"Bagger Vance" & Doniger on the Gita

[Bhadraiah Mallampalli]

The situation with gIta is pretty complicated.

1. As Wendy said gIta is part of mahAbhArata without which it is out of
context. Over the last many centuries Hindus themselves misunderstood many
aspects of this great book.

2. More misunderstandings are caused by mixup of contexts between different
chapters which present apparently contradictory methods. I can give details
if any one is interested.

3. Misunderstandings are the problem of readers and commentators, not the
book itself.

4. As for censorship, government of any society has its reason to limit
social unrest. Just because Rushdie and some book distributors want to make
a quick buck, India doesn't have to suffer damage to life and property.

5. I agree with Prof Fosse that America is a free society, but here is a
sample of the audience she is probably targeting:

http://www.allexperts.com/Board.asp?Category=946

That was my favorite joint. As scholars we think everybody in the society
reads our works and knows everything we do. It is far from true. When
America protests against teaching creation, it is because America wants to
bring up their younger generation as free citizens, not as prejudiced
robots. There is no need to teach reverence for gIta, but inconsistent
teaching affects students.

As for violence, has any US president apologized sitting on his knees at
Hiroshima? I know Wendy Doniger will say Oppenhiemer is a gIta enthusiast.
Was gIta an official scripture of US army during world war II? If Iraq
invades Kuwait next time, is Wendy going to garage her SUV because no more
oil will flow? It is a fashion these days to talk of peace, and point to
conflicts elsewhere for stock market performance, but some gutsy economists
at Princeton Economics Institute had predicted conflicts coming up in 2003
(they also predicted 1846 on Nasdaq-100 a year ago in Jan 2000!).

Regards
Bhadraiah
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