All very true, although this writer of the article is more defensive and polite, to those heaping abuse on Indian vast treasures of knowledge, than wouId serve the purpose of either correcting them, or correcting their mistakes and falsehoods for sake of future and present generations of young, especially the NRI.
What is needed is to see this from Indian viewpoint.
For example, the author refers to a portrayal of the Divine Goddess Kali, and in describing the western author's slant about Kali vs the Greek goddess Diana, questions if the western author couldn't have picked a different Indian Goddess for a fair comparison.
But what is needed is to strike at the very root of the mistake, in that the western author, and perhaps all West, see Kali as one invoking fear, and they simply assume this is how India sees too.
Fact is, fear is how all abrahmic faiths subconsciously, and often enough explicitly as well, think and feel about their one monotheistic imposed image or name of the entity they call God - while India does not see any firm of Divine with fear, especially not Kaalie. She is the Divine Power, for protection of the innocent and wiping evil out of existence, and hence is Mother. Think Ramakrishna Paramahans, and recall that his Divine was Maa Kaalie. This would make the point clear to anyone of India.
West, and all abrahmic faiths on the other hand, speak often enough - regardless of the language, the phrase and the feeling being common to them - of fear of God. This is rooted in the basic concept that those faiths impose on their followers, and attempt to do so on humanity, that of all humanity being guilty by definition, born in sin.
India would laugh at this. Humans, and creatures too, are - of course - innocent, except by their own doings, whether of acts or thoughts or intentions or heart.
Here is the point to make this difference clear - church holds all humans, including newborn babies, sinners. India refuses to entertain such a concept, and holds it beneath contempt.
And yes, definitely, comparison of Arjuna is with the allies, whether generals or higher.
This author of the article might not have thought about it, but much of the bias that the abrahmic faiths have against India in particular, and polytheism in general, has nothing to do with any rational, much less higher, thinking about question of monotheism vs polytheism, or the assumed superiority of monotheism, so assumed without any logic. Rather, it has to do with the horrors perpetrated by the various conversionist religions in wiping out all other religions and faiths as far as they possibly could, to establish a monopoly of power over minds of people. The subconscious racial memory therefore sees all that their religious institutions disallow, with horror.
What they do not realise, or think about, is the inherent contradiction - of some dozen branches of one, and twice that of the other, of the two conversionist abrahmic faiths all preaching three main points equally stridently:-
- that there is only one God (not true, by the way, as pointed out by one westerners on the internet in a debate - this worshipoed one, Elohim, is one picked out of many, which include for example Bacchus and many others);
- that the only true God is one followed by them, while all other branches of their faith and of all others too are false;
- that their path alone leads to salvation while all others lead to hell.
Just think, and it becomes clear, that either they are all following the same God (If what they preach in the first part is true), in which case the other two after are false impositions; or they are indeed all different, so everyone is going to several hells (and they tacitly hold that all Jews and Hindus are going to all of them)!
Ridiculous!
And yes, this author is correct, in that using imagery from India for negative psychological terms is racism, beyond that of using African American or Hispanic figures in images about misuse of drugs.
In fact it was British who imposed opium planting on Indian farmers, and reduced them from self sufficient well being to dire subsistence level below poverty, while the product then was forced on China by stealth and treachery, before using the poor men of India to make war for the purpose against China, the men of India forced to bonded labour under British due to the poverty brought about by the said imposed opium farming.
As for the opium war against China, all West was in it together. How is that for negative image?
Re animal sacrifices, yes, most temples don't; but it would be far more effective if, rather than go on the defensive as this writer does, to ask, if the person arguing against such practice abhors the abrahmic co religion, for they conduct such sacrifices punctiliously, every year, across all Islamic nations and more, not one per mosque but per family.
Chances are, and its a safe bet, the person arguing against temples of India "because they conduct animal sacrifices" would backtrack - and fast.
Part III of the article captures neatly various ways colonialism and church's need of power false defined Orient vs West and rational vs mysticism, respectively but not mutually exclusively. As do parts IV and V, various other points.
http://postcard.news/stereotyping-hinduism-american-education/
Responding to a comment below the original article, about why don't understand the simplest of all religions:-
Because simple it isn't, it's as complex as all space and Earth and creation, rich and more. Simple they understand - one man (must, man), one book, et viola! War!
