For Hinduism studies, the 21st century opens with an audacious tome by Wendy Doniger, 'The Hindus An Alternative History', Penguin/Viking 2009. This … - Wendy Doniger

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For Hinduism studies, the 21st century opens with an audacious tome by Wendy Doniger, 'The Hindus An Alternative History', Penguin/Viking 2009. This act of 'courage' or saahasa (also done with plenty of saa-haasa or tongue in cheek humor), ends up being closer to the ancient meaning of the word saahasa as used in Indian law codes, that is, an offence. After reading only a few pages of this book, I was reminded of something I did in my greener days. In late teens, when I had enough Sanskrit to read Valmiki, I went to my village educated mother, hoping to shock her, with my discovery that Valmiki's Rama when in exile used to hunt the deer, roast the meat and offer it to Sita. My mother, though not pleased at this great news, watched me intently to study my intentions and quickly took away my sadistic pleasure by quoting a line from Tulsidas, of whose Ramayana, she was a daily reader. 'Naanaa bhaanti Raam avataaraa/ Raamayana shata koti apaaraa' (Rama has taken many kinds of avatars and Ramayanas are hundred crores in number). Today I marvel at the profound meaning this rural untutored woman had deciphered from the text of Tulsi that some of us are unable to grasp even though we may have spent a life time of reading and teaching heavy classical texts in Sanskrit and that too sitting on the cushion of a salary. She not only kept 'her Rama' intact, but showed no antagonism, distaste or horror of the 'hunter Rama' who was just another avatara, and not somebody who would threaten her faith, demolish the 'myth of the holy cow', endanger notions of Hindu vegetarianism, create doubts about the historicity of Rama, or give a boost to the tension between 'Hindu attitude to violence in sacrifice and the Hindu ideal of nonviolence' in life, a favorite theme in Doniger's book. Myths or stories are many and in many versions. Do they mean to burden us with a past to be carried as a cross or are they meant to liberate us from ignorance and illusion that we ourselves create? Or, are myths to be interpreted as 'narratives' that aim to make a people, Hindus specially, uncomfortable, dislocated and even ashamed of their own heritage in order to make them yield to predatory cultures? These are some of the questions that come to mind while reading Doniger's massive volume.