The Gita: the critique literature:…//Dangers of teaching the Bhagavad Gita in educational curriculums | MR Online

This is an astonishing article to find at Monthly Review but on reading I find it entirely convincing. I don’t usually associate the Gita with capitalist ideology, but the author’s account of Hindutva in the age of Modi is very convincing. I have been consistently a schizoid fan/critic of the Gita, fascinated by its history, and very critical of its actual dubious place in religious history. Like the Bible the Gita is a palimpsest of confusions, but it is also, in principle, connected to an ancient and very profound tradition of yoga. In the hands of yogis the Gita is one thing, in the hands of Hindutva, quite another. We saw this other side with the Hare Krishna cult of the seventies; the problem is the path of Bhakti,

devotion beside the rationalistic yogas. But the Gita has many critics on its own terms as a text for yoga lore. We should cite three issues here: first Gandhi’s reverence for and confusion over the Gita:
https://redfortyeight.com/?s=Bhagavad+Gita: Gandhi was a westerner who bluffed his way into sainthood on political grounds citing the Gita. But as a text for nonviolence you have to wonder what Gandhi was thinking: the text explicitly preaches the need for violence, to be sure to Arjuna in the warrior caste. But wait, the warrior caste? The Gita is also a polemic Hindu caste. Strike one here…
Next, two critical works on the text:
https://gurdjieff-con.net/?s=Bhagavad+Gita is a search link for another blog: The Gurdjieff Con, and discusses two books critical of the Gita: The Gita as it Was,

The Gita As It Was: Rediscovering the Original Bhagavadgita: Sinha, Phulgenda: 9780812690255: Amazon.com: Books

and

Narla’s The Truth about the Gita

The Gita as neo-brahmin propaganda is an important study.

We will leave it at that for the moment, but the tide of secularism, somewhat delayed by the Western sudden New Age interest in yoga, is inexorable and we see that the Gita will not be spared. But the politics of the Gita is one thing, the legacy of yoga (and the war with Buddhists) quite another.

The Hindu right wing forces are planning for a while to make the Bhagavad Gita as a national scripture and access to absolute state power is allowing them to fulfil their long-time dream.

Source: Dangers of teaching the Bhagavad Gita in educational curriculums | MR Online