Wendy Doniger Resigned to Ill Fate of Book in India

After Penguin Books India recently decided to recall and pulp all copies of “The Hindus: An Alternative History” in the face of legal action, the book’s author, Wendy Doniger, was not surprised.

“I kept hoping we might win the lawsuit, but it was looking bad,” she said on Friday.

Ms. Doniger, a professor of the history of religions at the University of Chicago, expected the book to meet trouble in India. For the edition published there in 2010, she said, she and her editors worked “to take out things we thought might be particularly offensive to Hindus, to not thumb our nose at them.” The changes to the book, which came out in the United States in 2009, weren’t substantive, she said in an interview, “but we changed some of the wording and softened some things that would be like waving a red flag in front of a bull.”

Penguin’s decision settled a case involving Section 295a of the Indian penal code, which outlaws acts “intended to outrage religious feelings.” The withdrawal of Ms. Doniger’s work comes against the backdrop of the looming general elections, in which the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P., is expected to win significant gains over the Congress party....