User:Dennette

Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna, was a 1995 psychoanalytic study of the Indian mystic Ramakrishna written by religion scholar Jeffrey J. Kripal. The book caused intense controversy among both Western and Indian audiences which still persists unresolved. The book came into limelight and created controversy in India after a scathing review written by religious scholar Narasingha Sil was published in The Statesman.

Kali's Child is Kripal's Ph.D. dissertation on Ramakrishna under Wendy Doniger at the University of Chicago, which was subsequently published as a book. Kripal adopted a Freudian approach to uncover the connections between Tantric and psychoanalytic hermeneutical traditions. The book theorises upon an alleged homoerotic strain in Ramakrishna's life, practice, and teachings. Kali's Child's primary thesis is that a great deal of Ramakrishna's mystical experiences were generated by the lingering results of childhood traumas, and sublimated homoerotic and pedophiliac passions. Kripal argues that "Ramakrishna’s mystical experiences...were in actual fact profoundly, provocatively, scandalously erotic."

Methodology

Kripal examines a series of remarks made by Ramakrishna to some of his intimate disciples regarding his mystical experiences and visions, which Kripal, following Ramakrishna, calls secret talks. The secret talks identified by Kripal are taken as evidence of Ramakrishna's unresolved homosexual desires, misogynistic attitudes, and general obsession with the erotic.Kripal also mentions that he did not set out looking for a "homoerotic saint" but that as his research proceeded, he became increasingly aware of the "role of homosexuality" in the saint's life and teachings, especially as that became evident in the "secret sayings". Kripal also maintains that Ramakrishna's attitudes and orientations were well known to some of his contemporaries (though not to Ramakrishna himself) and were hidden and suppressed, initially by his own disciples and later by members of the Ramakrishna Order. Kripal suggests a systematic whitewashing of details and a general cover-up carried out by the biographers and translators of Ramakrishna.

In the preface, Kripal mentions that he was fascinated and interested in the relation between "human sexuality and mystical experience". He also mentions that Kali's Child was influenced by Wendy Doniger:

I am above all in debt to Wendy Doniger. Her voluminous work, both in its rhetoric style and its erotic content provided me with a scholarly context, a genre if you will, in which I could write and defend my own ideas.

Reception

Kali's Child won the American Academy of Religion's History of Religions Prize for the Best First Book of 1995. Controversy erupted in India when The Statesman published a review of the book in its Calcutta edition in January 1997. The review was written by historian Narasingha Sil, who had previously written Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. A Psychological Profile. Sil book was a psychoanalytic study of Ramakrishna, which suggested that Ramakrishna's mystical experiences were pathological and originated from alleged childhood sexual trauma. Hugh Urban described Sil's Statesman review of Kali's Child thus: "Narasingha Sil...decried Kripal as a shoddy scholar with a perverse imagination who has thoughtlessly 'ransacked' another culture and produced a work which is, in short, 'plain shit'" Sil's review provoked a flurry of angry letters to the editor. The Asian Age also published a negative review by Sil in the same year. Kripal soon found himself and the book embroiled in a long-running dispute. Censoring the book was even debated (unsuccessfully) in the Parliament of India. Kripal maintains, however, that less than 100 copies have been sold in India, and that few of its opponents have actually read the book.

The book received reviews in major academic journals of religion. Malcolm McLean, a scholar of Bengali literature who has translated the Sri-Sri-Ramakrishna-Kathamrta and the poetry of Ramprasad, wrote in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, "This analysis will be controversial particularly among the followers of Ramakrishna, who have sought over the years to deny, or at least to downplay, the Tantric elements. But Kripal's treatment of it is very thorough, his case is very well documented, and I find his argument convincing. In the Journal of Religion, Hugh Urban wrote, "Kripal's book penetrates the layers of pious obfuscation and reverential distortion surrounding Ramakrishna, to recover the original Bengali texts...which had been mistranslated and censored by later disciples. In the journal History of Religions, John Hawley wrote that "Kripal offers ample proof that Ramakrishna...had a very significantly homosexual side. In the Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, William Radice wrote that "[Ramakrishna's] homosexual leanings and his horror of women as lovers should not be the issue: there was plenty of evidence before the exposure of the guhya katha ["secret talk"].

In Autumn 1997 edition of the Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Gerald James Larson wrote:

Moreover, from the time (1942) of the publication of Swami Nikhilananda's English translation and version of Mahendra Nath Gupta's Bengali Sri-Ramakrsnakathnmrta entitled The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, the eccentric sexual fantasies and practices of Ramakrishna have been well-known, including transvestitism, transsexuality (longings to become a girl widow), oral and anal sexual fantasies (both heterosexual and homosexual), castration fantasies of one kind or another, and what psychoanalysis generally refers to as the "polymorphous sexuality" characteristic of the earliest stages of human development. None of this has been much of a 'secret.'

Huston Smith wrote in the Harvard Divinity School Bulletin that, "I doubt that any other book — not even those of early, polemical, poorly informed, and bigoted missionaries — has offended Hindu sensibilities so grossly. And understandably, despite Kripal's protestations to the contrary in Secret Talk: The Politics of Scholarship in Hindu Tantrism, Kali's Child is colonialism updated."

Gerald Larson wrote "the treatment overall lacks balance and proper contextualization and in the end falls into the trap of monocausal reductionism.". Larson questions the ethics of Jeffery Kripal for not getting his final draft reviewed outside the context of his teachers and colleagues University of Chicago and for hiding the manuscript from other scholars in same area and especially from the Ramakrishna Mission.

My impression is that Kripal did not let his final draft be read outside of the context of his teachers at the University of Chicago, the readers brought into the review process by the University of Chicago Press, and the various close friends and colleagues in the academy … although he thanks the Ramakrishna Mission Institute of Culture for supporting him and making materials available to him, he probably did not let the manuscript be vetted by some of the Swamis of the Mission… By "vetting" I am not suggesting that he should have allowed the members or followers of the Ramakrishna Mission and Math to exercise any sort of veto or censorship over his material, but I am inclined to believe that his book would have been much more balanced and would have avoided reductionism had he taken the trouble to engage in a frank intellectual exchange about his interpretation with the community about which and in which much of his material centers. I am also inclined to think that the book would have achieved greater balance and would have avoided reductionism had it been vetted by professionals within the psychoanalytic community…

Gerald Larson said that the problem of reductionism was due to the attitudes or perspectives that exists in the American Academy of Religion regarding the relation between modern secular intellectual communities, and believing communities Kripal would later respond to Larson's charges at length.

The deductions of Kali's Child and psychoanalytical credentials of Kripal were questioned by several scholars, including Jean Openshaw, Gerald Larson, Hugh B. Urban, Narasingha Sil, Swami Tyagananda, Swami Atmajnanananda, Somnath Bhattacharya, Huston Smith, Alan Roland, Pravrajika Vrajaprana, William Radice.

Critics including Krishnan Ramaswamy, Antonio de Nicolas, Aditi Banerjee, S.N.Balagangadhara, have argued that instead of winning a prize, this research should have been reviewed as a possible violation of academic due process and ethical norms, especially after it was challenged on grounds of extensive mistranslations and its arbitrary and questionable usages of Freudian methodology.

Criticism and arguments on shortcomings of Kali's Child

Critics and scholars have argued the presence of several critical errors in Kali's Child.

In 2000, Swami Tyagananda, minister of the Ramakrishna-Vedanta Society in Boston, wrote a 173-page tract, entitled Kali's Child Revisited or Didn't Anyone Check the Documentation?, and argues the presence of serious errors in Kali's Child. Copies of Kali's Child Revisited were distributed at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion and subsequently published in the journal Evam.

Numerous experts in psychology have raised serious issues about Kripal's understanding and application of psychological theory. Kripal's credentials to use psychoanalysis were questioned by psychoanalyst Alan Roland (author of books and articles on applying psychoanalysis to eastern cultures, and board member of the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis) in The Uses (and Misuses) Of Psychoanalysis in South Asian Studies: Mysticism and Child Development. Somnath Bhattacharyya (emeritus professor and former head of the Psychology Department at Calcutta University) also called into question Kripal's credentials to practice psychoanalysis on Ramakrishna, in his work Kali's Child: Psychological And Hermeneutical Problems.

The reviews in major academic journals argued that several problems existed in Kali's Child.

In the 2007 book Invading the Sacred, Ramaswamy and de Nicolas argued that the American Academy of Religion does not have a well-informed understanding of Hinduism. Ramaswamy and de Nicolas argue that translation errors continued into Kali's Childs second edition.

The scholars argue that the conclusions of Kali's Child were arrived through:

• a lack of understanding of Bengali language and culture.
• faulty, prejudicial translations and false documentation,
• willful distortion and manipulation of sources, circular Arguments, suppressing the facts,
• misuse of Tantra,
• misuses of psychoanalysis and hermeneutics, and
• false accusations related to claims of the Ramakrishna Mission's hiding of sources.

Arguments on lack of understanding of Bengali language and culture

Narasingha Sil has been Kripal's occasional collaborator and colleague. Kripal thanks him in the Preface to first edition. With respect to Kripal's scholarship and Kripal's Bengali proficiency, Sil wrote:

Jeffrey is very adept at using Bengali-English dictionaries and picking the most appropriate synonyms for words (disregarding the primary, secondary, tertiary meanings) he feels could make his point. Kripal is unable even to converse in Bengali (but very prompt at using dictionaries)."

Further Jean Openshaw wrote:

Where textual competence is concerned, Kripal's familiarity with a variety of Bengali texts is impressive. However, as he anticipates, his system of transliteration is offputting ("Ka-lu-" and yet "Ramakrishna"). Of translation slips that matter to the argument, the following is typical. The author asserts that the faith of an associate of Ramakrishna had "homoerotic dimensions" on the grounds that he "liked to look at pictures of men, for they aroused in him feelings of 'tenderness' and 'love'". But the word translated here as "men" is manus, which means "human being" without gender specificity. In fact, despite his initial differentiation of the erotic (as the sexual plus the sacred) and the purely sexual, Kripal himself falls into a reductionist trap by sexualising his language in a way quite inappropriate to the material.

Hugh B. Urban argues that Kripal was inattentive to Bengal's historical context:

The most problematic aspect of Kripal's work is its lack of attention to social and historical context. … Moreover, Kripal fails to place Ramakrishna and his disciples within the political context of late nineteenth-century Bengal. Rather strikingly, for example, he completely ignores Partha Chatterjee's important study of Ramakrishna and his relation to the middle-class society of colonial Calcutta

Further, Swami Tyagananda argues that Kripal's knowledge of Bengali at the time of his dissertation:

Indeed, even Kripal's associates in India acknowledge that when he arrived in Calcutta his knowledge of Bengali was fairly elementary. After eight months of study, Kripal's Bengali improved, but never beyond the intermediate stage.

…those who don't understand Bengali and trust Kripal's translation are upset that Ramakrishna allegedly spoke such words, and those who do understand Bengali are furious because Ramakrishna did not say what Kripal wants his non-Bengali readers to believe.

Arguments on distortion of Sources, Mistranslations

Addressing Kripal's arguments on Swami Nikhilananda's translation, Narasingha Sil wrote:

"…[Kripal's] method of supporting his thesis is not only wrong but reprehensible in that it involves willful distortion and manipulation of sources. . . . Kripal has faulted Swami Nikhilananda for his 'concealment' and doctoring of the crude expressions of KM [Kathamrita], but he has unhesitatingly committed similar crime[s] of omission and commission to suit his thesis."

Jean Openshaw wrote:

…More serious than these lapses and tendentiousness is the sleight of hand by which strained or confessedly speculative arguments are subsequently transformed into a firm base for further such arguments. There is also a slippage between an entirely appropriate scepticism towards the sources, and an unthinking acceptance of them when it suits the argument.

Hugh B. Urban argued that Kriapl introduces sensationalism and wrote:

Kripal's work also bears some rather troubling problems. Perhaps the most pervasive of these is Kripal's tendency toward sensationalism and at times an almost journalistic delight in playing on the "sexy," "seedy," "scandalous," and shocking nature of his material

Swami Tyagananda argues that Kripal misquotes Christopher Isherwood, who in fact said that he could not find any signs of homosexuality in Ramakrishna:

Swami Tyagananda argues that Kripal changes the meaning of Sarkar's work to its opposite:

Dr. Sarkar comments: "This is Tantric worship (upasana): looking upon a woman as mother (janani ramani)." Kripal makes precisely the opposite equation: the mother is the lover! Sadly, the entire chapter is nothing but an attempt to prove a fallacious, mistranslated equation.

Further, Larson argues that there is a lack of evidence:

"Ramakrishna's homosexual tendencies ... deeply influenced, indeed determined the manner in which he created his own self-defined 'states' out of the symbols of his inherited religious tradition," is thoroughly implausible and does not follow from the evidence presented in the book. None of the evidence cited in the book supports a cause-effect relation between the erotic and the mystical (or the religious), much less an identity!

By ignoring this larger framework of evidence Kripal ends up with a monocausal reductionism…

In his review of Kali's Child, William Radice argues that Kripal's style can be deceptive:

His book itself is a majar kuti ('mansion of fun') in which the reader often finds himself back in a previously visited room. Occasionally one stops to ask if one has not been hoodwinked by the charm of his arguments … If this is indeed a game, not a serious argument, it is no more playful than Ramakrishna's own earthy banter.

Pravrajika Vrajaprana argues that Kripal builds his case by quoting unreliable sources. Pravrajika Vrajaprana wrote — "Kripal describes a particularly bizarre method Ramakrishna supposedly used to control lust, but his endnote admits that he "doubts seriously" the incident ever occurred. Inexplicably, the incident is referred to again, twenty pages later, to seal his conclusion — despite his own admission that the information is probably inaccurate." Further Pravrajika Vrajaprana argues that Kripal's hypotheses are based upon innuendo, prejudicial translation, and cultural misjudgments. Swami Tyagananda, Somnath Bhattacharya argue that Kripal cites from non-existing references.

Scholars argue the presence of several critical mistranslations in Kali's Child. and argue that Kripal fails to consider the different shades of meaning for a word depending on the context:

• Kripal has taken "body" (ga- or an+ga) and "lap" (kol) to mean "genitals" and "a normally defiled sexual space".In Indian culture and Bengali culture in particular, the lap has an extremely positive and warm maternal association. And the word lap even appears in the Bangladesh's national anthem to indicate maternal affection, safety and trust.
• Krishna's traditional depiction in Hindu iconography, the tribhanga — bent in three places (i.e., bent at the knee, waist and elbow, with flute in hand) which is sacred to Hindus, has been translated by Kripal as cocked hips.
• vyakulata or vyaakula ( which means "anxiety" from the context ) has been translated as erotic torment.. In the study,The Damage of Separation: Krishna’s Loves and Kali’s Child, J.S.Hawley, revisits the Kali's Child debate highlighting one of its central terms — the vyakulata feeling of ramakrishna. J.S.Hawley concludes that, …neither the gopis’ torment nor Ramakrishna’s must be allowed to devolve to a bodily level that could be indiscriminately shared, …Eros is too dangerous.
• uddipana ( meaning "enkindling" or "lighting up.") has been translated as as homoerotic excitement, and subsequently interpreting looking at pictures of sadhus as getting erotically aroused by looking at picture of holy men.

• Critical age related errors such as, depicting a devotee kedar who was a fifty year old accountant as boy, depicting a "thirty-four or thirty-five year" aged person as "boy of fifteen" and disciples in their forties are described as "the boy disciples.". Further, the child eroticism has been built on these mistranslations.

• Translating Vrindavan-lila — The play in Vrindavan as Krishna's sexual exploits with the milkmaids.
• Translating Kamalaksha meaning lotus eyes, which is used to describe vishnu, rama, krishna as effeminate vishnava and subsequently associating it with sexuality.
• hrt-padma,( "lotus of the heart" ) is translated as vagina.
• Translating "heart" as "breast".

• Adding phrases such as "his near naked body", "instead of lusting after woman." which did not exist in the original bengali sources.

• Representing Ramakrishna's teachers , Bhairavi Brahmini, Totapuri and the temple manager Mathur babu as his sexual predators, without proof.

• Interpreting head as "symbolic phallus."
• Incorrect translation of the word raman. The phrase, "Have desire (kamana) for God. Unite (raman karo) with Satchidananda." is translated by Kripal as "Have sex with Saccidananda" which is crude and misleading. As scholars note, when a Hindu hears or reads about ramana with God, there is no idea of sex involved.Religious Scholars also note the presence of the word ramana in the Bhagavad Gita and several other scriptures to indicate Communion with God.
• milan (commonly used to mean "meeting.") is translated as "sexual union".
• magi (meaning women) as bitches. (However, this was corrected in 2nd Edition)

Arguments on misuse of Tantra

Scholars — Sil, Urban, Radice to mention a few, argue that tantra has been misused to support the thesis.

Narasingha Sil wrote:

"In order to fit the square peg of a Tantrika Ramakrishna into the round hole of a homosexual Paramahamsa, Kripal manufactures evidence by distorting the meaning of sources."

Hugh B. Urban argues that Kripal has a prejudiced view of Tantra as — "something scandalous, seedy, sexy, and dangerous"Swami Tyagananda argues that Kripal dismisses the "philosophical expositions" of Tantra as inauthentic, to support his thesis.. Kali's Child indicates that Ramakrishna's world is a "Tantric world" and overlooks other sadhanas , such as Vaishnava, Shakti, Vedanta, Islamic and the Christian.

Further, in the review of Kali's Child, William Radice wrote:

The erotic-Tantric lens is not the only one through which the Kathamrta can be read.

Arguments on Guhyakatha or "Secret Talk"

Scholars — Swami Tyagananda, Dr.Jean Openshaw, Gerald Larson, William Radice argue that Kripal introduces the word Secret which did not exist in the original source, the Kathamrita. Swami Tyagananda argues that Kripal introduces the word secret, for phrases which were spoken by Ramakrishna openly to a group of people.

Dr. Jean Openshaw downplays the presence of any secret talk — talks related to eroticism and wrote:

Above all (and this objection applies to much of the exegesis of this book), it is highly unlikely that any act considered "homosexual" would have been defended by the disciples (homosexuality was rigorously repressed in Indian society of the time), let alone immortalised in print by a devotee.

Regarding guhyakatha (secret talk), Swami Tyagananda wrote:

"Kripal believes that these talks were "secret" because their contents were "too troubling or important to reveal to any but [Ramakrishna's] most intimate disciples" (KC 4).Yet even a casual glance at these talks shows that there was nothing "troubling" about

them. Moreover, most of these were given in the presence of a large number of visitors,men and women, with the doors of Ramakrishna's room wide open.…many of the things included in the "secret talk" are also repeated on other occasions without the "secret talk" tag.

But the basic problem is the Kripal's misunderstanding of the term "secret talk" (guhya katha). The word "secret" (guhya) occurs with great frequency in Hindu religious texts, including the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads. The deeper meaning of a scripture is known as guhyartha. The word guhya is used mostly in the sense of "esoteric," meaning: "something likely to be understood by only those with a special knowledge or interest."

Larson wrote:

Even Freud, with all of his reductionist tendencies, would have been highly suspicious and critical of much of M's "secret" material, if for no other reasons than the temporal distance of M's notations and M's own projection and introjection.

William Radice argues that guhya katha as a evidence is insufficient:

…it is striking-after reading such a lengthy analysis of them in the book itself-how few occurrences there are: only 18, if one adopts Kripal's strict criterion that only those passages actually designated by Ramakrishna or M. as guhya should be counted as such. Has Kripal made a mountain out of molehill? Not if one accepts his view that these passages take one to the core of Ramakrishna's mysticism, and are therefore a lens through which one can validly read the whole Kathamrta, especially if one takes into account certain passages that are not technically ' secret' but which touch on similar themes.

Arguments on psychoanalysis and hermeneutics

Scholars — Aland Roland, Somnath Bhatacharyya, Gerald Larson argue that neither Kripal nor Wendy Doniger were trained as psychologists and in psychoanalysis. Numerous experts in psychology have argued that serious problems exist in Kripal's understanding and application of psychological theory. Gerald Larson writes:

…Psychoanalytic interpretations, as Freud fully recognized, are exceedingly problematic even with the extensive and current evidence of daily psychoanalytic therapy. Moreover, psychoanalysts would be very cautious about asserting a causal relationship or an identity relationship between sexual fantasies and mystical or religious experience. It is highly unlikely that a psychoanalyst would say that Ramakrishna's "... homoerotic energies ... were his mysticism.

The book Invading the Sacred argues that besides the numerous serious errors in translation that the American Academy of Religion failed to investigate, the presence of at least three methodological problems are argued:

• Scholars in psychology departments do not rely upon Freudian methods to dish out serious allegations against a person. Such applications, by religion scholars who are untrained in psychology need not be accurate.
• Freud himself seems to have questioned the propriety of applying his methods to third parties via native informants or posthumously. The analyst was required to directly engage the subject of inquiry.
• Freud never had access to non-Western patients, so he never established the validity of his theories in other cultures. This is a point emphasized by Alan Roland, who has researched and published extensively to show that Freudian approaches are not applicable to study Asian cultures.

Arguments on hiding of sources

Kathamrita

Kripal argues that Ramakrishna Mission is hiding the sources. According to Kripal, the five-volume structure of Mahendranath Gupta's Kathamrita was designed to "conceal a secret." Kripal argues that the five-volume, non-chronological structure is unusual. Kripal argues that Mahendranath Gupta "held back" the secret in the first volume, "hinted at" it in the second, "toyed with" it in the third, "revealed it" in the fourth and found that he had hardly any material left for the fifth.

In the review of Kali's Child, Colin Robinson wrote

Kripal uses the words “secret” and “secrecy” repeatedly. Yet the texts he exposes have been readily available to anyone who can read Bengali since 1932, when the final volume of the Ramakrishna Kathamrita was published. Kripal gets his material from the thirty-first edition of the Kathamrita, published by the Kathamrita Bhaban in 1987. It’s a funny kind of secrecy.

Swami Tyagananda argues that contrary to Kripal's accusations, portions from M's diaries were published in various Bengali journals long before the Kathamrita appeared in book form. These portions were published in the following journals: Anusandhan, Arati, Alochana, Utsah, Udbodhan, Rishi, Janmabhumi, Tattwamanjari, Navyabharat, Punya, Pradip, Pravasi, Prayas, Bamabodhini, Sahitya, Sahitya-samhita, and Hindu Patrika. There is no textual evidence anywhere to indicate that M began writing his diaries with the prior intention of publishing a book.

Further, Swami Tyagananda wrote that Ramakrishna Mission published the Kathamrita in chronological order, after the copyright which rested with Mahendranath Gupta's descendants expired -

What Kripal chooses not to mention in the main body of Kali's Child is that at the time he wrote this, the Ramakrishna Order had already published a two-volume edition of the Kathamrita, arranged chronologically. If the non-chronological device was meant to "conceal" the secret, the chronological edition should have "revealed" it! Apparently, the Ramakrishna Order did not feel any need to hide the "secret."

As is quite obvious, nothing was ever "hidden" from those who could read Bengali. At least four generations of Bengalis have read the Kathamrita and their perception of Ramakrishna is in most respects diametrically opposite to the picture presented in Kali's Child.

Swami Tyagananda also wrote that Mahendranath Gupta's dairies are with his descendants, and scholars-including a monk of the Ramakrishna Order have seen those diaries, even photographed them, without undue difficulty.

The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna

Kripal argues that although Swami Nikhilananda calls The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna "a literal translation," he substantially altered Gupta's text, combining the five parallel narratives into a single volume (which is often sold as a two-volume set), as well as deleting some passages which he claimed were "of no particular interest to English-speaking readers."

These arguments of Kripal were addressed by Swami Tyagananda, Somnath Bhattacharyya, Swami Atmajnanananda.

Swami Tyagananda wrote —

Translating texts across cultural boundaries is not easy: if you translate the "word," you risk being misunderstood; if you translate the "idea," you are charged-as Kripal does-with "bowdlerizing" the text. His allegation that Nikhilananda omitted portions containing "some of the most revealing and significant passages of the entire text" is not only textually unjustified but completely untrue.

What is most important to note is that Nikhilananda was honest when he said that he omitted "only a few pages of no particular interest to the English speaking readers" (Gospel, vii). He did not deny the omissions and it seems to me unfair to question his integrity-as Kripal does-simply because Kripal finds something of "particular interest" which Nikhilananda didn't. A few phrases, examples and incidents were indeed omitted; it was done not to "hide" secrets but only to respect the Western sense of decorum, at least as it existed in the 1940s, when the Gospel was translated.

Somnath Bhattacharya, argues that Swami Nikhilananda's translations are faithful and wrote:

Anybody with an elementary knowledge of Bengali may check for himself that Kripal's charge about Nikhilananda having "ingeniously mistranslated (or omitted) almost every single secret "(KC 333) is simply untrue. As a matter of fact if one cross checks the list of these passages marked guhya-katha, one finds that in an overwhelming majority of instances Nikhilananda's translations are faithful to the letter as well as spirit of the original.

Swami Atmajnanananda in his publication in the International Journal of Hindu Studies wrote —

There are some other instances which, at first, seem to substantiate Kripal's

cover-up theory. In each case, however, it is Nikhilananda's sensitivity to Western decorum that seems to have dictated his translation decisions, not fear of revealing hidden secrets. Had this been the case, he certainly would have eliminated far more of Ramakrishna's remarks than he did. In each case also, we find Kripal's translation of the missing portion more misleading than Nikhilananda's

omissions.

Jivanvrittanta

Kripal also argues that Sri Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsadever Jivanvrittanta by Ramchandra Dutta to be a scandalous, hidden biography of Ramakrishna. Pravrajika Vrajaprana, Swami Atmajnanananda said that the book has been published in nine Bengali editions as of 1995.. However, Kripal wrote dropped his arguments related to Jivanvrittanta:

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.

Kripal's responses

After Swami Tyagananda's Kali's Child Revisited was published, Kripal responded in his essay Textuality, Sexuality, and the Future of the Past: A Response to Swami Tyagananda —

"I read with a mixture of embarrassment, sadness, and hope Swami Tyagananda’s Kali’s Child Revisited. I will pretend no full response here. That can only come with a third edition of the book, for which there are no immediate plans. Until such an opportunity arises, however, I can say that I am eager to resolve these issues in a friendly and open-hearted spirit that can be as faithful as possible both to academic standards of free inquiry and intellectual honesty and to the felt needs of significant segments of the Hindu community, whose religious sensibilities I am all too painfully aware I have offended."

Kripal’s also maintained that the translation errors were not serious enough to damage the book’s central thesis. Kripal turned down suggestions to include a summary of Tyagananda’s rebuttal at the end of his book, in a new edition. Concerning the charge that he does not understand Tantra, he responded that Swami Tyagananda’s version of Tantra is the “right-handed” ascetic path, as expounded by neo-Vedanta, while the Tantra of Ramakrishna's milieu was the “left-handed” path, which integrates the sexual with the spiritual. In the second edition of Kali's Child, however, Kripal dismisses the "philosophical expositions" of Tantra as inauthentic because they are “designed to rid Tantra of everything that smacked of superstition, magic, or scandal” (28–29). He also noted that because Tyagananda questioned his personal motives for writing the book, the critique amounted to an ad hominem attack. Additionally, Kripal pointed out (following modern literary theory) that all interpretations, his own included, are products of the interaction of the reader’s horizon of understanding with that of the author’s.

By late 2002, Kripal decided to discontinue the discourse: “But there comes a time when it is time to move on. After eight years of almost constant thinking, eight published essays, a second monograph, and literally thousands of paper and virtual letters, that time has arrived for me. Accordingly, I plan no future formal responses and have long since moved on to other intellectual projects and topics.” He combined his primary replies on his website, and then moved ahead with other projects.

Kripal believes that gender and spirituality are intricately linked, and that the history of mysticism in all the world's religions is often deeply erotic. He has strongly denied that Kali's Child was intended as a slur either against Ramakrishna specifically or Hinduism in general. By comparing the deeply erotic nature of Teresa of Ávila's mysticism with Ramakrishna's, for example, Kripal gave one of many examples of how, phenomenologically, European Roman Catholics were experiencing things quite similar to the raptures of Bengali ecstatics like Ramakrishna. Kripal later devoted the entirety of his second book Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom (2001) to an in-depth study of the varied aspects (both homoerotic and heteroerotic) of mystico-eroticism, as found in almost all the world’s major religious systems.

External links

• Swami Tyagananda's essay, "Kali's Child Revisited or Didn't Anyone Check the Documentation?"
• Kripal's consolidated responses to criticism of Kali's Child
• A perspective on the controversy regarding RISA scholars from the University of Chicago
• Kali’s Child: Psychological and Hermeneutical Problems by Somnath Bhattacharyya
• Google Scholar citations
• Google Books citations