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Suppressed Literature

Kripal admits:

I have also, I believe, overplayed the degree to which the tradition has suppressed Datta's Jivanavrttanta. Indeed, to my wonder (and embarrassment), the Ramakrishna Order reprinted Datta's text the very same summer Kali's Child appeared, rendering my original claims of a conscious concealment untenable. (see: .)

So in the second edition of Kali's Child, I would imagine he no longer makes this claim. The article could be adjusted to note that he made the claim in the first edition, or that portion could be deleted. Devadaru (talk) 11:19, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

• Im adding this to the article, if it is not there already. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 02:52, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Controversy/Bibliography

Brian Hatcher's review essay in the International Journal of Hindu Studies 3,2 (Aug 1999) has a largish biblio (though for some reason he missed Urban's and McLean's reviews) with citations of other literature. Directly relevant reviews and articles (and one exchange, Larson vs Kripal) listed:

• Swami Atmajnanananda, IJHS 1,2 (1997)
• David Haberman, Journal of Asian Studies 56,2 (1997)
• John Hawley, History of Religion 37,4 (1998)
• Gerald Larson, The Journal of the American Academy of Religion 65,3 (1997)
  • (reply) Kripal, JAAR 66,3 (1998)
  • (rejoinder) Larson, JAAR 66,3 (1998)
• Carl Olson, IJHS 1,1 (1997)
• Jean Oppenshaw, Times Higher Education Supplement (15-Sep-1995)
• André Padoux, Archives de sciences sociales des religions 41 (Apr-Jun, 1996)
• William Parsons, Religious studies review 23,4 (1997)
• William Radice, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 61,1 (1998)
• Rajat Ray, Indian economic and social history review 34,1 (1997)
• Narasingha Sil, RISA-L (mailing list) (10-May-1998)
• TG Vaidyanathan, The Hindu (4-May-1997)
• Pravrajika Vrajaprana, Hindu-Christian studies bulletin 10 (1997)
• George Williams, Hindu studies review 2 (e-Journal, 1997)

Sil's and Williams' articles may not be available - The RISA-L archives are closed to non-members, and the Hindu Studies Review has disappeared from the California State Univ Chico website (Williams has retired). rudra (talk) 09:37, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

Update: Sil's 10-May-1998 post to the RISA-L was also archived elsewhere. rudra (talk) 10:52, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

That's some great stuff if anyone was wondering just exactly how much Narasingha Sil hates fags. Good luck finding that certain someone. — goethean ॐ 17:39, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Update 2: Williams' article, cached at archive.org. rudra (talk) 21:39, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Update 3: The date of Oppenshaw's review in Hatcher's biblio is wrong. It should be 15-Dec-1995. Also: Oppenshaw's review of Sil's revised book. rudra (talk) 23:03, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

The Intro., and POV.

After a scathing review written by historian Narasingha Sil was published in The Statesman, the book caused intense controversy among both Western and Indian audiences which still persists unresolved — None of the references indicate this cause and effect mentioned in the intro. In fact, urban says in the journal, "in the short time since its publication....". and the review appeared two years later.

Could somebody pls explain me, how a POV can be claimed by saying — " please stop using Misplaced Pages for religious prosyletizing "

-- vineeth (talk) 04:45, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

"Scholars"

There is a serious reoccuring error in this and the other Ramakrishna articles. Nvineeth writes: "Scholars indicate x...." It should be "Alan Roland argues y" or "In his 2001 article, Jeffrey Kripal says z" There is no scholars in the abstract. There is one or two people who have writen a particular thing, which was published in a particular place. I will remove all instances of referring to abstract scholars "indicating" whatever. It is highly POV, and an amateurish tactic. — goethean ॐ 16:04, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes indicate is not correct (my mistake), but so is allege (which was introduced later).

• According to the NPOV tutorial, Misplaced Pages:NPOV_tutorial#Bias_in_attribution:_Mind_your_nuances - "Neutral ways of expressing a statement -- "said," "wrote," "stated" -- are the safest".
• According to NPOV:Words to avoid — "Argued" is neutral and useful to paraphrase how someone has promoted a view or idea.

Thanks for corrections involving argued, but the allegations will be removed. -- vineeth (talk) 10:37, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Huston Smith fragment --- needs context

This edit re-introduced a decontextualized sentence fragment after I removed it and requested a larger context. If we can't even obtain the entire sentence, the quotation is usless. A larger context would be better. — goethean ॐ 16:09, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

OK, Priyanath fixed it here. — goethean ॐ 16:11, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

"Arguments on"...

There is no need to mention "Arguments on" in each title. I have fixed this. Bluptr (talk) 16:31, 24 October 2008 (UTC)

Lot of Quote templates

This article has lot of quote templates, (for small quotes this is not necessary). Few gramatical fixes are required., but has good deal of information.. information on Jungian psychoanalysis as opposed to Freudian, will also present a good perspective. Bluptr (talk) 07:30, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Misleading quote from Larson

Larson writes, "When I indicated in my review essay that many aspects of the problem of the relation between Ramakrishna's mystical experiences and his severe emotional disorders were "old news," to use Kripal's idiom, I was not referring to the homoerotic material. I was referring to the general discussion of the relation between mystical experience and psychopathology that has been discussed and analyzed at least since the time of Romain Rolland's work on Ramakrishna over fifty years ago.". So now the lengthy quote, "...what psychoanalysis generally refers to as the "polymorphous sexuality"" gives a completely mis-information to the reader! This will be removed. Thanks. --Nvineeth (talk) 06:40, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Started cleanup

The article was in need of a major cleanup and reorganization. I got only halfway through it. I have trimmed many quotes to the bare essentials or replaced them by in-line paraphrases, but all the essential information from the original article should still be there somewhere. In fact, there is still too much detail: this is meant to be an *encyclopedia* article, not a scholarly review. A lot of cleanup remains to be done in the rest of the article, from the "Distortions" section on. All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 02:40, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

The main problem is that the article was written by devotees of a guru who saw their role as defending their guru from scholarship rather than writing a decent encyclopedia article. These editors have a strong WP:COI and should not be allowed to edit these articles. When you go to the original sources, you see that their work is dishonest and should be re-written. — goethean ॐ 16:06, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I recognize the problem (which is not limited to Ramakrishna or even to religions in general), but at I can't see how to deal with it except by correcting factual errors and trimming excessive detail, statements of opinion, and the like. I have trimmed some of that, but I feel that some criticisms (particularly those that descend to personal attacks) should be trimmed further. Also the book by Ramaswami and DeNicholis seems to be cited an awful lot; does it really deserve it? If those are indirect citations of other sources, the latter shoudl be cited instead. All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 17:31, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Thank you for your reasoned reply.

Also the book by Ramaswami and DeNicholis seems to be cited an awful lot; does it really deserve it?

In short, no. It was bankrolled by reactionary NRI Rajiv Malhotra. User:Relata refero quite accurately called it "a guide to egg-throwing". Its website reeks of a desperate wish to be taken seriously. Its "News and Media" page all but screams "no academics will go near us!" The book was published in order to give some superficial credence to those who would effectively ban the academic study of Hinduism. — goethean ॐ 17:59, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

We cannot decide the reliability of a book based on the comments of some wiki editor and mischaracterization of other editors as "devotees of a guru" who should "not be allowed to edit these articles" does not help either. Invading the Sacred is included in the Religion additional content section of Britannica. Another review I came across was from Anantanand Rambachan , "There can be little doubt about the importance and legitimacy of many of the concerns raised by the authors of Invading the Sacred about the academic study of Hinduism in the United States." Another review by Prof.Jeffery D. Long can be found here. --TheMandarin (talk) 11:46, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

I would rather not have to take sides, but it is obvious that the opinions are extremely divergent and that this issue is emotionally charged. As I am a layman in these subjects, the best I can hope to do here is stick to the factual and fairness aspects. In particular, it is important to clarify which of the errors (translations and others) claimed by the critics were corrected in the 1998 edition. Also, Kripal apparently retracted his claims about censorship of the Jivanvrittanta; what about the Kathamrita and The Gospel? Methinks also that Kripal's responses (if any) to specific criticisms should be given more equal weight, either by citing them more explicitly or by trimming the criticisms proportionally. All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 21:22, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. I would request you to keep WP:WTA into consideration and avoid "claim", "point out" etc., and simply stick to "wrote", "argued" as per the guideline.. I will also do these fixes as and when I get time. Thanks. --TheMandarin (talk) 04:01, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

No mistakes of any consequence were corrected. Kripal never published a list, either. So the curious are obliged to wade through the book and check manually. Some horrors, however, were defiantly retained, such as the insistence that "cocked hips" is a correct translation of "tribhanga". The good news is that Kripal is no longer deigning to lecture native Bengalis on their own language based on his translations out of dictionaries. The bad news is that, with his Sanskrit no better than his Bengali, he has now moved on to Tantra studies or somesuch as the next worthy field in need of his "insights". rudra (talk) 04:29, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

If you take the time to read the article that you are supposedly comnmenting on, you'll see that he is no longer writing on Indian culture at all. Too many death threats, probably from the same bunch who you find so insightful. — goethean ॐ 15:01, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Goethean, we were discussing about Bengali (mis)translations. I think Tyagananda is not the only one, even before him Rajat Kanta Ray (1997) discusses this in Indian Economic & Social History Review, Vol. 34, No. 1 --TheMandarin (talk) 15:26, 2 February 2010 (UTC)

Mistranslations

The section on mistranslations notes only one case where Kripal corrected the error in the second edition. Were the othe errors retained? If not, the list should be trimmed leaving only those which were not corrected in the 1998 edition, with a short mention that the 1995 edition had {some|many} other errors. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 17:47, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Somnath Bhattacharyya

There are several citations in this and other related articles to the views of Somnath Bhattacharyya, who is said to be professor emeritus at the Psychology Department of the University of Calcutta. Can someone provide a refence for this fact? (The University's faculty page does not list emeriti, and Google finds only the Misplaced Pages refernces.) I need such a source in order to create a bio-stub for him (see User:Jorge Stolfi/Nursery/Somnath Bhattacharyya). Thanks, and all the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 02:51, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I don't think that he is notable enough to have a biography on Misplaced Pages. He was useful to the aims of the writers of this article. That's why he appears to be so large of a figure. — goethean ॐ 16:08, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I do not subscribe to the so-called "notability requirements". My view is that any person who is cited in any Misplaced Pages article *must* have an article in Misplaced Pages. This is especially important for "non-notable" persons (as some would perhaps classify SB), because otherwise a reader may waste a lot of time trying to figure out who the person is. For example, Google turns up many "Somnath Bhattacharyya", including the occureces of his name in Misplaced Pages. Every reader who will try sifting those records in search of the "right" SB will waste perhaps half an hour, and end up quite frustrated. Readers deserve better, and Misplaced Pages has the means to deliver it. All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 17:43, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Tellingly, the only reference that I can find for him is in Invading the Sacred. — goethean ॐ 18:01, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

I think Somnath Bhattacharyya including several other scholars on the article page come under WP:ONEVENT ( even though supported by other news sources ) and does not deserve a separate article. Another thing is that this name is awfully common in Bengal and one is sure to get several mishits. All the best--TheMandarin (talk) 11:52, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Again, the "notability requirements" (like almost everything in WP:*) are the opinions of a small minority of the Misplaced Pages editors, and definitely not mine. The fact that Google gives many wrong hits for "Somnath Bhattacharyya" is enough reason why Misplaced Pages should have an article on him --- namely, so that readers of this article can get *reliable* information *on the right person* (even, or especially, if that information is just "he was a professor at the U. of Calcutta" or "he is a psychoanalyst in private practice"). If the deletionists then choose to delete that article, well, there are lots of wrongdoings in the world that I cannot prevent.
In any case, before creating the article we need *some* reliable evidence on him. At this point I have no reliable and independent source for either statement, and I don't know any paper by him on an academic journal. The sources all seem to be derived from the same single source, whose reliability I cannot judge but is obviously being much disputed. It is even possible that his name was misspelled in the citations. So, strictly speaking, at this point the Misplaced Pages article on him would have to be an entirey blank page. Any help would be appreciated. All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 20:37, 13 January 2010 (UTC)

Kripal has commented on this article at his Rice University FAQ

Question: "What's up with your Misplaced Pages entry?"

Answer: "My Wiki entry often reads oddly because it has generally been controlled by the harshest critics of Kali's Child, who appear to think, for some odd reason, that this is the only book I have written. They have even monitored the entry for any changes in order to delete, immediately, anything posted on it that is balanced or positive. Basically, they want to control who people think I am and what I have written.

"There is a silver, if not golden, lining here, though. Kali's Child is largely about the cultural, religious, and historical processes by which the saint's astonishing 'secret talk' (guhya katha) in the Bengali texts was systematically censored and suppressed by the tradition as it passed into the English translations and Western culture. Of course, these same censorship processes continue into the present (witness the two ban movements), and they can easily be seen again now on Misplaced Pages, on the 'Talk' pages of the entries involving Ramakrishna, Kali's Child, and me. Just go and look. But don't read the Misplaced Pages entries. Read the 'Talk,' that is, the 'secret talk' behind the Misplaced Pages entries. As with the original Bengali texts behind the English bowdlerized texts, or the unconscious behind the conscious surface ego, the truth is not what appears on the surface to the public. The truth is what does not appear, what has been erased and suppressed.

"On the humorous side, one could thus say that reading a Misplaced Pages entry for accurate information about 'Jeffrey J. Kripal' is a bit like listening to Rush Limbaugh for accurate information about President Obama. If you agree with Limbaugh, it's great stuff. If you don't, it's a lesson in bad logic and grossly distorting rhetoric."

— Jeffrey J. Kripal FAQ Rice University Religious Studies department

Article is way too long

I am running out of gas with this article. I would like to think that it has improved, but I am still quite unhappy with it.
Stepping back, I would say that it is *way* too long and goes dow to an absolutely unnecessary level of detail. The detailed reviews, criticisms and responses are esily available in the net for anyone who cares, and it is pretty unnecesary to repeat them here. Thus the sections "Positive reviews", "Criticisms", and "Kripal's responses" could be trimmed to a couple of paragraphs each, summarizing the *kind* of arguments made. Besides, the texts repeat each other to a large extent; so the reader who cares can get a good picture of the controversy by reading just one or two pieces from each side. But that is just my fuzzy opinion at the moment. All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 05:20, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Agree with you, summarizing the kind of arguments with appropriate refs seems to be a good idea, interested readers can always look it up, while article does not loose its focus. --TheMandarin (talk) 07:48, 14 January 2010 (UTC)

Weasel words

Request User:Goethean to explain the reverting to usage of weasel words . It would be more apt to include at least the subset of scholars involved. --TheMandarin (talk) 17:41, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

I agree that the tags are inappropriate too, because (1) the article is not the place to carry out editorial disputes, and (2) those are not "weasel words" but merely accurate, balanced summaries of what is expanded in utterly nauseating detail in the body of the article. Trying to put more detail in the lede would soon bring us back to the start: the lede woul keep growing until we would have to move everything to the body and write a new summary. Besides, what use is to readers to list *names* of critics and praisers there? Readers who have never heard of Kali's Child will probably not have heard of those people either. All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 18:12, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Fine Jorge Stolfi, agree with you.... adding the names in the lede would bring us back to the start . However I have tweaked a bit towards eliminating redundancy. IMHO can be tweaked further. --TheMandarin (talk) 18:16, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Agree with Jorge, however, some refs can be added to lede to flesh out what is being referred to. Otherwise, future editors may tag it as TheMandarin did. — goethean ॐ 19:09, 15 January 2010 (UTC)

Rearrangement underway

I have begun to rearrange the contents in chronological order, even though I am not sure it will be an improvement over the current format. Perhaps it will have to be reverted en bloc at the end. 8-( I have to take a break now, and plan to be back within 24 hours. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 03:36, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Priority and repetition

I have read Atmajnanananda's article and it seem that many of the criticisms that are attribued to Tyagananda, Bhattacharyya, Invading the Sacred, etc. were first raised by him in 1997, and merely reproduced by the later sources. It seems also that some of the translation errors that he mentioned (like magi-bitches) were pointed out by Openshaw in 1995, but I do not have access to her article on the Times Higher Education; could someone check that, eventually? Thanks. All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 03:33, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

I think atmajnanananda was the first one to point about magi not Openshaw. Anyway here are couple of articles from Times Higher Education:

• Dr.Jeanne Openshaw (11 December 1998). "Crucifying a Saint". Times Higher Education.
• Dr Jeanne Openshaw (15 December 1995). "The mystic and the rustic". Times Higher Education.

Apart from these, we can benefit from the new perspectives on psychoanalysis, by Renuka M. Sharma, a feminist & psychoanalyst herself in her sophia review.

--TheMandarin (talk) 15:07, 20 January 2010 (UTC)

Article is unbalanced

The article contain reams of detailed and repetitive material about each and every criticism of the book, and the tiniest mentions of the many positive reviews. However, User:TheMandarin, above, continues to push for still more negative material to be added to the article. One doubts that any amount of negative material, no matter how outrageously excessive, will ever please the enemies of religious scholars. I am adding the POV template to the article. It should remain until these issues are resolved. — goethean ॐ 04:13, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

goethean the material added contains important scholarly perspectives, such as the chronological confusion, Larson's important rejoinder etc., It is strange that you consider this has been added to "please the enemies of religious scholars". --TheMandarin (talk) 07:08, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

I see that in response to my tag, you have continued to make the article even more unbalanced by adding more excessive negative material. Good show. — goethean ॐ 14:52, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Excellent sarcasm Goethean. You yourself had added {{cn}} tags earlier and its strange that adding references, removing product catalogue page,diff will render the page "even more unbalanced". --TheMandarin (talk) 15:41, 26 January 2010 (UTC)

Kripal "claims", while swamis "point out"

I've noticed that according to this article, Kripal trends to "claim" things, while the Ramakrishna Mission swamis appear to simply "point out" the obviously true. This is of course just a reflection of the fact that this article is a disgraceful joke in regards to neutrality and basic honesty. — goethean ॐ 14:01, 27 January 2010 (UTC)

Its not the question of Kirpal or swamis or others referenced. I found that even swamis "claim", the word usage needs to be fixed per WP:WTA uniformly ( also pointed at one of discussion above ). --TheMandarin (talk) 08:39, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

New Book

New book just out, by Swami Tyagananda and Pravrajika Vrajaprana: Interpreting Ramakrishna:Kali's Child Revisited. Another round in the back-and-forth... (published by Motilal, see this. Devadaru (talk) 03:16, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

And still the major primary biographical documents of Ramakrishna's life remain untranslated into English, and the Kathamrita is translated only in a heavily censored paraphrase. I guess that it is ironically appropriate that they have a Roman Catholic priest blurbing the new book. — goethean ॐ 03:39, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

They have placed a PDF file on their website, called The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna: The Missing Text, which purports to contain all the missing, "untranslated", and "mistranslated" portions of the Gospel (except for the ones dealt with in their book). This may be of interest to some contributors here. Devadaru (talk) 03:50, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

Its ironical that Francis Xavier Clooney is a professor who also earned his doctorate from University of Chicago; Its ironical that there are other "blurbs" from Gerald James Larson, Anantanand Rambachan --TheMandarin (talk) 06:11, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

They have placed a PDF file on their website, called The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna: The Missing Text, which purports to contain all the missing, "untranslated", and "mistranslated" portions of the Gospel (except for the ones dealt with in their book). This may be of interest to some contributors here.

I was referring to Ram Chandra Datta's Srisriramakrsna Paramahamsadever Jivanavrttanta, an important biographical document of Ramakrishna which has nver been translated into English and probably never will. The Ramakrishna Mission is deeply ashamed and embarrassed of the description of Ramakrishna contained in it, a description at odds with the Christianized, sanitized saintly figure which they present to their devotees and which the Misplaced Pages entry on Ramakrishna obediently presents to the world, according to the strident demands of a group of patently dishonest Indian hooligans. — goethean ॐ 14:20, 27 July 2010 (UTC)

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