A lot of controversy is going on about 'pulping' a book 'The Hindus: An alternative history' by Wendy Doniger, a professor at University of Chicago. What I can gather from various news reports - the book was published in 2009, in 2010 a group of people who thought that the book offends religious sentiments of Hindus in India filed civil and criminal cases (and in cases like these throws every possible accusations and the kitchen sink) for withdrawing the book from India. There was an online campaign as well to banish the book worldwide. Nothing much happened since 2010 except perhaps courts giving dates and the case progressing in a glacial pace (if at all). In 2014 Penguin in an out of court settlement decided to withdraw the book from India and pulp it.
Being a firm believer in Streisand effect and being proffered several links (I shall not provide them so as not to fall foul of DMCA) to download the book on Facebook, I decided to read the 'controversial' book and like a good lawyer, on an amicus brief, form my own opinion. It was no easy read - quite voluminous and not really scholarly in nature (my comparable frame of reference would be Halsburys for law and Winfield for torts), but then again I am no expert in religious study in general or Hinduism in special. However I did read various editions of Ramayan ranging from children's illustrated edition to a heavyset volume (which claimed to be authoritative) and of course watched the Ramanand Sagar TV series on the matter. Thus you would say that I have an average (and definitively no scholarly) knowledge on the epic. But one important difference for me was the presence of my militant atheist economics professor grandfather (who frequently clashed with my overtly religious grandmother) who always tried to instil in me a critical de-constructive spirit - questioning the status quo and upending the establishment. So I was always a bit miffed that Ram after fighting ferociously for Sita, abandoned her in name of keeping the people of his kingdom happy. Something did not gel well with my idea of equity and justice. This is a deconstructive ideology of interpreting the epic (and some say that there are over 200 versions of the epic), Karunanidhi (for whom I have no love lost) once said 'Who is this Raman? In which engineering college did he study and become a civil engineer?' and berated the epic as 'a piece of fiction that allegorically represented the conflict between Aryans and Dravidians'.
So I decided to read and compare Wendy's interpretation of Ramayan (Chapter 9 quite forebodingly titled Women and the ogresses in the Ramayana 400 BCE to 200 CE); well for a casual reader like me I could find that her deconstructive (which she calls alternative) narrative was more feministic and definitely more critical (than my children's illustrated version). She talks about sexuality (something of a taboo in India, conveniently blamed on the forceful imposition of Victorian morality by our former colonial oppressors) and interprets part of Ramayan focussing on the sexuality of Sita and other major characters. Sita is one of the holiest of holies in Hindu mythology (at par with the virgin birth or messenger of God for Christianity and Islam) and understandably the fringe attacks this 'phoren' misinterpretation of our beloved religious icons (who by default have to rise above base instincts like sex etc.).
So the question to be asked is Wendy right in her opinion or should it be stopped from corrupting the mind of impressionable young (to misquote and misuse Hicklin), and the answer can be who cares - if Dashrath was a sex crazy guy (which is quite self evident with multiple wives, easily manipulated by one of them, scientific hypotheses about monogamy being unnatural and then the adecdotalyet rational examples of sexual indiscretions of people in power from Tiwari to Clinton to Hollande etc.); the crux seems to be of a person writing about something, if you do not like it criticise it by writing a counter-piece but instead muzzling by pulping seems to be an utter shortcut (to quote Atal Bihari Bajpayee 'If you want to make a line appear short, do not erase it but draw a longer one beside it.'). And alternative narratives are always controversial because by default they have to depart from the mainstream (if you are still with me and want to explore a similar controversy look at Ramanujam Ramayana or the Mahishashura Martyrdom)
What I can personally take away from this is if a book is banned 9 out of 10 times it is not an interesting read (I read satanic verses and it gave me a headache but then Dr. Zhivago also gave me a headache, so I guess the problem has to be with me rather than the book) and 10 out of 10 times it is useless to have a ban. Without going into further spiel about free speech v hate speech v right to offend or magnanimity of Hinduism what I can summarise is that for Indian readers (if brought up solely on a diet of Ramanad Sagar and Amar Chitra Katha's sanitised version of Ramayan) Wendy's chapter on Ramayan would be engaging (i.e. if you open your mind to it you would have some opinion at the end of it) or if you did have a deconstructivist grandad you would say meh why the hoopla?
In the end I will leave you with two cartoons from the indomitable Amul girl.
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