Spiritualism and religion, or in the western vernacular, faith, has occupied my mind since the first conscious breaths I can remember. Who or what is God, I have asked since the time I learned to speak.
A few seekers have crossed my paths, and when they write I grab their texts in hunger and thirst, continuing my journey in search of faith, or as I prefer to name it, something worth trusting. Wendy Doniger, or once as I learned her name a while ago, Wendy O’Flaherty, has attracted me along the way because she has focused all of her distinguished career on Hinduism. http://www.faithstreet.com/onfaith/author/wendy-doniger
Equally interesting to me, she has taught for years at the University of Chicago’s divinity school, which exists just a few miles away from my family’s stomping grounds. Sanskrit was not one of the 14 languages I mastered, albeit temporarily, in my services to the US government, so the original texts related to one of the oldest human faiths have stood beyond my reach. Only English and German translations from Sanskrit, plus a few dozen excellent commentaries in English, have held my gaze. http://divinity.uchicago.edu/wendy-doniger
Happy Day! Wendy has published another fun read entitled The Hindus: An Alternative History, which now graces my Kindle reader. It won’t grace the reading devices of many Hindus, however, because the publisher, Penguin Books, just agreed today to take all of its print copies and destroy them, putting them out of the reach of anyone trying to purchase a copy in India. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/14/us-india-book-idUSBREA1D0TX20140214
Funny how the grandest democracy of them all, India, carefully squelches all divergent voices when it comes to Hinduism. What are they trying to hide, I must wonder aloud. That is precisely what Wendy’s new book uncovers: The divergent stories of great minds lost behind the hierarchical cloak of a choreographed Hindu history. That established history, similar to many other histories, offers one traditional view of Hinduism’s long reign from the perspective of its religious leaders. All divergent views critical or simply unsympathetic to that hierarchy or that traditional view have been immersed in the overbearing weight of unpublished histories. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/11/the-hindus-wendy-doniger-withdrawn_n_4769192.html
If the contemporary Hindu leaders of India had their way, Wendy Doniger’s latest excellent effort would also be immersed in obscurity…forever. But I am here to tell the world that a scholarly based, delightfully good read about an alternative Hindu history is available now, everywhere in the world except the capitol of Hinduism. http://HamiltonFinanceServices.com
Everyone should purchase or check out from the local library a copy of The Hindus: An Alternative History. Let us show the free speech aspirationalists of India how the rest of the world takes its leaders’ censorship. At least, that’s my opinion.
What do you think?
