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for the empire and anti-Asian racism, and exemplify everything that is wrong with
contemporary Australians.
8.2.1. Intertextual Distortions, Third World Anti-heroes, and Sacrificial Scapegoats
One of the most sweeping examples of this critical stance is given by Annegret Maack,
who writes, ‘Daß das Echo der Gita und des Hinduismus in Kochs Werk verzerrt ist, wie dies
bei allen Echos der Fall ist, hat Sharrad im einzelnen ausgeführt’ (Maack, 125). It is a bold
statement when one is either unable or unwilling to defend it with one’s own evidence, and
seems even more so when compared to Sharrad’s own, less accusatory words: ‘if there is an
echo, it is, like all echoes, distorted by the surfaces reflecting the original sounds’ (Sharrad,
1990, 175). Sharrad is defending Koch against criticism that he is not faithful to the spirit and
letter of the Bhagavad Gita. This is a strong argument against an intertextual reading of
Koch’s work, but Sharrad’s own argument is ‘echoed’ (i.e., distorted) by those who would use
it to criticize Koch rather than critique his novels.
Koch is neither rewriting the Bhagavad Gita nor offering an adaptation to it. The
distorting surfaces which Sharrad discusses are, without a doubt, partly due to the fact that
Koch is an Australian with a growing appreciation for, even with an imperfect knowledge of,
the Gita and Hindu philosophy, and that he is applying this Asian experience to his own
cultural milieu and developing literary purposes—and that makes for a rather unavoidable
intertextual critical approach. At the same time, as the Bhagavad Gita is a sacred text, it
remains open to interpretation. That disagreements about its meaning are to be expected
even—or especially—among experts and true believers is one of the most common comments
made in the other articles included in The Gita in World Literature, in which Sharrad’s work is
included. The recognition of the distortions in Koch’s appropriation of Indian philosophy is
then much less accusatory in Sharrad than Maack makes it seem.
Furthermore, Sharrad says there are three contextual factors which make distortion
inevitable. First, that the novel remains ‘firmly Christian’ in outlook; second, that the Gita is
transmitted in Koch’s ‘continuing theme of colonial culture’, necessarily foreign to the
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