Sir — This refers to the controversy over Wendy Doniger’s book, The Hindus: An Alternative History. It is sad to see Indians carrying Hindu names bashing Hinduism because they want to sound secular. Does lord Ganesha’s trunk symbolise a limp phallus to Hindu believersIJ Of course it does not. The symbolism and iconography related to lord Ganesha is captured well in the Wikipedia entry on Ganesha.
But influenced by Paul Courtright’s (from his Ganesa: lord of Obstacles, lord of Beginnings) far-fetched claims, even the Baltimore Museum seemed to buy into Courtright’s interpretation that “Ganesha’s trunk represents a limp phallus so that Ganesha would not have sex with his mother Parvati.” Do the secularists enjoy such lurid sentences in so-called great booksIJ