Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
In a telling sign of the growing power of Hindu nationalism in India, an American author has had her book “The Hindus: An Alternative History,” withdrawn, and remaining copies pulped, by her publisher, Penguin India.
This followed a lawsuit filed by a Hindu nationalist group, which took exception to Wendy Doniger’s handling of Hindu mythology.
Doniger, who teaches at the University of Chicago, is a well-regarded scholar and author of many books on India. Her previous books have been positively received in India and elsewhere. But she has faced regular criticism from those who consider her work to be disrespectful of Hinduism in general.
In an article written for the magazine “Outlook India,” Doniger responded that “I was, of course, angry and disappointed to see this happen, and I am deeply troubled by what it foretells for free speech in India in the present, and steadily worsening, political climate.”
She went on to say that her publisher was “finally defeated by the true villain of this piece -- the Indian law that makes it a criminal rather than civil offense to publish a book that offends any Hindu, a law that jeopardizes the physical safety of any publisher, no matter how ludicrous the accusation brought against a book.”
The Indian Constitution lists “freedom of speech and expression” among the fundamental rights it guarantees, but also allows the government to impose “reasonable restrictions” on this freedom.
Many Indian authors were incensed. Arundhati Roy accused the publisher of having meekly surrendered to extremists: “You have not only caved in, you have humiliated yourself abjectly before a fly-by-night outfit,” she said. “What was it that terrified you?” she asked in a column in the Times of India.
The group that brought the suit against Doniger, the Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samiti (Movement to Save Education), claimed to be defending “the sentiments of Hindus all over the world.” They contended that “she misunderstands and deliberately misrepresents Hindu texts and practices, insults Hindu gods in her readings of myth, and crudely focuses, through a psychoanalytic lens and above all else, on sex.”
Dinanath Batra, one of the plaintiffs, who is associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteers Organization), charged that the book was “written with a Christian missionary zeal and hidden agenda to denigrate Hindus and show their religion in poor light.”
The RSS has carried out acts of violence against Muslims and other minority groups throughout India since its creation in 1925. It is part of an array of Hindu nationalist movements that subscribe to the ideology known as Hindutva, literally “Hindu-ness,” the idea of India as culturally, racially, and religiously Hindu in nature.
In this interpretation of Indian history, Muslims are invaders, outsiders, and foreigners. Hence India had been illegitimately ruled by Muslim dynasties prior to the arrival of the British.
Hindu nationalism is also making gains in the political arena. In the forthcoming Indian general election, which will begin on April 7 and continue on nine separate dates until May 12, the ruling secularist Congress Party is predicted to suffer one of the worst losses in its history, to the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP. Its leader, Narendra Modi, has a long association with the RSS.
Currently, the Congress Party holds 201 seats against 112 for the BJP in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of parliament, which has 543 members. Both parties form coalitions with other groups when contesting national elections. Congress led the United Progressive Alliance to victory in 2009, while the BJP headed the National Democratic Alliance.
But 70 percent of Indians now say they are dissatisfied with the way things are going in India, according to a new Pew Research Center survey. And 63 percent of those polled said they would prefer that the BJP lead the next government, compared with just 19 percent who picked the Congress Party, which is led by Sonia Gandhi and her son, Rahul Gandhi.
Modi, the chief minister of the western state of Gujarat, on the border with Pakistan, led the state when riots broke out in 2002, costing the lives of more than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims.
He has been linked with a secret police assassination squad. Many Indians, especially the country’s 138 million Muslims and its many other minorities, worry he would exacerbate sectarian tensions in the country.
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