Western Misinterpretations/Misappropriations

Given this striking, and apparently gruesomely destructive iconography, it is not surprising that many Western sources, from current dictionaries to past colonial and missionary reports, to early 20th-century scholars, radically over-simplify and hence misconstrue Kali’s nature as fundamentally violent and destructive.  Even modern-day feminists, who attempt to reclaim Kali’s apparently angry iconography in a more positive light, continue some of the significant Western misreading of an “Orientalized” (demonized) Kali-figure.