Hindu studies in a Christian, secular academy

But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.

—Paul, Letter to the Romans 7:6

Why, do we then nothing? Do we work nothing for the obtaining of this righteousness? I answer: Nothing at all. For the nature of this righteousness is, to do nothing, to hear nothing, to know nothing whatsoever of the law or of works . . .

—Luther, Commentary on Galatians

Introduction

The concept of dharma is central to Hinduism, underpinning its ideas of rebirth, existence, salvation, and even cosmogenesis. Yet this concept is seldom understood and frequently misrepresented. One of the key sources of difficulty is the confusion between substantive and normative senses of dharma, and the tendency to represent dharma as merely a social construct. More importantly, scholars have viewed dharma on analogy with Judeo-Christian ideas of the law, and drawn, from its seeming inability to provide justification, the negative conclusion that dharma is inefficacious in salvation. Yet this conclusion is premature, as this article will argue. I will focus on a recent interpretation of dharma in the Mahābhārata, Disorienting Dharma: Ethics and the Aesthetics of Suffering in the Mahābhārata (Hudson 2013), to show how Judeo-Christian ideas of the law—more specifically, a Protestant critique of Jewish law—stand at the background of many contemporary accounts of dharma. My aim in doing so, however, is less to critique this particular interpretation than to illustrate the latent Protestant foundations of the discipline of the history of religions. The wider argument I will make is that without much greater attention to the presuppositions of our work than hitherto, we risk degrading our scholarship to a mere restatement of Protestant norms and values, because of the way those norms and values have been inscribed at the heart of the academic study of religions (Smith 2010, 1139–170).¹

Disorienting Dharma

In my review of Disorienting Dharma (Adluri 2016), I showed that Hudson failed to understand the concept of dharma in the Mahābhārata (see ibid., 5–7). Rather than reprise those criticisms here, I wish to show that this failure was not accidental: it derived directly from the application of an implicit Protestant hermeneutic to the text to generate an antinomian reading of dharma. Let me begin with a key observation of that review, namely, Hudson’s failure to adequately conceptualize the relationship of dharma to adharma. I argued that “within pravṛtti, dharma exists in an essential tension with adharma” (ibid., 6). Unlike Christianity, Hinduism does not contemplate the possibility of a perfected world—either now or in some distant future. Consequently, when the epic problematizes dharma its aim is to recommend neither lawlessness nor despair. Rather, it undertakes an analysis of dharma and adharma precisely as a propadeutic to mokṣa (final liberation). “Mokṣa,” Van Buitenen notes, “is release from the entire realm which is governed by dharma, that is, in the picturesque phrase, the Egg of Brahmā.” Mokṣa, thus, stands in opposition to dharma, “but the opposition is of another kind than that of adharma to dharma. Dharma upholds the established order, while adharma threatens it; adharma is sheer lawlessness. Mokṣa, however, is the abandonment of the established order, not in favor of anarchy, but in favor of a self-realization which is precluded in the realm of dharma” (Van Buitenen 1957, 37). Thus, when the epic illustrates the limitations of dharma (for example, that heaven is finite or that individuals, though innocent, suffer due to the adharma of others), it does this as a way to recommend pursuing the mokṣa option (see Sullivan 2006).² Contrary to Emily Hudson’s suggestion that we ought to follow the dharma as though it mattered, the epic is unwavering in its commitment to dharma. This is seen both in the epic’s setting up of the Kurukṣetra battle as a conflict carried out on the field of the Kurus, “supremely firm in the Law” (paramadharmiṣṭhe deśe bhūdoṣavarjite, Mahābhārata 1.2.10; all translations of the Mahābhārata, unless otherwise stated, are Van Buitenen’s) and in Vyāsa’s gesture at the epic’s conclusion, when he says: “with uplifted arms I cry out, but no one hears. From dharma [springs] wealth as well as pleasure. Why should dharma, therefore, not be pursued? One should not abandon dharma for the sake of either pleasure or fear or desire. Dharma is eternal; pleasure and pain, however, are not so . . .” (Mahābhārata 18.5.49–50; my translation).³

Thus the problem of dharma has to be seen within the context of the progression of the yugas, with the inevitable decline in order characteristic of the cosmic cycle, and within the context of the restitution of dharma through bhārāvataraṇa (Mahābhārata 1.58.35–51, 1.59.1–6). Hudson does not mention Nārāyaṇa’s descent, even though the Mahābhārata clarifies up front (in the Ādiparvan) that his descent is the essential step required for dharmasaṃsthāpana.⁴ The epic self-consciously sets up a mimetic universe, in which both dharmakṣaya and dharmasaṃśaya can unfold, so that it can ultimately, through the raṇayajña, declare the victory of dharma over adharma. Hudson misleadingly downplays the fact that the Kuru conflict is yet another episode in the periodic conflict between the gods and the titans (Mahābhārata 1.61.80–89). She ignores the careful staging of the epic’s narrations, which clarify that the problem is not one of how to obtain heaven (the epic is retold retrospectively, after the current generation of heroes has already attained heaven), but of how, through hearing of the characters’ fates and seeing that death is the face and fate of all phusis, to achieve ontological dessaisie. Ahiṃsā dharma, a key concept in the epic’s ethics (see Mahābhārata 1.11.12a, 3.198.69c: ahiṃsā paramo dharmaḥ),⁵ features only at the margins of her discussion (see 38, 39, and 222; in the last reference, it is dismissed with the words that, like ānṛśaṃsya, it is a merely “negative category”). She also ignores the Bhagavadgītā, even though her questions regarding dharma—especially the question: “If the path of dharma not only does not protect one from misfortune and sorrow, but, on the contrary, potentially is implicated in the problem of suffering, is the dharmic path even a noble or worthy pursuit?” (103)—are already anticipated by this text (see Bhagavadgītā 3.1 and 6.37–39). Focusing on the concept of svadharma in the Gītā would also have permitted her to articulate her question more precisely, which, if it can be taken to mean anything, must mean something like: the characters’ svadharma fails to protect them. This formulation would still be erroneous, because svadharma protects not in the manner of ensuring worldly success,⁶ but in the manner of a purification and a self-formation,⁷ but at least the question in this form has some content and would have been intelligible to those familiar with Indian thought.

Definitions of Dharma

These failures are exacerbated by the fact that Hudson does not explain what she, if not the text, means by “dharma.” She notes that the term “has been used in a bewildering variety of ways” and that it “has no single semantic equivalent in English . . . in various contexts [it] may mean law, justice, custom, morality, ethics, religion, duty, nature, or virtue” (36). But she does not engage with the concept beyond these observations. Even though it is one of the most notoriously difficult terms in Indian thought to define,⁸ she merely glosses it as a social/anthropocentric concept, analogous to the idea of the law in the West. There is no discussion of the way the term operates in the Mahābhārata (that is, as pravṛtti and nivṛtti dharmas, as varṇāśrama and kṣatriya dharmas, or as mokṣa and ṛṣi dharmas). These manifold senses of dharma are conflated to one, amorphous category “dharma” and a pseudo-problem constructed: “If the path of dharma . . . does not protect one from misfortune and sorrow . . . is the dharmic path even a noble or worthy pursuit?” (103).

Hudson makes much of the fact that the nature of dharma is “subtle,”⁹ but overlooks the first occurrence of the term sūkṣmo dharma right at the Mahābhārata’s outset in the story of King Vasu in the Ādiparvan, as the king ponders over his spilt ejaculate. Vaiśaṃpāyana narrates that King Vasu was asked by his ancestors to go hunting while his wife was in her season. Thinking of her on the way, the king spontaneously ejaculated; but being “aware of the subtleties of Law and Profit” (sūkṣmadharmārthatattvajño jñātvā, Mahābhārata 1.57.42e), he caught his sperm as it fell on a leaf and entrusted it to a kite to carry home to his wife. This is the first occurrence of the notion of dharmasūkṣmatā in the epic and, as such, a key indication that the problem of the subtle nature of the dharma is linked to the “fall” into pravṛtti.¹⁰ More problematic still, Hudson consistently glosses the sūkṣamata of dharma as referring to the ambiguity of dharma, that is, to its being difficult to state in some undefined sense,¹¹ when, in fact, the reference is most likely to an esoteric doctrine of the soul. Adam Bowles has shown the connections between the Mahābhārata’s use of the term and its Upaniṣadic predecessors. He comments, “in KU [Kaṭha Upaniṣad] 1.21, in the dialogue between Naciketas and Death, the ātman doctrine is said to be ‘not easily understood, it is a subtle dharma’ (na . . . sujñeyam aṇur eṣa dharmaḥ), repeated in similar terms in 2.13 (dharmyam aṇum). This is quite remarkable, especially since this ‘doctrine’ (dharma) is further described as OṂ, the syllable brahman (2.15–16ff.), precisely what CU [Chāndogya Upaniṣad] 2.23.1 contrasts to dharma” (Bowles 2007, 101).¹² Bowles further notes that “KU [Kaṭha Upaniṣad] 2.14 seems to contrast the ātman theory to the pair dharma and adharma in answering the question, what is ‘different from dharma and different from adharma’ (anyatra dharmād anyatrādharmād). In this case, the ‘subtle doctrine’ appears to transcend dharma and adharma, which, if I understand this correctly, must mean something like the traditional rituals, laws and duties, and their opposites, of Brāhmaṇism” (ibid., 101–2). The subtlety referred to thus must be intrinsically connected with the difficulty of stating the dharma with respect to the ātman, which, as eternal, unchanging, and eternally free, remains beyond good and evil (cf. Bhagavadgītā 5.15a: nādatte kasya cit pāpaṃ na caiva sukṛtaṃ vibhuḥ |).

In the Upaniṣads, the term sūkṣma occurs in Kaṭha Upaniṣad 1.3.12 (sūkṣmadarśin); Mahānārāyaṇa Upaniṣad 11.9 and Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad 4.14 (sūkṣmātisūkṣmaṃ); Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad 5.12 and 6.3 (sūkṣmāṇi and sūkṣmaiḥ); and Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad 3.1.7 (sūkṣmācca sūkṣmatara). It is also found in the Bhagavadgītā at 13.15 (sūkṣmatva). If we look at what the term qualifies in these verses, we see that in all these instances, the reference is to the Self (ātman). Thus, in Kaṭha Upaniṣad 1.3.12, Yama explains to Naciketas, “He [the puruṣa] is hidden in all beings, and hence He does not appear as the Self (of all). But by the seers of subtle things, He is seen through a pointed and fine intellect.” Note that here it is precisely on account of his ubiquity that the puruṣa is referred to as subtle. Likewise in Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad 3.1.7, Aṅgiras explains to Śaunaka, “It [brahman] is great and self-effulgent; and Its form is unthinkable. It is subtler than the subtle.” Śaṅkara in his commentary on the Kaṭha Upaniṣad states: “Now, then, the senses are gross. The arthāḥ, sense-objects, by which those senses were created for their (that is, of the sense-objects) own revelation; are certainly parāḥ, higher—subtler, more pervasive, and are their inner selves.” For each element of this hierarchical order (manas, buddhi, mahān ātmā, avyakta, puruṣa) he repeats this argument, arguing each time that it is “more subtle, pervasive, and is their/its inner self.” Regarding the last element of this series he notes: “He, the Puruṣa; is kāṣṭha, the acme, the culmination—of subtleness, greatness, and inwardness, as Self. Here, indeed, culminate all subtleness, etc., commencing from the senses.”¹³ The implication is that when the Mahābhārata refers to the subtlety of dharma, it does not mean to cast dharma into doubt. Rather, it means to underscore the extreme difficulty of perceiving the dharma with respect to puruṣa or brahman, and it is for this reason that the text engages in extensive discussions about it, just as, according to the logic of arundhatī-darśana-nyāya, in order to see a fine star such as Arundhatī, the student is first shown a large star and then her attention is progressively directed to smaller and smaller stars.¹⁴

The Articulation of Dharma in the Mahābhārata

Thus, when Hudson turns her attention to her main theme, the “subtle” nature of dharma, the reader is at a loss to understand what she means by “dharma” if it refers neither to the nature, order, or causal operation of the universe nor to the contrast with nivṛtti and mokṣa nor to the antithesis of adharma. In a work whose central thesis hangs from the fact that “Bhīṣma tries and fails [to answer Draupadī’s question], deeming dharma to be too subtle (sūkṣma) to be interpreted” (101; the reference is to Mahābhārata 2.60.40), it is striking that she does not point out that this is a response to a specific question, where the dharma point is not clear. Bhīṣma is far from declaring that dharma as a whole is subtle in Hudson’s sense (that is, that it is deceptive or impotent and hence worthy of abandonment). In the term’s very next occurrence (Bhīṣma’s soliloquy at Mahābhārata 2.62.14–21), he upholds the principle of dharma, stating, “the course of the Law is sovereign” (dharmasya tu parāṃ gatim, Mahābhārata 2.62.14a).¹⁵ Hudson states that Draupadī in the sabhā appears to criticize both dharma and the Dharmarāja, but does not mention that, in the Āraṇyakaparvan, when Draupadī casts aspersion on dharma a second time, Yudhiṣṭhira repudiates her with the words: “The words you have spoken and we have heard, Yājñaseni, are beautiful, well-phrased and polished; but what you are saying is heresy” (Mahābhārata 3.32.1).¹⁶

I could multiply almost endlessly such instances of textual oversight. Duryodhana is not “a figure of tentative sympathy” (81); he is already marked out in the Ādiparvan as born from a portion of Kali (kaler aṃśāt, Mahābhārata 1.61.80a). Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s lament in the Ādiparvan does not “convey . . . an emotion very close to vairāgya or world-weariness, the underlying emotion of śāntarasa, the aestheticized emotion of tranquility” (114), because śāntarasa in Ānandavardhana requires the insight into Kṛṣṇa Vāsudeva as the ontologically true (Dhvanyāloka 4.5A, cited according to the edition of Ingalls 1990), and this is precisely what Dhṛtarāṣṭra in his lament is unable to see.¹⁷ Hudson suggests that “the characterization of Dhṛtarāṣṭra is a central component of the text’s aesthetics of suffering” and he is apparently supposed to “play a significant part in the audience’s moral refiguration” (107), but overlooks that his clipped refrain (“then, Saṃjaya, I lost hope of victory”) is a cipher for the rolling cycles of pravṛtti and that this lament is followed by the glorification of Kṛṣṇa Vāsudeva, the sempiternal Blessed Lord (Mahābhārata 1.1.193–95).¹⁸ When Vidura in the nighttime sessions of the Udyogaparvan discourses to Dhṛtarāṣṭra on the dharma, elucidating a complex hierarchy of dharmas, he is not using “strategies of excess . . . to undermine our confidence in the category of dharma” (122) (what would the point of doing this to a king about to enter into a fatal war be?), but is illustrating the reach, the hold, and the inescapability of dharma.¹⁹ Hudson’s observation, “If dharma is everything, then is it anything?” (122), is illustrative rather of the viewpoint of the addled Dhṛtarāṣṭra, who at the discourse’s end, having listened with palpable boredom, says: “Is there anything, Vidura, that you have left unsaid?” (Mahābhārata 5.41.1).²⁰ Kṛṣṇa in the Bhagavadgītā does not “argue that Arjuna should not grieve for those ‘he’ is going to kill because Kṛṣṇa, as time, has already killed them” (160, n. 56); he argues that Arjuna should not grieve for them because “the wise do not grieve either for the living or the dead” (Bhagavadgītā 2.10; all translations of the Bhagavadgītā are Van Buitenen’s). The dog that accompanies Yudhiṣṭhira to heaven does not “appear out of nowhere” (207, n. 125): a dog played a significant role in a previous episode. At the Mahābhārata’s inception, Janamejaya’s brothers beat a dog, Saramā’s son, and Saramā cursed King Janamejaya that an unseen danger (adṛṣṭam, Mahābhārata 1.3.8d) would befall him. White (1989) points out that Yama is accompanied by two dogs who watch over the paths taken by the dead, Śyāma and Śabala, the Sārameyau or the sons of Saramā. In other words, we have a continuous motif, rather than a sudden accident and it only takes a little reading (the episode transpires in the Mahābhārata’s third minor book) to see what is happening.²¹

Adhikāri and Prayojana

When Hudson now declares that she will read the Mahābhārata from Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s perspective, we wonder: why Dhṛtarāṣṭra? How is he a reliable guide? How does he fulfill the requirements of the “sensitive listener” (sahṛdaya)? How is he qualified to be the adhikāri? Hudson tells us that “this [Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s appearance at the beginning of the Ādiparvan] is an important moment in the epic’s aesthetics of suffering because the entire central story is encapsulated in Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s lament” (109), but what is the guarantee that Dhṛtarāṣṭra has correctly understood or even heard the epic’s message? The blind king is rather the paradigm of the person who should not read the Mahābhārata, because, even after hearing the whole story and witnessing Kṛṣṇa’s revelation of the Bhagavadgītā on the battlefield to Arjuna, he still succumbs to lamentation. Hudson considers this lament a work of great poetry and beauty. Citing J. P. Sinha, she argues that “no Sanskrit poet presents any character whose grief could match the grief of Dhṛtarāṣṭra as presented by the poet of the Mahābhārata” (106).²² According to her, Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s experience in the epic has “the pure arc of a tragic life” (106). Yet, had she considered the relation of the adhikāri to the viṣaya and the prayojana of the text for a moment, before declaring that “we are directed to see parts of ourselves mirrored and greatly magnified [in the person of Dhṛtarāṣṭra]” and that “the extremity of what Dhṛtarāṣṭra has to face . . . renders bearable what we ourselves have to face and are loath to face” (141), she would have seen that Dhṛtarāṣṭra can in no way be the person from whose perspective we are supposed to read the text. As the paradigm of the incontinent, vacillating, self-absorbed person in the epic, he is the worst person to choose as a guide to the epic. His apoplexy at the beginning of the Ādiparvan, ending in a swoon, already sets up in the epic the tragedy of the person who will gain nothing from reading it. It also brings a sharp rebuke from his charioteer Saṃjaya, who tells him that “those whose minds do follow the scripture do not fall into confusion” (yeṣāṃ śāstrānugā buddhir na te muhyanti bhārata, Mahābhārata 1.1.184c).²³ The episode of Maitreya’s curse in the Āraṇyakaparvan (see n. 23) marks the king out as a gossip, an idle mind, incapable of following good counsel and interested only in hearing tales. In the long session called Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s Vigil, the king, suffering from sleeplessness, calls Vidura to advise him. But instead of taking the steward’s advice regarding the proper dharma to heart, he urges him to carry on storytelling as he is still sleepless and suffering from unease (see Mahābhārata 5.34.1, 5.35.1, 5.36.48, 5.39.1). Instead of the wakefulness enjoined upon the spiritual aspirant (Bhagavadgītā 2.69), the king is interested in dharma discussions only as a means of passing the time.

Adhikāri and Dhvani

Hudson probably considers Dhṛtarāṣṭra the main character in the epic from the perspective of its “aesthetics of suffering” because of the great value she attaches to the lament (see Hudson 2007). But Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s lament cannot be read straightforwardly as a tragedy. This “dirge” (109), as Hudson calls it, is primarily a list of contents and major episodes and is too formulaic to be moving. Moreover, as anyone who knows literature is aware, a single calamity might be considered unfortunate and two or three a tragedy. But at a certain point the person’s suffering ceases to be tragic and becomes comic instead.²⁴ When a blind person repeats fifty-four times that he saw the impending destruction coming and, moreover, prefaces this with the comment that he possesses the “eyesight of insight” (prajñācakṣuṣam, Mahābhārata 1.1.101e), when even a person with normal eyesight could have seen from the events that destruction was inevitable, this is a clear indication that we are not supposed to take Dhṛtarāṣṭra seriously. Hudson is aware that “Balarāma links Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s physical blindness with his moral blindness at 3.119.11” (11, n. 22). Yet, she does not take this potent clue seriously.²⁵ She informs us that “‘the paradox of Dhṛtarāṣṭra’” consists in the fact that “the blind king often ‘sees’ with insight, [but] he seldom makes decisions in accordance with it” (106), yet, in viewing the epic from Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s perspective, she only repeats that paradox. “The eyesight of insight” (prajñcakṣus) is not “a polite epithet for a blind person”²⁶ (110, n. 13); it connects with Kṛṣṇa’s speech in the Bhagavadgītā, when he accuses Arjuna of having spoken “to sage issues” (prajñāvādāṃś ca bhāṣase, Bhagavadgītā 2.11a). Dhṛtarāṣṭra is emblematic of the person who, although he sees the destruction coming, is unable to turn to the soteriological dimension called Hari in the text (see Mahābhārata 1.1.22c),²⁷ due to his incontinence and his cupidity. Dhṛtarāṣṭra is not “the most human of all the characters” (69) in the epic; he is the most laughable. It is regrettable that Hudson has chosen to base a reading of the Mahābhārata upon the experiences of this one figure.²⁸ That she thinks Dhṛtarāṣṭra’s experiences have any pedagogic value illustrates that she has understood neither the concept of the qualified reader nor the concept of suggestion.

These problems in Hudson’s interpretation of Dhṛtarāṣṭra could have been avoided had she read the Kaṇikanīti, a passage of 230 lines found in the vulgate.²⁹ Although in the vulgate rather than the critical edition, this text should not be dismissed lightly, for the vulgate, as Madeleine Biardeau argues, represents the best guide to the epic’s interpretation. The Indian tradition is a text-commentarial tradition; ideas do not appear from just anywhere, but are developed within a strictly controlled system of commentary, meta-commentary, and sub-commentary. The Mahābhārata’s later recensions, as argued elsewhere (Adluri and Bagchee 2017), are not simply instances of uncontrolled contamination; they are the first glosses on the archetypal text. In the passage under consideration, we are offered a completely different view of Dhṛtarāṣṭra than the one Hudson works out so painstakingly. Dhṛtarāṣṭra is a hypocrite, an utterer of sanctimonious bromides, begrudging of others’ success, jealous of his privileges, and always on the lookout for bad counsel that will justify his actions. Kaṇika, the king’s minister, tells Dhṛtarāṣṭra that strong kings should never hesitate to render harmless their foes, whether through bribery, conciliation, warfare, or treachery. Kaṇika’s advice resonates well with the king, who queries him ardently on what he should do, either by bribery, or by sowing dissension, or by force, to destroy the enemy (kathaṃ sāntvena dānena bhedair daṇḍena vā punaḥ | amitraḥ śakyate hantuṃ tan me brūhi yathātatham, App. 1, no. 81, lines 49–50). Kaṇika responds by comparing the king’s position with a jackal, fully acquainted with the science of politics (nītiśāstra, App. 1, no. 81, line 52), who, even though surrounded by stronger, braver, and nobler animals, is able to assert his authority. Kaṇika’s choice of the jackal, known from the Pañcatantra for its cunning and ruthlessness, shows that he has correctly discerned the king’s nature. It is also the first time in the epic that Dhṛtarāṣṭra listens to an advisor’s counsel. By not taking seriously the view of Dhṛtarāṣṭra canonical in the continuing tradition, Hudson commits avoidable mistakes.³⁰

Prayojana and Mokṣa

This raises a serious question: what are the qualifications someone must possess to read the Mahābhārata? Who is the adhikāri? Is it simply anyone with a slight knowledge of the text? Does it suffice to have only the barest idea of the plot outline? Or must there be an intrinsic connection between the adhikāri, the viṣaya or the text’s subject matter, and the prayojana or purpose of study? The Mahābhārata, as Fitzgerald has shown (Fitzgerald 1980), is primarily a mokṣa text, effective in knowledge of the self. This means that without an appreciation of for whom and with what purpose the text was written, our interpretation of the text is likely to go astray.³¹ Yet, when we look at Emily Hudson’s work, we see that not only is she ill-informed about the epic but she also consistently downplays the textual reality of mokṣa. She is well aware that “for Buddhist, Jain, and nearly all Brahmanical religions the soteriological goal is defined as liberation (mokṣa) from saṃsāra, that is, release from the cycle of rebirth” (45). She also cites Fitzgerald on the contrast in these systems between “two senses of dharma,” the one “predicated upon the desire for some great good (in the end heaven—the ultimate ‘protection’ against suffering)” and the other “seek[ing] to expunge all desire (that is, to gain liberation or mokṣa)” (39). Yet, she thereafter completely ignores the topic. Discounting references to the titles of the works of other authors that contain the term, I counted the word mokṣa only five times in the book (39, 45, 58, 195, and 222), each time only in passing. In each of these instances, she suppresses the theme of mokṣa. She cites Ānandavardhana as stating that by depicting the sorry end of the Vṛṣṇis and the Pāṇḍavas Vyāsa intends to invoke detachment (vairāgya) in his readers and thus suggests that the principal subject of his poem is “the peaceful flavor [śāntarasa] and the human aim characterized by liberation [mokṣa]” (58; Hudson cites the translation of Ingalls 1990); yet, in the immediately following sentences and paragraphs, she never once mentions the theme of mokṣa. Likewise, in the term’s next appearance, the hunter’s discourse in the Āraṇyakaparvan (Mahābhārata 3.198–206), she cites the hunter’s statement that “being in a state of constant suffering yet unsuffering, one is called happy. Therefore, in great agony one goes around in saṃsāra like a wheel because the fetters have not been cut and karma has come again” (194),³² yet cuts the statement short before his concluding words: “When the bondage has been terminated and he is freed from it, he attains to the worlds of merit, where, once he has reached them, he will no more suffer [yatra gatvā na śocati]” (Mahābhārata 3.200.38, italics added; cf. Bhagavadgītā 15.6: yad gatvā na nivartante; obviously the soteriological goal and the place attained when there is no more suffering are the same).

Mokṣa and Svarga

The problems with Disorienting Dharma thus cannot simply be put down to Emily Hudson’s insufficient knowledge of the text. Rather there is a repeated pattern of stopping short of the text’s actual soteriological doctrines. Hudson’s thesis that the Mahābhārata means to “disorient” our ideas of dharma (30–32) so as to “refigur[e] the sensitive reader/spectator’s understanding of suffering . . . and by extension . . . of the world” rests on her claim that “heaven is the ultimate reward,” as “the absence of suffering is inherent in the idea of heaven’” (219–20). This is, in fact, a feature of Christian theology; Hudson’s repeated efforts to substitute the mokṣa question with a heaven question suggest that she is conflicted about which tradition she is arguing with. In Indian thought, “the conception of an ‘after-life’ which, though interrupted by intervals of heaven and hell, remains on the same level as the present life, and, although its varying degrees of ‘spirituality’ (caitanya and related terms) encompass the entire range from worm to Brahmā, cannot be regarded as essentially different from human life” (Van Buitenen 1957, 33). One cannot ask Indian systems to justify their theology in terms of heaven, when they reject this category as deficient, both ontologically and soteriologically.³³ As the maximization of pravṛtti, svarga or heaven is censured in the Mahābhārata. Not only are the joys of heaven temporary, but even Indra, Lord of heaven, is perpetually insecure, fearing a rival who will unseat him. Kings who ascend to heaven such as Vasu (Mahābhārata 12.324), Nahuṣa (12.329), and Yayāti (1.82) inevitably fall. Kṛṣṇa in the Bhagavadgītā also critiques those who “inspired by desires, [are] set upon heaven” (Bhagavadgītā 2.43–44). When Hudson claims that “the epic’s aesthetics of suffering is attempting to reorient the sensitive reader/receiver toward a notion of dharma that is divested of the idea of reward (heaven is the ultimate reward according to the logic of dharma in the first sense) as well as stripped of the notion that dharma would, or could, provide protection from suffering (for the absence of suffering is inherent in the idea of heaven)” (219–20), she conflates two things: the idea of heaven and the idea of the ultimate reward. It is only on this presupposition that it can seem as though the Indian epic, because it disparages heaven, must also be setting aside dharma.

Hudson also misunderstands the specific way Nārāyaṇa/Kṛṣṇa “saves” in the Mahābhārata. Via a reference to Sutton (2000),³⁴ she dismisses Nārāyaṇa’s avatāra (incarnation or descent) as “a peripheral concept” (200, n. 94). She further criticizes Biardeau, James L. Fitzgerald, and W. J. Johnson for reading “the epic largely through the lens of the doctrine of the avatāra.” In her view, although “many scholars have argued that the Mahābhārata concludes with the restoration of dharma[,] . . . this reading of the text is hard to reconcile with what actually happens at the epic’s conclusion. In actuality, the Mahābhārata concludes, as Pollock aptly puts it, ‘in anomie, ascetic suicide, and apocalypse’” (200, n. 94). However, avatāra does not save in the manner of Christian incarnation, assuring its followers of heaven. Given the epic’s commitment to the circularity of time, those who attain heaven would only re-descend in the next cycle. Thus, the avatāra’s salvific function would not be preserved if only Nārāyaṇa’s believers were sent to heaven or attained worldly success, while the disbelievers suffered torment. Rather, the destruction must be total:³⁵ purified souls, having received teaching and striving for self-knowledge, will be emancipated, while the souls of those intent upon heaven or other worldly desires will receive appropriate destinations.³⁶ Thus, avatāra must be intrinsically linked with bhārāvataraṇa, contrary to Paul Hacker’s claim that avataraṇa initially only had the meaning of violent descent and only later developed into the idea of a salvific descent (Hacker 1960).³⁷ The argument also applies in reverse: bhārāvataraṇa will not work as a lessening of the earth’s burden, if all the souls involved were to reincarnate in the next cycle. It can only work if some souls attain emancipation; hence the connection between Kṛṣṇa’s apocalyptic and pedagogic aspects.³⁸ Further, since the entire Mahābhārata must be viewed in some sense as Nārāyaṇa’s avatāra (according to the principle in Mahābhārata 12.327.85: “And when the work of the gods becomes unbearable for you I will manifest Myself, teaching Self-knowledge”;³⁹ note that Nārāyaṇa’s descent is not historical, but takes place as the manifestation of wisdom in the world), Hudson’s thesis that the Mahābhārata’s pessimistic conclusion militates against the avatāra’s salvific significance is false: it is precisely through teaching the lesson of inexorable destruction in time that the avatāra enables some individuals to attain emancipation.⁴⁰ The operative contrast, however, is not between the virtuous and the wicked, the believers and the non-believers, and the saved and the damned (remnants of Paul’s theology that still infiltrate Hudson’s account), but between those capable of understanding the text’s message and those resistant to it.

Thoughtful reading and theodicy

Indeed, if we look at Hudson’s central contention against the Mahābhārata (that is, whether it “provides a rationale for the existence of suffering (i.e., a theodicy)”; 49, and see also 179: “in short, we will be exploring the question of whether or not the epic’s aesthetics delivers a theodicy”), it proves to be ill-chosen. The origins of the term theodicy lie within a specific problem experienced in Christianity, namely, the Trilemma of reconciling God’s omniscience and omnipotence with his omnibenevolence. The term itself was coined by Gottfried Leibniz in his Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l’homme et l’origine du mal, better known as Théodicée, in 1710,⁴¹ and the problem becomes a major preoccupation of Western philosophy thereafter. Rousseau and Hegel struggle with its implications, and Kant rejects the possibility of a “positive” answer to it.⁴² In contrast, the problem of theodicy cannot arise in the Mahābhārata, because of its commitment to a monistic ontology. As (Ramanujan 1994) has shown, theodicy is never a problem within monism. The real problem in monism is how the One became the many—a problem that has as its correlate not theodicy, but a doctrine of procession that functions downwards as a cosmology and upwards as a soteriology.⁴³

Hudson introduces the question of theodicy into the Mahābhārata, using Weber’s comment that the doctrine of karma provides “the most complete formal solution to the problem of theodicy” (190). However, theodicy is only a problem in a dualistic system, in which creation is a real event. In a monistic system such as that propounded by the Mahābhārata,⁴⁴ where the One does not become,⁴⁵ and creation is replaced by a logic of emanation (śṛṣṭi, Mahābhārata 1.1.39c) (and where emanation itself is explained in terms of a logic of reflection; compare Mahābhārata 1.1.197c: pratibimba), the problem of theodicy cannot arise. Because creation is ultimately unreal, explained as an effect of ajñāna or nescience, at most “theodicy” can mean that the individual must rise up from suffering and learn about her identity with the One. This is called adhyātma or (knowledge) of the soul in the text (Mahābhārata 1.1.196a) and the text is clear that all that needs to be done to reverse the fall into cosmology is to see the One—as do “the greatest of mystics, yoked and possessed of the vigor of meditation . . . lodged in their own selves, as an image in a mirror” (yat tad yativarā yuktā dhyānayogabalānvitāḥ | pratibimbam ivādarśe paśyanty ātmany avasthitam ||, Mahābhārata 1.1.197).

Hudson argues, “neither fate, human endeavor, karma, nor Kṛṣṇa provide conclusive answers to the theodicy question [in the Mahābhārata]” (49 and 179). She further claims that the epic’s purpose is not to provide “a ‘straightforward’ approach” to the “theodicy question” (49), but rather, to “undermin[e] the very formulation of the theodicy question itself” (220). According to her, the epic’s answer to the “theodicy question” (49, 179, 190, 215–16) consists in showing “that suffering exists simply and totally and that there are no conceptual categories that one can rely upon to make sense of this suffering” (215). However, the Mahābhārata’s silence on the “theodicy question” cannot be interpreted as a rejection of responses to suffering. It is, rather, a rejection of the question’s meaningfulness when formulated in this way. Indian thought distinguishes between the impassiveness of the highest principle and the activity and agency of the demiurge Brahmā (or, in some systems, between the inert Puruṣa and the active Prakṛti). Even in its theistic variations such as the Mahābhārata, this distinction is maintained. Kṛṣṇa in the Bhagavadgītā states that actions do not bind him because he has no desire for their fruits; he who understands him in this way is no longer bound by his own actions (na māṃ karmāṇi limpanti na me karmaphale spṛhā | iti māṃ yo ’bhijānāti karmabhir na sa badhyate ||, Bhagavadgītā 4.14; see also 9.9 and 13.31). Actions are the sphere of prakṛti or the guṇas (Bhagavadgītā 3.27–29, 13.29, 14.19). Both Prakṛti and Puruṣa are beginningless, but the senses in which they are causes of the universe are different: “Prakṛti is stated to be a cause inasmuch as it is the agency in the production of products, while Puruṣa is stated to be a cause in that he experiences happiness and unhappiness” (kāryakāraṇakartṛtve hetuḥ prakṛtir ucyate | puruṣaḥ sukhaduḥkhānāṃ bhoktṛtve hetur ucyate ||, Bhagavadgītā 13.20). The Puruṣa’s experience of both sukha and duḥkha is explained as a consequence of his attachment (saṅga, Bhagavadgītā 13. 21c) to the guṇas; in reality, however, he is the transcendent “spectator, consenter, sustainer, and experiencer” (upadraṣṭānumantā ca bhartā bhoktā, Bhagavadgītā 13.22a).⁴⁶

The epic furthermore provides a clear statement of its position on the “theodicy question” (Hudson’s expression) in the Uttaṅkopākhyāna of the Āśvamedhikaparvan (Mahābhārata 14.52–57). In this brief post-war episode, sage Uttaṅka confronts Kṛṣṇa and accuses him of having failed to prevent the destruction of the Kauravas, even though he was capable of doing so. Uttaṅka threatens to curse him. Kṛṣṇa responds by revealing a monistic ontology: he is the soul of the existent and the non-existent, the manifest and the unmanifest, as well as the indestructible and the destructible (sad asac caiva yat prāhur avyaktaṃ vyaktam eva ca | akṣaraṃ ca kṣaraṃ caiva sarvam etan madātmakam ||, Mahābhārata 14.53.5). He is both the principle of Being, the underlying unity of all beings, and, through projecting himself into the creation, enables (individual) beings to be. This descent occurs according to or as the principle of dharma (which, for this reason, is called his “first-born son” or “sutaṃ agrajaṃ”; Mahābhārata 14.53.11a). Indicating the close-knit structure of the descent, the formation or the articulation of dharma, and righteousness of the process, he informs Uttaṅka that his births take place for the sake of protecting and establishing dharma (dharmasaṃrakṣaṇārthāya dharmasaṃsthāpanāya ca, Mahābhārata 14.53.13a). Kṛṣṇa is therefore identical with dharma, even though its establishment only occurs through permitting beings to come into being, a coming-into-being that entails a wandering or turning in adharma (adharme vartamānānāṃ, Mahābhārata 14.53.15a).

Hudson cites this very passage, but overlooks the key point: in a monistic ontology, the One, though unaffected in itself, undergoes diminishment as it successively proceeds outwards and downwards from itself into a multiplicity. This logic of emanation does not mean, as Hudson suggests, that “passages that depict Kṛṣṇa as the all-powerful godhead, such as those found in the Bhagavadgītā, are placed in an ambiguous relation with those that suggest that his power is limited, such as the Uttaṅka episode” (201). The way Kṛṣṇa exhibits his “all-powerful” nature is identical in both episodes: he manifests himself as the viśvarūpa, a vision of the unity of all beings as a manifestation. Kṛṣṇa does not reveal his power in the Bhagavadgītā by taking up arms or directly influencing the battle’s outcome. As befits his status as the puruṣa and the ātman in all beings, he remains neutral in battle.⁴⁷ Hudson’s error is to confuse the sense of plenitude and power that accrues in a monistic ontology to the One Being with that ascribed in a monotheistic faith to the one God. Furthermore, she does not have a sufficiently sophisticated sense of how emanation differs in its operation from creation. For the text and for the tradition, Kṛṣṇa’s ultimate identity with the One Being (Brahman) is fully reconcilable with his diminished capacity as a mortal incarnation.⁴⁸ It is only Hudson, who regards not only Kṛṣṇa as a being but also any God whatsoever as a being, who experiences a contradiction here.⁴⁹

Antinomianism and absurdity

Indeed, the very question of whether dharma presents a satisfactory theodicy is false, evincing a confusion between dharma and the concept of law. Hudson frames the problem as: either the virtuous should be assured of heaven (and the wicked, in corresponding measure, of damnation) or dharma fails as a source of justification. Further, from the crucial episode in the Mahābhārata’s final book where Yudhiṣṭhira discovers that Duryodhana attained heaven while his brothers and Draupadī suffer torment in hell, she reasons that the epic, in the person of Yudhiṣṭhira, must mean to repudiate dharma.⁵⁰ However, both conclusions are false. First, as we have seen, the Mahābhārata does not regard heaven as the “ultimate reward” (219) so the loss of heaven cannot be equated with the failure of dharma to render just. Second, and more important, the concept of justification with its Christian resonances is out of place here. Dharma, as I have shown, functions more in the manner of a self-purification than a means of justification. While it is ultimately conducive to salvation, it does so through engendering the conditions for self-knowledge rather than itself being the mokṣopāya.⁵¹

Hudson, however, links dharma with justification, for she writes, we are “force[d] [, in this episode,] . . . to come face to face with the unimaginable possibility that the ‘good’ are doomed to suffer torments in hell and the ‘bad’ are rewarded with glorious lives in heaven” (212). The implication is that the measure of dharma is its ability to render us just, as evidenced by our ability to experience a pleasurable existence both here and hereafter. Presenting Yudhiṣṭhira’s censure of dharma at Mahābhārata 18.2.50⁵² as this episode’s ultimate message,⁵³ Hudson argues for seeing it as the ultimate index of dharma’s failure as a source of justification (211), a conclusion she buttresses with the observation, “David Shulman makes much of Yudhiṣṭhira’s curse here, particularly in terms of what it says about dharma and suffering. He sees it as a ‘rejection at the end of the day of the whole world of dharma.’ . . . Shulman also notes that since Yudhiṣṭhira is the Dharmarāja, this curse must include himself” (211, n. 145).⁵⁴

The problem with this interpretation is that Indian thought explicitly distinguishes the pleasurable (preyas) from the good (śreyas), where heaven is the ultimate goal of those set upon pleasure. In contrast, the goal of the wise is the Being that transcends heaven,⁵⁵ and is not subject to reversal.⁵⁶ In the Kaṭha Upaniṣad, Naciketas asks Yama, the god of Death, whether there is something after death or not. Initially, Yama refuses to answer his question and urges him to ask for goods, wealth, offspring, and a long life instead. When Naciketas remains steadfast, he commends him, saying, “The preferable is different indeed; and so, indeed, is the pleasurable different. These two, serving divergent purposes, (as they do), bind men. Good befalls him who accepts the preferable among these two. He who selects the pleasurable, falls from the true end” (Kaṭha Upaniṣad 1.2.1; Gambhīrānanda’s translation). Likewise, in the Muṇḍaka Upaniṣad, we find that heaven is rejected as the ultimate soteriological goal. The text explicitly opposes heaven to śreyas, the ontological good.⁵⁷ After rejecting heaven in verse 1.2.10 (“The deluded fools, believing the rites inculcated by the Vedas and the Smṛtis to be the highest, do not understand the other thing (that leads to) liberation [śreyaḥ]. They, having enjoyed (the fruits of actions) in the abode of pleasure on the heights of heaven, enter this world or an inferior one”; Gambhīrānanda’s translation), the text states, in the very next verse (that is, 1.2.11), that “Those who live in the forest, while begging for alms—viz those (forest-dwellers and hermits) who resort to the duties of their respective stages of life as well as to meditation—and the learned (householders) who have their senses under control—(they) after becoming freed from dirt, go by the path of the sun to where lives the Puruṣa, immortal and undecaying by nature.”⁵⁸ This is the very solution the Mahābhārata advocates: performance of one’s varṇāśramadharma without attachment.

The interpretation that “if the virtuous go to hell and the sinners to heaven, then these categories, dharma in particular, are rendered meaningless” (212) thus only works from the perspective of a worldview that identifies the pleasurable with the ultimately salvific and, furthermore, assesses an individual’s predestination in terms of her ability to experience the pleasurable instantly.⁵⁹ From any other perspective, even one that equates pleasure with salvation, but allows for deferral or testing, the conclusion is invalid.⁶⁰ Hudson’s account of dharma is thus not only technically flawed; it also reflects a very specific understanding of dharma. The roots of this understanding are ultimately Christian and Lutheran. In making the justificatory rather than the ontological or purificatory functions of dharma normative for her enquiry, Hudson evinces a Christian understanding of law. Further, because her analysis aims to show that dharma fails as a source of justification, we are justified in seeing the proximate inspiration of her criticism as Luther. In his writings,⁶¹ Luther specifically criticized the expectation, characteristic of Judaism, that the law can render just. At the core of his objection is the view that if we are justified by law, then it is impossible to render ourselves just and we are lost.⁶² Hence, while he retained the law in its function of revealing sin,⁶³ he rejected the view that it could have any role in salvation. He expresses this rejection in characteristic terms: “But we will not have this sort of thing [that is, permitting ourselves to be “governed” “according to the letter of the law of Moses”]. We would rather not preach again for the rest of our lives than to let Moses return and to let Christ be torn out of our hearts. We will not have Moses as ruler or lawgiver any longer. Indeed God himself will not have it either. . . . [If someone should say,] ‘Thus says Moses, etc.’ . . . you simply reply: Moses has nothing to do with us,” and then he adds: “Moses is dead. His rule ended when Christ came. He is of no further service” (Luther 2012, 96–97).

Hudson’s emphasis on dharma as theodicy, the formulation of theodicy itself in terms of the differing fates of the virtuous and the wicked, the emphasis on heaven as the mark of salvation, and the rejection of salvation itself for a this-worldly satisfaction are thus not innocent moves. They attest to the long tradition of antinomianism in secular modernity, which has struggled with the philosophical implications of Luther’s theology of sola fide and sola gratia and, indeed, has preferred to throw away a rational soteriology rather than accept the role of law in salvation or—another consequence—the validity of dharma- or Torah-based traditions.⁶⁴ The rejection of dharma on the grounds that it fails to render just, as measured by our experience in this world, and the suggestion that we should henceforth perform dharma only ironically (that is, as though it mattered, but knowing in our hearts that it is powerless to save)⁶⁵ are the clearest indications of this Lutheran antinomian inheritance.⁶⁶ In the wake of this Lutheranizing interpretation, the conclusion, “all the suffering in the epic simply took place and that is it” (214) and “what is at stake in many, if not most, discussions of dharma in the Mahābhārata . . . is the issue of human despair” (224), not only appears inescapable; it also appears as the text’s genuine doctrine,⁶⁷ legitimately read out of it in an act of well-intentioned exegesis.

Secular modernity and the academy

I have focused here on Hudson’s work, because, in my view, it offers the most eloquent testimony for what Smith has described as the unacknowledged Protestant character of our entire academic enterprise. Hudson’s work is also testimony to our willingness in modernity to privilege absurdity, meaninglessness, and anxiety over well-grounded, philosophical interpretations. Paradoxically, it is then these philosophical interpretations that appear “religious” to us because they contrast with the academy’s antinomian, anti-traditional stance. I have argued throughout this article that Hudson’s errors are not innocent: too consistent is the pattern of reading the epic against its grain, too consistent the pattern of ignoring or misquoting existing scholarly literature on it.⁶⁸

There is also, in my opinion, a clear indication for Hudson’s Christian theological concerns in her repeated citation of James W. Laine. As I have argued, Laine is not a reliable source. He makes no secret of his commitment to a vision of exclusive truth, when, for instance, he writes, “the decision for an inclusivist universalism appears to be no decision at all: in choosing to worship a form of Viṣṇu, one does not deny the existence of Śiva, or vice versa. But to deny nothing, and include all, is to deny the possibility of specificity, concreteness, exclusive truth. This has been Hinduism’s choice” (Laine 1989, 276).⁶⁹ Later, he provides an even stronger affirmation of his commitment to Christian exclusivism: “Unlike the docetic Mahāyāna Buddhists and brahmin Vaiṣṇavas, and unlike the gnostics of the West, orthodox Christians affirmed the true humanity of their heroic savior God. However little Paul was interested in the actual life of Jesus, he still emphasized the essential humanity of Christ. . . ” (ibid., 280).

It cannot surprise us then that Hudson, who draws crucially on Laine’s work to dismiss the doctrines of avatāra, devarahasya, dharmayuddha, and pralaya in the Mahābhārata,⁷⁰ provides an interpretation of the Mahābhārata brimming with Christian theological motifs. Yet had she read Laine more carefully, she might have seen that he makes no secret of his commitment to historical criticism as a form of Christian apologetics: “As an historian of religion, I have sought to reveal the pattern of meaningful history, the history of the shift from an epic style of expression to a mythological, the shift from an heroic understanding of theophany to one more docetic and universal. This history in part accounts for the formulation of the Hinduism which has perdured to this day. It is a history which contrasts with the formulation of the Western pattern of religion and society. As these histories of India and the West no longer remain in isolation, a profound reflection on the choices our predecessors made may allow us to consider afresh the religious possibilities open to us” (ibid., 283). In fact, the historical method is activated precisely as a means of retrojecting fantastic histories of the text so as to frustrate a coherent philosophical interpretation.

Thus, without evidence for the disparity of the text’s contents (or its origin in disparate historical contexts), Laine posits a distinction between “the world of the epic” (heroic, individualistic, historical, and potentially capable of developing into or at least being open to Christianity) and “the world of the Purāṇas” (speculative, docetic, mythic, and only able to accept Christianity in a way that denies its claim to exclusive truth).⁷¹ He writes that, “whatever the frustrating uncertainties of chronology in Indian history, the world of the epic and the world of the Purāṇas are not the same world, and any ‘universe of bhakti’ which would include them both must be so catholic and capacious as to mask the distinctiveness of the Mahābhārata as the unique product of a particular historical situation” (ibid., 247).⁷² Laine also cautions that, while “in the modern West[,] there are those who would recommend the Indian style of universal inclusivism [that is, the “perennial philosophers”]” and while “in a climate of liberalism and relativism, in the historical context of cosmopolitan pluralism, the ‘perennial philosopher’ proposes an attractively tolerant position,” we must remember that “the ‘perennial philosopher’ . . . like the brahmin author of a Purāṇic mythology, is unable to accept all and deny nothing, to excuse himself from choice. The brahmin and the ‘perennial philosopher’ have both chosen to deny the possibility of a concrete, exclusive, specifically defined image of deity, and have affirmed instead a transcendent abstraction beyond human understanding or rational critique” (ibid., 281). That the concern uppermost in his mind is to preserve his own religious conviction is clear from his next statement (incidentally, the book’s concluding words): “We in the West should think clearly about the meaning of the divergent ventures of Western and Indian religion and civilization, for we live in a society where the choice for a universal inclusivism is a live theological option. In a sense, one must always be both a relativist and an absolutist. One must admit that in matters religious, the justifiable and reasonable choices are indeed several. One may appreciate the tolerance of Hinduism, the social conscience of Islam, the psychological insight of Buddhism. [But] [t]hen one must live, and live in a coherent manner, proclaiming clearly in action if not articulately in confession, the truth that one is able finally, that is absolutely, to affirm” (ibid., 283; italics added).⁷³

It appears implausible that Hudson, having read James Laine, could be ignorant of these details. But, in that case, is her Lutheran antinomian interpretation of dharma in the Mahābhārata merely an instance of the inevitable misinterpretations that occur when reading the texts of another tradition or is it expressive of a deeper project?

More important, the preceding analysis of Hudson’s book reveals systematic problems with the academic study of Hinduism. Hudson’s errors were so manifest that no one with the slightest familiarity with either the Mahābhārata or basic concepts in Hinduism could have been convinced by Disorienting Dharma’s argument. Even basic precepts of good academic practice such as citing an author correctly were not followed. Red flags ought to have gone up—and would have gone up for anyone familiar with current literature—at Hudson’s misrepresentation of scholars such as Sinha, Sutton, Shulman, and Hiltebeitel. Many times simply reading the sentence quoted to the end would have sufficed to know that Hudson was using the author to make the opposite point than the one he intended. The interpretation produced was in a significant sense tangential to the text under discussion. Yet Hudson’s book passed the review not only of a senior dissertation advisor and three dissertation committee members but also an external expert, the editor of the series Religion in Translation, and the Book Awards Jury at the American Academy of Religions. I do not include in this list non-specialist reviewers for the simple reason that academic standards are neither their domain nor their responsibility: hyperbolic praise of the kind Murali Sivaramakrishnan (2013) expresses in his review in The Hindu merely reflects popular faith in academic scholarship.⁷⁴ The very systems of review in place to ensure scholarship is textually grounded, cognizant of its historical situation, self-reflexively aware of its interpretive presuppositions, and accurately reflects the traditions it studies thus appear to be failing. If we in the academy wish to continue to claim that we provide objective, well-researched, and not only critical but also self-critical accounts of Hinduism, we cannot avoid an urgent conversation about the future of Hindu studies at American universities. Without greater transparency and accountability, we risk betraying those selfsame academic freedoms we justly hold dear.