Quotes from Wendy Doniger

Women were forbidden to study the most ancient sacred text, the Veda

Voltaire was deeply impressed by it and cited it often.

Its hatred is directed not only against Hindus of the more diverse traditions—the ones that the British, and Rammohan Roy, taught the Hindus to despise—but also, ironically, against the very monotheisms (Islam and Christianity) that nurtured the Hindu insistence that Hinduism is monotheistic.

he female sex (and, for that matter, sex in general) has never found favour with any of the world's religions, or with their priests and prophets (which should make us stop and think a little about religion in general, but that's another book.)

Although proselytizing is not in itself necessarily intolerant, it does close the open-ended door of pluralism

intrareligious and interreligious. Hinduism interacted

As long as it was just a matter of graft and the lust for power, the British treated the people they robbed as human beings. It was religion that made them treat them like devils

But not every image is symbolic; not every woman is a goddess.

The emotional involvement, the pity, desire, and compassion of the bhakti gods causes them to forget that they are above it all, as metaphysics demands, and reduces them to the human level, as mythology demands.

The term 'Hindu' was coined in opposition to other religions, but this self-definition through otherness began centuries before

I'm a pacifist. I don't believe in 'good' wars.