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BOOKS
Being
the Beloved
Homoerotic
India has an indulgent past—and lots of poetry
By
Ritu Menon
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Same-Sex
Love In India
Ed By Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai
St Martin's Press
Price: $49.50
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In
1861 the British in India passed a law criminalising homosexuality, marking
a definitive break with what the editors argue as the earlier tolerant
traditions of same-sex love. Our modern-i.e., 19th and 20th century-condemnation
of it, they say, is in sharp contrast to the relative frankness and indulgence
with which it was treated, both in society and in literature, from the
Vedas up until the end of the Mughal empire.
Same-Sex
Love in India: Readings from Literature and History is truly a labour
of love. It is also an extremely useful compilation of material on same-sex
love in India, accompanied by insightful analyses of contemporary social
mores at the time that the poems, stories and novels were written.
The editors'
objective was to see how, at different times and places, primary romantic
attachments between men and between women were viewed-were they largely
accepted, glorified or vilified?
At the outset,
Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai make an important distinction between same-sex
love and casual same-sex sex. The latter, they believe, is behavioural,
and may be devoid of emotional or erotic content; the former is often
valued as a primary relationship, sometimes even over and above familial
ties. As Krishna tells Arjuna: "Thou art mine and I am thine, while
all that is mine is thine also! He that hateth thee hateth me as well,
and he that followeth thee followeth me! O Partha, thou art from me and
I am from thee!" (Vana Parva XII).
In ancient
India the Vedas mentioned such a range of familial arrangements, non-biological
parenthood and miraculous births, that they seem to dislodge the primacy
of heterosexuality somewhat. Given the high degree of tolerance for the
multiplicity of forms of love to be found in ancient texts, it would be
foolish to imagine that one form of same-sex love would be either taboo
or condemned. Because gender itself was like the body, a garment assumed
at birth and shed at death, there was little rigidity regarding sex roles.
Puranic
stories are full of accounts of sex-change-Vishnu into Mohini, Arjuna
and Narada cross-dressing, and same-sex pairing, from which god-like beings
are born. The legend of the birth of Ayyappa from Shiva and Vishnu (Bhagvata
Purana) is one variant of this theme.
Far from
the 8th century being the beginning of a period of moral decline-as some
chauvinists would have us believe-the material in this book demonstrates
just how richly varied our practices were between the 4th and 14th centuries,
whether Hindu, Buddhist, Jain or Muslim.
If anything,
it is the Koran that is unequivocal in its condemnation of same-sex love,
but as Kidwai notes, orthodoxy was mediated by mysticism, and Sufism not
only subverted the role of the clergy, it elevated the love between a
devotee and his god to ecstasy. Much as bhakti had done.
The cosmopolitanism
of urban Islamic culture made visible what Kidwai calls the "homoeroticism
of the bazaar", an all-male space. Medieval poetry, thus, speaks
of romantic and erotic interactions between men across class and religion,
and Mir Taqi Mir's ghazals are replete with thinly-veiled references to
them.
The point,
of course, is not that same-sex love was the norm, but that it was treated
with indulgence, and one of the strengths of this anthology is the wealth
of examples it offers. A curious transition takes place in modern times:
the minor homophobic voice of pre-colonial India becomes dominant, and
sexual love between women is depicted explicitly. What accounts for this?
On homophobia,
the editors blame moralising colonisers who succeeded in influencing nationalist
social reformers on the evil of the "abominable vice". They
point to the "heterosexualisation" of the ghazal as evidence
of this. Poets like Firaq and Josh tended to camouflage their bisexuality,
while lesbian love was/is usually presented as unnatural, depraved and
abusive. Homophobia replaces indulgence. And although women may have emerged
from the wings, only six or seven have been included here.
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