In the debate over Wendy Doniger's "The Hindus," a friend recently shared this link, an interview with the author from 2009.
In college, I wrote a personal essay about Diwali for the school newspaper, which concluded with "The legends don't say [Ram] returned home to a populace that wasn't segregated by class, or to a kingdom that wasn't paralyzed by dissent. They don't promise that he went without reservations or uncertainty. Only that he went."
The Ramayana is one of my favorite stories, and Sita is one of my favorite characters. (Ayn Rand once said - I'm paraphrasing - that most people's moral compromises take the form of tiny acts of daily cowardice, rather than the form of grand battles. And she's right. Ram went into the forest for 14 years, which somehow made my 22-year-old self feel better about my inadequate ways of coping with homesickness.)
But like a lot of women I know, I was ambivalent about the story, especially the bit at the end when Ram rejects Sita in favor of his crown. I found this decision unacceptable and deeply unfair. I wasn't the only one. From my conversations with other women, I know that many of us gravitated towards Sita's story, and towards that moment of abandonment. We all felt that it was the low point of Ram's trajectory (we rejected entirely the idea that he did the right thing by leaving her).
In the introduction to"In Search of Sita," one of the editors writes about how young women have trouble relating to Sita's ideals and life. I'd always seen Sita as a woman who made her own decisions, although she was let down by a man.
In her interview, Doniger addresses Ram's repudiation of Sita thus: "But even so, [Ram] is afraid that people who noticed Dasaratha’s love for Ram will say that like his father, he too is keeping a woman he should not because he’s so crazy about her. So he fears public opinion will connect him with his father."
I don't know enough Sanskrit to quibble with Doniger's interpretation (other people do), but I understand what propels her question. Sita's situation seems quintessentially female, not in the sense that it embodies any archetype of ideal womanhood, but in the sense that she grapples with the same problems and dilemmas that women still face when it comes to the people they love. Understanding women's place in scripture and tradition doesn't mean drawing a straight line between a woman and the words themselves. It means asking about the motivations and behaviors and attitudes that shaped women's stories, and by extension, actual women's lives.
In their obsession with excising sex from the scriptures, puritans of all stripes have decided to remove women, as well. The debate is neither new nor restricted to Hinduism - massive controversy has arisen over the idea of Gnostic Gospels, or the theory that Jesus might have been married. I mean no disrespect to anyone's tradition, but isn't it hurtful that the worst thing you can say about a man is that he loved a woman? Or that the road to being a perfect man involves leaving women by the wayside?
The idea that sex is bad has often meant, in the existing tradition, that women are bad as well. Doniger's critics have accused her of being a "woman hungry for sex." Certainly, she's hungry for fame and perhaps willing to tolerate notoriety. But it's disingenuous to suggest that her critics are concerned only with the nature of her Vedic translations - they are deeply concerned about sex as well.
Consider this quote, from the petition against Doniger's book "The Hindus": "Pg 112 - The author alleges that in Rigveda 10.62, it is implied that a woman may find her own brother in her bed! COMMENT: The hymn has no such suggestion. It is offensive to suggest that the sacred text of Hindus has kinky sex in it." Indeed, much of the petition's complaints fall under "Derogatory, Defamatory and Offensive Statements." The petition itself opens with the word "scandalous" in all caps.
The debate is not about the translation or interpretation of a seminal book from India's past, or about the quality of Doniger's scholarship. It's about the structure of the future society we build here, who will be represented within it, and what information children will be permitted to access. It is about what those children will learn - whether they will feel they have the right to judge or condemn their peers for non-mainstream sexual or life choices - or whether they will value tolerance and inclusion instead. (Consider: the Indian Supreme Court recently upheld a faded provision criminalizing certain consensual sex acts.) The petitioners who filed the report against Doniger's book (led by a former school principal) are fighting for their future society. And in this case, they won. The real loss isn't "The Hindus," but the book that comes after it that will now never be released in India at all. And the conversations about Sita, about Hinduism, and about our tradition that will, in this context, be even harder to have.
In college, I wrote a personal essay about Diwali for the school newspaper, which concluded with "The legends don't say [Ram] returned home to a populace that wasn't segregated by class, or to a kingdom that wasn't paralyzed by dissent. They don't promise that he went without reservations or uncertainty. Only that he went."
The Ramayana is one of my favorite stories, and Sita is one of my favorite characters. (Ayn Rand once said - I'm paraphrasing - that most people's moral compromises take the form of tiny acts of daily cowardice, rather than the form of grand battles. And she's right. Ram went into the forest for 14 years, which somehow made my 22-year-old self feel better about my inadequate ways of coping with homesickness.)
But like a lot of women I know, I was ambivalent about the story, especially the bit at the end when Ram rejects Sita in favor of his crown. I found this decision unacceptable and deeply unfair. I wasn't the only one. From my conversations with other women, I know that many of us gravitated towards Sita's story, and towards that moment of abandonment. We all felt that it was the low point of Ram's trajectory (we rejected entirely the idea that he did the right thing by leaving her).
In the introduction to"In Search of Sita," one of the editors writes about how young women have trouble relating to Sita's ideals and life. I'd always seen Sita as a woman who made her own decisions, although she was let down by a man.
In her interview, Doniger addresses Ram's repudiation of Sita thus: "But even so, [Ram] is afraid that people who noticed Dasaratha’s love for Ram will say that like his father, he too is keeping a woman he should not because he’s so crazy about her. So he fears public opinion will connect him with his father."
I don't know enough Sanskrit to quibble with Doniger's interpretation (other people do), but I understand what propels her question. Sita's situation seems quintessentially female, not in the sense that it embodies any archetype of ideal womanhood, but in the sense that she grapples with the same problems and dilemmas that women still face when it comes to the people they love. Understanding women's place in scripture and tradition doesn't mean drawing a straight line between a woman and the words themselves. It means asking about the motivations and behaviors and attitudes that shaped women's stories, and by extension, actual women's lives.
In their obsession with excising sex from the scriptures, puritans of all stripes have decided to remove women, as well. The debate is neither new nor restricted to Hinduism - massive controversy has arisen over the idea of Gnostic Gospels, or the theory that Jesus might have been married. I mean no disrespect to anyone's tradition, but isn't it hurtful that the worst thing you can say about a man is that he loved a woman? Or that the road to being a perfect man involves leaving women by the wayside?
The idea that sex is bad has often meant, in the existing tradition, that women are bad as well. Doniger's critics have accused her of being a "woman hungry for sex." Certainly, she's hungry for fame and perhaps willing to tolerate notoriety. But it's disingenuous to suggest that her critics are concerned only with the nature of her Vedic translations - they are deeply concerned about sex as well.
Consider this quote, from the petition against Doniger's book "The Hindus": "Pg 112 - The author alleges that in Rigveda 10.62, it is implied that a woman may find her own brother in her bed! COMMENT: The hymn has no such suggestion. It is offensive to suggest that the sacred text of Hindus has kinky sex in it." Indeed, much of the petition's complaints fall under "Derogatory, Defamatory and Offensive Statements." The petition itself opens with the word "scandalous" in all caps.
The debate is not about the translation or interpretation of a seminal book from India's past, or about the quality of Doniger's scholarship. It's about the structure of the future society we build here, who will be represented within it, and what information children will be permitted to access. It is about what those children will learn - whether they will feel they have the right to judge or condemn their peers for non-mainstream sexual or life choices - or whether they will value tolerance and inclusion instead. (Consider: the Indian Supreme Court recently upheld a faded provision criminalizing certain consensual sex acts.) The petitioners who filed the report against Doniger's book (led by a former school principal) are fighting for their future society. And in this case, they won. The real loss isn't "The Hindus," but the book that comes after it that will now never be released in India at all. And the conversations about Sita, about Hinduism, and about our tradition that will, in this context, be even harder to have.
In a sense, every time we condemn a book or words, we respond to what we feel, as well as to what we wish to allow others to feel.
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