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     Masularex Side Hero Username: Masularex Post Number: 3374 Registered: 05-2010 Posted From: 123.201.151.241 Rating: |
Professor at the Divinity School, University of Chicago, Wendy Doniger's rather radical works on Hinduism, its scriptures and icons have provoked huge debates. Her latest book, 'On Hinduism', too questions established ideas about the religion and its contemporary face. She tells Malini Nair that Hinduism lives through its liberal followers in the book you also demolish the popular theory that Hindus are a tolerant community. I think the paradox becomes clearer when you become more specific about what people are tolerant about. Hindus have generally been very tolerant about ideas; they did not persecute people whose beliefs about the gods were different from their own. This is the source of their quite justifiable pride in Hindu tolerance. But Hindus have not always been tolerant about behaviour - about what people ate, touched, or wore - and this, of course, makes for trouble with Muslims and Sikhs. What worries me most about the Hindutva brigade is that they are just as intolerant of behaviour as Hindus have often been, but now they are also intolerant of ideas, engaging in censorship of a fundamentalist nature that has never infected Hinduism until now. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/stoi/all-that-matter s/Wendy-Doniger-Hinduisms-openness-will-carry-it-through-pre sent-danger/articleshow/22407502.cms |
