Talk:Brian K. Pennington

Brian K. Pennington is a Professor of Religious Studies and Director for the Center for the Study of Religion, Culture and Society (CSRCS) at Elon University in Elon, N.C , as of November 2022.

In 2021, he endorsed the "Dismantling Global Hindutva" conference and made the allegation

"the current government of India [in 2021] has instituted discriminatory policies including beef bans, restrictions on religious conversion and interfaith weddings, and the introduction of religious discrimination into India’s citizenship laws. The result has been a horrifying rise in religious and caste-based violence, including hate crimes, lynchings, and rapes directed against Muslims, non-conforming Dalits, Sikhs, Christians, adivasis and other dissident Hindus. Women of these communities are especially targeted. Meanwhile, the government has used every tool of harassment and intimidation to muzzle dissent. Dozens of student activists and human rights defenders are currently languishing in jail indefinitely without due process under repressive anti-terrorism laws."

Publications related to India

Books

1. Pennington, Brian K., editor. Teaching Religion and Violence. Oxford University Press, 2012.
2. Pennington, Brian K., and Amy Allocco. Ritual Innovation: Strategic Interventions in South Asian Religion. SUNY Press, 2018.
3. Pennington, Brian K. Was Hinduism Invented? Britons, Indians, and the Colonial Construction of Religion. New York, Oxford Academic, 2005.

Journal Articles

1. Pennington, Brian K. "The Haunt of Authenticity." Modern Asian Studies, 2021.
2. Viswanath, Rupa, et al. "Roundtable on Rupa Viswanath's The Pariah Problem." Modern Asian Studies, 2021.
3. Pennington, Brian K. "The Pitfalls of Trying to Be Different." Digital Commons at Butler University, 2013.
4. Pennington, Brian K. "Hindu Heritage and Tradition." Encyclopedia of Religion in America, edited by Charles H. Lippy and Peter W. Williams, CQ Press, 2010.
5. Pennington, Brian K. "Nine More- or Less-related Observations on Historical Approaches to Hindu-Christian Studies." Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, vol. 21, 2008.
6. Pennington, Brian K. "Introduction: A Critical Evaluation of the Work of Bruce Lincoln." Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 2005.
7. Pennington, Brian K. "Constructing Colonial Dharma: A Chronicle of Emergent Hinduism, 1830-1831." Journal of the American Academy of Religion, vol. 69, no. 3, 2001, pp. 559-592.
8. Pennington, Brian K. "William Ward of Serampore and his Legacy for the Christian (Mis)perception of Hinduism." Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, 2000.
9. Pennington, Brian K. "Christianity and Hinduism: An Annotated Bibliography." Oxford Bibliographies Online Datasets, 2000.

Book Chapters

1. Pennington, Brian K. "Striking the Delicate Balance: Teaching Hinduism and Violence." In (Neo-) Liberal Challenges to Interreligious Studies: Dispatches from an Emerging Field, 2020.

   Brian Pennington makes blatantly ignorant, incorrect statements such as

   • Hinduism and Vedas promote violence "The oldest texts of the Hindu tradition, the Vedas, already indicate a certain uneasiness about the violent sacrificial rites they appear to have inherited." "In the Vedic corpus, early qualms about violence are most apparent in the Brahmaņas, commentaries and ritual in- structions appended to the Samhitás, the oldest Vedic hymns, which express fewer such scruples"
   • Whatever principles that Hinduism holds derive from Buddhism and Jainism. "This bifurcated consciousness begins to appear at the same time as the rise of asceticism and the appearance of Buddhism and Jainism, related movements that each elevated the ideal of ahimsa to a primary moral principle."
   • Author cites Ramayana and Mahabharata wars to prove his claim that Non-violence is not possible in Hinduism."Contemplating the cost of the righteous war he is about to wage, the Mahabharata's Arjuna became paralyzed thinking about the ethical paradox and initially refused to fight in the epic's most famous episode, the Bhagavad Gitä. Similarly, King Rama, the hero of the Ramayana, did penance for killing the demon Ravana who kidnapped his wife. The ambivalence of Hindu thinking on the issue of violence is apparent here: royal muscle is the umbrella under which ascetics and Brahmins may pursue the ostensibly higher path of ahimsa."
   • BJP government of Gujarat was the orchestrater of the 2002 Godhra riots in Gujrat

   The author makes an unsubstantiated claim about Gujrat Riots and Narendra Modi's statements and claims that he said that it was a natural response of Hindus to resort to violence against Muslims "Right-wing Hindu politics often legitimate episodes of Hindu violence by calling them a "natural" reaction to various Muslim offenses, past or present. This was the explanation offered by Narendra Modi, chief minister of the west Indian state of Gujarat, for the rioting in 2002 that left roughly 2,000 people dead, most of them Muslims, after the burning of a train car that killed fifty-eight Hindu activists."

2. Pennington, Brian K., and Amy Allocco. "Ritual Innovation Chapter 9: Village Widow/Town Priestess." In Ritual Innovation, SUNY Press, 2018.
3. Pennington, Brian K., and Amy Allocco. "Introduction." In Ritual Innovation, SUNY Press, 2018.
4. Pennington, Brian K. "Constructing Interreligious Studies: Thinking Critically about Interfaith Studies and the Interfaith Movement." In Interfaith/Interreligious Studies: Defining a New Field, edited by Eboo Patel and Jennifer Howe Peace, Beacon Press, 2018.