Shiva Linga

Published on 18th May, 2022, in Times of India. Orientalist academicians love describing the Shiva-ling as a ‘phallic symbol’ because it irritates the Hindu who prefer to see the object of their devotion as something spiritual, not sexual. For the Orientalist, i.e. Western and Westernised scholar, such descriptions are, at one level, a way of thumbing the nose at the religious establishment that views sex as sin. At another level, such descriptions are to reinforce Hinduism pagan polytheistic nature. In colonial times, Hindu reformers were embarrassed by this Orientalist description of the Hindu god. But they were caught in a conundrum between the abstract explanations ..

Published on 1st April, 2018, in Mumbai Mirror. Politics is often a play when it comes to criticising Hinduism. In Vedantic traditions, Shiva-linga means the attribute (linga) of the one without attributes (alinga), hence a simple pillar or a rock. In Tantrik traditions, the pillar along with the trough below sometimes refers to the cosmic male (spiritual reality) and the cosmic female (material reality). Yet many Western scholars have popularised Shiva-linga as a phallic symbol, choosing the titillating literal over the symbolic, and ignoring the gaze of the faithful. The very same academicians, however, will never ever refer to the image of Jesus on the ..