The Washington Post's article, “Wrath Over a Hindu God: U.S. Scholars' Writings Draw Threats From Faithful”[i] by Shankar Vedantam has elicited charges of biased reporting from many in the Hindu community. Rajiv Malhotra's article [2] criticizing The Washington Post asserts that the article article “misrepresents the topic.” Vedantam's rebuttal[3], defending his article argues that it is fair and balanced since it gives sufficient space to the concerns of both sides. In his defense, Vedantam states “Mr Malhotra, in fact, got more column inches than any other source I quoted in my story.”

Is the Post article indeed fair and balanced because it quotes extensively from both sides? Or is it one-sided as suggested by Rajiv Malhotra and many readers who have been commenting on Sulekha? We examine this question in greater depth.

The core thesis of each side

There are really two major points of view in this dispute.

One point of view is of the members of the Hindu community in America who have been expressing concern about how the academic study of Hinduism in American Universities misrepresents their tradition. Rajiv Malhotra is one of the intellectual leaders of this community who has devoted many years to this issue. One of his early articles criticizing the scholarship of Wendy Doniger and her academic progeny was published in Sulekha in September 2002. I personally decided to investigate these charges of prejudice and soon published my research regarding the representations of different religious traditions in Microsoft Encarta. Many other people in the community began independently reviewing and analyzing American scholarship on Hinduism. As the controversy over Paul Courtright's book on Ganesha came to the fore, Vishal Agrawal and Kalavai Venkat published a detailed essay deconstructing and debunking the book, posing serious questions about the nature of the scholarship, the veracity of its references and the validity of its interpretations. (See Appendix I for links to the articles.)

The central issue of these various articles has been the nature and contents of existing academic scholarship on Hinduism. The consistent and recurring demand has been for the academic community studying Hinduism to engage with and respond to the viewpoints and challenges posed by well-informed, practicing members of the Hindu community. This point of view shall hereafter be referred to as that of the Concerned Community (CC).

The other point of view has been that of the Questioned Academics (QA). These include Wendy Doniger, Paul Courtright and others whose work has been challenged. In reading their responses, included those quoted in the Washington Post article, their major concern has been that of “violence”, threats, and the alleged ignorance and lack of legitimacy of the questioners. From their viewpoint the challengers are academically unqualified to debate with them. For instance, the Sulekha editor had invited Doniger to respond to the original article by Rajiv Malhotra. She declined. The viewpoint of the QA's has also been to consider concerns of the Hindu community in America from the prism of the “Hindutva” political movement in India.

The two positions are reflected in the following representative quotes.

In “The Courtright Twist and Academic Freedom” I write:

“The first question, that all truth seekers whether within or outside academia must ask is – is the academic study of Hinduism in America, as it currently exists, a valid discipline in that it has some ability to distinguish between truth and falsehood, and between scholarship and fiction? ”

In the Washington Post article, Doniger is quoted as saying:

“"Malhotra's ignorant writings have stirred up more passionate emotions in Internet subscribers who know even less than Malhotra does, who do not read books at all," Doniger wrote in an e-mail. "And these people have reacted with violence. I therefore hold him indirectly responsible." ”

In summary, the community has primarily been concerned about the nature of scholarship coming out of American academia. On the other hand, the QA's have been concerned about the nature of the protestors and possible anger and violence.

Now that we see how each side would wish the issue to be represented we can ask – is the Washington Post article fair or biased? Does its editorial voice privilege the point of view of one side over the other?

Lending the editorial voice to one side

The Post article carries the headline: “Wrath Over a Hindu God: U.S. Scholars' Writings Draw Threats From Faithful.”

From the outset the Post has framed the debate from the perspective of the QA's. The primary issue as read from the Post headline is one of the “wrath” of protestors and the “threats” received by the scholars. There could hardly be a better headline from the QA perspective if Doniger had written it herself. Here is a possible headline that would represent the other viewpoint:

“Scholarship With a Slant: Academy Charged With Bias Against Hinduism”

Here is another headline that would express both concerns:

“Prejudiced alleged in Hinduism Studies: Academics Concerned Over Threats”

The existing Post headline, as it stands, places the focus entirely on the nature of the protest in the terms that the QA's would like to define it, rather than the viewpoint of the Community.

Unfortunately, this clear slant in the framing of the issues is not restricted to the headline alone. The first few paragraphs of the Post article merely serve to reinforce this framing.

Before we examine the rest of the details in the article, it is worth tackling the issue of “violence” that has been raised.

Doniger and co. have attempted to frame this issue, quite unreasonably and disproportionately as we shall see, as one of "violence", "wrath" and so on, as opposed to serious questions about the nature of their scholarship.

The only incident of alleged violence is an egg that had been thrown at Doniger during a lecture in the United Kingdom. While such behavior is reprehensible, valid and legitimate community concerns cannot be sidelined on the pretext of the immature actions of an individual in another country not known to or associated with those active in the CC in the US.

Courtright's claims of "death threats" are also vastly overblown. In any Internet forum with 50,000 messages posted anonymously one can always find a few loonies who write stupid things that they have neither the means nor intent to carry out. In the anonymity of the Internet, no one knows who posted those messages. It is just as easy for a Courtright supporter to post it under the name of "Gopal" to discredit the petition as anyone else. One tossed egg and a few anonymous internet postings and emails comprise the entire stated case in the Doniger-Courtright affair on which the claims of violence are being manufactured.

In the absence of any verifiable or credible violence or threats against Doniger, Courtright et al, the Post chose to do something that could, at best, be described as questionable journalism.

It picked incidents in India entirely unrelated to the non-violent academic satyagraha (literally “truth insistence”) that Malhotra and others have been leading here in the US and co-presented that as the "violence" to bolster the academics' claim. In particular, it used events that are related to the controversy over a book on Shivaji, the Maratha warrior, by Jaimes Laine to bolster the QA's unsupported claims of violence here.

This was particularly egregious because the Laine controversy is not even about Hinduism but about regional politics in India. The entire framing and title of the article is used to conflate these separate issues in a misleading and dishonest way.

Finally the Post repeatedly uses the words “threats”, “violence”, “wrath”, “zealots”, “militants”, “attacks” and so on in the first few paragraphs – providing a very negative and distorted portrayals of the reasoned criticism from the community.

The first paragraph simply introduces Courtright as one who has “immersed” himself in the study of Ganesha, where he “detects” Oedipal overtones. The article then spends multiple paragraphs on the ideas of threats and violence.

2nd paragraph:

“After a scathing posting on a popular Indian Web site, he has received threats from Hindu militants who want him dead.”

Did the Post verify that it was Hindu militants who were threatening Courtright? Was there a trace on the internet addresses of the posters to verify their identities? Were they interviewed to find out whether these threats were serious or were they merely using graphic language under the cover of anonymity to express their anger? It is unlikely. Instead, Courtright's assertions appear to be presented as truth in the editorial voice.

Yet, in the reply to Rajiv Malhotra, Vedantam asserts that he did not used Doniger's statement that the “Gita is a dishonest book” that was quoted in the Philadelphia Inquirer since it could not be verified and “…no responsible person would repeat such an unsubstantiated statement.” Apparently the same standards for verification are not applicable when ascribing threats to “Hindu militants.”

While the statement in the Inquirer can apparently not be used, the Post has no hesitation in allowing quotes from unverified anonymous internet postings in the following paragraph as the main lead-in to the article to advance its thesis of violence.

3rd paragraph:

"Gopal from Singapore said, 'The professor bastard should be hanged,' " said Courtright, incredulous. "A guy from Germany said, 'Wish this person was next to me, I would have shot him in the head.' A man called Karodkar said, 'Kill the bastard. Whoever wrote this should not be spared.' Someone wanted to throw me into the Indian Ocean."

4th paragraph:

Other academics writing about Hinduism have encountered similar hostility, from tossed eggs to assaults to threats of extradition and prosecution in India.

Clearly that one tossed egg is being exploited for its full mileage. The “threats of extradition and prosecution in India” is about an entire different controversy, not about Hinduism, yet the Post has not hesitation in adding this for effect. (See detailed discussion later about the Laine/BORI issue).

Another technique that has been used by the QA's to avoid academic debate on the topics raised by American Hindus is to link it to political movements in India. Given the fact the concerns raised by the American Hindus are about scholarship here in the US, not about Indian politics, the following paragraph contains another false conflation. Following as it does the “threats of extradition” it also fails to mention that these threats were issued by the Congress-NCP government in Maharashtra, a political rival of parties identified with Hindutva.

5th paragraph:

The attacks against American scholars come as a powerful movement called Hindutva has gained political power in India, where most of the world's 828 million Hindus live. … 7th paragraph:

In November, Wendy Doniger, a University of Chicago professor of the history of religion who has written 20 books about India and Hinduism, had an egg flung at her by an angry Hindu when she was lecturing in London. It missed.

Here we have that one tossed egg in London again. This is not surprising since it is the only incident in the Doniger-Courtright affair that can remotely fit under the tag of violence. Thus it is both repeated multiple times and then juxtaposed with the other, unrelated, instances of violence.

The Laine controversy

7th paragraph:

In January, a book about the Hindu king Shivaji by Macalester College religious studies professor James W. Laine provoked violent outbursts: One of Laine's collaborators in India was assaulted, and a mob destroyed rare manuscripts at an institute in India where Laine had done research. The Indian edition was recalled, and India's prime minister warned Laine not to "play with our national pride." Officials said they want to extradite the Minnesota author to stand trial for defamation, and the controversy has become a campaign issue in upcoming parliamentary elections.

It is worth discussing the Laine controversy in detail here to illustrate how it is being misused. Since Doniger and Courtright's claims and attribution of violence are unsupportable in the context of the reasoned academic debate they have has faced from their North American critics, the Post article uses the unrelated Laine controversy to bolster her case. Why is the Laine controversy unrelated?

1. The people involved in writing articles here in the US that criticize poor scholarship on Hinduism in the American academy had nothing to do with the Laine affair at all.

2. The Laine affair is a political affair in India that is about regional and caste issues, in particular, “Maratha pride” and is not about representation of Hinduism in the West.

3. The attack by the mob on the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI) that was given wide coverage in the media in India, was by Sambhaji Brigade, a group that is against Hinduism. The Maratha Seva Sangh, the parent organization of the Sambhaji Brigade recently announced a mass conversion of half a million people out of Hinduism.[4]

4. BORI was a target because it contained Sanskrit manuscripts that, to the followers of Sambhaji Brigade represent “Brahamanical Hinduism.” According to “The Week”, Shaniwar Wada, which has nothing to do with Laine, is the next target of the group because it also represents the legacy of the Peshwa Brahmins.[5]

5. The extradition call for James Laine was given by the Maharashtra government, which is ruled by the Congress-Nationalistic Congress Party (NCP) combine – a coalition opposed to the Hindutva parties. The Laine book was also banned by the same Maharashtra government. According to Rediff:[6]

“The state government, particularly the Maratha-dominated Nationalist Congress Party, seized on the emotional subject with the forthcoming general election in mind and banned the book even as it took a lenient view of the attack on the institution.

“Last week, in an attempt to breathe fresh life into the furore, Home Minister R R Patil, who is also the NCP's Maharashtra unit president, declared that the government would issue an arrest warrant against Laine and contact Interpol to get him extradited to India.”

While the Shiv Sena had earlier attacked a scholar associated with the book, the Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee (who leads the BJP, the party identified with “Hindutva”), explicitly spoke out against the banning of books after the Laine controversy[7].

So the Post's sequencing and the manner of its presentation create three false linkages:

(a) It links the academic criticism by the Hindu American community with the “Hindutva” movement in India. No evidence is presented that this linkage exists but clever phraseology and juxtaposition is used to establish this in the mind of the readers. Note that this is exactly the linkage that Doniger, in a later quote, wishes to establish.

(b) It further links Hindutva to “book banning” and “threats” of extradition etc. in an attempt to link it back to controversy in the US when these actions were actually taken by the political rivals of Hindutva. A recent article in The Telegraph stated that the Hindutva parties had not banned a single book during their six-year reign in power while their political rivals, including the Congress-NCP and the Communist Party of India (M) had both done so[8].

(c) Finally to lend support to the QA thesis of “violence” by Hindus, critiques by American Hindus about misrepresentation in American academia are linked to violence and “Hindutva” by trying to pass off attacks against Hindu institutions in India by those opposed to Hinduism as attacks by Hindus.

The Post would be well aware that 99% of its readers are unlikely to understand Indian politics to the level of subtlety that is required to separate out the multiple threads that the Post has linked together. For the readership, the damage has been done. An active non-violent protest in the US has been branded by aspersion as violent and militant.

Is this a result of ignorance or is it deliberate misrepresentation? Perhaps the journalist was not aware that most of the vandalism in the Laine affair was done by an anti-Hindu group.

Unfortunately, the situation is more troubling than that.

Based on Vedantam's questions and interest in the BORI episode, I was apprehensive that he would try to link the BORI vandalism to the work on critiquing bias in the academia in the US. So, on Jan 26, 2004, I sent Vedantam an email with details of the BORI episode, news reports and links to demonstrate that it was the work of a group that had disavowed Hinduism and in any case was unrelated to the concerns that the Hindu American community was expressing.

Yet paragraph 4 is worth repeating here in how its combines these issues:

Other academics writing about Hinduism have encountered similar hostility, from tossed eggs to assaults to threats of extradition and prosecution in India.

Unless the Post can demonstrate that “threats of extradition” relate to other than the Laine episode (which was on writings about Shivaji, not Hinduism in any case) this raises serious issues of journalistic integrity and intent.

Following the paragraph on the Laine issue, the Post article switches back to a quote from Doniger, establishing the link between the two in the reader's mind.

8th paragraph: Doniger, a 63-year-old scholar at the center of many controversies, is distressed to see her field come under the sway of what she regards as zealots.

"The argument," she said, "is being fueled by a fanatical nationalism and Hindutva, which says no one has the right to make a mistake, and no one who is not a Hindu has the right to speak about Hinduism at all."

Thus the first 8 paragraphs, ending with the Doniger quote, seal the mischievous linkages that Doniger wishes to establish in falsely branding those who are criticize her work as violent and fanatical and she is ably assisted in this positioning by the editorial voice of the Post.

Slanting the protestors as racist

The QA's also wish to create another framing for the issue of Hinduism studies. This avoids the primary critique of the community, which is about the nature of the scholarship. The article ends with Doniger's quote that;

“..Doniger said, there was little use in discussing the merits of the various books, or her Encarta essay on Hinduism. "It does not matter whether the article published under my name was right or wrong," she said in an e-mail. "The only important thing about it was that I wrote it and someone named Sharma did not."<p> Now, it is perfectly reasonable for Doniger to advance this argument and for the Post to quote her. However since the Post considers this an important statement by which to conclude the article, it would also be expected that the Post would present evidence that supports or refutes such a conclusion.

The Post did present a statement that might be seen as partially supporting Doniger's assertion:

"For pretty much all the religious traditions in America, most of the people studying it are insiders," said Sanu. "They are people who are believers. This is true for Judaism, Islam, Christianity and Buddhism. This is not true for Hinduism."

However, the Post erred in leaving unchallenged Doniger's contention that this is an issue of “last name” or ethnicity. In fact the Post carefully included quotes supporting the Hindu community only from ethnic Indians.

This is unfortunate because I had provided Vedantam names of non-Indian academics that have expressed similar concerns about bias against Hinduism in the American academy. On Jan 22, 2004, I sent an email to Vedantam suggesting that[9]:

It will be good to include the perspective of American academics … who are opposed to the dominant cartel rather than only Indians.

Vedantam responded that he would call whoever he thought was needed for the story, which was certainly his perogative. (Jan 23, 2004)[10]:

Concerned that the issue might be stereotyped as an ethnic one, I replied back to Vedantam (Jan 23, 2004)[11]:

Dear Shankar,

Your call obviously on who you include to tell the story -- Ramdas Lambs' story will certainly be different from Arvind Sharma's … In sending you the list I  just wanted to present you with the perspective that this has been an ongoing Satyagraha for a while that many people have been struggling with in different ways. Since yours is the first major coverage of this in the mainstream press (it has received some coverage in the ethnic press, like India Abroad), my interest has been in helping make sure that it gets a fair coverage of both sides of the serious academic debate in America rather than becoming  the story of some hooligans throwing eggs  at Doniger in the UK.

Unfortunately, on reading the Post article my fears of misrepresentation and stereotyping ended up being well founded.

Soon after the article was published I received a call from Ramdas Lamb, who is a professor of Religion at the University of Hawaii and whom I had first met in a conference in New Delhi some months ago.

Lamb was equally disturbed by how the issue had been caricatured by the Post article. In the conversation he revealed to me that Vedantam had called to interview him and he (Lamb) had related several instances of facing prejudice as someone who was openly Hindu in the academy. Ramdas Lamb had related to me earlier that he was advised by two well-known professors in the field that he change his first name if he wanted to be taken seriously as a Hinduism scholar in academia.

According to Prof. Lamb, “He (Vedantam) repeatedly questioned the relevance of my experiences and appeared unwilling to recognize them as symptoms of bias in the academy.”

As it turns out, Vedantam did not use any of the quotes from his conversation with Lamb. One can only conjecture why this was the case, particular when a quote from Lamb sympathetic to the community's concerns would refute Doniger's concluding assertion that the issue was one of the ethnicity of the scholar.

It should hopefully be quite clear now to Vedantam that his last name provides no more immunity from criticism than Sharma's and that someone named Lamb is equally capable or incapable of doing good scholarship than someone name Doniger.

Whose PR?

In the response to Rajiv Malhotra, Vedantam suggests that Malhotra is engaged in a Public Relations exercise. Rajiv is certainly one party in the debate and has his point of view. However, one would expect that the Washington Post itself would produce balanced and non-partisan coverage in a news item.

Unfortunately, the foregoing analysis suggests that it is the Washington Post article that's been spun in the PR pitch favored by the Courtright-Doniger academic cartel instead[12].

The Post has to determine whether this is accidental or by design. According to Malhotra, Emory University and/or related groups engaged a Public Relations firm that resulted in the Post article getting written.

In an email to me soon after the article was published, Vedantam defended his coverage as fair and stated that it was not unusual for a fair and balanced piece on a charged topic to be viewed as partisan by both sides. Yet it is clear that Emory University is quite happy with the coverage that it may, literally, have paid for.

Soon after it was published, the article was prominently and approvingly cited on the Emory University Academy Exchange. The introduction to the article is titled “More on Scholarship in an Age of Terror[13]” and states that:

Emory Professor of Religion Paul Courtright was featured in a Washington Post article about recent attacks on scholars of Hinduism. The wave of attacks has been orchestrated by the Hidutva movement, which claims, “scholars are imposing a Eurocentric world view” on their culture, writes Post reporter Shankar Vedantam in the April 10, 2004, issue. A brief section of Courtight's 1985 study of the Hindu god Ganesha (published by Oxford UP) incensed some readers by offering a psychoanalytic reading of one part of the mythology.

The article connects the email threats and online petition against Courtright to recent attacks on other Hinduists. In November, University of Chicago scholar Wendy Doniger was “egged" in London but escaped injury. And in January a work by Macalester College Professor James Laine on an ancient Hindu King sparked an assault on one of his collaborators and on materials in an institute housing rare manuscripts in India.

Of course, as we have discussed earlier, no such connection exists. Yet, it is clear that a PR agency could not have scripted the article any better to cast the QA's as victims of irrational and violent protestors.

This is not the only place where academics have willingly drawn the conclusions that the Post article aims to establish through aspersion and a dubious conflation of incidents. In this short time, multiple websites have used Post's conflations as authoritative.

A Williams University website that is “designed to supplement the book Who Owns Native Culture? (Harvard University Press, …)” cites this article in its reading list. The article is introduced as follows[14]:

From the Wash. Post:  On the menacing campaign, including death threats, against cultural "outsiders" at American universities who have written about Hinduism in ways that "insider" Hindu fundamentalists find objectionable, April 2004 (html).

So it is quite clear that the overall impression that the Post article conveys to third party readers is neither balanced nor fair but carefully advancing the party line favored by one side.

Conclusion

There were two major dissenting points of view in the issue of Hinduism studies that was the topic of the Washington Post article.

The point of view of some academics such as Doniger and Courtright, framed the issue as one of angry ignorant protestors causing violence. Secondarily it was framed as a matter of ethnic origin rather than of scholarship.

From the point of view of the writers in the community who have been criticizing the scholarship in the academy, the primary issue has been and remains the nature and content of the scholarship. A secondary issue is whether the personal beliefs and affiliations of the academics have influenced the substance of their scholarship. The reader may refer to several articles listed in Appendix I that have been published by community members on this topic to get a first-hand flavor of the criticism.

The Washington Post article, even when quoting both sides, chose to lend its editorial voice to only one side. It included extraneous data that would appear to support that viewpoint and ignored relevant data that would contradict it.

The Washington Post article “Wrath Over a Hindu God” thus grossly misrepresents the concerns of the Hindu American community using a variety of questionable means such as negative branding and associative guilt. The article can serve as a good case study of unprofessional journalism, stereotyping, bias, and misrepresentation for interested students of media, academia and society.

The article can also serve as a good case study for determining whether and how powerful interests manipulate news media to advance their story while marginalizing any challengers.

In the meanwhile, the Post needs to decide whether this article truly represents the standards of journalistic excellence that it aspires to and, if it does not, what corrective action would be appropriate for it to take.

Appendix I: Articles on issues with Hinduism studies

Are Hinduism Studies Prejudiced? A Look at Microsoft Encarta.
http://www.sulekha.com/expressions/column.asp?cid=245733

RISA Lila 1: Wendy's Child Syndrome
http://www.sulekha.com/expressions/column.asp?cid=239156

RISA Lila 2: Limp Scholarship and Demonology:
http://www.sulekha.com/expressions/column.asp?cid=305890

The Courtright Twist And Academic Freedom
http://www.sulekha.com/expressions/column.asp?cid=305899

When The Cigar Becomes A Phallus - Part 1
http://www.sulekha.com/expressions/articledesc.asp?cid=307042

When The Cigar Becomes A Phallus - Part 1
http://www.sulekha.com/expressions/articledesc.asp?cid=307053

Hinduism in American classrooms
http://www.sulekha.com/expressions/column.asp?cid=181242

Puzzling Dimensions and Theoretical Knots in my Graduate School Research
http://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/s_es/s_es_rosse_puzzle_frameset.htm

Stereotypes in Schooling: Negative Pressures in the American Educational System
http://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/s_es/s_es_rosse_school_frameset.htm

The Clandestine Curriculum in the Classroom
http://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/s_es/s_es_rosse_EAA_frameset.htm

Notes:

[1] The Washington Post, Saturday, April 10, 2004; Page A01

[2] http://www.sulekha.com/expressions/column.asp?cid=305924

[3] http://www.sulekha.com/expressions/column.asp?cid=305926

[4] http://www.the-week.com/24apr25/currentevents_article1.htm

[5] http://www.the-week.com/24apr25/currentevents_article1.htm

[6] http://www.rediff.com/news/2004/mar/27laine.htm

[7] http://www.hindu.com/2004/01/17/stories/2004011706380100.htm

[8] http://www.telegraphindia.com/1040130/asp/opinion/story_2834652.asp

[9] Private email correspondence

[10] Private email correspondence

[11] Private email correspondence

[12] This term is used loosely from the article “The Peer-Review Cartel” http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20040202&fname=rajiv&sid=1

[13] http://www.emory.edu/ACAD_EXCHANGE/2004/aprmay/whatsnew.html Referenced on April 27, 2004.

[14] http://www.williams.edu/go/native/ Referenced on April 27, 2004.>