Hannibal has “beautiful” crime scenes, but it does not really romanticize suffering. Its version of Hannibal Lecter is a great aesthete, but the beautiful tableaux he creates are polluted, just as the elaborate dinners he prepares for his friends and acquaintances secretly involve the cooked organs of his victims.
Data like these are always engaging, especially with a delightful, refreshing beverage. But this new data set tells little that most religionists didn’t already know—while it might actually skew our understanding.
The news has hit most of the major papers in India and the United States. Under threat from a small group called Shiksha Bachao Andolan, Penguin Press has withdrawn Wendy Doniger’s The Hindus: An Alternative History.