Guest Post by Eric .M. Gurevitch

A few years ago I had the pleasure of sitting in on a seminar Wendy Doniger taught on Hindu Mythology. On the final day of the class, Professor Doniger was addressing the continuing questions of students. A young man raised his hand and was called upon. “Professor Doniger,” he said somewhat sheepishly, “why do Indians keep retelling the same stories over and over again?” The rest of the students looked on somewhat aghast—clearly this student hadn’t understood the point of the class at all. But Doniger just chuckled. “Well,” she said, a sly grin creeping across her face, “because they can never get them quite right.” Her point is a simple but powerful one. As she went on to explain to the class (and in her book The Implied Spider), the stories we tell reflect the world around us. And as soon as we write a story down, the world we were trying to capture has changed. We cannot help but retell the stories that we value—after all, they are never quite right for us—in our time. And even if we manage to get them quite right, they are only right for us—other people living around us will have different reasons for telling similar stories, for appealing to the same stock of authoritative figures for different purposes. The importance of analyzing the implications of retelling of Indian stories takes on new meaning in a modern India where Wendy Dongier’s controversial book The Hindus, an Alternative History is no longer sold in stores.

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