Another one-sided article on the same issue (piṣṭapeṣaṇa, to use a Sanskrit word). In the discussion of protests against the book “The Hindus: An Alternative History”, Doniger does not mention the book written in response to her book by Vishal Agarwal. The book is available at http://www.amazon.com/dp/1505885590/. 

Doniger says ‘many were scientists or doctors lacking competence to judge humanistic scholarship’ but does not say that many were also exemplary Sanskrit scholars in India. This is almost déjà vu of Ananya Vajapeyi’s factually incorrect statement “almost none of the petition’s 132 principal sponsors … are experts of Sanskrit, other classical languages, literature, history or the humanities, or indeed scholars at all” in The Hindu not too long ago. Are authors like Doniger and Vajapeyi not aware of Sanskrit studies and Sanskrit scholars in India? 

Dilip Chakrabarti (Cambridge) says in his praise for Rajiv Malhotra's The Battle for Sanskrit that there is a “deplorable unwillingness among Western scholars to take note of the viewpoints of an increasing number of Indian professionals.” This can perhaps be explained by ‘humanistic scholars’ not seeing ‘doctors’ and ‘scientists’ as equals; never mind the fact that even a humanistic scholar like Doniger can make mistakes, e.g. contrasting treatment of the Kākabhuṣuṇḍi in RCM with treatment of the Jayanta in VR ignoring that the same treatment of Jayanta in in the RCM also. But what explains the fact that these Sanskrit scholars in the West are unaware of Sanskrit scholarship and Sanskrit scholars in India?