"Bagger Vance" & Doniger on the Gita

[Luis Gonzalez-Reimann]

For an interview with the author of Bagger Vance, take a look at:

http://www.harpercollins.com/baggervance/bagger_tee5.html

Best,

Luis Gonzalez-Reimann
University of California, Berkeley
__________

At 06:31 PM 03/13/2001 -0800, you wrote:
>A friend forwarded this. Has Wendy O'Flaherty written
>a paper on the myths of Gita and "Bagger Vance"?
>
>Appreciations for giving the URL for the Phil. Inquirer piece.
>
>Thanks.
>
>------------------
>
>One of my students brought me a newspaper article from the
>Philadelphia Inquirer (11/19/00) entitled "Big-screen Caddy is a
>Hindu Hero in Disguise." It contends, among other things, that the
>current movie "The Legend of Bagger Vance" is based on the Bhagavad
>Gita. The character "Bagger Vance," whose name is a pun
>on "Bhagavan," is based on Krishna and the character Rannulph Junuh
>(played by Matt Damon) is Arjuna. The movie is set in the post-WWI
>American south and centers on an epic golf match.
>
>The article discusses the Gita at length and relates that Drexel
>University in Philadelphia recently sponsored an interdisciplinary
>course on the Gita. Wendy Doniger of the U. of Chicago was among
>the "high-profile" lecturers. Here is the newpaper's report of her
>lecture:
>
>"The Bhagavad Gita is not as nice a book as some Americans think,"
>she said, in a lecture titled "The Complicity of God in the
>Destruction of the Human Race."
>Throughout the Mahabharata, the enormous epic of which the Gita is a
>small part, Krishna goads human beings into all sorts of murderous
>and self-destructive behaviors such as war in order to
>relieve "mother Earth" of its burdensome human population and the
>many demons disguised as humans.
>
>"The Gita is a dishonest book; it justifies war," Doniger told the
>audience of 150, and later acknowledged: "I'm a pacifist. I don't
>believe in 'good' wars."
>Several in the sudience objected to her reading of the Gita, but she
>tendered no apologies and "begged" her listeners to plunge deeper into
>the Upanishads and other great literature of Hinduism.
>"Reading the Bhagavad Gita without reading the Mahabharata is like
>reading the Sermon on the Mount," she said, "without knowing about
>the Crucifixion."
>
>Personally, I find Doniger's reading of the Gita appalling, insulting
>and blatantly anti-Hindu. I'm saddened that Drexel Univ. chose her
>to speak on the Gita, apparently without rebuttal except from a few
>audience members. I'm also distressed that her views are reported
>without a counter-opinion in a major US newspaper. Imagine what
>Americans think of the Gita after reading this. What can be done
>about this injustice?
>
>_________________________________________________________________
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