By reading and interpreting between the lines, Doniger claims, there is much that we can understand about religious practices and beliefs. Her book is both an alternative to mainstream histories of Hinduism, and an alternative to contemporary hegemonic interpretations of Hinduism.
The Hindus: An Alternative History is a tome rich in history, analysis,
interpretation and opinion. It is written by one of the foremost scholars on
Hinduism, also a Sanskritist. A caveat here: I am neither a Sanskritist nor a
student of world religions. However, I do represent the intended or potential
readership for this book, which, notwithstanding the extensively researched
references and bibliography, is still meant to be accessible to the lay reader.
I do also represent an audience that seeks to better understand the religion of
their birth, not as practitioners of the religion or faith, but as mere mortals
grappling with the enormity of myth, tradition, ritual and practice that came to
define the religion for them in their formative years.
Wendy Doniger is
the Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions in
the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, and the author of more than a
dozen books on or related to Hinduism. In Hindus: An Alternative History, she
delivers a comprehensive account of an alternative reading of Hindu philosophy,
representing the voice of the marginalized in the ancient texts. But as the
author is quick to point out, Hindus is an alternative history and not the
history. Much of what we know about Hinduism is what we know through texts, or
the written word in Sanskrit. She argues that texts tell us not just about who
ruled but also about who was ruled, and about the voice of the ordinary people,
if you look close enough.
Since a history of Hinduism is in a sense a
history of India, Doniger traces civilizations in India starting from the merger
of a breakaway landmass from Africa on to the central Asian landmass, and then
chronicles the Indus Valley Civilization, the Vedic peoples, the trajectory of
the Vedas, the Brahmanas, the Upanishads and the two great epic poems—the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Doniger also analyzes the Bhakti traditions
emerging from South India, briefly touches upon the Tantric Puranas, and then
moves on to Hinduism under the Raj and finally Hinduism in contemporary India.
Since her training is primarily in philology, Doniger organizes her
alternative history around the texts—the Vedas, Upanishads, and the epics.
Throughout the book, she sets the stage by providing commentaries on certain
sections or stories from the texts and then parses out the voice of the
marginalized, whether it be women or the lower castes. This teasing out of the
faint voices is then further analyzed through the recurrent themes of violence
and the representations of animals such as the horse, the dog and the cow, to
represent power, pollution and purity respectively. Doniger’s study of violence
brings to light the contending forces within and without Hinduism that seemed to
both condone and accept violence (through ritual sacrifices) but also eschew it
(in part owing to Buddhism and Jainism’s distancing from the idea of ritual
violence). As an example of how the author teases out the subaltern voice, take
the story of Janashruti and Raikva from the Chandogya Upanishad. King
Janashruti, a Kshatriya, seeks to learn from Raikva, a homeless person and of a
lower caste, his secret knowledge, suggesting that there may be non-Brahminic
sources to some of the ideas expressed in the Upanishads. But ultimately, the
point is that a search for true source or origins may be futile. What would be
more important and interesting is to understand how different faith or belief
systems have fed into a larger tradition that we now call Hinduism. Particularly
useful for a quick grasp of the origins of the Veda are Doniger’s summaries on
the competing theories on the Aryan invasion/migration. She clearly lays out the
four competing theories, and then systematically argues why (or why not) any one
theory could hold water.
The numerous sidenotes can at times be
distracting, although some of them can be treated as stories within stories like
those in the Kathasaritsagara or the Arabian Nights, goading the reader to take
a break and delve for a moment into a vignette. (If you do, dive into the
vignette on page 51 on Gondwanaland.)
For an amateur collector of
etymologies this book is a treasure trove. Did you know, for instance, that the
Sanskrit jara is cognate with the Greek georon, from which is derived the
English word “gerontology,” or that the noun karma comes from the verb kri,
which is cognate with Latin creo—to make or do?
What also emerges in
Doniger’s work is a theme that we now find in just about any popular account of
India—the notion of multiplicity, or that of India as a land of opposites. But
Doniger’s is more specific to Hinduism and is reflected in seemingly opposite
concepts such as extreme asceticism, renunciation, and speculations on monism in
the Upanishads, on the one hand, and opulence, or the Kama Sutra, on the other.
We all know this, and indeed it’s the first thing that is offered up as evidence
of the plurality that is India. For instance, in speaking of the shivalinga and
its treatment both in its physical sense and as an abstract symbol, Doniger
suggests, “(H)ere is a fine example of a tradition driving one foot on the brake
and the other on the accelerator.” But elsewhere, she also cautions us, and
rightly so, that we should be wary of “essentializing these oppositions…we
should regard these dichotomies as nothing more than general guidelines…that
help us find our way through the labyrinth of ancient Indian religious groups.”
The past, Doniger says, can be drawn on to understand “almost any
position in contemporary India: that Hindus have been vegetarians, and that they
have not; that Hindus and Muslims have gotten along well together, and that they
have not; that Hindus have objected to suttee, and that they have not; that
Hindus have renounced the material world, and that they have embraced it; that
Hindus have oppressed women and lower castes, and that they have fought for
their equality.”
If anything, through Doniger’s Hindus, we come to
understand that folks in ancient times too struggled with issues that we grapple
with today—like morality, violence, violence towards animals, materialism,
renunciation, etc. In Doniger’s view, a history of Hinduism or ‘isms’ should
reflect that. And hers does that, lucidly.
Doniger’s brilliance as a
comparative analyst of texts also comes through in her discussions of the
concepts of dharma, karma, and moksha. How could an individual reconcile
sva-dharma, (what is expected of you in this life) with general dharma? If your
profession is butchering, she asks, how could you reconcile that with the
general dharma of nonviolence? She calls this puzzle “the paradox of absolutism
and relativism,” which is perhaps another pithy summary of Hindu thought.
The language, though scholarly, is accessible if the lay reader makes a
concerted effort to plough through. Once the reader settles in for the long
haul, the prose emerges as a conversation between the reader and the author, any
questions being soon answered or raised by the author herself, either in the
prose itself or the many footnotes or the comprehensive bibliography. The book
is peppered with delightful wordplay (the pali-valent Pali speakers) and the
commentary is often irreverent and tongue-in-cheek. The Aryan invasion or
migration is “the charge of the light-(skinned) brigade” and karma, when
expressed as a palindrome, is: “Do Good’s deeds live on? No, Evil’s deeds do, O
God.”
Popular criticisms seem to zero in on her interpretations of the
Ramayana and her treatment of Rama as one who was ill at ease with his
sexuality. In a tome such as this, factual inconsistencies may always creep in,
but nothing that a new edition could not fix. But interpretative inaccuracies
are harder to point out, especially when quoted or taken out of context.
Admirers of Doniger’s work suggest the same—that her commentaries are always
susceptible to misunderstanding when taken out of context. In her response to
critics, Doniger says that ultimately, she is deeply appreciative of Hinduism,
and that “she intends to go on celebrating the diversity and pluralism, not to
mention the worldly wisdom and sensuality of the Hindus that I have loved for
about fifty years now and counting.” But perhaps as other critics have
suggested, Doniger seems to lump any and all criticisms (from the non-academic
world) as right-wing fundamentalist rants. Just as there is a multiplicity of
interpretations to ancient texts and epics, there is too a multiplicity of
contemporary Hindu voices.
Once the skeptical reader understands that
Doniger’s too is but one version of an alternative history, coming from a
liberal scholar, the book should become so much more enjoyable. Doniger, after
all is a scholar, a scholar’s scholar if you will. She is known as much for her
work as for the criticisms from certain quarters to her work (porn fiction, some
have called it, referencing her seemingly heightened attention to eroticism and
sensuality in the texts). There are more people who know about the reception to
her work than have read her works. But any discerning practitioner of Hinduism
or admirer of the religion should first read the book, comprehend the brilliant
arguments, the commentary, and only then counter it.
Some who have read
the book argue that the intended audience is Western, in its repeated references
to eroticism, and the hegemony of the male Brahmin text editors or poets. But,
one could also argue that the intended audience is exclusively Hindu or at least
Indian, given that the alternative history is a reading of not just the texts,
but also the epics, and the folklore. Any reference to Periya Puranam, for
instance, would be lost on a casual Western reader.
Doniger gets
defensive when she justifies the book as an effort to “counteract their (the
Hindu Right’s) claims and to tell the history of the Hindus the way I think it
should be told, the way it is more to the credit of the Hindus.” Surely, this
massive tome cannot be a mere response to the fundamentalists. Seen this way,
the book becomes merely part of a larger polemic and it shouldn’t be. Even
though Doniger claims that the book is a “backhanded compliment” to her
detractors, homage to the religion that is now “being ruined,” this book is
still not just that. It is too much of a scholarly work for her detractors to
treat it as an olive branch. If anything, the book showcases the interpretive
diversity in the texts and epics, something that the detractors have always had
problems with. This is not to say that Hindus is a stifling academic treatise.
If anything this review states otherwise. But Doniger must know now that no
response would be an appropriate rebuttal for her detractors. The book speaks
for itself and needs no justification.
A magnificent tour de force, and
a must-read, but to be savored chapter by chapter. Read a little, ponder, soak
it in, and then read some more. Savor the book as you will a glass of fine
French red wine—the notes may be confusing and strange, the label not quite
matching the notes at first, but at the end of it all, you will be that much
giddier with the satisfaction of having read through a fascinating account of
Hindu thought and philosophy.