Book review: For the Love of Stories by Wendy Doniger
A life richly lived
Coincidentally enough, I am reading the memoirs of two eminent historians at the same time, Romila Thapar`s `Just Being` and this book I`m reviewing, Wendy Doniger`s `For the Love of Stories.` The former attends a talk by the latter and remarks that it was both entertaining and provocative. And that`s just how I`d slot this look-back by Doniger: entertaining as well as provocative.
Doniger is one of the world`s most erudite Indologists but she wears her academic credentials lightly in this memoir written in a chatty, almost gossipy style; there are no chapters here, only passages one flowing into another, in which Doniger recounts a life studded with academic achievements, teaching stints at some of the most respected academic institutions, liaisons of the heart, single motherhood, her love for horses and dogs, and yes, her deep connection to Sanskrit, Indian Studies, Indology.
She studied Sanskrit at Radcliffe and was almost immediately hooked, her words. She did a BA, followed by an MA, PhD, DPhil, all in Indian/Oriental Studies. She hung out at Berkeley with AK Ramanujan who interestingly, would not accept anything but water from Doniger! She translated parts of the Rigveda but had a decided fondness for what she called her true base, the Puranas, the simple stories about ordinary people, men and women and their turbulent and often hilarious adventures with gods who were not austere and infallible but just as flawed as human beings.
Doniger assures us that she has `a good forgettery` but you really wouldn’t credit that from the detailed recall, flattering and otherwise, in this book. The tone is decidedly whimsical, arch, even wicked at times, and the author is not above a snide comment or three. She liked or loathed people, texts, objects…there seems to be no middle ground for her.
An accidental feminist
Doniger also assures us that she is an accidental feminist but from statements like `I was interested in the ways that men had tried to control women and women had maneuvered to maintain their integrity and their power,` you get the feeling she is very much a deliberate feminist, even if a self-interested one. She calls out any and all suggestions of sexism but it`s a sort of pragmatic, it-is-what-it-is feminism that comes through, as when she states that even when women did eventually win the right to equal treatment as scholars, the combined forces of biology and social tradition made it more difficult for them than for men to combine children with a successful academic career.
Elsewhere, she mentions that back in the day, there were no women professors or women colleagues in the field of Sanskrit or Indian studies, which is why she didn’t expect to talk about her work with women.
The wit is sharp, as when Saul Bellow related an anecdote of what happened in Stockholm. What were you doing in Stockholm, she asked him. I was getting the Nobel Prize, he answered. Another funny passage talks of a major disagreement between David Grene and Doniger, when his description of `gravid load of leverets` ran counter to her suggestion: `mother hare heavy with her unborn young.` She is sardonic about seriously contemplating suicide, because of her `being determined to quit before (she was) fired,` and later says, ` I briefly cracked up and then decracked.`
The deep affection for India shows all through. There is the gentle laughter evoked when a telegram sent from India to her then husband Dennis O`Flaherty `gird loins,` fetches up in Cambridge as `gird lions.` She tells us of her first horse which she named Nandi, another one, Babur. She says she makes all her Siri voices Indian just to hear the beloved accent.
She provides details of her `fight in India` when Penguin India bowed to pressure from an octogenarian who filed a series of civil and criminal cases against Doniger, Penguin USA and Penguin India, over her book The Hindus: An Alternative History, and agreed to withdraw and pulp all extant copies. If Batra`s aim was to stop people from reading my books, his plan certainly backfired, Doniger goes on to say triumphantly.
All through the book, there appears a morbid compulsion to tell us when each of the many friends she talks about died. The 85-year-old Doniger indicates that this could be her last book, stating, `I lived in interesting times which is said to be a curse in Chinese but which was a blessing for me,` and mentioning her ` sense of gratitude for all that I have had, a gratitude that precludes any possible greediness for more, or even any resentment that I can`t have more of the life that I have already outlived.`
Be that as it may, there is no indication of any dimming of Doniger`s sharp intellectual mind, thanks be.
For the Love of Stories, Confessions of an Accidental Feminist by Wendy Doniger. Speaking Tiger Books. 366 pages.Rs 899.
This appeared in DH of 6 September 2026.
Sheila Kumar • September 6, 2026