Whose History Is It Anyways?

I was scanning the headlines on the HAF (Hindu American Foundation) website this evening when I came across an article about India's history. I found it interesting because I have been doing my own research on the topic over the past year or so. Instead of trying to summarize the key points of the article for you, I have chosen a portion of it to share with you, below. If it sparks a reaction in you, please leave feedback in the comments section.

There are winners and losers when history is assessed, and there are protagonists and antagonists. Historians recognize the onerous burden of their profession in these times when a spare use of the word "genocide" in the House of Representatives to describe events in Armenia decades ago led Turkey to recall its ambassador. And politics infuses the narratives of history. Anti-Semitism, Marxism, white supremacy, all are known to prejudice renditions of peoples, cultures and religions. Historian Wendy Doniger, professor of the History of Religion at the University of Chicago Divinity School, finds herself in the midst of a history book kerfuffle of her own. Doniger, long enjoying exalted status as the doyen of Hindu studies in the American academy, faces scrutiny now in an unfolding drama involving her latest book, "The Hindus: An Alternative History". An online petition asking Penguin Press, the publishers of the book, to hold publication and demand revisions is approaching 10,000 signatures. And when the book was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award, Hindu activists staged a rare protest outside the award ceremony last week (the book did not win).
Hindus know that Doniger was derailed before. In 2003,Microsoft retracted a chapter on Hinduism written by Doniger for its online encyclopedia after a heavily publicized internet campaign protested factual and interpretive errors in her essay. In the end, a Hindu writer, providing the insider's perspective, wrote an entry that depicted Hinduism in the light that practitioners would actually recognize.