Interpreting Form and Reality

In 1976, within a year of its publication, Wendy Doniger’s Hindu Myths met with a bad press. ‘The title (of the book) is offensive’, a reviewer of Indian origin wrote, ‘to the Hindu, the stories of his sacred literature are not myths: they are as much reality and are as sacred as are the stories of the miracles of Christ or of Adam and Eve or Noah to the Christians…..’ K.S. Narayan Rao, the reviewer in question, ended with the observation that the author was but an old time missionary in a new garb—the academic. Closer to our time too, Doniger’s writings have met with some indignant protest and injured pride, mostly at the hands of Indians settled abroad. By 2007, the U.S based Indian philanthropist, Rajiv Malhotra, had a blog directed at Wendy Doniger (RISA-Lila-I, Wendy’s Child) followed by Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hindu Studies in America (2007) and more recently, Being Different: An Indian Challenge to American Universalism (2011).