THIS WAS A BRIEF INTRODUCTION GIVEN TO THE "AUGUST" EMORY UNIVERSITY DEAN'S COMMITTEE THAT WAS PROTECTING PROF. COURTRIGHT'S ACADEMIC FREEDOM FOR OUTPOURING SOPHISTICATED PROFANITY AT HINDUS DISGUISED AS DIGNIFIED SCHOLARSHIP

Dean Paul, members of the committee, and friends: (The Emory Academic Gang)

If any of us had a banana for breakfast this morning we must ask Prof. Courtright what it means in our psyche.  Since he has a dirty mind, one would be apologetic to this august body and especially ladies present here for any obscenity promulgated by Prof. Courtright that will necessarily have to be discussed here. Depiction of another religion or even Christianity a la Prof. Courtright should not be seen as a "mean spirited attack on another religion" or culture but only an attempt to illustrate what kind of verbal atrocity Prof. Courtright has committed upon Hinduism, by using parallel illustrations, to counter him by leveling some similar profanities towards his culture and religion which has led to his
bizarre mind, a product of his Western Christian religion and culture, and his disparaging white supremacist colonial attitude towards Hindus.

May I urge you to read the entire essay I have presented to you with a calm and objective attitude at your own convenience?  I think my written presentation is more sober and thought provoking than this verbal presentation. This presentation is designed to get you in touch with the emotional issues. I must clarify that I have not “diagnosed” Prof. Courtright and his colleagues in my written presentation. However, I might have used some clinical descriptions that come close to describing their form of thinking. They are all intelligent, highly accomplished, individuals in this Western culture who are used to damaging other cultures not their own and study them as if they were a form of some animal species. The difference is that the Zoologists and Botanists, and Ethologists who undertake such study do not hate the subject of their study or have a deep-seated disdain for it. It is such unethical violation of the golden rule in "looking down attitude" by one culture towards other cultures that has led to the ultimate destruction of many cultures from within and without.

Is it necessary to have detailed discussion about the voluminous, seemingly encyclopedic compilation of myriad of “facts” about Shri Ganesha Prof. Courtright has collected and interpreted with distinctly maligning tone? An objective Western scholar who reads such book will be thoroughly impressed by Prof. Courtright’s painstaking efforts to gather information and unravel the mysteries about the so-called “Hindu deity.” A knowledgeable Hindu, however, is astonished to see the translations of their familiar prayers and chantings repeatedly distorted to obsessively belabor ad infinitum the themes that Prof. Courtright finds fascinating. These are of "beheading, breaking the body parts, creating and removing the obstacles, being a true trickster, and associate of animals, eunuch, homosexual, a deity engaging in oral sex, manifesting sexual ambiguity, his mother offering her "vagina" symbolically as a gift to her beloved son for his demonstrating intellectual grasp of the nature of the Universe and its dimensions and distances," etc. He attempts to depict the Hindus as veritable fools or idiots for adoring and admiring this “character” ("character" is exactly the word Prof. Courtright uses for a Hindu deity because he was inculcated into hatred for others' Gods by his intolerant narcissistic jealous "Only God" that declares arrogantly all other "gods" as false, an unquestioned "fact" he idiotically accepted as a child and as an unthinking student in his seminary devoid of training in logic or critical thinking leave alone with any scientific background in human psychology or human physiology.) The Hindus he imputes are as fascinated and obsessed with such pornographic themes as he himself is. He has taken undue liberty to embellish and add his own spice to these themes and gone an extra mile to discolor the “character” of Shri Ganesha. 

One certainly does not need a team of experts to see through such mischief, if one were to write an ostensibly scholarly book to depict Jesus as a homosexual because he associated with twelve male disciples. The theme of immaculate conception is a very fascinating one too. The supra-mundane “character” that furnishes the other 23 chromosomes to the product of out of wedlock pregnancy that becomes the narcissistic “king” of the Jews are also  fascinating myths. There is no need to argue that such examination of the myths and their "psychoanalytic" expositions could fill volumes. There is a plethora of various forms of these types of myths. They could lead one to the royal road to the “unconscious mind of the Christians” if there is such a thing. That is not, it must be asserted, a true psychoanalytic methodology to understand Hindu or Christian cultures.  If one were to gain insights into the minds of various individuals from undertaking their analysis, that would by a legitimate study. Such “scholarly” analysis as attempted by Prof. Courtright would be illogical and immediately detectable as sacrilegious by any reader. 

It is only because Prof. Courtright is treating a foreign religion that has been bashed in such manner by many Western pseudo-scholars and missionaries, that such activity has become quite an ego-syntonic one for the Western mind. However, Prof. Courtright can bamboozle the Western readers into believing that his work is consistent with the “scientific” methodology used by other Indologists. If one were to imitate his friend and admirer Dingy Wendy (Wendy Doniger) who wrote the foreword to Prof. Courtright’s book, one could exclaim, “A book about Jesus!” “What fun that would be!” Knowing that Fidel Castro is a bastard child that took up for the poor and became the ruler of his region would stimulate a scholar to take up a similar psychoanalytic study of other famous "bastard" children and their characters.  So what are we arguing about? If Prof. Courtright were to visit the Catholic mass and witness the communion, he would certainly see the "cannibalistic oral drives" in ingesting the "body and the blood" of Jesus offered as bread and wine, embedded in the depths of the “Christian psyche.”  If such base endeavors of Prof. Courtright were to be glorified as scholarship, while ridiculing Jerry Falwell for dubbing Tinky Winky Teletubbies as “homosexuals,” one needs to examine the standards used to judge the applications of one’s intellectual and scholastic efforts in the fields of Humanities and Religion. Book burning is as bad as giving an "academic stature" to such books. Both extremes are deplorable. Therefore, promulgating Prof. Courtright's books as authoritative works on Hinduism and prescribing them as recommended readings in the departments of religious studies is nothing but sustained bigotry.

With this seemingly offensive introduction, there are three main issues I would like to focus on. First, there is ample evidence that Prof. Courtright had the knowledge or he came close to understanding the rationale behind principles that guided the iconography of Shri Ganesha. He has probably deliberately neglected his duty to give insight into such facts.  First, he is obviously starting from the premise “I am OK and you are not.” He has not devoted any thought for explaining what the basic principles of Hindu or Vedic Philosophy are, or taken pains to cross the bridge to understand and explain the form of worship by using symbols, images, and idols. The U.S. Flag stands for some thing. It is saluted. If some one finds it to be a ridiculous practice, one would need to start with the basics of understanding the value of symbols in human psyche when they represent some lofty entities or concepts. The internal states of mind that lead to such reverence must be first understood. That issue is not at all covered by him with due respect for the culture he is ostensibly attempting to understand and explain. That in itself sets the stage for detecting his suspect motivation. 

What does “OM” stand for? Its resemblance to elephant is only coincidental. This symbol has been present and worshipped for nearly ten thousand years. This is not a place for me to give any detailed information about the Vedic philosophy or Hindu theology. It is grossly misrepresented by Prof. Courtright is all I can say in this brief introduction. In not setting the stage and continually delving into “cock and bull stories” of mythology he has misrepresented Hinduism and misled readers into believing that the Hindu psyche is totally guided by such "bizarre sounding"stories. Unfortunately his own religion operates at that primitive or more primitive level of mythology and does not even have the dignified philosophical or scientific cosmological base that Hindu or Vedic religion starts formulating its premises with. This statement is not made in a one man upmanship manner, but it is a known fact. 

So, how many of us have seen elephants that enjoy performing oral sex on each other? You and we both know that it is an anatomical improbability when elephant anatomy of elephant face and mouth is in proximity of human male genitals even considering the most well endowed human male. That is where the authenticity of Prof. Courtright’s scholarship ends and his flight of ideas gets exposed as totally unrealistic and essentially mean spirited interpretation devoid of any thoughtfulness expected in a true scholar.

Second issue is the lopsided heavy use of psychoanalytic "libido theory" to analyze a “fictional” "character" and by analyzing the myths and customs of “Hindus”,  he is creating a myth of a “Hindu psyche." The human Unconscious and the dreams are by definition irrational. The themes of castration, oedipal guilt, etc. are aboundingly ubiquitous and are not limited to any particular culture. A psychoanalyst who makes such interpretations takes the pains to explain to his patients that these are universal phenomena and not unique to any patient. Prof. Courtright starts with these themes in the Unconscious and escalates these into elaborating his own bizarre fantasies about an elephant head engaging in oral sex.  It is anatomically difficult to imagine a transplanted elephant head on erectly standing human body to be actually facing anteriorly and overcoming the physical obstacle presented by its proboscis even for an erect elephant phallus leave alone a human erect phallus no matter how pervertedly motivated this character would be to perform oral sex. Paul is very concrete in many other areas of his study but in letting his imagination fly in this instance, he fails to be concrete in this area of his obsession about oral sex. He forgets Oral sex is a multimillion dollar sport in his own culture as witnessed by the Lewinsky instance. He is projecting his own dirty mind and there is no question such interpretation has no standing in Psychoanalysis.  He even admits that there were no references in the Hindu myths or literature about Shri Ganesha actually performing oral sex. So where did he come up with this idea? He says because Shri Ganesha loves to eat the "modak," a sweet dessert he holds in his hand, and therefore according to Prof Courtright he (Ganesha) is an "oral character," and therefore, he must be engaging in "oral" sex. So would Winnie the Pooh?? He is not a psychoanalyst and has no training to psychoanalyze Shri Ganesha or one billion Hindus in aggregate from his armchair using this kind of ridiculous logic. 

The third issue is his major effort to bamboozle the Western supporters and his own University colleagues by raising smoke screens by denying his obvious “cross-cultural vandalism.” He could do what he damage he did as an individual, or even as a missionary or someone supported by a proselytizing Church. To camouflage his activity as the product of an academic Department of a prestigious university such as Emory to attain a status as an "expert and an authority on Hinduism" is a grossly violent intellectual attack on Hinduism. It will not go unrecognized in the U.S., in India, or anywhere in the world where Hindus read this book. They have every right to protest against it regardless of the privilege of free speech and academic freedom Prof. Courtright may claim to exercise.  The University should also have the freedom to sanction against such uncouth pseudo-scholastic lewd writings under its prestigious banner.

In summary, Prof. Courtright’s pseudo-psychoanalytic treatise on the compiled myths about Shri Ganesha shows calculated lack of intellectual honesty and authentic scholarship and is motivated with the usual Western Christian colonial arrogance and bigotry towards other major religions manifested by the proselytizing religions. It is a shame that such activity was surreptitiously slipped out of the Department of Religious Study of a prestigious university (Emory) which in my opinion might have been blinded by the accolades accumulated by Prof. Courtright from his "mutual admiration society" self-apponiting itself as the "peer review" cartel that shares in his "anal sadistic vandalistic ventures" against a foreign culture.

Respectfully submitted to the Dean's Committee of Emory University as an introduction to this 
author's detailed article later published on this blog titled "Prof. Courtright's Pseudo-psychoanalytic
Depiction of Shri Ganesha: Authentic Scholarship or Bigotry??." This article was submitted along with other articles written by the Concerned Citizens' Committee of residents of Atlanta, Georgia and invited guests representing Hindu diaspora of the United States.

If this 5 minute introduction stimulates your interest please see :

http://sookta-sumana.blogspot.com/2013/12/ten-years-after-limp-phallus-fantasy-of.html