Fields of Blood

Title: Fields of Blood – Religion and the History of Violence
Author: Karen Armstrong
Publisher: The Bodley Head, 2014 (First)
ISBN: 9781847921871
Pages: 499

The attack on the World Trade Centre on Sep 11, 2001 was a watershed moment in the long history of religious violence. Even though not for the first time, the world sat up and took notice of why the worship of a god or deity demands violence from its adherents. With a start, the world noted that every religious text contained insinuations to violence. If the practitioners followed it verbatim, like a direct revelation from god, violence was bound to follow, whereas if your society is modern enough and above the level of savagery, individuals would assign only a 'symbolic value' to the teachings and quietly ignore the exhortations to kill. It is in this context that this book finds relevance before you read it. After going through it, there is confusion on why such an erudite scholar as the author condones religious violence and essentially points out human nature as the reason behind it. It claims that the 'myth of religious violence' was founded on the belief that the separation of church and state would liberate society from the inherent belligerence of religion, but every secularizing reform in Europe and other parts of the world would begin with an aggressive assault on religious institutions. The book provides a survey of the ancient civilizations of Sumer, India, China and Israel one by one in analysing the violent content in them. Karen Armstrong is one of the world's leading commentators on religious affairs. She spent seven years as a Catholic nun in the 1960s and then returned to normal life. She has authored many books on religion.

Armstrong makes a review of social progress from the prehistoric times, but strangely does not consider why the religious spirit arose in men. Some of the rituals and myths devised by our prehistoric ancestors survived in the religious systems of later, literate cultures. In this way, animal sacrifice, the central rite of nearly every ancient culture, preserved prehistoric hunting ceremonies. Large scale violence originated with sustained farming. The large grain stores of Jericho became a magnet for hungry nomads and thick fortifications were made. Hence large scale violence was linked not with religion but with organized theft. This continued till agriculture ceased to be the economic basis of civilization. Exploitation of the peasants by the elite was an indelible feature of these societies. Civilization required a leisured class to cultivate it - which developed the arts and sciences that made progress possible. Pastoralists, who lived on the fringes of settled society, soon found that the easiest way to replace animals was to steal the cattle of nearby villages and rival tribes. Fighting thus became essential to the pastoralist economy. In agrarian societies, war was not just the sport of kings, but an economic and social necessity to conquer land and gain more peasants to tax. The author identifies a striking contrast between new and old societies. While modernity has institutionalized change, radical innovation was rare in pre-modern times because civilization seemed so fragile. Originality was not encouraged, but conformity was!

As part of its review of ancient civilizations and how they are infused with religious violence, this book begins with Sumer and scoops up India and China in quick succession. She categorically rules out the 'Aryan invasion theory' by stressing that 'there was no dramatic invasion'; they arrived in small groups, 'gradually infiltrating the region over a very long period' (p.41). Aryans established the kings of Kuru-Panchala by force and that 'events may well have conformed to what social historians call the conquest theory of state-establishment' (p.44). Armstrong argues that Ashoka's dilemma in not disbanding his army is the very dilemma of civilization itself. As society developed and weaponry became more deadly, the empire would become the most effective means of keeping the peace. People looked for an absolute imperial monarchy for a peaceful life. As in other states too, in ancient China, all violence in the form of sacrifice, warfare and hunting was the privilege and distinguishing characteristic of the nobility. The author claims that China proves that it is erroneous to believe that a given set of religious beliefs will lead inexorably to violence. Instead, we find people drawing on the same pool of mythology, contemplative disciplines and ideas but embarking on totally different courses of action. Armstrong's unfamiliarity with Indian sacred texts is palpable in the misguided directions she takes. Too literal interpretations of texts are considered without understanding the relevance these texts might or might not have had on the society. She happily reproduces quotes from Wendy Doniger and Romila Thapar, both of whom are notorious for their far-left ideology spilling onto their literary corpus. With such a literal acceptance that only Kshatriyas could rule in ancient India and Shudras were fit only to serve, she is helpless to explain why Shudras like Mahapadma Nanda and Chandragupta Maurya could usurp the Magadhan throne.

The book then turns its attention to West Asia. The Hebrew dilemma was that though Yahweh insisted that his people abandon the agrarian state, they had to return to it time and again because the land for herding which Yahweh had selected for them often failed to sustain them. Monotheism made Israel prone to violence because of the rabid intolerance not found in the generous pluralism of paganism. The author counters this by insisting that Israelites were not strictly monotheistic at this time. As noted earlier, the author was very particular to interpret Indian texts strictly in the literal sense, but for others she bends over backwards to read them in a favourable light. In the seventh century BCE, reformers brought a wholly new intransigence into the cult of Yahweh by incorporating exclusivity to his worship and advocating elimination of all infidels. King Josiah translated these lessons into acts of destruction and bloodshed. Jesus' attitude to violence is also examined. He forbade injury to others, but was verbally abusive. He fulminated against the rich, cruelly lambasted the scribes and Pharisees and called down god's vengeance on villagers who rejected his disciples. As Christianity took root in the Roman world, it set aside platitudes of peace and nonviolence. In the fourth century CE, zealot monks destroyed pagan temples in an act of violent orgy everywhere in the Christian world. They didn't spare synagogues either. Aurelius Augustine, bishop of Hippo, declared that violence was legitimate if it was inflicted with 'the enemy's welfare in mind'. In 528, Justinian gave all pagans three months to get baptized. In the next year, he closed the Academy in Athens that had been founded by Plato. The Dark Ages is believed to have begun with this incident.

What is embarrassingly shameful for the author is that she somewhat struggles to bail out Islamic scriptures in the ancient as well as its interpretations in modern times without even bothering to examine how their holy texts address the issue of violence for the religion's sake. She justifies the early Muslim violence. The Prophet's party in Medina had no independent source of income, so the 'obvious' alternative was plundering raids (p.164). Jews of Khaybar were slaughtered, but they deserved it because they aligned with the Prophet's enemies in Mecca! Umar's campaigns were driven 'entirely' by the precarious economy of Arabia (p.168). When she turns to the modern world, she finds that Muslim fundamentalism is more turned to physical aggression because 'Muslims had a much harsher introduction to modernity' (p.278). She then suggests that it began after World War I. She further makes an audacious comparison that the hard-line Muslim cleric Abul Ala Maududi was in agreement with Gandhi regarding the role of religion in politics (p.284). The most heartless one is that the Ottoman sultans deported and killed their Greek and Armenian [Christian] subjects 'in order to control the rising merchant class' (p.289). As is expected, the author is a vocal supporter of the extremist Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt and Khamenei in Iran! She accuses the former Persian ruler Shah of masterminding every assault on peaceful protests. Regarding the Iran hostage crisis in which 3000 religious students stormed the US embassy in Teheran and kept 52 diplomats hostage for 444 days, she blurts out that 'it is not clear whether Khomeini knew of their plan beforehand' (p.305). The Egyptian hard-line organisation Jamaat al-Islamiyyah segregated the sexes during lectures 'to protect women from harassment' (p.316). The radical students of the University of Minia in Egypt vandalised Christian churches 'in response to government oppression'. This disgraceful kowtowing in front of an intolerant and violent ideology decimates this book's worth as a piece of serious research.

A prominent manifestation of violence motivated by religion in the Middle Ages was the Crusades in which European Christians tried to liberate their holy places in Israel which were occupied by Muslims and who were threatening its very existence. When Roman power had collapsed in the west, the bishops had taken the place of Roman senatorial aristocracy. Pope Gregory VII wanted to free the Byzantines from Turkish aggression and to liberate Jerusalem. The author being biased to the Muslim view; she paints the crusades in a very bad light by claiming - among other things - that the crusades made anti-Semitic violence a chronic disease in Europe. Every time a crusade was summoned, Christians would first attack Jews at home. The crusaders knew nothing about local politics in the Near East and their understanding was derived from religious views and prejudices. The crusading army was a monastery on the march. Jews had been fully integrated in European society till the eleventh century. Their position grew worse with each crusade. In the end, Saladin put down the crusades through his conquest of Jerusalem.

The author then turns her attention to the advent of modernity and the gradual disintegration of the hold of religion first on state power and then in secular society. For the first time, it had to recede from most of the niches it had occupied in driving or controlling every need of the society and was relegated only to the sacred sphere. By 1492, papal power had plummeted and balance of power passed to the kings. The book notes that Renaissance humanists like Thomas More supported the violent subjugation of natives in the New World, believing them to be savages. What the author hints at is that secularism is also not free from violence inherent in its ideals. With the development of tools of capitalism such as joint stock companies, the church had no control over them. Successful merchants, artisans and manufacturers became powerful enough to influence politics. Luther portrayed religion as a discrete activity, separate from the world as a whole, which it had previously permeated. Where pre-modern faith had emphasized the sacredness of community, for Luther, religion was a wholly personal and private matter. The word 'secularization' originally meant the transfer of goods from the possession of the church into that of the world in the sense that legislative and judicial powers that had been in the church's remit were gradually transferred to the new sovereign state. The Thirty Years' War (1618-48) is known to be the most influential occurrence that ushered in secularism in Europe, but the author claims that the War was not in fact between the Protestants and Catholics. People of both faiths were arrayed in both the factions that fought against each other. This may be factually correct, but we can only conclude that Armstrong is missing the wood for the trees. In America, religion still exerted its pernicious effect on the white settlers. The native Americans were suppressed by ruthless colonists, justifying their violence on the bellicosity of Hebrew scriptures.

The basic cause of writing this book is the author's desire to proclaim that violence in human societies is not caused by religion alone, but is a deeper malice of human nature. With this in mind, she examines modern societies and concludes that secular societies are not less violent. The French Revolution brought in a secular republic backed by systemic violence. After a few fits and starts, it eventually held on as a model for the world. The combination of industrial technology and empire was creating a global form of systemic violence, driven not by religion but by the wholly secular values of the market. The American civil war was a conflict charged with religious conviction, both sides believing that God was on their side and that they knew exactly what he was doing. When lost, the Southerners saw their defeat as divine retribution. The book wishes to reiterate that nationalism is the new faith of the secular age. The author handles the issue of Islamic terrorism in a style soothing to its perpetrators by beginning with LTTE and claiming that they were Hindu Tamils. This book tries to lessen the fearful effect of terrorism by arguing that it is not very extraordinary and that 'some of the largest-scale acts of terrorist violence have been carried out by states rather than independent groups or individuals' (p.313). She further points out that 'terrorism is fundamentally and inherently political, even when other motives are involved' (p.313). This means Armstrong believes that the 9/11 attackers were freedom fighters, which is exactly the same as jihadi propaganda. Armstrong lists out some elements that lead to structural violence and terrorism as too rapid urbanisation, inequitable social system and physical and social dislocation. However, these are present in all states, but why does only a few go into terrorism? She terms the 1983 Hezbollah suicide attack on an American base in Beirut as a 'martyrdom operation' (p.320). People who enrolled in al-Qaeda did so to 'assuage the suffering of fellow Muslims and not to fight the US'.

The author's undisguised partisanship to Islam is nauseatingly evident in the clever omissions and commissions. It provides a graphic description of violence inflicted by the crusaders on the captured Muslims, but not vice versa. She commends the Muslim side because 'their wars had always been conducted within mutually agreed limits' (p.195). Then again, 'Muslims were always ready to learn from other cultures' (p.200). Caliph al-Hakim's destruction of the Church of Resurrection in Jerusalem is not listed as a cause of the crusades, but instead, she declares that he was insane! She exhibits a bit of haughtiness and colonial pride in her wishful thinking on Indian society and practically concludes that the Hindu religion did not exist before the British began to categorize a group of people as such. Her assertion that in the Mughal empire, the administration rarely had a 'religious colouration' (p.261) must have come about only because of her ignorance. Regarding the freedom struggle, her claim that 'Hindus campaigned for an India free of both the British and Islam' (p.263) is outrageous because of its naked falsehood.

This totally biased work is a waste of time for most readers and hence not recommended.

Rating: 1 Star

It’s All About Muhammad

Title: It’s All About Muhammad – A Biography of the World’s Most Notorious Prophet
Author: F W Burleigh
Publisher: Zenga Books, 2014 (First)
ISBN: 9780996046930
Pages: 554

As the title implies, this is an explosive book for the believer as well as non-believer but its relevance cannot be doubted. It is an unabashed criticism and the onus is now on the believers to come out refuting the claims in this book. The world is wracked by Islamist violence on an unprecedented scale in its history. This book claims that every thirty minutes or so, a murder is happening somewhere in the world committed by jihadis, of people who refuse to pronounce the first pillar of Islam – the kalima (p.12). This book was published in 2014, but its continued significance is attested by the Pahalgam terror incident in Kashmir two months ago where terrorists gunned down 26 Hindu male tourists in front of their wives for refusing to, or more probably, being ignorant of the kalima. In fact, this gory incident was a reason to read this book in order to understand why the jihadis go on such bloody rampages for the last fourteen centuries. This book asserts that Islam was imposed by violence, because it has no other way to sustain itself. This is claimed to be a biography of Prophet Muhammad compiled from original sources. It is not clear whether the author has used the Arabic versions or later translations. The author’s name, F W Burleigh, is evidently a pseudonym as no search on the Internet could extract any info on his identity (I believe the author to be a male). He claims that he had examined 20,000 pages of original Islamic texts for the research of this book. He was motivated by the 9/11 attack to delve deeper into the question of why hard-line Muslims resort to such violent measures.

His life and times are well chronicled by early Islamic writers and biographers and an extensive corpus of literature is available on this topic. It also surveys the socio-religious milieu of pre-Islamic Mecca. The town was the centrepiece of Arabian polytheism which housed the temple of moon worship by importing a human-like statue of the Nabatean moon good Hubal. This temple was without a roof and had a rectangular wall about the height of a single storey building. The walls were often breached by flash floods and the Meccans rebuilt it with a raised platform and roof and named it ‘the cube’, that is, kaba. There were people protesting against various aspects of the religion and a polytheistic apostate named Zayd ibn Amr believed in an idealized Abrahamic religion founded on belief in one true god and total submission to it. Meccans drove Zayd out of the town and he took up residence in a cave on Mount Hira. He used to come to the town at night and had discussions with Muhammad and other people who shared his interests.

Paganism is inherently tolerant. So it is with some astonishment that we read about why the Meccans drove him and his disciples away from the town. The narrowness of the new religion’s dogma was offensive to the Meccans who were traditionally tolerant of everyone’s god concept. Our protagonist ridiculed their idols and statues; he condemned each and every polytheist to the fires of hell. This was in no way acceptable to the Meccans who tolerated everything except intolerance. He performed his prayer routines in the open in front of their temple as a challenge at which the Meccans seethed in anger, but they could do nothing about it because such freedom was granted to everyone by default. Allah was one of the gods the Meccans worshipped. What was different in the new religion was its repudiation of all other deities. He branded the people of Mecca as idol worshippers whereas none of them disputed the existence of a supreme deity. They thought that the idols were only representations of higher powers and not the powers themselves. While most of his own Hashemite clan rejected him in the early stages, they supported him against any harm by other groups as a show of clan loyalty. This tribal affinity prevented the Meccans from dealing a severe personal assault. The new religion used the Meccans’ customs such as providing safe passage in specific months to good advantage even though they had little respect for the traditions. He was exploiting their openness and tolerance. The temple was open to worship for anybody to worship whatever they wished but he tolerated only his own idea of god. This was a bone of contention with the Meccans.

He and his companions were forced to leave Mecca as their lives were at risk. Yathrib (present day Medina) was the preferred destination because the Khazraj and Aws tribes which resided there were more receptive to monotheism. They had exposure to the Jewish faith who constituted nearly half of the population. Prophets guided the Jewish religion. Besides, the warring tribes in Yathrib needed a strong leader to unify them. Polytheism was weak there and no communal worship was in place. After the alliance with the Yathrib tribes was sealed, revelations were received to fight for the cause since peaceful proselytization could not make much impact. Once the group relocated to the new desert oasis, there began plunder of caravans and he claimed a fifth of the booty which made him and many of his followers rich beyond their wildest dreams. The victory at the battle of Badar gave them confidence to take on his enemies in Yathrib. All criticism was silenced; several poets who mocked him in verse were assassinated. After the base was secured, hostile tribes in Arabia were targeted. Heavenly sex or terrestrial booty was promised to the loyal fanatics who fought on his side. If they did not fall in line, the threat of perpetual hellfire was an effective clincher.

The consolidation and empowerment of his reign in Yathrib is explained in quite some detail. The string of assassinations and expulsion of Qaynuqa Jews brought about a rapid expansion of his religion and it included much of the non-Jewish population of Yathrib. The book provides a graphical description of the massacre of Qurayza Jews in which 900 men and grown up boys who surrendered were beheaded five or six at a time and dumped into a trench dug nearby for that purpose. The author claims that this was exactly what the ISIS did in Iraq and Syria and concludes that terror was a convincing missionary. Boys were killed if they had reached puberty. If there was any doubt about their age, they were checked for pubic hair. If so, they too were beheaded. Men with clothes worth preserving were forced to remove them so that some of them died naked (p.311). Their women and children were forced to watch this ordeal and were then sold into slavery. He was ferocious than any of his opponents and overwhelmed them until his very name caused fear. Though his enemies were able to inflict occasional setbacks on him, they ultimately saw the embrace of his religion as the only refuge from the pain and misery he was able to impose on them. Thus his religion grew. Proactive attacks on enemies, real or imagined, were carried out through numerous raids, forceful conversions, fundraising through plunder and spreading terror. He invited the people to convert to his religion. If they refused, he proclaimed them guilty of turning their back on truth. They were then subject to god’s punishment; attacking them was rendering divine justice (p.380). The book contains a vivid description of the brutal interrogation of the leader of Khybar Jews named Kinana regarding the places where he had hidden his wealth.

Burleigh makes a character sketch of our protagonist which has some positive and mostly negative aspects. He is alleged to possess some psychiatric problems and is claimed to have gained control of anxiety disorder by ‘elaborating and practising a complex prayer ritual marked by repetition and precise, time-consuming body movements. He is also said to be a control freak. Creating rules was fundamental to his controlling nature and he never passed up an opportunity to create laws about matters as they arose, no matter how trivial. It also went into areas he did not comprehend fully. For instance, he prohibited intercalation of the Arabian calendar which added a month every three years to keep the lunar calendar in sync with the solar cycle and seasons. With this omission, the Muslim calendar began to slip the sun by eleven days each year. This act was contrary in spirit to what Gregory XIII did nearly a millennium later. His family life is treated in a gentle manner throughout the book and a chapter titled menage-a-quatorze is reserved for a detailed analysis which is surprisingly devoid of harsh recriminations. Such allegations are reserved for the personality assessment. Very harsh terms like epileptic psychopath, deluded mass murderer, revelations were hallucinations, etc. are included in the book. At the same time, some qualities are also indicated. He is said to be a creative genius, masterful at reading his audience, gift of eloquence, astute leadership, make others die for him, ability to convince people he had the truth etc. He is also credited to have created a trans-tribal super tribe of believers.

The book is claimed to be entirely based on the original literature of the religion. If the readers find the protagonist of this biography disturbing, it is asserted to be because what is written about him in the original literature is disturbing. The lay followers of the religion are obliged to follow the protagonist’s practice and they are violent to non-believers because he was so. Burleigh declares this book an antidote to what the protagonist created and to facilitate the ‘the aggressive, relentless and unapologetic exposure of the truth about him, particularly through dramatization in film’ (p.477). The book contains several illustrations of the protagonist contrary to the dictates of the religion not to personify him in any way and also as committing or superintending violent acts. The author advocates the production of a movie depicting these events. If such a movie is ever produced, it would be the ultimate expose of the religion and is sure to produce a violent backlash all over the world. Probably, it could be distributed only in the electronic format but would spread to every corner of the globe like wild fire. The book is dedicated to Theo van Gogh, the Dutch film director who was assassinated in 2004 in Amsterdam by a Muslim who resented his film Submission, Part 1 which criticized the treatment of women in Islam.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star

Gods, Guns and Missionaries

Title: Gods, Guns and Missionaries – The Making of the Modern Hindu Identity
Author: Manu S. Pillai
Publisher: Allen Lane, 2024 (First)
ISBN: 9780670093656
Pages: 564

Hinduism is a constantly evolving religion. This characteristic is also a proof of its vitality. Contrary to what happened to Paganism in Greece and Rome at the end the classical period, Hinduism withstood the crushing impact of not one, but two Abrahamic religions one after the other and still survived to tell the tale. Hinduism is flexible enough to accommodate any number of gods or even to incorporate external deities somewhere on the branches of its vast mythology. It successfully employed this strategy to absorb strangers into its fold till the arrival of Islam which could not be reconciled due to its professed exclusivity and monopoly on divinity. The same thing happened with Christianity too. At the same time, the Hindus also felt compulsions of various sorts to convert them to the new ‘monotheistic’ faiths. Evidently, Hinduism had to change subtly to effectively engage with the new threat. This was felt more seriously on interactions with the Christian faith. Though the Islamic invasions were militarily brutal and materially exhausting, it proved to be intellectually bankrupt. It somewhat transformed Hinduism but never on the immense scale Christianity did. This book tells the story of how gods (reinvention of Hinduism by anchoring on its philosophical past), guns (colonial power) and missionaries (evangelical efforts at proselytization) completely reformed Hinduism in the last four centuries after the arrival of Europeans in the sixteenth century. Manu S. Pillai is a talented, young author and this is his fifth book. You can find reviews of all his earlier works here. This book’s title involves a little bit of plagiarism with Jared Diamond’s incredibly well-written book, ‘Guns, Germs and Steel’.

Pillai begins his exhaustive survey with the practical adjustments Hinduism made on the ground even before the arrival of Semitic religions. Brahmins acted as a repository of theoretical knowledge and provided the mechanism to bend it constructively to make life easier – at least for themselves and their patrons. Brahmins bypassed awkward corners between theory and reality through the manipulation of tradition. Kings of low birth changed caste and varna by a ritual in which they symbolically emerged out of an artificial gold cow. The four-fold division of varnas – which is often portrayed as rigid and unchanging – was only an idealized aspiration of the Brahminized world that never existed in such perfection anywhere in India. Hinduism is not what Brahmins actually wanted; instead, it is the story of their negotiations with a bewildering variety of counter-thoughts and alternate visions. Change is coded into its DNA (p. xix). This book is the study of Hinduism of the last four centuries. Its motive is to survey the historical setting and emotional stimulus empowering present-day Hinduism. The author also claims that it is not a history of Hindu philosophy or of the lofty ideas of ancient sages. It deals with human actions and reactions in the context of political conquest, cultural dominance and resistance.

Hinduism met Christianity on many fronts and in different time periods. In the pre-medieval and early-medieval accounts of European travellers and merchants, India was portrayed as a heathen country where the devil was worshipped and was home to revulsive sexual practices. Hindus didn’t care. They lay diffused across the country and were nonchalant as to be concerned with what was being said of them in distant lands. But with European powers establishing trade with India and meddling in internal politics by the seventeenth century, they sat up and took notice, but still in isolated pockets. It was in response to the European portrayal of Hindus that Hinduism took its contemporary modern form, drawing pride and confidence from certain aspects of its past and shame from others. The book describes the early interactions of missionaries with Hinduism. Hindus listened to them with genuine interest and was even willing to accept their precepts as true, but stoutly refused to concede that this was the only way of knowing divinity. Hinduism always made space for ideological diversity and could not acquiesce in to claims on monopoly of truth. The Hindu philosophers never accused Christianity to be false, but that it might be adapted to the missionary’s part of the world. Quite contrary to this expression of tolerance, the missionaries thought everything else as diabolical pretension of primitive paganism. Over time, the missionaries collected and began to study Hindu texts and were gradually compelled to admit some goodness in it. One scholar grudgingly remarked that ‘even though much reeked of the dung pit, Hinduism had pearls by which white men too could benefit’ (p.56). This attitude grew with further study. In the peak of Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, white intellectuals dismissed the Hindu society of the present, but romanticised its past. The formula would be amplified by Hindus in future. The Western philosophers, disillusioned with the religion at home, felt the need to idealize an alternative Hinduism which was presented as just the item with the mysterious Vedas.

The eighteenth century saw the dawn of a fresh chapter in Hindu-Christian relations with the entrenchment of British power in Bengal and North India. Warren Hastings and William Jones researched on Indian law and literature respectively. The aim was to reformulate ancient Hindu law so that the present society could be administered on its basis. But the law they painstakingly unearthed had no universal applicability. Customs of caste, region and sect were what guided people’s lives. It only suited the empire’s purposes to have a set of rules of whose legitimacy the subject people could not challenge. Intellectual emphasis focussed on scripture above custom and the enthroning of philosophical Hinduism as more legitimate than the ‘lower’ form. Pillai also amusingly notes how Victorian morals censored portions of open sensuality in Indian texts. While on one occasion Kalidasa describes Shakuntala as sweaty, it was translated into English as ‘glowing complexion’! When faced with such censure of their ancestors’ tastes, natives unnecessarily developed feelings of shame. All in all, Indian confidence ballooned as an unforeseen by-product of Orientalism. Its retrieval of past heroes and celebration of Indian accomplishments injected pride into the colonial subjects. Through the first half of the nineteenth century, the British oscillated between promoting traditional learning and introducing Western ideas through school education in English.

The nineteenth century saw another marked shift in the religious equation. Having successfully set up a colonial regime and also keeping internal security on a firm footing, the colonial masters again took on an aspect of complacent disdain on the native religion. Meanwhile, Hindus felt the days of Sanskrit education was over even though it was supported by the colonizer. A Hindu college to teach Western literature and science was set up in Calcutta in 1817 by Indians and dissenting British men who collected Rs. 1,13,000 locally, while the entire government budget for education in Bengal was only Rs. 1,00,000. The Orientalists objected to this, but the transition from Sanskrit to English was most pointedly expressed in the mid-1830s when state funding was reserved only for modern education in English. Meanwhile, the missionaries encouraged vernacular education, the only target being the conversion of pupils. The author cites a geography textbook in one of these schools that urged ‘the people of India’ to ‘accept the message of Christ’ and ‘endeavour to spread it’. By 1850s, British political power reached the zenith and even the son of the ‘Lion of Punjab’ Maharaja Ranjit Singh, named Duleep Singh, was converted to Christianity. Viceroy Dalhousie was restless to spread the Christian faith in India. It was he who cleverly stage-managed the conversion of Duleep Singh. A prominent cleavage in the conception of India among the British society became very evident at this point. Orientalists praised the glories of India, its ancient philosophies and Sanskrit literature, while the evangelists were producing material that cast Hindus as a class of ‘infant-murdering, wife-burning debauchees, in desperate need of reform’ (p.177). With the East India Company’s charter amended to accommodate evangelical work in 1813 and 1833, officials’ attitudes stiffened. Patronage extended to temples was withdrawn. In 1857, however, India responded with a full-blown revolt that forced the British to adopt a technically neutral stand on the issue of religion in future. In 1790 itself, Governor General Cornwallis had written that the company’s security rested on native troops and to meddle in the religion would jeopardize security. The book however keeps silent on the religious aspects of the 1857 rebellion's causes. The issue of greased cartridges was only the fuse that lit the fire, while the powder had been accumulating for years. Anyhow, I am fairly sure that the current breed of Indian secularists, including the author, would accuse the rebels of narrow-mindedness and communalism for their refusal to handle cartridges lubricated with the fat of cows and pigs.

After the Rebellion, the religious kaleidoscope shifted once again. Reform movements sprang up everywhere to give a facelift to the ancient religion. Demands for equality for the oppressed lower castes followed close on its heels. At the peak of these two, nationalism blossomed – both of the secular and cultural varieties. Pillai finds a strain of resemblance between the Protestant movement in England and the Hindu reformers. Like Protestants, Indian reformers placed scripture over custom and accumulated tradition. They parked blame for Hinduism’s decline from unparalleled purity on the Brahmins, just like the Protestant battering of Catholic priest craft. Ram Mohan Roy was vocal in denouncing Brahminic obfuscation of Vedic ideas on monotheism. This blunted the Christian threat to Hinduism as the Catholic Church’s liturgy differed not much from full-blooded idolatry. But very few Hindus practised what they preached and ordinary temple worship thrived as vigorously as before. Dayananda Saraswati’s Arya Samaj began venerating the cow as a formative rite to unite Hindus. The author deliberately hints here that cow worship began at this point, while in fact it was followed from very early times. Reconversion back to Hinduism through ‘Shuddhi’ was also developed. By the latter half of nineteenth century, untouchables began to assert their identity. Jyotiba Phule repudiated everything Hindu, from Vedas to idol worship, while Narayana Guru of Kerala accommodated some degree of Sanskritization, himself a Sanskrit scholar. Guru’s reforms lay in rejecting Brahminism as a social practice, while democratising Brahminic Hinduism (p.253).

The book’s final chapter, ‘Drawing Blood’, is reserved to heap scorn and mockery on Tilak and Savarkar, the two glowing figureheads of Hindu nationalism. A reasonably true biography of both are given, but interspersed with skewed and derisively paraphrased quotations. It seems the author’s pique against the duo is for the fact that they tried to unite the Hindus socially, perhaps for the first time ever in Indian history. This might be going against the grain of Western philosophical theory that could not comprehend the coming together of such diverse peoples under a common banner. This book is part of the anti-Hindutva movement and is relentlessly chipping away at its roots. Pillai does not mention this openly, in variance to what Charles Allen openly confessed in his recent book, ‘Aryans – The Search for a People, a Place and a Myth’ (reviewed earlier here). Tilak started the Ganapati and Shivaji festivals to gather people together as a means to move political work forward. Fun and play were the vehicles to impart political awareness among grumbles of turning faith into spectacle. The author nit-picks on Tilak’s speeches in order to find snippets against untouchables. With this in mind, he quotes a little known research paper at an obscure Canadian university to claim that Tilak made a disparaging remark about two communities as “which have no job avenues left other than thieving” (p.282). The source of this discovery is only a paper by Amar Khoday submitted at Manitoba University, but this information is concealed deep in the thick jungle of notes at the end of the book.

The book is very big at 564 pages, 238 of them nothing but notes totalling 2308 which are thoroughly researched entities that appears as a corporate effort rather than of a single person. However, Pillai has not acknowledged it. A very large number of books and papers have been consulted obviously but unusually for such an effort, no bibliography is given at the end. This is somewhat strange, forcing the reader to go through each and every note to find the sources. Quotes from Wendy Doniger and Audrey Truschke are given prime spots of accommodation though – or because of? – they are outspoken critics of Hinduism. Some parts of the book are recycled from the author’s previous works. The activities of the monk Roberto de Nobili who dressed, worked and lived like a Brahmin, wearing even the sacred thread, to convert Hindus can also be found in Pillai’s book, ‘The Courtesan, the Mahatma and the Italian Brahmin’ (reviewed earlier here) and stories about Serfoji II of Tanjore are in ‘False Allies: India’s Maharajahs in the Age of Ravi Varma’ (reviewed earlier here). The book includes early sketches of people and events starting from the sixteenth century and sourced from rare collections in Europe and the USA. Islam makes only a cameo appearance in the book, but when it does, the author treats it with kid gloves unlike what he does with the others. He remarks that Brahmins ordered the world into castes while Islam proposed egalitarianism. Instances of proper justice meted out to Hindus in the Mughal period, however rare, are unearthed from little-known works to generalize it. The sentence construction in the book is a bit laboured with lots of commas, hyphens, semicolons and brackets that affect readability. Of course, some may enjoy them. Even though the author’s views on the making of modern Hinduism are not agreeable to most readers, he has provided a lively survey of the encounter between Hindus and the Europeans in their various avatars as missionaries, orientalists and colonial administrators.

The book is recommended.

Rating: 3 Star

Banaras – City of Light

Title: Banaras – City of Light
Author: Diana L. Eck
Publisher: Penguin, 2015 (First published 1983)
ISBN: 9780140190793
Pages: 427

The root of the Sanskrit word ‘Kashi’ (Banaras) is ‘kash’ which means luminant. Literally, this may refer to the legendary jyotirlinga which is said to have filled the city in the beginning of time. Setting aside the myth, Kashi was the source of light that illuminated the religious life of Hindu India. People from all walks of life flock to Varanasi for pilgrimage. If they could die in the city, moksha was guaranteed to them. Hundreds of temples, ashrams, ghats and religious seminaries sprang up in due course of time. This refreshing book is a study and interpretation of Banaras from the standpoint of one who acts as a bridge between the Hindu and Western academic and religious traditions. It examines all origin myths connected to the birth of the city, the temples for their significance to specific rituals or legends, the practices and objectives of pilgrims and also how this city, liberating one from the ties and knots of life repeating again and again, is reconciled with the general philosophical outlook of Hinduism. Diana L. Eck was professor of comparative religion and Indian studies in the department of South Asian studies at Harvard University. She has written three other books on Hindu religious tradition. She has also worked commendably for American religious pluralism.

India is very diverse and has had political unity only for a very short time in its history spanning several millennia. But one thing Hindu India has held in common is a shared sense of its sacred geography (p.38). There are pilgrims who would carry a pot of Ganges water from the Himalayas all the way to Rameshwaram in the South in order to pour that water on the Shiva linga there. And from Rameshwaram they would carry the sands of the seashore back to deposit in the Ganges on their return north. Pilgrims who visit Kashi stand in a place empowered by the whole of India’s sacred geography as it is a single place that embodies all tirthas of India. The rise and sanctity of Kashi is simply beyond easy comprehension. Eck quotes a missionary who commented on it and put in such a way that it can’t be improved upon. His remark was that ‘when Babylon was struggling with Nineveh for supremacy; when Tyre was planting her colonies; when Athens was growing in strength; before Rome had become known or Greece had contended with Persia; or Cyrus had added lustre to the Persian monarchy or Nebuchadnezzar had captured Jerusalem and the inhabitants of Judaea had been carried into captivity, Varanasi had already risen to greatness, if not to glory’.

The author has gone into the details of worship of deities in Kashi. The number of deities is considerably small even though they are adored in numerous aspects relevant to a tale or incident in the epics. It is generally accepted that Kashi is the city of Shiva where the other gods have no jurisdiction. Even the god of death Yama is powerless here and Shiva himself is believed to chant the sacred mantra to cross the ocean of worldly ways to attain bliss into the ears of the dying. Anyone who dies in Kashi is said to attain nirvana straight away. However, it is not the city of Shiva alone. He shares the place with the whole pantheon of gods without rancour. The so-called Shaivism and Vaishnavism go hand in hand here. To an outsider, Kashi may appear as a disordered, crowded jungle of temples. But to those Hindus whose vision is recorded in the mahatmyas of Kashi, these temples are all part of an ordered whole with its divine functionaries and its own constellation of deities. Their vision is embodied in the sacred geography of the city. The deities of Varanasi envelope the entire spectrum of Hinduism which even contains goddesses or yoginis whose origins were non-Vedic and non-Brahminical. These are found in abundance here.

While remaining the most important religious centre of Hinduism, Varanasi was also a place of substance for Buddhists where Buddha had delivered his first sermon at Sarnath. It had a significant Buddhist presence until the twelfth century CE, when Qutb ud-din Aibak’s armies demolished Sarnath as well as Varanasi’s great temples. While the Hindus recovered from the blow, the Buddhist tradition which was dependent entirely upon its monks, monasteries and centres of learning was virtually eliminated (p.57). The book then glances upon the devastating centuries in which Muslim powers ruled over the ancient city and either destroyed or converted many ancient temples as mosques. In a classic case of understatement, Eck remarks that ‘the Muslim centuries were for the most part hard’ (p.83). The temples of Kashi were destroyed at least six times during these years. Muhammad Ghuri, Firuz Shah Tughlaq, Mahmud Shah Sharqi of Jaunpur, Sikandar Lodi, Shah Jehan and Aurangzeb destroyed the temples on a large scale. Aurangzeb was very particular in razing prominent temples including Vishweshwara, Krittivasa and Bindu Madhava. Their sites were forever sealed from Hindu access by the construction of mosques. Aurangzeb even named the city Mahmudabad but the name didn’t stick (p.83). The situation is so pathetic that there is no religious sanctuary in Varanasi now that predates the time of Aurangzeb. So exhaustive was the destruction wrought by this Mughal.

The author has visited all the religious places described in the book and asserts how effortlessly they blend with the cosmopolitan faith of the devotees. She confesses that ‘some of the temple I sought out, which had clearly been important in the era of the Sanskrit literature, no longer exists. Some such sites are now occupied by mosques’ (p.xiv). Despite its fame, today’s Vishwanatha temple has none of the magnificence, architectural splendour or antiquity as India’s great classical temples in Odisha or South India. Today, atop the ruins of old Vishwanatha temples, sit two different mosques, one built in the thirteenth century by Razia and one in the seventeenth century by Aurangzeb (p.120). The mosque of Aurangzeb is said to have transformed the old Hindu edifice without entirely purging its soul. One wall of the old temple is still standing, set like a Hindu ornament in the matrix of the mosque (p.127). The book also places on record the universal reverence the city of Kashi evoked from all parts of India. An inscription of twelfth century in South India records that a certain king of Karnataka set up a fund to help the pilgrims of his area pay the Muslim-imposed tax so that they could visit Vishweshwara in Varanasi (p.132).

It is a great blessing for Hindus to live and die in Varanasi. Then why doesn’t everybody live there? This book looks into the intricacies of lore and finds that Dandapani, a member of Shiva’s entourage, is the judge in this matter. He is the divine sheriff who sees into the many lifetimes through which a person has travelled. From Dandapani’s divinely advantaged point of view, the learned Brahmin may be no better than the poor beggar. Life and death are two simultaneous aspects of living in Varanasi and it is also a living and transforming symbol with double-edged power. Several tirthas with life-giving waters of creation and also the cremation grounds with its burning fires of destruction and liberation occur side by side here. One need not travel the globe in search of the sacred, for he has come to Kashi. Other sacred places of India are replicated in the city, be it tirthas, temples, lakes or even geography. Varanasi is witness to the union of Shiva and his Shakti and is a visible and earthly ford in the crossing to the far shore of liberation. The relevance of Kashi in the philosophical scenario of Hinduism is also examined. If one internalizes the truly luminous wisdom, he need not go on a pilgrimage anymore; and yet pilgrims continue to come to Kashi to walk on its streets, to bathe in the waters, to see the divine images and to see the city itself. Banaras is a good place to die and this fact makes it a good place to live. Moksha is only the last of the four stages of life. Only by ripening the fruit of life in each stage is one truly ready for the fruits of death. The throbbing heart of the book is the part which links Varanasi to the pulsating life of the society living within it. Kashi is not the city of moksha alone; it belongs to dharma and kama also. In India, kama is more than sexual pleasure. It is the attitude that informs all that people do for the sheer love of doing it, all that they enjoy simply because it is enjoyable. It is also the aesthetic enjoyment of music or art. Kashi is famous for its traditions of music and dance. Its courtesans in history were famous and wealthy right from the time of Buddha himself.

This book is a mandatory read for anyone who wants to understand the city better and to feel the spirit of the city in a meaningful way. A tourist to the place should read this book. So does a pilgrim, an administrator, a politician, a student or even a businessman. Whatever may be their field of specialty, everybody who treads the ancient streets and bylanes of Kashi should try to grasp something of the soul of Kashi, for which this book is absolutely essential. It observes that ‘there’s little in the world to compare with the splendour of Banaras, seen from the river at dawn’. Likewise, it provides other perspectives to comprehensively absorb the psyche of the city. It includes several illustrations of notable places of Varanasi made by James Princep, who was an archaeologist, numismatist and epigraphist, in the early nineteenth century. The book was first published 41 years ago in 1983, but due to its fame as the ‘eternal city of India’, all parts of the book and its descriptions stay relevant and applicable with little modification or revision.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 5 Star

The Darkening Age

Title: The Darkening Age – The Christian Destruction of the Classical World

Author: Catherine Nixey

Publisher: Pan Books, 2017 (First)

ISBN: 9781509816071

Pages: 305

 

When the ISIS occupied parts of Syria and Iraq for a few years since 2014, the world was forced to watch the ghastly spectacle of the terrorists blasting away remains of ancient temples that were thousands of years old. Their logic was simple – the very existence of these buildings once used to worship other gods was a blot on the landscape and culture prescribed by their holy book. But one thing was noticeable in the entire charade. The temples destroyed by the ISIS were already in a ruined shape, similarly destroyed by somebody much earlier. Whatever standing upright was due to the careful restoration work of archeologists. Who was that somebody who broke down these temples and when? This book answers this puzzle and little of what is covered in this book is well-known outside academic circles. We were taught that when Christianity spread in the Classical world of Greece, Rome and the regions where their culture held sway, the pagans who worshipped gods such as Jupiter, Zeus, Athena or Minerva simply melted away in front of the advancing Christianity. Some scholars even suggest that they were somewhat grateful to renounce their silly religion and embrace Christianity. Nothing is further from the truth. In fact, as Christianity gained hold in the kingdom, it unleashed a violent intolerance against the native religious practices. It destroyed their temples, smashed the idols to pieces, mocked the ceremonies and forbade them to practice their old religion even in the privacy of their homes. This book tells of the darkening age when Christianity subsumed the old belief systems into a strict form of monotheism. Catherine Nixey was a Classics teacher who is now a journalist working on the arts desk at The Times. She is a British Catholic and the daughter of a former nun and a former monk.

 

Medieval and modern scholars continuously harped on the theme of how Christianity preserved the classical knowledge. Christianity’s good works in preserving pagan things has been told again and again. Such books proliferate in libraries and bookshops. However, the history and sufferings of those whom Christianity defeated have not been elaborated upon. This book fills this crucial gap. It is because of this meritorious service that I grant it a five-star rating. The arrival of Christianity introduced a profound change in the nature of spiritual philosophy. Before this happened, there had been competing philosophical schools, all equally valid, all equally arguable. Now, for the first time, there were right and wrong philosophies with no scope for interpretation. People who opposed Christian dogma were destined to hell. Before it preserved, the church destroyed classical art and knowledge. During the fourth and fifth centuries CE, it demolished, vandalized and melted down a staggering quantity of art, destroyed statues, temples were razed to the ground and books were burnt. The Library of Alexandria with 700,000 volumes was burnt down by the bishop of the city. It was over a millennium before any other library would even come close to its holdings in number. To preserve the old parchment manuscripts, they needed to be re-copied but mostly, classical texts were not. Medieval monks simply scrubbed away the pagan text when parchment was expensive and reused them to copy the Bible or other prayer books. The author estimates that only a tenth survived to modern age.

 

This book provides a rich source of information on the Christian persecution of pagan religion and its practitioners. All traditional gods were demons in the eyes of Christian scholars who reminded the faithful in violently disapproving language that the pagan religions were inspired by the devil. Paganism had no structure in the sense of a modern religion. It was merely an overarching framework of various cults practiced in different parts of the kingdom. There is a striking similarity between this religion and Hinduism till the medieval period. A good Christian would spit on the altar of a pagan and blow out the incense than accidentally breathe in its fumes. Christian speakers asked their congregations to hunt down sinners (pagans) and drive them into the way of salvation as relentlessly as a hunter pursues his prey into nets. As Christianity gained adherents, it forbade people from worshipping the old gods. Eventually, it restrained anyone to dissent from its teachings. Even arguing about the precepts in public was made equivalent to high treason and punishable with death.

 

We have been served with tales of how poor Christians were forced into gladiatorial fight with lions to entertain the spectators as part of Roman persecution. Nixey finds this exaggerated. Polytheism is inherently tolerant as they won’t mind the introduction of one more god for people to worship. Even Christian observers looked on the tolerance of their non-Christian neighbours with astonishment. Augustine marveled at the fact that the pagans were able to worship many different gods without discord, while the Christians, who worshipped just the one, splintered into countless warring factions. Moreover, the Christians steadfastly proclaimed that theirs is the only true god and all others are demons. Naturally, that would hardly endear them to others in a pluralistic, multicultural society. Sacrificing to the gods and emperor was expected of every citizen and adherents of the new faith refused to perform this duty. Even then, Christians were persecuted in fewer than thirteen years in three whole centuries of Roman rule. We know of no government-led persecution for the first 250 years of Christianity with the exception of Nero. But Nero was truly wicked and persecuted everyone. Emperor Trajan specifically ordered that Christians should not be hounded. This grace and liberty was denied when Christians finally gained control. A decade after Constantine – the first emperor to accept the Christian faith – came to the throne, laws were passed to ‘restrict the pollution of idolatry’. Sacrifices were banned. Fifty years later, death penalty was awarded to one who sacrificed. A century later, any pagans who still survived were suppressed.

 

One drawback of the book is that it does not analyse why the pagan religion crumbled like a pack of cards against the attacks by Christians. There were powerful oratory and rhetorical literature in support of the old faith, but on the ground, there was no organisation uniting them. When the temples were destroyed in one city, people of the neighbouring cities simply watched on helplessly. Moreover, the Christian fighters were unafraid to court death while committing a religious war. Martyrdom held considerable benefits for those willing to die. Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability. Martyrs went straight to heaven and were provided an exalted place there. Their aim was to die as painful a death as possible – greater the pain, greater the gain. The similarity to modern jihadi suicide squads is striking. This book also describes how the early Christians determinedly undermined paganism. Constantine ordered the idols to be taken out of temples. All precious material was recovered from them and then destroyed. Despite the horrible destruction, little resistance was offered by the pagans as the spirit had gone out from them. His destruction emboldened other Christians and the attacks spread. The temples in many cities were destroyed and churches erected in their place. It is a shocking reminder to all multicultural societies that at the time of Constantine’s conversion and persecution of the traditional religion began, Christians constituted only about seven to ten per cent of the total population.

 

Were these destruction taking place without the knowledge of illustrious church fathers, as isolated acts of vandalism by hooligans? Nixey’s answer is a resounding ‘No’ and the author shows the early church figures red in tooth and claw. St. Martin is said to have destroyed many temples and shrines in fourth century France. These violent acts were not seen as embarrassing, but as proof of a saint’s virtue. Benedict of Nursia was a celebrated destroyer of antiquities. His first act upon arriving in Rome was to smash an ancient statue of Apollo and destroy the shrine’s altar. St. Augustine reminded his flock that destruction of temples, idols and sacred groves were the express commandment of god. In 401 CE, Augustine told Christians in Carthage to smash pagan objects because that was what god wanted and commanded. Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria, destroyed the magnificent temple of Serapis and the great library attached to it which housed 700,000 volumes. John Chrysostom sent violent bands of monks to destroy the shrines in Phoenicia. Chrysostom was a stout anti-Semite too. He likened Jewish synagogues to brothels and his writings were reprinted with enthusiasm in Nazi Germany.

 

Historians mark the beginning of Dark Ages over Europe with the closure of Plato’s Academy at Athens in 529 CE. The last nail in the coffin of paganism was the result of a well-calculated move, this time by Emperor Justinian. He put forward a law that forbade the teaching of any doctrine by those ‘who labour under the insanity of paganism’ so that they might not corrupt the souls of their disciples. This law caused the Academy to close. After a century of physical annihilation of pagan symbols, Christianity turned its attention to wipe it clean from people’s minds too. We can only stare in astonishment at the brutal effectiveness and total success of this project. Centuries later, Edward Gibbon declared that the entirety of barbarian invasions had been less damaging to Athenian philosophy than Christianity was.

 

This book is very pleasing to read on account of its fine diction. The style is so easy-flowing and entertaining with caustic remarks embedded in flowery prose. The research is well done, but could have been more comprehensive. The author is a journalist and a professional historian’s rigour is not expected from her. But still, I awarded this book the five-star rating because it opened a vista that was dark to me even though I was reading books of this sort for nearly three decades now. I read this book literally with bated breath because most of the events portrayed in the book were already played out in India by colonial invaders, missionaries and the native converted flock. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Hinduism stood trembling against the onslaught of colonial Christianity like the pagan religion did thirteen centuries earlier. However, the result was not repeated as Christianity had a new competitor and they could not find a Constantine in India, even though the Jesuits tried their best to convert Emperor Akbar. Like what they did to pagan gods, the missionaries denigrated Hindu deities as demons openly till the middle of twentieth century and clandestinely even now. In that sense, Indians can easily relate to what is described in this book and hence this effort deserves a perfect ranking.

 

The book is highly recommended to all and is a must-read for Indians.

 

Rating: 5 Star

 

Holy Censorship or Mistranslation?

Title: Holy Censorship or Mistranslation? Love, Gender and Sexuality in the Bible

Author: K Renato Lings

Editors: Rev J P Mokgethi-Heath, Rev Loraine Tullekin

Publisher: HarperCollins, 2021 (First)

ISBN: 9789354225413

Pages: 327

 

The holy books of all major religions came into existence many centuries ago and quite naturally, they echoed the socio-economic conditions then prevailing in their country of origin. Their claims of applicability to the whole of the world and for all time need not be taken seriously. What is then prudent for modern adherents of religion is to ignore those passages which run counter to the ethos and morality of the present and get on with their lives. However, there are people who believe in the literal validity of the ‘revealed’ text and argue that we find them anachronistic because we interpret those passages in the wrong way. Such scholars produce novel interpretations to make the holy books stand criticism in the modern world and this book is one of them. It is generally accepted that the Bible is rather harsh on sexuality and plays it down wherever possible. This book argues that it is not the case and one of its main purposes is to highlight the possible link between the current English Bible versions and negative attitudes towards same-sex love as due to mistranslation or censorship of important concepts. Whereas the book’s cover mentions sexuality, the narrative deals only with homosexuality which is equivalent to deceiving the unsuspecting readers. This book is a concise version of the author’s original work titled ‘Love Lost in Translation’, which ran into almost four times the number of pages as this book. Renato Lings was born in Denmark and is a scholar of classical languages, translation studies and theology. He has written and taught extensively on biblical interpretation, translation and issues relating to gender and sexuality. He lives in Spain.

 

Lings makes a distinction between cultural practices regarding marriage and love in the present to that of the Biblical era. Customs and traditions in those times were radically different from what is expected and done in our times and few people would advocate a return. Legal and social equality of husband and wife did not exist in antiquity. Women were the property of either her father or husband. Violence against them by an outsider was considered as an affront to the honour of their male masters and led to blood feuds. In view of this, the relevant parts should be read as a piece of cultural information about marital practices that suited the social structures of the times. Traditionally, marriage was regarded as an alliance between two families or clans. Love and attraction were accepted as valid basis for marriage only after the rise of the Romantic Movement in the nineteenth century. That the woman loves the man she is going to marry is stated only once in the Bible, in the case of Mikhal, daughter of Saul, who falls for David.

 

This book provides many examples of the case of mistranslation or censorship regarding sexuality. In the sexual realm, the tendency of English versions is towards mistranslation which does not reflect the cultural complexities governing the Hebrew and Greek universes. The apostles and early church fathers were celibate and this might have contributed to a touch of misogyny that eventually crept in. However, the author reminds Bible readers of how they are selective when it comes to paying attention to those parts of the Scripture that affect their life choices. In Genesis, when the Creator speaks of food that is apt for human beings, it explicitly suggests that they should be vegetarians or perhaps even a vegan. But this advice is nearly always ignored by Christians everywhere in the world.

 

After the cursory introduction, the author plunges straight into discovering approval for homosexuality in the Bible. The story of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis is very well known as a lesson to practitioners of unnatural sex. Lings attempts to reinterpret the story in quite another way. As we know, two young men came to Sodom who were god’s representatives intending to investigate what is going on in the town. The townspeople amorously surrounded Lot’s house where they were lodged and asked him to let them ‘know’ the visitors. The Hebrew word for ‘know’ is yadah which is used many times in the Testaments in a sexual sense. Lings argues that probably the translators misunderstood it when the locals had wanted only to interrogate the newcomers, in the literal sense of the word. Also, Lot’s offer of his two unmarried daughters in lieu of the visitors is in fact just a promise to offer the girls as hostages in the safe and honourable custody of the people as long as the guests remained in Lot’s house. The people did not listen to the man’s entreaties and God destroyed the place with fire and brimstone. This should be acknowledged as a punishment for mistreating immigrants to the town in the light of another verse quoted from Exodus supporting the argument. Even the earliest translations of the Bible contain the story as we know it today and Lings’ version is palatable only to people who are strongly determined to accommodate the sexual minorities in the scheme of the Divine. Also, it is argued that some English versions are prone to exaggerate the language when confronted with what they perceive to be same-sex eroticism. In several cases, their renderings are considerably harsher than the Greek source (p.98).

 

After leaving the Old Testament which is written in Hebrew, Lings turns to the New, which is in Greek. Paul’s letter to the Romans categorically condemns homosexuality. Nazi condemnation of the gays was based on the Apostle’s letter. Here, the author claims that translators tended to regard several Greek expressions as references to same-sex relationships even when they simply describe unconventional behavior. What Paul expressed was concerns about idolatry and orgiastic practices said to be prevalent in pagan Rome. The book also includes a few examples where no deviant interest is involved as vindicating homo-eroticism. The love and dedication of Ruth to her mother-in-law Naomi in the Book of Ruth is a case described in detail. Both were widows and Ruth migrated out of her homeland for the sake of Naomi. This is alluded as a lesbian affair when nothing of the sort was indicated in the Scriptures. The relationship between David and Jonathan is also depicted in the same light. Jesus’ love for his best disciple described in the Gospel adds one more point to the author’s list as he claims that the wordings found in modern versions reveal considerable discomfort among translators and commentators in relation to the intimacy between males depicted in the narrative. Contrary to popular perception that it was John the Apostle being referred to, Lings suggests Lazarus, the person whom Jesus raised from the dead, as the best candidate.

 

The most startling claim in the book is that God created the first human being as a hermaphrodite! The Scripture says he created the groundling in his image, male and female He created them (Gen 1:27). This means a single being, both male and female, was created in view of a later verse which declares that a distinct female (Eve) was created out of it after some time. Is he unintentionally referring to the concept of Ardhanarishwara in Indian mythology? Lings suggests that this is an indication that the Creator has not limited to a single gender and the first human being is endowed with a dual nature containing an equal number of male and female components, or in other words, a bi-gender hermaphrodite (p.246-7). Then why did the Christian world not been able to find this out so far? The author provides an answer for this too. The early church did not read the creation story in the source language of Hebrew. They depended on the early Greek translation called Septuagint. Later, as the Roman church spread to Europe, it studied the Bible entirely in the Latin translation called the Vulgate made by St. Jerome. The Hebrew text was rediscovered only during the Reformation.

 

As noted earlier, there is a distinct element of cheating the readers in conveniently omitting the word homosexuality in the book’s subtitle. This is a marketing strategy as its inclusion would have considerably cut down the number of people who would read this book. This aspect is responsible for removing one deserving star from the book’s rating. The book is easily readable and the author’s scholarship in the Hebrew and Greek languages shine through the detailed analyses and arguments. Moreover, the postulates in this volume provide much food for thought for Bible scholars.

 

The book is not recommended for general readers.

 

Rating: 2 Star