Hinduism Experts Fear Lasting Effects of Controversy Over Wendy Doniger’s Book

American scholars of Hindu religion and culture say recent efforts in India to suppress the work of a prominent academic are having a chilling effect on their field.

After years of fighting lawsuits brought by a Hindu nationalist group, the Indian publisher of Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus: An Alternative History agreed in February to withdraw the book and pulp all remaining copies.

Ms. Doniger, a professor of the history of religions at the University of Chicago, herself warned of the consequences of the attacks on her scholarship in a speech last week to the Association for Asian Studies. "This sort of bullying and the resultant self-censorship," she said, "has indeed caused many scholars, especially young scholars without the armor of tenure, not only to bite their tongues and hold back their true judgments on many sensitive issues but even to refrain from tackling such topics at all."