Description: Offers a portrait of India as seen through the eyes of a sensitive, sharp-eyed, and witty young scholar in the early 1960s.
Brief description: Wendy Doniger is Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions in the Divinity School, University of Chicago. She is the author of many books, including The Hindus: An Alternative History.
Review Quotes:
"By the time of her departure in March 1964, India had 'claimed' Ms. Doniger. It is a country, she tells us, that has a way of 'wearing you down by small coincidences, absorbing your small self in its greatness.' She returned to America with a smattering of Bengali, relatively robust Sanskrit and a passion for Hindu gods, whom she came to admire, she says, for their flaws and foibles. Many years later, these same gods would be invoked against her by Ms. Doniger's opponents, who lack her humane finesse, zealots whose grasp of India is so much poorer than her own." -- Wall Street Journal