Dear Log,
«Yet as Colin Thubron recently pointed out in an important article in the TLS, it is ridiculously simplistic to see all attempts at studying, observing and empathising with another culture necessarily "as an act of domination - rather than of understanding, respect or even catharsis... If even the attempt to understand is seen as aggression or appropriation, then all human contact declines into paranoia."»
I don't know what exactly the author's thesis is, but according to Madeleine Biardeau (a woman that spent 30 years to produce a french translation of the Mahabharata) the reality is slightly more complex. Mme Biardeau disagrees with the timeline reported in the article, and also with the term "Hindu revival" applied to the fight against Buddhism and other unorthodox (anti-vedic) religions or philosophies. She thinks that the Mahabharata and the Hinduism were constructed by some Brahmans as a weapon against Buddhists. (Of course this ideological fight doesn't exclude another more violent and physical fight, from the Kshatriyas.)What is perhaps especially valuable about The Buddha and the Sahibs is Allen's gentle reminder of exactly how and why Buddhism died out in the land of its birth. Every child in India knows that when the Muslims first came to India that they desecrated temples and smashed idols. But what is conveniently forgotten is that during the Hindu revival at the end of the first millennium AD, many Hindu rulers had behaved in a similar fashion to the Buddhists.
