The Hindus: An Alternative History

A possibly good side to the Wendy Doniger affair At first sight, the withdrawal of Prof. Wendy Doniger’s book The Hindus, an Alternative History by her publisher Penguin is an all-round disaster for the Hindus. The nit-picking by some Hindu activists that the book wasn’t really banned by a Court but only withdrawn by the [...]

Gunga Din is a character from a classic Rudyard Kipling poem, and was adapted into a film of the same name in 1939. In that production, Gunda Din is a simple water bearer who sacrifices his life in order to save the white British soldiers from rebel forces of the Thugee. The film is now [...]

The controversy about Penguin India’s decision to withdraw and pulp Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus: An Alternative History brings to the surface issues likely to trouble scholars of India for years to come. First, the obvious: the banning of any book violates academic or intellectual freedom. Rightly so, this leads to moral indignation among the intelligentsia of India [...]

I was shocked and aghast to read the comments of author Wendy Doniger calling Indian Judiciary as the main villain in this case. Equally shocking was the article of Ram Chandra Guha carried by your esteemed newspaper stating that courts have failed to protect artistic rights. Equally stunning was the letter of Arundhati Roy calling [...]

Numerous Hindus come across as jubilant and triumphant now that they, or some of them, have managed to pressure Penguin books into agreeing to withdraw Wendy Doniger’s book The Hindus: an Alternative History and destroy its stock. I am not that happy about it. And I agree with Wendy that the real villain of the [...]

New Delhi:  All copies of American scholar Wendy Doniger’s “The Hindus: An Alternative History”, published by Penguin, will be recalled and destroyed as part of a court-backed settlement with a group that called the book “insulting to Hindus.” Penguin India reportedly agreed to “pulp” all remaining copies of the book in a pact signed in [...]