Beginning with British philology in the colonial period, Hindu studies has been practiced largely by Westerners, due in part to the lack of a distinct department for religion in Indian academia.
This historical emphasis on philology has had a strong influence on present day Hindu studies, which often emphasizes medieval and classical period Hinduism.
By the time Wendy Doniger became involved with Hindu studies, the nature of Hinduism as a single category was already in question, having been discussed in Wilfred Cantwell Smith's The Meaning and End of Religion (1962).
In a general-audience response, she claimed in the Wilson Quarterly (1991) that Hinduism could be imagined as a "Venn diagram" which together constituted a whole, or akin to light being both a wave and a particle.
[10] In 2002, Rajiv Malhotra founder of Infinity foundation rekindled the debate with a blog post called "RISA Lila - 1: Wendy's Child Syndrome".
Anantanand Rambachan wrote that "there can be little doubt about the importance and legitimacy of many of the concerns raised by the authors of Invading the Sacred about the academic study of Hinduism in the United States.
The authors of Invading the Sacred by and large claim that the outsider, etic, perspective has historically shielded scholars from feeling affected by their judgments.
[15] Russell T. McCutcheon, the author of Critics Not Caretakers: Redescribing the Public Study of Religion, has used the controversy as a means to present his own perspective on the insider/outsider problem.
"[18] However, the authors of Invading the Sacred assert that they critique etic Western evaluations of Hinduism "not because it is offensive or politically incorrect, but because it is baseless and untruthful.