Copy of email. People in US please help to show protest against baseless theory about Hinduism. Dear friends, No doubt you have asked yourself this question many times why does this happen again and again in India? And no doubt you know the answer, it is because of our apathy. We have kept quiet for too long for the fear of being branded activists, as if that is bad thing to be! Now, modern mass-communication tools such as this are helping us express our hurt honestly without the filter of the heavily biased media channels. Recently, a book purporting to be about Hindus was written by a woman named Wendi Doniger. We fought this battle in the courts for the last four years and were able to convince Penguin that it was doing a great disservice by publishing such poorly researched and heavily biased views being passed off as scholarly studies. Today, I came to know that Ms. Doniger is being invited to deliver the keynote address in the 2014 annual conference of the Association for Asian Studies in Philadelphia, USA from March 27 to March 30, 2014. The title of her address is Academic Freedom and Censorship: Publishing Controversial Books in India. As you can see, having lost a battle with Hindu scholars who diligently produced research to list out grave factual errors in her book, Ms. Doniger is now taking to the speaking circuit to malign Indias free thinking society as a prejudiced and close-minded one. We may not be able to change the minds of the organizers of this event, but let us not be quiet about this. Protests are being organized in Philadelphia. But if you can email these people and express outrage, it will make them understand that we are not a handful of people who they can dismiss off as the fringe, but we are mainstream Hindus and our sentiments are truly being hurt by such actions. Please do what you can. Thank you. B.K. Vasan People to send your emails: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected],ckaneac2013@gmail, Anne Grimes , [email protected],[email protected], [email protected], [email protected], ann.sherif@gmail, [email protected] [email protected], [email protected], rogersjohnd@aol, [email protected], [email protected],[email protected], [email protected], [email protected] Contact info for AAS: Association for Asian Studies 825 Victors Way, Suite 310 Ann Arbor, Michigan 48108 USA Phone: (734) 665-2490 Fax: (734) 665-3801 If you want to use my format, my email to them said: Dear Directors of AAS, It is with deep disappointment and hurt that I am writing this letter. I hear that you have invited a highly controversial figure like Wendy Doniger to deliver your keynote address. It speaks poorly for your judgement about 1.2 billion Hindus who live in Asia and the rest of the world. Not only that, the subject of her address intends to paint India in a bad light because her book was withdrawn voluntarily by her publishers. No matter how much they try to paint this as the same as the many Fatwas issued by Muslim clerics every time there is a book about Islam, it is imply not the same. No religious bodies issued any threats against Wendy Doniger. She was challenged intellectually to defend her book and she failed to do so. When Penguin was presented with the choice of either defending the grave factual errors being passed off as her scholarly opinion about the Hindu religion, or going to court, Penguin realized it could not defend this in court and voluntarily agreed to pulp the remaining copies. Note that her book is still available in the electronically downloadable format. Our victory against this book being sold in India is at best a symbolic one. We have not prevented any free thought. So, for her to malign India as a biased and prejudiced society is nothing more than expressing her own anger at being challenged to defend her work. Scholars should not be angry when they are challenged if their intention is scholarship. They get angry only when they are caught out in lies and their own prejudice is being exposed. I urge you to withdraw your invitation to her and invite some one else who speaks for Indians such as Shri. Rajiv Malhotra. Thank you. Sincerely,
Posted on: Tue, 25 Mar 2014 15:55:25 +0000
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