On American Hindu Studies

In Outlook India, Aditi Banerjee discusses her book (Krishnan Ramaswamyand Antonio de Nicolas co-editors), Invading the Sacred: An Analysis of Hinduism Studies in America:

Shortly before I began practicing law, my guru advised me to begin wearing a bindi every day--not the stick-on kind but actual kumkum mixed with water... However, I then came across Prof. David Gordon White's book, Kiss of the Yogini: Tantric Sex in its South Asian Context, in which he remarks that the bindi a Hindu woman wears represents a drop of menstrual blood.

I grew apprehensive about wearing the bindi to work--would others mistakenly see it as some primitive, (literally) bloodthirsty rite? Still, I have followed my guru's instruction and wear the bindi every day, and I have never regretted it. I do wonder sometimes, though, when catching the surreptitious curious stares of others, what exactly they think when they see the red oval between my eyebrows, and whether that perception has been shaped by the speculation of 'renowned' scholars such as White.

Because I have faced this Hinduphobia, which often shows itself in the subtlest of ways, because I have seen my friends and peers suffer from similar experiences, and because we have never had the voice or the ammunition with which to fire back--with which to say that this is wrong, not because it is offensive or politically incorrect, but because it is baseless and untruthful--because of all this, I could not say 'no' when the opportunity arose to become involved with this book. For, what starts in American universities does not remain there--it spreads globally, percolates through to mainstream culture, to primary and secondary schools, and to the way ordinary citizens interact with and react to each other.