On a certain bias in Hindu studies

Last month Professor Tyler Cowen, a distinguished Professor in George Mason University and a co-author of the famous "Marginal Revolution" blog, recommended a recent book written by Professor Wendy Doniger of University of Chicago titled "The Hindus: An Alternative History", quoting from it ^{footnote 1}:

I would not go so far as some who would insist that a Hindu is not the person to ask about Hinduism, as Harvard professor Roman Jakobson notoriously objected to Nabokov's bid for chairmanship of the Russian literature department: "I do respect very much the elephant, but would you give him the chair of zoology?"

When Professor Doniger says she "would not go so far...", what she is implying ( without explicitly stating, as is common for people of a certain political color ), is that a Hindu is naturally at a disadvantage as regards making an academic study of Hinduism.

In itself, this statement seems innocuous enough; after all, wouldn't a Hindu's belief color his/her perspective of the religion? However, that begs an analogous question : Professor Doniger has written so much about Hindu attitude towards women, scrounging ancient texts to relate to a "problematic Hindu male attitude to women", the Valentine's day violence in India and what not ( try doing that with Koran and Islamist extremism, please ). Wouldn't being a woman stand in her way to cultivating objective scholarship on problems faced by women ^{footnote 2} ?

On the contrary, most of western academia considers women as better qualified than men to write about womens' issues.

I think being a woman puts you at an advantage in some respects and at a disadvantage in some others as far as the issue of conducting womens' studies is concerned. On one hand women are more likely to introduce gynocentrism into the picture and are less likely to be detached while writing about discrimination against women, and on the other they can better relate to the problems faced by fellow-women.

Similarly, a Hindu is likely to go softer on the defects in Hindu society and might have a less detached perspective on many of the topics, but at the same time can better relate to the theistic perspective from which Hindu religious texts were written.

And the hypocrisy of western academia lies in selectively marshalling benefits of doubt in the manner that suits their tastes - not only denying Hindus an encouragement analogous to what women get in the context of womens' studies, but also actively discrediting their potential in the field of Hindu studies.

Footnote 1 : Professor Cowen, in the post linked above, tries to be non-committal and appear unbiased by using words like "noteworthy" to describe the book, and qualifying his link to criticisms of Professor Doniger with "some of it from fundamentalist Hindus". Somehow such a style of writing strikes me as desperately trying to come across as neutral, while at the same time generating subconscious biases in favor of his position. I can't argue this position more rigorously, though.

Footnote 2 : ( especially with all the wonderful credibility she has amassed by writing about Sarah Palin, that "Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman." - the point here is not that she is opposed to Palin or that she considers Palin stupid/dangerous, but that she seems to suffer from screwed up convictions on gender issues, to the point of claiming that Palin is not a woman. )