The Hindus: An Alternative History

According to the Hindustan Times, The Hindus was a No. 1 bestseller in its non-fiction category in the week of October 15, 2009. Two scholarly reviews in the Social Scientist and the Journal of the American Oriental Society, though praising Doniger for her textual scholarship, criticized factual errors in her coverage of British colonialists in India and her lack of focus. In the popular press, the book has received many positive reviews, for example from the Library Journal, the Times Literary Supplement, the New York Review of Books, the New York Times, In January 2010, the National Book Critics Circle named The Hindus as a finalist for its 2009 book awards. The Hindu American Foundation, a Hindutva organization affiliated with the Sangh Parivar, protested this decision, alleging inaccuracies and bias in the book. Bharat Gupt, defending Indigenous Aryanism views, criticised her book, stating that Doniger misunderstands the meaning of myths by focusing too much on the gap between fictional and factual history, and aiming to show how oppressive power-structures are perpetuated in the Sanskrit-oriented mythology. According to Gupt, Doniger's analysis is politically motivated, and aligned with a left-wing and Marxist agenda. ==Court case in India==

While scholarly and popular reviews were by and large positive, it quickly drew much ire in the Indian blogosphere and the internet more generally, following what Taylor calls "a decade of bad blood, flaming, and hurtful personal attacks" following the publication of ''Kali's Child'' and several other controversial works. The book was criticised by Shiksha Bachao Andolan Samithi (Hindi: शिक्षा बचाओ आंदोलन समिति, "Committee for Struggle to Save Education"), founded by Dinanath Batra, arguing that the work was "riddled with heresies" The book was withdrawn from the Indian market by its Indian publisher, Penguin India, who agreed to destroy all the existing copies within six months commencing from February 2014. There was a Streisand effect on the sales of the book and its sales effectively increased. Some bookstores continued to secretly sell the book, wrapped in brown paper. The publishers blamed the "British vintage Section 295A of IPC" for withdrawal of the books and felt that it was difficult to maintain international standards of free speech in light of this section. The decision to withdraw the book was widely criticised and certain thinkers felt that Penguin should have defended the case effectively and upheld freedom of expression. According to plaintiff attorney Monika Arora, she merely asked the publisher Penguin to fix errors in the book. Arora says the withdrawal of the book by Penguin India and subsequent republishing under a different publisher was a scheme to avoid addressing factual errors in court. ==See also==