger, comes along and sniggers ‘when you worship the lingam, you worship a phallus’. I do not identify Wendy’s statement as an ‘ad…
Read moreDoes Shivalinga ‘mean’ phallus? A theoretical dispute
Question: “In the context of puja, does Shivalinga denote or connote anything other than Shiva, in particular “phallus”? A Wendy says “Yes”, a Balu says “No”. For some person, not…
Read moreNegative portrayals of non-Western Cultures like Indian: Secularization of Christianity – S.N. Balagangadhara
I want to raise three issues: (a) how to analyze what Rajiv portrays about Wendy and her children in the field of religious studies; (b) depending on that, what an…
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