Alain Danielou (1907-1994) was famous as one of the few western disciples of KarpAtri ji.
He was also considered to be an expert on Shaivism and a friend of Hindus.
However, there are certain less commonly known facts about him which cast a dark shadow on this reputation.

These facts relate to a scandal that remained buried for decades till 2004 when Danielou's own disciple started discovering these facts which showed that Danielou had indulged in academic dishonesty and had betrayed KarpAtri ji by misrepresenting and distorting his views.

This phenomenon of a Hindu guru being betrayed by a western disciple is well known to many of us. Still, this specific episode is worth reminiscing because every such occurrence throws its own set of learnings for us.

Having said that, we now recount the details of this episode after taking a brief look at the career of Alian Danielou.

Alian Danielou was the man who made the first ever English translations of works of KarapAtri ji. He published translations of 9 such articles in the 1940s. For a long time these remained the only English translations of KarapAtri ji's works.

Danielou was a French artist and musician who came to VArAnasi before the 2nd world war. He stayed there till 1954. He met KarapAtri ji in VArAnasi and wrote some articles, under the name Shiva Sharana, in SidhAnta, the magazine run by KarpAtri ji, .

After returning to Europe , Danielou man became reputed as expert on Hinduism and India. He wrote nearly 30 books on India and claimed that these books were based on traditional Hinduism, especially on KarpAtri ji's teachings.

His books such as "Myths and Gods of India, Hindu polytheism" were received enthusiastically and registered good sales figures. Many westerners were introduced to Hinduism and Indian music and culture through Danielou's works.

Danielou was broadly seen as this great friend and champion of Hinduism who was the disciple of one of the most revered gurus of the time : KarpAtri ji.

However, this was far from the truth which remained hidden from the public view till 2004.

This truth was brought out by another Frenchman who was named Jean Louis Gabin. Gabin, who collaborated with Danielou for a long period, was working on editing the unpublished works of Danielou.
Between 2003 and 2006 ( After Danielou's death ), Gabin edited 5 books of Danielou.

In 2004, Gabin discovered a huge factual error regarding KarpAtri ji in many of Danielou's books such as "A brief history of India".

According to Danielou, KarpAtri ji had created the political party Jana Sangha.

This was a big mistake because KarpAtri ji not only didn't create Jana Sangha but was also, as founder of RAma RAjya Parishada,a political opponent of Jana Sangha. He had severely criticised RSS and Jana Sangha on many occasions.

Gabin further says that he later noticed that many western people considered KarapAtri ji to be Jana Sangha' founder on authority of Danielou.

The response of KarpAtri ji's direct disciples whom Gabin met later was one filled with surprise and disbelief.

At that time, Gabin was working on a project of publishing Danielou's translations of KarpAtri ji's work in a single volume. This volume was being prepared under the title "The Ego and the self and other writings".

As he begin to compare various translations done by Danielou, he immediately started noticing huge discrepancies among them. In many cases these had the effect of significantly distorting the meaning of the text.

For instance, in " The inner significance of Linga worship", the term "linga" which appears without any change in 1941 translations is replaced by "Phallus" or " Sexual Organ" in later translations.
This could mislead the reader who might see it as KarpAtri ji's interpretation.

Here is an example of such changes made by Danielou

Clearly, Danielou had made changes in original translations from one edition to another.

Gabin decided to dig deeper and thought the best recourse at that point was to compare Danielou's translations with the original articles written by KarpAtri ji.

After some effort, Gabin was able to lay his hands on the original "LingopAsanA" and a reprint of " Shri Bhagvati Tattva" as it had appeared in Siddhanta.

Gabin started to check the translation of "LingopAsanA" along with G C Tiwari, a direct disciple of KarpAtri ji.

The translations were soon found to be replete with biases and distortions.

The singular "deity" was replaced by plural "deities".

Many paragraphs had been arranged differently and most shockingly many sentences and last 5 pages concluding the article had been totally omitted!

An Example of sentences omitted by Danielou

" It would be a great offence to consider Linga and Yoni , that are forms of Shiva- Shakti, as merely the worldly penis and vulva, the fleshy organs of urination."

Another example

" Could a worldly Yoni, a urinary organ, a scrap of leather, support the Jyotirlinga, made of fire that burns everything?"

The last 5 paragraphs, mentioned earlier, that were omitted totally repudiate Danielou's views about Shaivism.

While Danielou represented a strand of Shaivism that excluded Vishnu and Shakti, KarpAtri ji strongly emphasised the unity of Shiva, Vishnu and Shakti.

KarpAtri ji says

".....In fact Shiva and Vishnu are one - (As shown) in the image of Harihara"

and then ,

" The same Lord, having taken the form of Shakti, is called ChandikA, the fearful Goddess."

Irrespective of the strengths of the two competing arguments, this was a clearly case of Danielou misrepresenting the views of KarpAtri ji.

Another point repeatedly Stressed by KarpAtri ji omitted by Danielou concerns the theory categorising Shiva as a non Aryan god.

KarpAtri ji totally rejects this theory pointing to the importance of Shiva Rudra in the Vedas. His views are in contradiction to those of Danielou.

To support his position KarpAtri ji quotes many passages, from Rk, Yajur and Athrava Vedas and from Taittiriya Aranyaka.

Danielou never mentions them in his translations !

The omitted pages also discuss Shiva's association with Tamas.

KarpAtri ji says

"To say Shiva is god of Tamas is great foolishness."

and

"Lord Shiva is controller of Tamas; he is not within power of Tamas"

This view was again in opposition to Danielou's.

Similarly, in translating "Shri Bhagvati Tattva", Danielou edits out the words
" Monotheism ( EkeshvarvAda) is universally accepted."
The reasons for this are not hard to see as Danielou, who had become famous for his work "Hindu polytheism", was a staunch opponent of monotheism

We can see how Danielou, presents his own views such as Shaivism being pre Aryan and Hinduism being polytheistic as if these were the views of KarpAtri Ji.

This is nothing but blatant distortion and misrepresentation of the views of a man he called his guru.

In Danielou's translation, in words of Gabin,
" ....All the reasoning of SvAmi KarpAtri disappears, and what remains are 'tales', 'myths' and 'gods' designated by decorative names - like Shiva the lord of sleep, Sarasvati, the lady of the lake- always colourful but often wrong"

Such distortions had the effect of bringing some undeserved notoriety to the name of much revered Dharma SamrAta KarpAtri ji.
This is evident in the way some foreign scholars described KarpAtri ji as a " Tantric teacher and practitioner" on the authority of Danielou !

It was only through Ishwara's will, infused with a great deal of irony, that Danielou's wrong doings were brought to light by his own follower and collaborator Gabin.

Expectedly, after discovering Danielou's follies, Gabin shelved the project of publishing the translations.

Instead, he decided to publish a new translation in a bilingual edition that contained KarpAtri ji's articles with annotations.

This took the form of the book " The Linga and the great Goddess" which contains the original devanagri text along with translations of 2 articles "LingopAsanA Rahasya" ( translated by G C Tiwari)
and
"Shri Bhagvati tattva" ( translated by M V Mehra)

This endeavour of Gabin was supported by the followers of KarapAtri ji. Also, the preface of the book was written respected ShankrAchArya Swami SwarupAnanda Saraswati.

Here we note that publishing of " The Linga and the great Goddess" , a book where traditional scholars were intimately involved could serve as model for future publications related to Hinduism and Hindu culture.

One is not suggesting a ban on works by western scholars but unless Hindu readers start placing a higher value on books which give representation to the traditional views, the empire of Donigers and Pollocks will keep growing bigger and stronger.

The saga of dubious Danielou also underscores the importance of traditional Hindu gurus exercising extreme caution while getting associated with those coming from non Hindu traditions.

This caution is advised mainly because most of these foreigners may be too deeply entrenched in their older culture to be able to grasp the Hindu worldview in its totality and hence end up distorting and misrepresenting that worldview.

Danielou may not have been evil but we can surely detect a propensity for liberal ideas
No wonder he tried to present Hinduism as a non dogmatic, joy seeking and liberal religion even at the cost of betraying his guru.

Finally, we note that although it was matter of luck that KarpAtri ji's great name was exonerated from the distortions and misrepresentations of Danielou, such things will happen in the future too. Hindus have to be more vigilant to ensure early detection and remedy.

With this we end this thread which is based on the account of events provided by Jean Louis Gabin in the introduction to the book " The Linga and the great Goddess".