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“Hindu” Bioethics?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Deepak Sarma
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Not much work has been done on Hindu bioethics other than by a select few scholars and medical doctors. Professor Cromwell Crawford, author of Dilemmas of Life and Death: Hindu Ethics in a North American Context and Hindu Ethics for the Twenty-first Century, for example, is well known in the field of Hindu bioethics. Others scholars include Dr. Uma Mysorekar, who is a gynecologist as well as the president of the board of trustees of the Ganesha Temple of Flushing New York. She has published several short pieces on Hindu bioethics, and has even been interviewed by PBS for their “Religion and Ethics” program. Dr. H. L. Trivedi, director of the Institute of Kidney Diseases and Research Center at the Civil Hospital Campus in Ahmedabad, India, is also prominent. His pithy paragraph in Transplant Proceedings on Hinduism and organ transplantation is cited with enormous frequency on the Internet and elsewhere. These thinkers, however, are unequivocally wrong in their position that Hinduism supports organ transplantation, and, more importantly, that it offers any coherent or systematic bioethics whatsoever.

Type
Symposium
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , Spring 2008 , pp. 51 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2008

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References

See Cromwell Crawford, S., Dilemmas of Life and Death: Hindu Ethics in a North American Context (New York: Sate University of New York Press, 1995) and Cromwell Crawford, S., Hindu Ethics for the Twenty-first Century (New York: State University of New York Press, 2003).Google Scholar
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The term “religion” can also be problematized. I will not do so here for want of space.Google Scholar
This section is from my own article, Sarma, D., “Hindu Leaders in North America?” Teaching Theology and Religion 9, no. 2 (2006): 115–120. I am grateful to the editors for allowing me to reproduce it here.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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I will use the term “Hindu” and “Hinduism” hereafter without the quotation marks. This should not be taken to mean that I endorse the term. Rather, I do so in full acknowledgment of its inherently problematic nature.Google Scholar
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Kancha Ilaiah, for example, has argued that Dalits, who are often characterized as Hindu by upper classes, are not Hindus at all. Moreover, the very act of being characterized as such is offensive and oppressive. See Ilaiah, K., Why I am not a Hindu: A Sudra Critique of Hindutva Philosophy, Culture and Economic Policy, 2nd ed. (Calcutta: Samya, 2005).Google Scholar
Though Mormons, for example, centralize other texts, they still include the Bible in their canon.Google Scholar
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Trivedi, H. L., “Hindu Religious View in Context of Transplantation of Organs from Cadavers,” Transplant Proceedings 22, no. 3 (1990): 942.Google Scholar
Velji Shah, H., “Hindu Dharma and Organ Transplantation,” available at <http://www.uktransplant.org.uk/ukt/newsroom/fact_sheets/religious_leaflets/hindu_dharma_and_organ_donation/hindu_dharrma_and_organ_donation.pdf#search=%22Hindu%20organ%20transplants%22> (last visited December 4, 2007).+(last+visited+December+4,+2007).>Google Scholar
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Mysorekar, U., “Gratitude As Viewed in Hinduism,” Yale Journal for the Humanities in Medicine, February 25, 2002, available at <http://yjhm.yale.edu/archives/spirit2003/gratitude/umy-sorekar.htm> (last visited December 6, 2007). Information about Dr. Mysorekar's visits to the White House was mentioned in this site.+(last+visited+December+6,+2007).+Information+about+Dr.+Mysorekar's+visits+to+the+White+House+was+mentioned+in+this+site.>Google Scholar
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Personal communication from Patrick Olivelle to author, August 29, 2006. On file with author.Google Scholar
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Courtright places the origins of myths about Ganesha in the “early Puranas: The Brahmanda, Matsya, the Srstikhanda of the Padma, and the Harivamsa (c. A.D. 300–500).” Courtright, P., Ganesa: Lord of Obstacles, Lord of Beginnings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985): at 18.Google Scholar
There are many accounts about the origins of Ganesha. My brief version here derives largely from Dimmit and van Buitenen's retelling, which is found in Dimmit, C. van Buitenen, J. A. B., eds. and trans., Classical Hindu Mythology: A Reader in the Sanskrit Puranas (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1978): at 179–185.Google Scholar
Id., at 171–179; Dowson, J., A Classical Dictionary of Hindu Mythology and Religion (Calcutta: Rupa, 1995): at 76–79.Google Scholar
I am indebted to Professor Wendy Doniger for this insight. Personal communication from Wendy Doniger to author, August 11, 2006. On file with author.Google Scholar
See Doniger, W., “Transplanting Myths of Organ Transplants,” in Youngner, S. Fox, R. O'Connell, L., eds., Organ Transplantation: Meanings and Realities (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996): 194–220, at 210 for more on this issue of karma.Google Scholar
Other than, of course, this one.Google Scholar
These dates differ among scholars. I am using the category as characterized in Michaels, A., Hinduism Past and Present (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004): at 38.Google Scholar
See Sarma, D., Epistemologies and the Limitations of Philosophical Inquiry (New York: RoutledgeCurzon Press, 2004): At 24–30 for more on the Madhva canon.Google Scholar
A version of this section was first published in Sarma, D., Introduction to Madhva Vedanta (Hampshire, England: Ashgate Publishers Ltd., 2003): at 1–3.Google Scholar
See Dumont, L., Home Hierarchicus: The Caste System and Its Implications (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Madan, T. N., “Concerning the Categories subha and suddha in Hindu Culture: An Exploratory Essay,” in Carman, J. Marglin, F., eds., Purity and Auspiciousness in Indian Society (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1985): At 11–29; Srinivas, M. N., “Varna and Caste” in Srinivas, M. N., ed., Collected Essays (Oxford: Delhi, 2002): 166–172; Marriott, M., “Hindu Transactions: Diversity Without Dualism,” in Kapferer, B., ed., Transaction and Meaning: Directions in the Anthropology of Exchange and Symbolic Behavior (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1976): 109–142.Google Scholar
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Id., at chapter 5, verse 135, at 95.Google Scholar
Id., at chapter 4, verse 207–212, at 80.Google Scholar
Id., at chapter 5, verse 107, at 93.Google Scholar
Id., at chapter 4, verse 222, at 81.Google Scholar
There is literature about contact with another person's bodily fluids. This is not be confused with exchange of bodily fluids such as blood transfusions and the like.Google Scholar
See The Law Code of Manu, supra note 31, at chapter 10, verses 1–73, at 180–185.Google Scholar
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Articles 15 and 17 of the Indian Constitution.Google Scholar
Doniger, W., “Transplanting Myths of Organ Transplants,” in Youngner, S. Fox, R. O'Connell, L., eds., Organ Transplantation: Meanings and Realities (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996): 194–220, at 201.Google Scholar