Defamation and Diaspora Hindus:
Notes on Internet Discussions
Vasudha Narayanan
University of Florida
Should there be a lakshman rekha, a line self-imposed or otherwise,
that scholars should not cross? If so, who should draw the line and who
should move it?
My task today is to talk about "defamation" on the internet. There
is some ambiguity attached to the term in the context of today's
discussion: we deal with the alleged defamation of Hinduism on the one
hand, and defamation of scholars on list serves and web pages on the
other. I will spend most of my time today outlining a list of issues
that concern some Hindus about list serves where most of the discussants
are non-Hindu. I will focus primarily on RISA-L and, to a lesser
extent, on Indology. In this enterprise, I would like to acknowledge
the help of a former Indian/Hindu student from the University of Florida
who took some advanced level reading courses on Vedanta, specifically
the Sri Vaishnava tradition, with me. He would like to be identified as
"a recent resident in the US, an engineer by profession but very much
interested in scholarly Hindu studies." He sent me a long document with
specific problematic issues in RISA-L, and it seemed to reaffirm the
tenor of many internet discussions criticizing western scholarship.
However, he does say that this critical report does not mean that he
holds the "RISA scholars in contempt per se;" and says that this is only
an anthology on what he considers to be the "bad aspects."
Many moons ago, when western scholars studied and wrote about
Hinduism, Hindus had little control over what was said and how
information was interpreted and disseminated. The audience for the
articles and books was also Euro-American scholars. Obviously that has
changed now—we all know that there are Indo-American, Hindu scholars in
the academy, and second generation Hindus in our classrooms. More
important to our discussion today, there are many Hindus who are reading
and listening in on academic discussions. While in the past, there had
been groups of Hindus rather bemused and occasionally even flattered at
the attention that American or European scholars seemed to lavish on
their texts and rituals, now there are some in the United States who are
wary and angered at the way in which they perceive Hinduism is being
portrayed in classrooms and more particularly at the AAR. It is, of
course, hard to get numbers in this quest and I certainly do not want to
generalize about how "Hindus" feel about so called "western"
scholarship. Just speaking from my anecdotal experience, most Hindus
are not aware of a great deal of "western" scholarship and have not made
an attempt to know more about it.
I also do not mean to suggest that this is an intellectual battle of
Hindus against non-Hindu Euro-American scholars; rather, what I
would like to underline is that there are many assumptions not shared
between the groups. There are many Hindu scholars in many
disciplines—humanities and some behavioral sciences—who are also being
criticized and condemned by a few Hindus. Rather than draw a broad
picture, I will simply bring up some of the criticism against RISA and
RISA-L in particular. It is obvious that I am a member of RISA, the
AAR, and a Hindu. I thus participate in all these universes and have
received e-mails from several individuals who have perceived attacks.
Thus, I have been involved in many of these conversations. My comments
today are largely based on e-mails, both personal and to list serves,
and not on any scientific or methodical sampling of particular
web pages.
We all know that internet discussions and list serves have created
several interest groups. With web pages for most of the major gurus,
sampradayas, and members of several communities, information and
misinformation has never been so regularly available. Many groups for
various sampradayas have list serves set up by Hindu devotees
with very pious, interesting, and scholarly dissemination of
information. For example, in just the Sri Vaishnava sampradaya
alone, there is not just one generic discussion list, but a number of
web pages and list serves for "in house" devotees of different
matha-s and teachers (acharya) of the Vatakalai and
Tenkalai subsects. And of course, there are discussion groups for the
Advaita and Dvaita sampradaya-s and particular gurus like
Ammachi. There are many learned discussions in these, but the driving
energy behind their creation is devotion or adherence to a particular
teacher or tradition. There are a whole range of list serves, of
course, between these devotional list serves and those devoted to the
academic study of religion, like RISA-L.
Indology was one of these "in between" ones which had its share of
those who have had professional training in the subject and many who did
not. The list included many educated professionals, students of math,
engineering, and allied fields. RISA-L, on the other hand, has been
restricted to those who are in the academic study of religion and most,
but not all subscribers are members of the AAR.
It was in subscriber lists like Indology that I first encountered the
postings of Indian professionals who had more than a passing interest in
the subject. Some were well versed in music, others knew Sanskrit, some
knew about Indian science and so on. What many of them shared was a
tremendous knowledge of various parts of Indian culture and a
professional education in non-Indological subjects. What many
people who subscribed to the list seemed to haveŠand this is from all
sectors, not just Indians or academics, was an abundance of time
to answer questions and move quickly on to ideological matters. I
learned a lot in this forum for a while on Tamil culture, the Indus
valley debate, beef eating in the Vedas, but a lot more about people's
prejudices about each other.
RISA-L, on the other hand, has been relatively cloistered. Most
subscribers are teachers or graduate students of religion. Yet, this
group has also been criticized in the internet. The group as a whole
has been castigated in other list serves, and individual members have
been taken to task in web pages. There have also been very strong, very
hurtful attacks against individual scholars.
While there have been many topics that have merited attention from
Hindus on non-Hindu treatment of Hinduism, two are particularly
noteworthy—the Aryan migration debate and Kripal's Kali's Child.
The Aryan migration and indigenous Aryan debate has been
extraordinarily heated in the Indology network and relatively mild in
RISA-L. There is now a very large body of literature on Kali's
Child including many discussions which erupt regularly on RISA-L.
There are several other areas of concern as well; some voiced in
internet sites, others in private email correspondence. I will briefly
enumerate some areas which are of concern to the Hindus who follow these
discussion. My comments here are very brief and can be discussed at
length later.
In regard to the question of Hinduism being studied and represented
by non-Hindus, at least two issues are explicit—the question of
representation and the participation of Hindus. Yet there is a third
issue as well, but this one is unstated: it is probable that the lament
is not just about the non-participation of Hindus, but specifically,
about the lack of participation on the part of Hindus whose ethnic
origins are in India. Checking out the field, it is obvious that there
are few students of Indian origin who really major in religious studies
in America. Putting on a third hat here—not just as a Hindu and a RISA
member but specifically speaking as a Hindu parent—I can say that most
Indian parents I know want their children to be doctors or accountants.
Even my former student, who articulated many of these problems discussed
on the internet, says that the teachers in the humanities in academia
are paid too little! The culture of the younger generation taking up
humanities, fine arts and performing arts for a living (or lack thereof,
which seems to be the moot point) is simply not prevalent at this point
among Indian immigrants in this country. Until we have more of the
younger generation Hindus in academics, I don't know what can be done.
My former student sent me his views on why the younger generation is
turned off from Indian studies in America: he believes that one finds
there some hostile, biased representations by American professors—"an
infatuation with 'Hindu Fascism.'" He perceives American professors to
like select "Marxists, liberals, and other political commentators" and
names several of them.
While these are similar to the thoughts expressed by some factions in
India, as well as about Indian academia's infatuation with "Marxist"
historians in general, most Hindu students I know are able to sift
through different kinds of materials and critique them with some
sophistication. One of the things we do try to teach in our classes is
to understand the agendas behind the texts, to see where the writer is
coming from. It is true that many undergraduates take a while to figure
out where they can get alternative opinions. There is a slow influx of
Hindu students in our classes and it is to be hoped that eventually
there can be many fruitful discussions with people of many backgrounds,
including many with a Hindu heritage, who participate in the learning
process.
Most scholars in RISA-L don't think of themselves as
representing Hinduism—they are in AAR meetings and in RISA-L for
exchange of ideas, research ideas. The study of religion for many of
them is an academic discipline. It is very important to keep this in
mind; this is an academic forum, a research forum, and should be seen in
such a context.
Many other criticisms are directed against RISA-L. There is a
perception that the scholars discuss the "faults" and "excesses" of
Hindu nationalism and do not speak about issues where Hindus are
victims. (This, is the politics of news making and reporting;
scholarship seems to feed off the media and sometimes into it). There
is also a perception that Euro-American scholars tend to give
patronizing answers to Hindus who post on list serves like Indology.
Connected with this is the perception that some "western liberals" jump
all over those who try to voice their opinions and "restore balance" to
e-mail discussions. Some Hindu critics think that "poverty" and "lack
of women's rights" and other social ills are portrayed by "western"
scholars as Hindu problems and that stereotyping is still
rampant. A few Hindus in this country also have very specific ideas
of what should be taught in classes: Vedanta, certain kinds of
philosophy, and yoga. There is a certain aversion to the portrayal of
ethnographic materials, including phenomena like "possession," the
occasional animal sacrifices found in some communities, and so on,
because they believe that many high school students and undergraduates
do not have the background to put it all in perspective. Many religion
scholars have only recently moved from purely textual approaches to one
which integrates ethnography with texts; some Hindus are uncomfortable
with this.
One should not think that all textual approaches are seen as good.
Hindus in this country point to errors in translations and what they see
as strained interpretations of texts. But perhaps the most sensitive
issue is that of method. Some methods, especially psychoanalytic
when applied to revered figures like Ramakrishna are considered at best,
insensitive, and at worst, extraordinarily insulting to the Hindu
tradition.
A word here about the last issue, which has been treated at length in
other forums. One point that the Hindu critics make is that
psychoanalytic approaches and also the exoticization of the religion
(which in the Hindu case results in focusing on sati, dowry, etc.) are
simply not done in the study of Islam in the United States. Thus, they
say, there is no psychoanalytic approach used to interpret the prophet
Muhammad, there are no AAR panels on polygamy in Islam, and so on. They
point out that there are many "sensitive" issues in Islam which Ameican
scholars do not touch—thus, we do not seem to have panels on, say,
cultural and religious factors in Islam which promote violence at
certain times. The last issue is one that we can, perhaps, discuss in
this forum today. One may ask: is there a perceptible difference in
the kind of topics and kinds of methods used in the academic study of
Islam in the last few years and those used in the study of Hindu
traditions? Many scholars of Islam I know are constantly aware of the
"misportrayals" (as they call it) of Islam by the media and are
constantly trying to restore a balance. The criticism, then, is that
RISA scholars feel no such compunction when it comes to the study of
Hinduism and that, therefore, they hold double standards.
A point that many Hindu critics make is that Hinduism is a minority
religion in this country and that specialist work—psychoanalytic and
otherwise—done in RISA and similar forums "trickles" down and that Hindu
students in this country are uncomfortable with it. Younger students
without any knowledge of Hinduism get a wrong "feel" for the traidition
when the focus is on sati, sexuality, and social discrimination. In
this way Hindu students feel ridiculed and marginalized. On the other
hand, there are some Hindus who seem to welcome such open inquiries;
they point out that in India, where they are in the majority, very
little is being done to promote such critical inquiries and that freedom
of thought and expression should not be sacrificed in academia.
Finally, before I leave all this open to discussion, let me make a
few quick remarks. I think there are several misunderstandings and
perceptions about the academic study of religion, and we are just
beginning to see in relation to Hinduism the kinds of issues that
surfaced many decades ago between the rigorous academic study of
religion, specifically Christianity, and the faith communities. Those
lines, divides, and a few bridges have long been accepted in the
American academic world. Some Hindus—like those Christians, Muslims,
Sikhs, or Jews who are not trained in the professional study of religion
and the critical theories that have emerged in the last hundred
years—think of academic studies as encroaching on matters of faith. When
this is augmented by what they perceive as poor language preparation or
politically motivated interpretation, the temperature level of the
discussion begins to rise.
Scholars in the field, both Hindu and non-Hindu of the field, believe
that discussions will be more fruitful if the others understand that
Religion, like History and other subjects in the humanities, is a
highly evolved field with rigorous training—one needs to know not just
the texts, but the social and political contexts, gender, class, age and
other hierarchies in those contexts, and so on. A number of techniques
are to be deployed in the understanding of these materials. Further,
work presented at the AAR, RISA and other forums are simply a fleeting
snapshot of work in progress and not a comprehensive view of Hinduism.
The audience here is comprised of research scholars; it is not meant to
be a substitute for the chamber of commerce's introduction to India done
for a business traveller. Many of my colleagues in RISA would agree
that what they teach in classrooms, especially in introductory classes,
is different in texture from the kinds of issues they discuss in
research forums and that they try to be sensitive to the students needs.
The conversations are just beginning in the study of the Hindu
traditions and there are many parties to this: Hindu scholars from India
and other parts of the world who are professionally trained in the study
of religion; Indian-Hindu professionals who are experts in other fields
but who nevertheless have a lot invested in the portrayals of Hinduism
that emerge from academia; traditional scholars; political bystanders;
and other actors.
And so, we ask, what we can do now? We may ignore the critics
completely and go on with our business; or we can come back to our
original question and ask: should scholars draw certain lines for
themselves, the lakshman rekha of Hindu thought, to accommodate the
sensitivities of a minority and/or faith community? The lines would be
shaded in different ways in teaching and research, changing with
increased knowledge, increased understanding, and sophistication on all
sides. It is this issue that we can discuss now, and ask if we need such
a line in academic teaching and research. If so, who draws it and
where?
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