Freudian Trivialization of Hindu feelings and Dr. Balu...

In 2004, paul courtright a professor of Indian Religion, Emory University USA wrote a book with Freudian type interpretation on the concept of Ganesha. Here are few excerpts from the book:

Ganesa, "remains celibate so as not to compete erotically with his father, a notorious womanizer, either incestuously for his mother or for any other woman for that matter."

"Although there seem to be no myths or folktales in which Ganesa explicitly performs oral sex, his insatiable appetite for sweets may be interpreted as an effort to satisfy a hunger that seems inappropriate in an otherwise ascetic disposition, a hunger having clear erotic overtones. Ganesa’s broken tusk, his guardian staff, and displaced head can be interpreted as symbols of castration…This combination of child-ascetic-eunuch in the symbolism of Ganesa – each an explicit denial of adult male sexuality – appears to embody a primal Indian male longing: to remain close to the mother and to do so in a way that will both protect her and yet be acceptable to the father. This means that the son must retain access to the mother but not attempt to possess her sexually."

"An important element in the symbolism of the elephant head is displacement or, better disguise. The myth wants to make it appear that the elephant head was not a deliberate choice but merely the
nearest available head in an auspicious direction or the head of one of Siva’s opponents to whom he had already granted salvation. From a psychoanalytic perspective, there is meaning in the selection of the elephant head. Its trunk is the displaced phallus, a caricature of Siva’s linga. It poses no threat because it is too large, flaccid, and in the wrong place to be useful for sexual purposes…So Ganesa takes on the attributes of his father but in an inverted form, with an exaggerated limp phallus – ascetic and benign – whereas Siva is hard, erotic, and destructive."

"Ganesa, then, is an attempt of the Indian psyche to transform the incestuous hunger that a son feels for his mother . "


These Freudian outlook does not stop here it continues in another American Indologist , Jeffrey Kripal an Indologist prof. in the university of Chicago. This guy does an psycho-analysis of Ramakrishna Pramahamsar. According to this guy Ramakrishna was a Peodeophile and in order to hide his ulterior motives he faked those famous trances.

These are really blasphemus for Hindus especially the one on Ganesha. This created a big furore amognst the NRI Hindus in america. The publishers recalled the books from the stores. But many western authors do these type of pyscho analysis on christian religion too. I have read articles by some christian historian that Judas and Jesus had a homo sexual relationship and judas was annoyed by jesus when jesus started to ignore him. On being outraged by this cold shouldering judas lets jesus to the romans. Also, the whole DaVinci code and lots of books of that genere (both before and after that book) questioned the legacy of christ and portrayed christ in more humanic terms.

I did not get agitated but little irritated by this view on ganesha. Constantly being barraged by periyar's much more uncouth comments on Hindu gods this psycho analysis on ganesha seemed more benign to me. But many hindus who are not exposed to periyar's barrage may not be as immune as me. Also as far as Ramakrishna parahamsar is concerned eventhough i dont know about his pedophile intentions, from my childhood i carried the conviction that something is really wrong with him. I held the view that he is a nut gone loose case. How else could we reason his wintnessing of gods who dismiss each other's existence? The philosophy of whole christian religion lies on the basis that there is no other god other than christ. Paramahamsar said he has witnessed Jesus and also Ram and also Allah. He has even banged his head against some stone pillars when he could not witness them.

I have to slightly digress now from the main topic. Recently (I think jan of this year) there was a conference in NewDelhi called “Rethinking Religion in India". I just happened to see some recorded videos of the conference on You tube. The conference head was one Dr. Balagangadhar. The talkers in the conference were some professors in socialogy from some Ivy league colleges of USA.

My curiosity increased on this man Dr.Balagangadhar. He just did not have a beard he had a mane!! I just started looking more about him in the net. He was a director of comparitive religious school in some university called Ghent in Belgium. I started googling him and i hit upon his web site. I started going through it and got to read his take on those professors paul courtright and etal.

His article began so methodically setting up a strong base. I got really impressed with the begining . I thought oh, i think i could find the missing great philosophical interludes for all the puranic stories from this counter article and also from all his books and now i can really counter some of periyars blabbering. I just felt elated and also felt really bad on myself for to have dismissed all of the puranaic stories in Hindu religion as utter nonsense with no really philosophical interludes to the main advaitic or dwaitic philosophy of hinduism.

But my joy was shortlived when i finished reading reading the article. It was as hollow as Ram goplan's (the Hindu munani leader) utterances. Dr. bala's image just imploded in me.This happens quite a few times for all of us. We would just thnk great about some one but on the basis of something but when we get to journey a little more on them their image just peters out. I thought My mother or even me could give a better counter to paul courtright's book.

The crux of Dr. Balagangadhar counter, filtering out all his meaderings in the pretext of setting up a strong base to his reasoing, is that paul courtright or for that matter any western author do not have right to comment Indian symbols, abstractedness ,philosophy and religion without taking into account the Hindu expereinces which an Hindu goes through on these symbols like says a linga.

His argument is that these distortive outlooks which even many Indians have imbibed are due to the western way of looking at things that are incomprehensible to them with out taking into consideration the unique Hindu experience.

As i said before My mother and even "gnanabhoomi" magazine could provide decent and convincing counter arguments to these baubles.

With the limited readings i have done on him, it appears that he needs to delve deep into Indian religious texts to put forth convincing arguments or just leave it bare and not defend purananic representation of Hindu philosophy (just because it hurts him as he has gone old now) rather than questioning every western author's writings with just a single argument of those authors interpretation lacking genuine Hindu expereince.

My strongest conviction is puranas are not the crux of hinduism. The upanishads, which are the real commenataries or bashiams to vedas form the crux of hinduism.

The Freudian thought of ganesha by paul courtright is also not without basis. In TN, you would find pillayar in the banks of every river in every town the river passes and there is a common folklore at least in TN that pillayar is in the banks of the rivers to find a woman ,who is as beautiful as his mother, as the river banks are the main passing by areas of women.


I feel Dr. Balu is just struck by a chord of an old man's nostalgic return to his roots and getting helpless at the inability to counter with convincing arguments.

My argument is just because it hurts the sentiments of Hindu believers people cannot stop questioning puranas. Can we say at the same breadth that just because questioning sati does not take into consideration the unique expereince the proponents of sati undergo we should limit ourself and not bring forth any reform on to that territory?

I would tell Dr.balu to propogate the "Advaitic" Consiousness in Hindu philosophy rather than meander in the defense of puranic manifestations.

More information on him and his research team can be found in

http://www.cultuurwetenschap.be/index.php?page=RESEARCH%20STAFF

The Youtube recording of the conference which Dr.Balu headed in delhi can be viewed at http://youtube.com/cultuurwetenschap.

Gates Vs Ballmer...

All men are mortals, their success does not make them infallible. Success is really a decoupled commodity from maturity. It is really a folly to expect a well rounded personality just because someone had been really successful in life. A lesson well learnt for me when i had the oppurtunity to go over some recently published papers on Gates and Ballmer relationship.

I had really thought Gates really propped/groomed Ballmer as a replacement for him. Looks like it is not really so. When Gates really stepped down to No.2 in MS he really did not like him being a second fiddle to his chosen man. I could not really grasp this. A man without any force willingly makes his closest buddy the top man of his company but looks like without even understanding his own decision to sidestep he kept interfering in his friend's territory. If he wanted Ballmer to be just a namesake CEO he should have named himself as COO and should have devoted more time as he had done before in running the affairs of MS but he did not choose that route . He wanted a reduced work load to concentrate more time on philanthrophy and at the same time he could not satiate his ego to take commands from his friend. In meetings and in other events this became very evident ,he kept snubbing Ballmer passing murky comments about Ballmers ability in front of other Vice presidents some times even reducing ballmer to tears.

Going through that WSJ artcle , i really felt that Google was allowed to grow because of the simmering cold fued between these two men. MS was considering NetDocs a web/net version of its famed Office product suite,long before Google had any idea of offering it, but this product was caught in the cross currents of the ego clash between these two and it never saw the light of the day in the end.

It took the cajoling of Melinda gates and some VPs to make these two meet in a Restaurant to defuse their cold war type fued. After this meeting Gates really realised and admitted his mistake of not playing the role he assigned himself but indulging too much in Ballmer's territory. The meeting had a miraculous effect on Gates and the other VPs in MS could really feel the difference in the attitude of Mr.Gates.

Now Bill has even decided to walk down into retirement. At the end of day in June 6 of this year his involvement in MS would be just reducted to that of the chairman of the board. He has now vacated his corner office for his buddy ballmer. The hawk has really sung its swan song.

Here another wise man's observation also seemed to have failed. I still remember the late Dewang Mehta's comment on Mr.Gates, Mehta had said Bill would never loose the drive to create more money. But as Gates finally steps out of Microsoft's day today activities on June 6,2008 to devote full time on philonthrophy I can sense the tiredness in the man, the thirst which dewang Mehta saw has really been quenched. The angry young man has become a mellowed do gooder.

But one thing is for sure he has left the corporate world with a long shadow looming on it which would be very tall for any one to measure up against.

And now its libor...

If there is anything that affects your life more than your spouse and your family i can bet it can be none other than libor. Its the london interbank offer rate.

All the interest rates are tied to it, your mortgage rate, your car loan rate, your student loan rate, the rate that bank offers for your savings account, the rate the companies get money etc depends on this rate.

Not only that some countries even alter their monetary policy based on this rate .

With being the nerve and bankbone of the whole instituition of capitalistic soceity one would expect it is highly regulated and sanctified than the instituition of marriage.

But looks like it is another highly manipulated index with no verification on its validity. The libor rates depends on some 16 member banks dialy reportings or to aptly call it blabberings.

Just a .001 manipulation of its value would cost a whopping amount any one could imagine. I think we cannot, atleast i cannot quantify the number with my limited counting wizardry. I think no one better than these banks would understand the grave importance of being honest in this number. The entire capitalistic machinery needs this number to even make a creeching sound if not for running.

It looks as if these banks run a roulette wheel and just blurt out a number that is convenient to them to the libor board. But alas the libor board is as guillible as or even more guillible than a 3 year old as this libor board is. This is based on my experience , i dont think i can cheat or no one can cheat my 3 year old with a junk story of this type.

These 16 US banks tell the libor board as how much it would be willing to spend to get a loan as it stands today. The dollar libor rate would be the average of these 16 numbers.

The roulette random wheel which these bank uses cannot cross any number greater than 3. The wheel splurts the dice to a slot within the number 3 and the bank rep. just blurts out the number.

Even at the height of credit crisis when these banks were spending lot more to get their inter bank rate loans they repeatedly have quoted a very low number to libor. The main reason is if they tell the true picture it would clearly portray the desperate situation of their credit needs which in turn would show how hollow their balance sheet is. So inorder to conceal their hollowness these banks desperately tried to conceal the real percent lending rates and quoted low of their borrowing rates to the board.

The board members with so much guillible attitude could not even detect the hollowness in the numbers even at the time of credit crunch.

Capitalism can thrive only when there is sound regulatory authority that does not stifle the growth but miffles the fraud. But the libor board failed to act and behaved like the guillible buffons parading in the local circus.

At last some one in the wall street journal who grew suspicious of this libor conducted an investigation which revealed .75 to .85 percentage point cheating in the rates.

The transparancy International howls at indian babus for their corruption and ranks india at the top echelons of corruption index at the same time sleeping over the US corporate cheatings and defrauding to the tunes of arae yaar what number is after trillion?