<p>India, once a major civilizational and economic power that suffered centuries of decline, is now newly resurgent in business, geopolitics and culture. However, a powerful counterforce within the American Academy is systematically undermining core icons and ideals of Indic Culture and thought. For instance, scholars of this counterforce have disparaged the Bhagavad Gita as a dishonest book ; declared Ganesha's trunk a limp phallus ; classified Devi as the mother with a penis and Shiva as a notorious womanizer who incites violence in India; pronounced Sri Ramakrishna a pedophile who sexually molested the young Swami Vivekananda; condemned Indian mothers as being less loving of their children than white women; and interpreted the bindi as a drop of menstrual fluid and the ha in sacred mantras as a woman's sound during orgasm. Are these isolated instances of ignorance or links in an institutionalized pattern of bias driven by certain civilizational worldviews? Are these academic pronouncements based on evidence, and how carefully is this evidence cross-examined? How do these images of India and Indians created in the American Academy influence public perceptions through the media, the education system, policymakers and popular culture? Adopting a politically impartial stance, this book, the product of an intensive multi-year research project, uncovers the invisible networks behind this Hinduphobia, narrates the Indian Diaspora's challenges to such scholarship, and documents how those who dared to speak up have been branded as dangerous . The book hopes to provoke serious debate. For example: how do Hinduphobic works resemble earlier American literature depicting non-whites as dangerous savages needing to be civilized by the West? Are India's internal social problems going to be managed by foreign interventions in the name of human rights? How do power imbalances and systemic biases affect the objectivity and quality of scholarship? What are the rights of practitioner-experts in talking back to academicians? What is the role of India's intellectuals, policymakers and universities in fashioning an authentic and enduring response?</p>

Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America

Religion & Spirituality

Aditi Banerjee

Krishnan Ramaswamy

Antonio de Nicolas

Hinduism

Rupa&Co

The Vow of Parvati

Bloomsbury India

<p>Language: EnglishPages: 318About The BookGandhari has one day left to live. As she stares death in the face, her memories travel back to the beginning of her story, to life's unfairness at every point: A fiercely intelligent princess who wilfully blindfolded herself for the sake of her peevish, visually-impaired husband; who underwent a horrible pregnancy to mother one hundred sons, each as unworthy as the other; whose stern tapasya never earned her a place in people's hearts, nor commanded the respect that Draupadi and Kunti attained; who even today is perceived either as an ingratiatingly self-sacrificing wife or a bad mother who was unable to control her sons and was, therefore, partly responsible for the great war of the Mahabharata. In this insightful and sensitive portrayal, Aditi Banerjee rescues Gandhari from being reduced to a mere symbol of her blindfold. She builds her up, as Ved Vyasa did, as an unconventional heroine of great strength and iron will - who, when crossed, embarked upon a complex relationship with Lord Krishna, and became the queen who cursed a God. About the AuthorAditi Banerjee is a practicing attorney at a Fortune 500 financial services company. She is currently an Executive MBA student at Columbia University. She co-edited the book, Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America. She has published several essays on Hinduism and the Hindu-American experience in publications such as The Columbia Documentary History of Religion in America since 1945 and Buddhists, Hindus, and Sikhs in America: A Short History (Religion in American Life) (Oxford University Press). She earned a Juris Doctor from Yale Law School and received a B.A. in International Relations, magna cum laude, from Tufts University. In her free time, she enjoys</p>

The Curse of Gandhari

Kashi: The Valiant History of a Sacred Geography

History

Bluone Ink Private Limited

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Books by Aditi Banerjee