Firstly, I assume religious historians can be discussed in the subreddit.

As many of you must be knowing, her book titled 'The Hindus' has been found offensive enough by right-winged fundamentalists to be opposed against publication(albeit in a constitutional manner rather than a fatwa),and by ordinary Hindus for the sheer authority with which spicy claims are made without citations, support or relevance to current interpretation and practices...While I don't support banning of any book or idea, I read many ongoing debates regarding the incidence, and the following points struck me the most, which are relevant to this subreddit, and on whom I would like to hear from you folks:

1. Psychoanalysis: How reliable is freudian analysis considered as a means to analyze especially non-western civilizations? From what I have read, freud is considered as somewhat the Galileo of psychology; insightful pioneer, but not exactly useful for detailed analysis.

2. An important question asked to Ms. Doniger was whether she had a degree in psychoanalysis, to which she replied in negative, also affirming the fact that she was never psychoanalyzed...this leaves vast room for personal prejudice to influence her commentaries....so the question becomes: What right do historians, or any rational thinker, have to apply a technique of analysis, especially a field as abstract as preliminary freudian analysis, to something as complex as culture without a scholarly degree to do so? How reliable is such work considered academically?

3. For anyone academically graduating in a particular history, what is the influence of such books? For a layman as me, this book reached me precisely because it had controversial content, any other history publication will go without me even hearing its name.

Again, my question essentially pertains to understanding academic standards one needs to adhere to while publishing stuff via legitimate outlets, and how such work is understood in historian circles. If I publish a scientific research paper based on pseudoscience or outdated science, it would be openly criticized by acclaimed critics, where as in this particular case, I see all critics being labelled as religious fundamentalists, which is certainly not the case...