Chapter 17
Paul Courtright’s ‘Ganesa, Lord of
Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings’: An
Independent Review
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Editors’ Note:
In this chapter, Vishal Agarwal and Kalavai Venkat provide a detailed
review of Paul Courtright’s book, Ganesa, Lord of Obstacles, Lord of
Beginnings. Their analysis raises very troubling questions about the
quality and integrity of Courtright’s scholarship. Nevertheless, Courtright,
Doniger, and her followers, continue to evade these questions about
methodology by demonizing their critics.
Doniger has recently adopted an interesting new tactic to silence criticism
while simultaneously appealing to American liberals. She has started
comparing those who criticize her to fundamentalist Christians opposing
the teaching of Evolution in schools. She casts herself in the role of
Darwin, as a courageous ‘scientist’ being attacked by obscurantists who
are unwilling to deal with empirical evidence. The allegation is that
her critics are irrational. This charge is over and above her prior
allegations that her critics—along with their deities and spiritual
traditions—are violent and immoral.
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She deploys a tactic with deep emotional roots among American liberals
going back at least a hundred years, from before the Scopes Monkey
Trial. This seminal socio-political event, perceived as the triumph of
obscurantism over science still resonates strongly. Many American
liberals rightly carry a ‘never again’ attitude over this issue, with
visceral feelings that tie into their personal identity. To enlist liberal
sympathies against the Indian–American minority, Doniger
disingenuously positions the debate as between scientific reason,
represented by her school, and unreason, represented by the Hindu
diaspora.
Ironically, most Indian-Americans who have criticized Doniger’s
scholarship are scientists or professionals with considerable technical
training, while Doniger and her cohorts are typically trained in the
humanities, and questionably, at that.
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In addition, many critics within
the Hindu diaspora have had lifelong instruction in many Indian
languages and in Sanskrit. They have, importantly, knowledge of multiple
versions of narratives based on regional differences, chronology, or
schools of thought, besides a culturally rooted understanding of texts.
Many in the diaspora see the Doniger school’s methodologies as
empirically flawed, arbitrary, irrational and ultimately harmful to
American liberalism, as well as a prejudicial bulwark to the dignified
inclusion of Indian-Americans into the American mainstream.
In an interview with a local American newspaper, posted on UChicago’s
public relations website, Doniger engages in undisguised us-versus-them
branding and insinuation by misrepresenting her critics’ positions. The
newspaper reported that Doniger:
sees some parallels with the debate in Kansas about how much
teaching on creationism should be allowed in the classroom. ‘This
same fight is going on in my field,’ Doniger says. ‘Not literally,
of course, about Darwin and the Hebrew Bible and Genesis, but
whether the scholarly attitude of the events in the history of Hinduism
or the faith attitude to the history of the events in the history of
Hinduism is the one that should be taught in school. There’s a very
close parallel.’
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The primary problem with her analogy is that the particulars of the
‘debate in Kansas’ over creationism versus evolution are the inverse of
the current situation. The ‘fight going on in [Doniger’s] field’ is not a
battle between modern scientific approaches, represented by RISA et al,
versus a tradition-bound obscurantist Hindu diaspora. It is a debate
between, on the one hand obscure, arbitrary approaches to Hindu
Studies based on Eurocentric paradigms and poor evidence, which make
unverifiable inferences about the meanings ‘of the events in the history
of Hinduism’ versus an approach to Hindu Studies that insists on
rigorous training, accuracy in translation, independent peer-review and
cultural authenticity.
The reader should judge for herself whether Doniger is justified in calling
her followers’ approach to Hinduism ‘scientific’, i.e. comparable with
Darwin or even ‘historically accurate’. On the one hand, Courtright’s
book, carrying Doniger’s endorsement, won a prestigious history prize.
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Courtright has also tacitly compared himself to noted historians and
chroniclers like De Tocqueville and Myrdal, even though he is not
trained as a professional historian.
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Courtright’s work was supposedly
peer-reviewed by other Western academic scholars prior to publication
to ensure scientific rigor in the use of evidence and theory. On the other
hand, this chapter demonstrates the value of independent peer-review,
when the academic peer-review system is broken. The reader can judge
for herself whether Courtright’s book is, in fact, scholarly and evidence-
based; or relies upon fabricated data, shoddy research and arbitrary
theorizing—dressed up with a scholarly gloss to disguise prejudice.
Introductory Remarks:
Background and Importance of Courtright’s Book
In the years 2003–2004, a fierce controversy involving Hindu- Americans
on one side and certain Indologists on the other, broke out over Paul
Courtright’s book on the Hindu deity Ganesha. The controversy gathered
steam in November 2003 when a chapter of the Hindu Students
Council (HSC), at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, started an
online petition criticizing the book. The petition reproduced several
passages regarding Lord Ganesha from Courtright’s book that were
deemed pornographic in nature. Within a matter of days the petition
successfully attracted almost 7000 signatures. Unfortunately some
anonymous signatories took advantage of the privacy that the Internet
offered them and posted death threats to Courtright on the petition.
The HSC members who started the petition immediately took if off
the website before the situation got out of control.
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Meanwhile
Motilal Banarsidass, which had published the Indian reprint of the
book, withdrew it from circulation before the controversy reached
Indian shores. The publisher also apologized to the protestors for
hurting the religious sentiments of Hindus.
These two developments in turn raised a storm among a section
of scholars of South Asian Studies in the American academic
community. They went on to denounce the publishers and protestors
as ‘Hindu fundamentalists’ bent on damaging freedom of speech in
American Universities by intimidating the author of a ‘scholarly’,
‘sensitive’, ‘thoughtful’, ‘peer-reviewed’, and ‘excellent’ book.
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This
generalization is, in our opinion, quite crude and reductionist. We often
hear these same academicians sermonize Hindus on how we should
approach matters in a nuanced, sensitive, multivalent manner, and that
we should consider many different perspectives of an issue. Why are
the same people now trying to reduce the situation to an issue of
freedom of speech? And why do we get the impression that these
scholars are suppressing dissent in the academic discussion lists controlled
by them?
Courtright’s book cannot be ignored and it is in fact a prominent
yet controversial Indological publication for several reasons outlined
below. First, the text bears a Foreword by none other than Wendy
Doniger, who currently acts as the reigning Czarina of Indological
Studies in the United States. She is a cult figure for a very large number
of her students, who have a profound influence on how India and
Hinduism are depicted at American Universities. Even those who are
not her students, nevertheless feel proud of their association with her,
such as Courtright. Second, the book has received a national award
for its presumed excellence. The award was given in 1985 by the
Committee on the History of Religions of the American Council of
Learned Societies. It may be noted that the History of Religions as a
discipline emerged, for all practical purposes, from the University of
Chicago, where Wendy Doniger is now in fact a Professor in the History
of Religions!
Third, the dissension actually prompted Oxford University Press,
one of the most reputed academic printers in the world, to publish a
2003 reprint of the book in the West.
Fourth, its reprint in India was brought out by Motilal Banarsidass,
the largest publisher, exporter and distributor of Indological books in
the country. As a result, the book was also noticed and commented
upon in India. We will refer to some of these reviews in our own
extensive comments here.
Fifth, it appears that perverse descriptions of Ganesha from the
book have started to creep into mainstream society in the West. For
instance, in a recent exhibit on the Hindu deity Ganesha arranged by
a museum in Baltimore,
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the book served as a seminal text that was
quoted in citations accompanying the displays.
Sixth, since the publication of the book, Paul B. Courtright has
been acknowledged as an authority on the subject of Ganesha. This
is evident from the way in which numerous other writers of books on
the deity not just acknowledge his help and guidance; they also often
quote his text either approvingly or at least in a neutral manner.
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Conversely, the list of people whom Courtright acknowledges in his
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book for their help reads like a veritable ‘Who’s Who’ in the world
of Hinduism studies in the United States.
Seventh, the book is derived, at least in part, from the author’s
Ph.D. thesis
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and therefore should be considered a result of intensive
research. The thesis was completed in 1974, eleven years before the
publication of the book. It is reasonable to assume that the book
therefore contains the fruits of his intensive research as a doctoral
student, and perhaps a lot of other subsequent research in the eleven
years thereafter. Moreover, the author has published several journal
articles on themes related to the subject matter of his book.
Eighth, in the wake of this controversy, a number of professional
scholars of Hinduism Studies and in related fields have actually gone
on record with whole-hearted praise of the book. Such academic
support not just defends Courtright’s right to free speech; it actually
praises his book for its content and analyses.
Ninth, Courtright has done better professionally than most scholars
in Hinduism studies. He is currently a tenured professor and former
co-chair of the Department of Religion at Emory University; a feat
attributable to the accolades his book has drawn in the past.
Tenth, a cursory search on WorldCat and other electronic catalogs
shows that approximately 300 college and school libraries in North
America alone have a copy of his book on their shelves. This is a large
number for any Indological publication and attests to the widespread
acclaim and popularity that his text has attained in American academia,
almost to the point of canonization.
Finally, a sourcebook
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on Hinduism and Psychoanalysis cites
long extracts from his book to explain the father-son relationship in
the Hindu society! These citations actually constitute some of the most
obscene and offensive sections of the book. Obviously according to the
editors of this sourcebook, Courtright’s psychoanalysis provides seminal
understanding of family relationships amongst Hindus!
Being such an important book also means that the controversy
raises many other issues besides the question of free speech and academic
freedom. In our review, we restrict ourselves to the issue of Paul
Courtright’s misuse of primary data from Hindu texts for developing
his theses. We argue that since the author has taken great liberties with
Hindu texts and traditions, his interpretations depend on a flawed set
of data and therefore cannot be valid. We shall examine his (mis)use
of textual data under different classes of Hindu scriptures. We wish
to emphasize that the examples given below are merely illustrative and
form a small subset of distortions pervading the book. We will not
examine the book from the perspective of a flawed application of
psychoanalytical techniques themselves because a review by another
author has done this task.
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Psychoanalysis and Indology in the United States: When the Cigar
becomes a Phallus
Sigmund Freud had a lifelong relationship with cigars.
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He was rarely
photographed without one between his lips. It is said that he enjoyed
as many as twenty of them every day. In the declining years of his life,
he was beset with some ailments such as arrhythmia, which were
blamed on his passion for cigars. On medical advice, he often tried to
quit his obsession, but he would always experience withdrawal
symptoms. During one such period of abstinence, he even exhibited
hysterical behavior in a letter to his physician. When his friends suspected
that he was addicted to cigars, he argued that they were a very private
aspect of his life that should be insulated from psychoanalysis by
others. This disagreement with peers supposedly gave rise to a statement
at times attributed to Freud, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” The
implication being that people should not see something else in his cigar
since it really was just a cigar.
Little did Freud know that several decades later, a ‘gutsy’ Indian
novelist and high-profile socialite Shobha De would write a novel in
which a woman sees a cigar lying on a table in front of her, only to
discover that it is actually the phallus of her paramour standing nearby.
While Freud’s cigar was just a cigar, Shobha De’s was certainly a phallus.
But lest one credits steamy-fiction writers with too much originality,
let us hasten to add that some Indologists and other academics on
Hinduism in the United States foreshadowed Shobha De’s innovative
use of cigars by at least a decade, albeit in the guise of scholarship.
What we are referring to is the complete Freudianization of
Indological parlance, or lingo, by a small band of academics. The
phenomenon has advanced to such an extent
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that words and phrases
like ‘castration’, ‘flaccid-penis’, ‘sexual-fantasy’, ‘erect penis’ and such
have become a sort of lingua-franca through which the intellectual
intercourse of closely-related scholars achieves effect in their academic
publications.
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Wendy Doniger, the doyenne of academic studies on
Hinduism
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has summarized the weltanschauung of these scholars in
the following words:
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Aldous Huxley once said that an intellectual was someone who had
found something more interesting than sex; in Indology, an
intellectual need not make that choice at all.
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After all, did not Courtright’s book on Ganesha precede Shobha
De’s novel by several years?
Who wrote the Mahabharata?
The Foreword to Courtright’s book is written by Wendy Doniger
O’Flaherty
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who, in her typical colloquial and superlative style,
praises his book without apparently adding anything substantial. Except
she does reveal undisclosed lore about the writing of the Hindu epic
the Mahabharata, “ . . . in which Ganesa dictates the epic to Vyasa”
(Courtright, viii.)!
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Hindu tradition, however, is unanimous in
informing us that it was the Sage Vyasa who dictated the epic to
Ganesha rather than the other way around as Doniger states. No, this
is not a slip of the tongue on Doniger’s part, unless it is some kind
of a Freudian slip, because she actually constructs a pseudo-psychology
out of her erroneous version of the tradition:
. . . every book exists in toto in the mind of the elephant-headed
god, and we scribes merely scramble to scribble down those bits
of it that we can grasp, including the ‘knots,’ the obstacles to full
comprehension, that the god of obstacles throws in on purpose to
keep us on our toes and to keep us in awe of him.
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Courtright too returns the compliment of Wendy Doniger. He
writes:
A special word of gratitude goes to Wendy Doniger O’Flaherty, who
not only shared her vast knowledge of the Puranic literature and
Hindu mythology and made many valuable suggestions on several
drafts of this book, but also graced this undertaking with her
inexhaustible enthusiasm and confidence in its value.
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Doniger, for her part, reciprocates the lavish praise. She writes:
“This is a book that I would have loved to have written”. (Courtright,
p.vii).
The mutual admiration club completes its protocol. In Courtright’s
defense, we must point out that he himself has correctly referred to
the tradition about the authorship of the Mahabharata in his book
(Courtright, pp.151–53). Doniger herself perhaps did not read the
book thoroughly even though she wrote the ecstatic Foreword to it.
Lord Ganesha does not get to bask in the glory of his surprise, albeit
ephemeral, promotion from a scribe to the narrator of the epic.
Courtright brings Ganesha down from the heavenly realms to the earth
and transforms him into something of a eunuch, an incestuous son,
and a homosexual. Had Ganesha indulged in the ephemeral glory
bestowed on him by Doniger then one must indeed pity his naivety,
because Doniger had earlier forewarned:
Ganesa has everything that is fascinating to anyone who is interested
in religion or India or both: charm, mystery, popularity, sexual
problems, moral ambivalence, political importance, the works.
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[added emphasis].
Doniger had essentially made the same universal claims for Lord
Shiva, when she herself wrote one of her first major books on Him
in the year 1973.
The mythology of Siva forms only a part of the material of the
Puranas, but it is an ideal model which reveals a pattern which
pertains to the material as a whole. Siva is not only an extremely
important god; he is in many ways the most uniquely Indian god
of them all, and the principles which emerge from an intensive study
of his mythology lie at the very heart of Hinduism.
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But that was when there were no ‘Wendy’s Children’. Now she is
the matriarch of Indology, who will shower her anugraha [blessings]
on any of her children and sakhis [compatriots] who write anything
on everything Hindu: the Rig-Veda, the Kathasaritsaagara, Ganesha,
caste, etc. Euphoria and superlatives ooze from the numerous forewords
she has written in the last twenty some odd years. Perhaps the author
of these forewords is an ideal subject for Freudian studies in her own
right.
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We proceed to review the contents of Courtright’s book.
Misuse of Textual Sources
Courtright attempts to base his study on the contents of Hindu texts
and then interprets them to derive a particular thesis. The two major
classes of texts he deals with are the Vedas and the Puranas. The Tantras
and the Upanishads are largely left out, except for a stand-alone
translation of the Ganapati Atharvasirsa Upanishad in the appendix.
In this section, we examine the validity of Courtright’s use of Hindu
texts in his study.
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Dubious Vedic Textual References
In Chapter I, titled ‘The Making of a Deity,’ he explores the evolution
of Ganesha as a deity in the Hindu pantheon from a historical perspective.
He begins with the antecedents of the deity in Vedic literature and
proceeds to make dubious statements. For instance, while dismissing
all Vedic references as evidence that the worship of Ganesha was known
when the Vedic texts were the primary source of Hindu practice, he says:
A similar invocation in another Brahmanic text addresses ‘the one
with the twisted trunk [vakratunda]’ (Tà 10.1.5), also leaving it
uncertain whether it is Ganesa or Siva who is being addressed.
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This is puzzling, because vakratunda is distinctly another name
for Ganesha. Moreover, the last portion of the mantra (called the
Vighneshvaragayatri in the Hindu tradition) reads—tanno dantih
pracodayaat (Taittiriya Aranyaka 10.1.5), which is clearly a reference
to the tusk of Ganesha.
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Courtright also mistakenly classifies the
text as ‘Brahmanic’ or from the Brahmanas, whereas in reality it is
a mantra. Another obvious reason why this mantra containing the
word vakratunda refers to Ganesha and not to his father Shiva is that
the preceding mantra is in fact addressed to Mahadeva and Rudra
(other names of Shiva), and the mantra after the Vighneshvaragayatri
is addressed to Nandin, the mount or vehicle of Shiva. Moreover, the
mantra that follows the Nandigayatri is addressed to the brother of
Ganesha, Karttikeya. Thus from the words of the mantra and its
context as well, we should infer that this mantra is clearly addressed
to the deity Ganesha and not to Lord Shiva.
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The parallel mantra
in Maitrayani Samhita 2.9.1 reads hastimukhaaya (one with an
elephant head) in lieu of vakratundaaya and this should again clinch
the matter.
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Referring to Ganapati in Aitareya Brahmana 1.21, Courtright again
claims that the reference is to Shiva (Courtright, p.9). The actual text
reads “ganaanaam tvaa ganapatim havaamah iti brahmanaspat-
yambrahma vai . . . ,” showing that here Ganapati actually refers to
Brahmanaspati (=Brihaspati) and not to Shiva. In fact, the Brahmanic
text clearly refers here to Rig-Veda 2.23.1 that reads,
ganaanaam tvaa ganapatim havaamahe
kavim kaviinaam upamasravastamam
jyeshtaraajam braahmanaam brahmanaspata
aa nah srnvann uutibhih siida saadanam
The mantra is addressed to Brihaspati, who is indeed the devataa
of this mantra according to Saunakiya Brihaddevata.
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Finally, Courtright claims that ‘TB [Taittiriya Brahmana]10.15’
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contains the word dantin. This reference by Courtright is problematic
because Taittiriya Brahmana is divided into 3 books that are further
divided into smaller sections. Therefore, the citation of TB 10.15 does
not make much sense. The Vedic Word Concordance of
Vishvabandhu
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also does not indicate any occurrence of the word
dantin in the entire Taittiriya Brahmana.
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Courtright attributes the
textual reference to a publication of Louis Renou.
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After referencing
Renou’s article, however, we did not find any mention at all of the
Taittiriya Brahmana in it. The reference in Renou’s article is in fact to
Maitrayani Samhita 2.9.1. The presence of so many erroneous and
apparently invented textual citations in just one page of the book is
simply unacceptable from an academic perspective.
Errors of Vedic citations are seen in other parts of the book as well.
For instance in Chapter II of his book, Courtright claims: “The
association of the thigh with the phallus in the Indian tradition dates
from the Rig Veda (RV 8.4.1).”
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The mantra in question reads:
yadindra praagapaagudam nyag vaa uuyase nrbhih
simaa puruu nrshuuto asyaanave.asi prashardha turvashe
Ralph Griffith’s translation reads—
Though Indra, thou are called by men
eastward and westward, north and south,
Thou chiefly art with Anava and Turvasa,
brave Champion! urged by Men to come.
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There is no reference to the penis or thighs here.
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We therefore
question what Courtright was thinking.
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A majority of references to
Vedic texts by Courtright in Chapter I of his book and others in
subsequent chapters are either interpreted incorrectly, or they are non-
traceable.
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Thus we question if Courtright even had a first hand, or
even a reasonable second hand, knowledge of Vedic texts when he
wrote his book.
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The examples we have cited here are for illustrative purposes only
and do not constitute the entire list of errors in his Vedic citations.
Despite the sloppiness of textual citations, Chapter I has two merits.
First, it dismisses various prevalent theories about the origin of worship
of Ganesha as variations on the Dravidian hypothesis, which are mere
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