Hmmm… I should have been more upfront about my personal opinion about this whole matter…
Censorship is wrong in almost all instances and was also a bad move here strategically that just made the book a martyr anyway. That the law on religious sentiments etc exists in India is also unfortunate, as I stated previously. It has been used not just on foreign but also on indigenous work regardless of religious majority/minority status. More free speech (and people learning to not blow their gasket every time someone says something) would be better for India, as it would be everywhere else.
Personally I think this book (or any other work in any medium) should be debated and/or ridiculed as appropriate on its own merits.
Since I wasn’t involved in the original book banning movement (this only popped up on my radar a few days ago, after Penguin withdrew it) there’s only so much I can say about that. But I’ll make sure to let the people involved know about your opinions. As I’m sure you know, all 1 billion of us meet regularly to plan these things as the ancient and wise peoples that we are. 
In terms of western religions, what I specifically said was, this kind of “scholarship” would get people “laughed out of the room”. And that is exactly what I feel about the book - it’s a laughable embarrassment that has apparently failed miserably in understanding Hinduism both in its own context and in the context of religions in general.
That these people at the top of the US academia are using shoddy and erroneous research methods as well as Freudian psychoanalysis to draw utterly unsupported inferences is just mind boggling to me. I do work in the sciences though, so I don’t know if perhaps in the humanities this is par for the course - at least in certain sections (Doniger is an accomplished professional in her area).
Whether or not this type of shoddy scholarship and use of unsound techniques still goes on at the higher levels of the study of western and abrahamic religions/cultures I don’t know, but if it does, that is rather tragic too. Not because I think religions should be “respected” but because understanding why religions work as useful sociopolitical tools and personal belief systems could be useful for creating better social structures. I don’t see how using Freudian hermeneutics is of any use whatsoever other than keeping a few people in cushy tenured jobs.
Hopefully, in combination with my original post, this clears up a few things.
Finally, here’s another article about how Doniger and her students have been engaging in such shoddy scholarship for quite a while and how the established political structures of their profession allow them to carry on without being held accountable for academic malpractice. - RISA Lila - 1: Wendy’s Child Syndrome - 2002 (Yes, this has been going on for a while…)
Also, TIL: I’m a silly goose who clutches my pearls while engaging in latter-day postcolonial prudery as well as old fashioned tight-assed censorship… I wonder if someone could paint me a portrait of that… 
edited to quote a bit more of Supercrisp’s post and to remove (self-censor? 
) some of my own rudeness
PS: I stand by everything I said in my post, including that Dinoger et. al.'s work contains strong cultural imperialism, presentism, and eurocentrism. These attributes are at the very least currently seen as suboptimal for academic historians, anthropologists, sociologists etc, and perhaps are even just plain wrong. That said, if you read all that I wrote and inferred that I was implying “more oppression of brown people, eurocentrism plain and simple”, that’s all you @Supercrisp. I personally don’t think a small portion of US humanities academia has the power to oppress anyone. (OK, maybe some of the economists do 
)
Also, could you explain what “latter-day postcolonial prudery” is? I know Indian culture got much more prudish with the islamic and puritan invasions, but I believe we’ve (slowly - hundreds of millions of people take a long time to die/change minds) been getting less prudish. What do you exactly mean by that phrase? I hope it’s not just more humanities style impressive sounding nonsense, cause it sounds kind of cool!
