Wendy Doniger is a Jew and not christian. A lot of Hindu right wingers incorrectly associate her with "Christian attempt" to malign Hinduism. I am born Hindu a

Wendy Doniger is a Jew and not christian. A lot of Hindu right wingers incorrectly associate her with "Christian attempt" to malign Hinduism. I am born Hindu and atheist. I have studied both Sanskrit and Religious texts like Gita in both religious and completely academic setup. For me, Wendy's interpretations comes as a shoddy work of an incompetent scholar. I do empathize with her attempts to provide a drastically different interpretation of Hindu texts, but I do not think using falsehood is an acceptable way to do it. I think her understanding of Sanskrit is poor. She probably relies on some sort of dictionary which gives translation of words without context. She linking Krishna's "Vishwarup Darshana" (World encompassing existence view) as doomsday is utterly rubbish. "Krishna manifests his universal form, the form in which he will destroy the universe at Doomsday" She is probably too influenced by "Judgement Day" sort of ideas here. The original lines are here [1]. The Hindu worldview believes that world has several starts and several ends, there are million worlds which are born and destroyed a million times. There is no fixed beginning and fixed end. Krishna is using this argument to tell Arjuna that his attachment to things is pointless because all the existence is far too tiny. To give an appropriate context this might be very similar to what Rose Tyler saw in Doctor Who. The entire time vortex in her head. All existence, all life, destruction and entire vastness of time all in once place. [Just to give a context.] Also, linking Splendour of thousand suns with Atomic Bomb and destruction is Oppenheimer's own creative liberties and has nothing to do with the interpretation of Gita itself. The idea of Sun in Hindu philosophy is very different. For Wendy it might seem like "explosion" but Hindu texts use Sun as a symbol of human intelligence (so-hum), these ideas were borrowed and made more popular by Buddhism (om namo amituo fu, om mani padme hum). The thousand suns is not a giant explosion causing destruction but magnificence of the reality. The "thousand suns" analogy is used to convey that what Arjuna is watching is beyond human comprehension and is simply blinding. See this remarkably notorious translation by Wendy: "Stop acting like a kliba; stand up!" (Kliba is a catch-all derogatory term for a castrated, cross-dressing, homosexual, or impotent man, here used as a casual slur, “not a real man.”) This sort of translation makes me question her motive. She is trying to portray Geeta as homo-phobic in some sense and as if Krishna is someone who despises Homosexuals. In reality Krishna invites a certain cross-dresser/transgender to kill an important warrior later as part of his strategy [2]. Arjuna himself was a cross-dresser before the war [3] and Krishna too was a cross-dresser. Krishna's cross-dressing romance with his girlfriend Radha is subject of several songs. The word Kliba is neither a slur nor has multiple meanings. "Kliba" is a person incapable of having sexual intercourse either because of lack of erection or castration. Kliba is not transgender, it is certainly not homo-sexual and unless you are high on pot it can not be translated to cross-dresser. The specific usage in Gita is merely a metaphor. It is common even in todays world to use impotence as a metaphor for cowardice. I am not upset because Wendy is giving negative publicity to my religion. I am upset that her work is not subjected to the same level academic scrutiny as any other academic criticism of religious texts and people who try to do that a summarily rejected as "Right wing Zealots trying to stigmatize a scholar." [1] http://www.bartleby.com/45/4/11.html#44 http://www.bartleby.com/45/4/11.html#44 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shikhandi http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shikhandi [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brihannala http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brihannala [4] http://bit.ly/1uXWxTr http://bit.ly/1uXWxTr