Homosexuality, Hinduism and Section 377
A hurried post from the middle of my travels. Pl. use this thread to post your comments and thoughts on the matter of homosexuality, Section 377, the recent judgement of the Delhi High Court, Homosexuality and religion etc.
Thanks to Sanjay for alerting me to this article.
*** CAUTION: Explicit Content ***
Homosexuality and Religion
An Encyclopedia – (ed.) J. Siker, Greenwood Press, 2007.
HINDUISM. Hinduism is the world’s oldest living religion, and Hindus constitute about one-sixth of the world’s population today. Hindu communities foster a wide range of philosophy and practice, and revere thousands of texts as sacred. There is a Hindu God and a story or variation of a story related to practically every activity, inclination, and way of life. Hindus consider this diversity expressive of divine abundance and everything in the universe a manifestation of divine energy. Every God and Goddess is seen as encompassing male, female, neuter, and all other possibilities, and every living creature as having divine potential. The simultaneity of unity and multiplicity is a basic Hindu premise. Variations in gender and sexuality have been discussed in Hindu texts for over two millennia; same-sex love flourished in precolonial India, without any extended history of persecution.
Like the erotic sculptures on ancient Hindu temples at Khajuraho and Konarak, sacred texts in Sanskrit constitute irrefutable evidence that the whole range of sexual behavior was known to ancient Hindus. When European Christians arrived in India, they were shocked by Hinduism, which they termed idolatrous, and by the range of sexual practices, including same-sex relations, which they labeled licentious. When the British colonized India they inscribed modern homophobia into education, law, and the polity. Homophobic trends that were marginal in premodern India thus became dominant in modern India. Indian nationalists, including Hindus, imbibed Victorian ideals of heterosexual monogamy and disowned indigenous traditions that contradicted those ideals. Ancient Hindu ascetic traditions see all desire, including sexual desire, as problematic because it causes beings to be trapped in a cycle of death and rebirth in the phenomenal world. While procreative sex, hedged around with many rules, is enjoined on householders, nonprocreative sex is disfavored. These ideas influence householder life, which is structured as a set of obligations. Many Hindu texts insist that everyone has a duty to marry and produce children, during the householder stage of life. This is countered in Hindu devotional practice and also philosophy and literature by an emphasis on the Gods as erotic beings, and Kama (desire) as one of the four normative aims of life. The earliest texts represent Kama as a universal principle of attraction, causing all movement and change. In later texts, he is the God of love, a beautiful youth, like the Greek Eros, who shoots irresistible arrows at beings, uniting them with those they are destined to love, regardless of social disparities. Thus, Krishna, incarnation of preserver God Vishnu, is worshiped with his beloved Radha, even though, in most traditions, each of them is married to another spouse.
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Hindu law books, dating from the first to the fourth century CE, categorize ayoni or nonvaginal sex as impure. This category encompasses oral sex, manual sex, anal sex, sex with animals, masturbation, sex in the water or in a receptacle. But penances prescribed for same-sex acts are very light compared to penances for some types of heterosexual misconduct, such as adultery and rape. The Manusmriti exhorts a man who has sex with a man or a woman, in a cart pulled by a cow, or in water or by day to bathe with his clothes on. In the Arthashastra, the penalty for a man who has ayoni sex is a minor fine, also prescribed for stealing small items. Modern commentators wrongly read the Manusmriti’s more severe punishment of a woman’s manual penetration of a virgin as revelatory of that text’s antilesbian bias. In fact, the punishment is exactly the same for either a man or a woman who does this act, and is related not to the partners’ genders but to the virgin’s loss of virginity and hence of marriageable status.
The Manusmriti does not mention a woman penetrating a nonvirgin woman, and the Arthashastra prescribes a negligible fine for this act. The sacred epics and Puranas (compendia of stories of the Gods, dating from the fourth to the fourteenth centuries) seemingly contradict the law books; they depict Gods, sages, and heroes springing from ayoni sex. This is because, unlike the Christian category of sodomy, ayoni sex is not so much sinful or evil as forbidden or taboo. Like other taboos, it may be broken by special beings or in special contexts, and is broken in secret by ordinary beings too. Unlike sodomy, ayoni sex never became a major topic of debate or an unspeakable crime. Medieval Hindu texts narrate how the God Ayyappa was born of intercourse between the Gods Shiva and Vishnu when the latter temporarily took a female form. A number of fourteenth century texts in Sanskrit and Bengali also narrate how the hero, Bhagiratha, who brought the sacred river Ganga from heaven to earth, was miraculously born to two co-widows, who made love together with divine blessing.
The fourth century Kamasutra, also a sacred Hindu text, emphasizes pleasure and joy as aims of intercourse. It nonjudgmentally categorizes men who desire other men as a “third nature,†and describes in detail oral sex between men, also referring to long-term unions between men. Hindu medical texts dating from the first century AD provide a detailed taxonomy of gender and sexual variations, including different types of same-sex desire. Close same-sex friendships, in which friends live and die together or for one another, are celebrated in Hindu texts and socially approved in most Hindu communities as an essential element of the good life. As long as a man does his duty by marrying and having children, his intimate friendships are usually accepted and even integrated into the family. Women’s ability to maintain intimate friendships after marriage is more constricted.
Over the last two decades Indian newspapers have reported a series of same-sex weddings and same-sex joint suicides, most of them by female couples in small towns, most of them Hindu, and not connected to any gay movement. The weddings generally took place by Hindu rites, with some family support, while the suicides were the consequence of families forcibly separating lovers and pushing them into heterosexual marriage. These phenomena suggest the wide range of Hindu attitudes to homosexuality today, varying from community to community, and even family to family.
Modern Hindu ultraconservative organizations, like the Shiv Sena, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, and the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, who aim to remake Hinduism as a militant nationalist religion intolerant of differences, declare that homosexuality is alien to Indian culture and tradition, and has been imported into the country from Euro-America or West Asia. In 1998, activists of these organizations violently attacked theaters showing the lesbian film Fire. The Indian government has retained the British antisodomy law, which is widely used by police and blackmailers to harass gay men and also to threaten women.
There is a gulf between these opinions and those of several modern Hindu spiritual teachers who draw on traditional concepts of the self as without gender, and emphasize the sameness of all desire, homosexual or heterosexual, which the aspirant must work through and transcend. Thus, when Swami Prabhavananda (1893–1976), founder of the Vedanta society in the United States, heard of Oscar Wilde’s conviction in the early twentieth century, he remarked, “Poor man. All lust is the same.†He advised his disciple Christopher Isherwood to see his lover “as the young Lord Krishna†(Isherwood 1980, 254).
Pioneering gay activist Ashok Row Kavi recounts that when he was studying at the Ramakrishna Mission, a monk told him that the Mission was not a place to run away from himself, and that he should live boldly, ignoring social prejudices, and testing his actions to see if he was hurting anyone. Inspired by this advice, Row Kavi went on to found the gay magazine Bombay Dost. In 2004, when Hindu ultraconservative leader K. Sudarshan denounced homosexuality, Row Kavi wrote an open letter to him in the press, identifying himself as “a faithful Hindu,†asking Sudarshan to read ancient Hindu texts, and pointing out that not homosexuality but rather modern homophobia is a Western import. Vedanta teacher, Swami Chinmayananda (1916–1993), when asked his opinion of homosexuality, replied, “There are many branches on the tree of life. Full stop. Next question†(Kumar 1996, 6–7).
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar (born 1956), founder of the international movement, Art of Living, when asked about homosexuality, stated, “Every individual has both male and female in them. Sometimes one dominates, sometimes other, it is all fluid.†When asked about the high suicide rate amongst gay youth, tears came to his eyes and he responded, “Life is so precious. We need to educate everyone. Life is so much bigger. You are more than the body. You are the spirit. You are the untouched pure consciousness.†(Rupani 2003, 15).
In her 1977 book, The World of Homosexuals, mathematician Shakuntala Devi interviewed Srinivasa Raghavachariar, priest of the Vaishnava temple at Srirangam. He said that same-sex lovers must have been cross-sex lovers in a former life. The sex may change but the soul retains its attachments, hence the power of love impels these souls to seek one another. A Shaiva priest who performed the marriage of two women stated that, having studied Hindu scriptures, he had concluded, “Marriage is a union of spirits, and the spirit is not male or female†(Vanita 2005, 147).
Despite these enlightened opinions, there is little discussion of the issue in religious communities. Consequently, some teachers and most lay followers remain homophobic, which has driven many gay disciples out of religious communities and a few even to suicide. Swami Bodhananda, Vedanta master in the Saraswati lineage, and founder of the Sambodh Society, stated the following about same-sex unions: “We don’t look at the body or the memories; we always look at everyone as spirit. . . . I am not opposed to relationships or unions — people’s karma brings them together. I am sure spiritual persons will have no objection when two people come together. It’s a Christian idea that it is wrong. From a Hindu standpoint, there is nothing wrong because there is nothing against it in scripture . . . but it’s a social stigma. We have to face this issue now. . . . what is required is a debate in society†(Vanita 2005, 307).
The centuries’ long debate in Hindu society, somewhat suppressed in the colonial period and after, has now revived. When Hinduism Today the Swamis expressed a wide range of opinions, positive and negative; that they felt free to reporter Rajiv Malik, at the Kumbha Mela in Ujjain in 2004, asked several Hindu Swamis their opinion of same-sex marriage, differ with others in their own lineages (akharas), is evidence of the continuing liveliness of this debate, facilitated by the fact that Hinduism has no one hierarchy or leader. As Mahant Ram Puri, of Juna akhara, remarked, “We do not have a rule book in Hinduism.
We have a hundred million authorities†(Malik, 2004).
RUTH VANITA
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FURTHER READINGS
Das Wilhelm, Amara. Tritiya Prakriti (People of the Third Sex): Understanding Homosexuality, Trans-
gender Identity, and Intersex Conditions through Hinduism. Philadelphia, PA: XLibris Corporation,
2004.
Isherwood, Christopher. My Guru and His Disciple. New York: Penguin, 1980.
Kavi, Ashok Row. “The Contract of Silence.†In Hoshang Merchant, ed., Yaraana: Gay Writings
from India. Delhi: Penguin, 1999.
Kumar, Arvind. “Interview with Jim Gilman.†Trikone, 11(3) (July 1996): 6–7.
Malik, Rajiv. “Discussions on Dharma.†Hinduism Today (October–December 2004): 30–31.
Rupani, Ankur. “Sexuality and Spirituality.†Trikone, 18(4) (2003): 15.
Sweet, Michael J. and Leonard Zwilling. “The First Medicalization: The Taxonomy and Etiology of
Queers in Classical Indian Medicine.†Journal of the History of Sexuality, 3(4) (1993): 590–607.
Vanita, Ruth. Love’s Rite: Same-Sex Marriage and its Antecedents in India. Delhi: Penguin India, 2005.
Vanita, Ruth, ed. Queering India. New York: Routledge, 2002.
Vanita, Ruth and Saleem Kidwai, eds. Same-Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History.
New York: Palgrave, 2000.
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Also read: Govt resolve to act on Section 377 hits Deoband hurdle and 377 steps
More on all this later. Still traveling. Back in action by Friday. Pl. expect some delay before I am able to respond to (and moderate) comments.
Thank you for your patience and understanding. Look forward to everyone’s thoughts on the matter.
I think repealing of sections of 377 dealing with consensual sex among adults is a welcome step and brings the IPC in line with Hindu philosophy’s views on homosexuality.
It depends on which India you are talking about? Liberation of the sexes in the West has led to a decline in their fertility to such an extent that the rate of birth is not even at a replacement rate. The only reason the population s not falling another further is bacause of Muslim immigration into Europe. Fertility in India has been a curse with its burgeoning population, so we might excuse a fall as temporary advantage.
Arjun in the Mahabharat is described as a transgender, but who fulfills his dharma as a husband and father. One reason for the disgrace of India in modern times has been the sexual consumption of hindu kings. The modern day transgender are following in the footsteps of those such kings rather than the example of Arjun.
What is certainly needed from society is that transgenders deserve to be treated as human beings and given the same life chances as the rest of society rather than being marginalised into the sex industry. That fits the ideals of Hindu society.
There had been no prosecution under S377 for over 20 years. NAZ had no very real reason to over throw the law except as a publicity stunt.
The striking down of this provision will deprive women and minors especially of the protection they have enjoyed against sexual abuse. I have never heard of any court being able to put a different gloss on a law without striking it out. Now its seems any form of sex can be interpreted as consensual. It would be the height of misgovernment if the Government did not deal with this unsatisfactory state of affairs.
*** CAUTION: Explicit Content *** should have read *** CAUTION: Rubbish ***
Not that homosexuality was anathema to ancient indians. It did not get the undeserving attention it is getting now.
Personal feelings of arousal towards same sex/ opposite sex/ animal/ bird/ tree/ inanimate object/ nature elements or even to oneself if naturally felt is to be understood as such. What he/she next does will decide subsequent consequences.
If he/she analyses his such feelings, which help him/her towards spiritual evolution, best.
Apart from that, the article is Bull S of the highest kind that can be seen in Encyclopedias and the like, though of course, not to the levels achieved by Doniger, Kirpal, Coutright and such.
That indians seek knowledge about their ancestors’ views from foreigners show the extent of deracination that is there among them.
What India needs now is a Revolution of the mind.
Rediscovery of itself, its roots, its past, its ancestors, the civilisational ethos developed in this land. How relevant they are now. And its relevance in sustaining Life on Earth. It is the only model that answers the fundamental question about purpose of life, its sustenance and eventual dissolution. It provides the unified field theory, not in a purely scientific sense, but encompassing everything from philosophy, spirituality and all other aspects of human feelings and emotions as well as disciplines such as astronomy, medicine, astrology, mathematics, architecture, commerce, administration etc.
Ancient Indians contributed extensively towards developing consciousness on all spheres. Their undeserving progenies are wasting away their lives, deracinating subsequent generations, not recognizing their responsibility to themselves.
Khandu Patel:
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There had been no prosecution under S377 for over 20 years. NAZ had no very real reason to over throw the law except as a publicity stunt.
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Doesn’t matter if there has been prosecution or not. As long as the law is there, corrupt policemen will use it to harass gays. We’re better off with the change in IPC as the section criminalizing consensual sex among adults goes against Sanatan Dharma.
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The striking down of this provision will deprive women and minors especially of the protection they have enjoyed against sexual abuse.
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As far as I know, the High Court has only struck down the portion that relates to consensual sex among adults. The provisions dealing with minors (which would make it non-consensual sex) is still there and still punishable. Now, the ball is in the government’s court.
It seems to me that you are mixing up different issues in your comment above, and while some of your points may be valid (NAZ seeking publicity), let’s separate those different issues and deal with them according to their merit, instead of mixing them all up.
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Personal feelings of arousal towards same sex/ opposite sex/ animal/ bird/ tree/ inanimate object/ nature elements or even to oneself if naturally felt is to be understood as such. What he/she next does will decide subsequent consequences.
If he/she analyses his such feelings, which help him/her towards spiritual evolution, best.
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But it depends on one’s karma whether – and to what extent – one is able to analyse such feelings, understand them and go beyond them (if that’s the aim).
very interesting write up.
More interesting, however, is the tension between one school of thought in hindu dharma towards gruhasthi and the other, more liberal school of thought.
That they co existed, without strife, is interesting.
“Swami” Ramdev to challenge the Delhi High Court decision in the Supreme Court.
Given the way the Delhi High Court has framed its judgment, I would be very surprised if the Supreme Court does not uphold the judgment. Then, it will be interesting to see what all these religious types do and whether the Congress is clever enough to avoid the trap.
Excellent post Shantanu! Ever since the news about article 377 broke out, there have been mounds of off-topic comments on various blogs, everyone of them a segue from the main article. None of the regular blogs I visit addressed this issue, until now:) This is precicely the kind of perspective I was hoping to get, one from ancient Hindu texts and what our ancestors and other bright minds thought about homosexuality.
Swami Chinmayananda’s explanation was simple yet profound. I look forward to more articles and comprehensive analyses when you’re back from your travels.
Most of the religions more so Hinduism looks at Sex as a pleasure that needs to be avoided. I think it is difficult to prove that Hindu Scriptures denounce Homosexuality as explicitly as Christianity. But at the same time I think it is not possible to say that Hinduism accepted and gave equal status to homosexuality.
As far as Article 377 is concerned we should not be bothered too much about what a particular religion says. Our laws should never be based on any religious dogma.
Most importantly religious beliefs should never be imposed on those who do not subscribe to those beliefs.
So let the article 377 be interpreted as per the recent verdict.
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“Most of the religions more so Hinduism looks at Sex as a pleasure that needs to be avoided.”
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Akshar, by whom? A householder, or an ascetic? My reading says that Hinduism does not have the same attitude towards sex (guilt, taboo) as some Abrahamic religions do. It recognizes the place of sex and sexual pleasures in our lives and in the context of a relationship, though it also cautions against lust and being obsessed by it to the point of bringing imbalance into one’s mind. So, the approach seems very common sense, matter-of-fact and rational to me. If I go by ‘Kama Sutra’ and other books, then it seems that there’s openness in terms of discussion of sex and its place in our lives.
If someone is an ascetic and has taken a vow of brahmacharya, then there’s a different set of instructions regarding sex. Let’s not mix up the two – most of us are householders (I’m guessing), not saints or ascetics who have renounced the world.
I have a feeling one of the issues in India is – when it comes to sex or standing up against intolerance – that we live in the world yet want to act like we’ve renounced the world, just like many saints and sages did. And to become like saints or sages who have renounced the world, takes effort and certain tools (sadhna) – it’s very rare that someone can reach that stage just by intellectual analysis or by acting like saints. No wonder it causes confusion and leads to unhealthy pacifism, or current attitudes about sex in Indian society, which is more suited to Abrahamic religions and not Hinduism. Just so that there’s no confusion, I’m not advocating for an ‘anything goes’ attitude towards sex or sexual relationships in a society – both extremes are unhealthy and need to be avoided.
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But at the same time I think it is not possible to say that Hinduism accepted and gave equal status to homosexuality.
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Akshar, but equal to what and in what context? The point is that there’s no persecution of homosexuals (consenting adults) in Hinduism and repealing of (sections of) 377 reflects that.
I’d be interested in reading more about “Hinduism looks at sex as a pleasure that needs to be avoided” that you mentioned in your comment, and whether it’s applicable to one and all. Please let me know your source(s) for it.
Kaffir, What would you say to people who believe that tolerating or allowing homosexuality legal status would be an open invitation to zoophiliacs to demand legality?
btw, I’m not one of them. Just wondering how one would propose counter-arguments to such people.
Very interesting and truly enlightening. I am a student of advaita vedant but still at the pre-school level and I was wondering what our shastra have to say about it. So this has been a very educative read. Thank you.
Though as a sidenote I also heard somewhere that Radha was not a real woman but a concept…Radha epitomized a certain state of mind or emotion. Do you know something about it and if yes would you kindly throw some light on it.
CC, logically, I cannot argue against allowing zoophilia (we do eat animals against their wishes, so consent doesn’t enter the picture) or even incest among consenting adults, and when the debate is framed that way, it does seem like a slippery slope.
Though if the ability to procreate is the basis of that argument (of not sanctioning gays and lesbians), then logically, it follows that marriage and sex be limited to only fertile and fecund heterosexuals. Yet, that’s clearly not the case and couples that are unable to have a child, do have the freedom to marry and/or adopt kids. Or, as we often look into the past to get an idea and give examples, in the case of Vichitravirya/Ambika/Ambalika/Vyasa, or Kunti, unconventional means (which were likely not the norm and were the exception) were used to ensure that the line continued.
If the argument is for a mother and a father as the basis of a family, then we don’t force widows and widowers, who are also parents, to re-marry against their wishes and there are many single parents raising kids, as well as widows/widowers who can adopt. We can find many examples where straight couples, consisting of a mother and a father, are poor parents.
I’m not arguing for “anything goes” and acknowledge the complexity of the issue as well as certain norms that a society sets, and prefer to look at this issue from a different angle.
Kaffir, thanks for sharing your thoughts. I don’t support ‘anything goes’ either.
My point of view on zoophilia is that since animals cannot give informed consent, there’s no issue of giving this legal status along the lines of homosexuality. As for incest, it’s dangerous for the survival of the human race with the threat genetic deformities of offsprings of such unions. Also, these sort of relationships will lead to the breakdown of society. So therefore legalizing incest is also out of the question.
Thanks All…Will add comments made by Patriot, Mahesh, Khandu (and others) on other threads to this post…
History is always there for reference. And it is our history to respect every human begin and give them there due space and freedom. In older time noone took homosexuals as untouchable or bad for society. Infact they were always treated at par with society and as normal human begin. Today it is our nature to create controversy out of everything. This is work of some smart(call them over intelligent)ppl who just want to stay in limelight by one way or other. How the issue of homosexuality with mutual consent effect common people??? If two adults girls or boys are happy with each other company then let them live there life. Why you are bothered abt it. When they don’t have any problem why u have it. It is there problem how they will have child or other things in life. Why we are soo concern abt it. As per my view more then 95%(I belive it is more) of Indian population don’t get effected or don’t have objection if it is with mutual consent between two adults. We need to understand that this are issues raised just to create controversies.
Why we are wasting ourtime by giving air to this small issues. It is better to let them live there life and start building a better/free society where all can live happily
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As for incest, it’s dangerous for the survival of the human race with the threat genetic deformities of offsprings of such unions.
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CC, what if it’s *guaranteed* (through vasectomy, other family planning measures) that there will be no offsprings? 🙂
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Also, these sort of relationships will lead to the breakdown of society.
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And CC, isn’t the above similar to the argument used by many who are opposed to homosexuality? 🙂
Kaffir, yes those are the sticky questions I wanted answers for myself.
I feel incest breaking down society is different than homosexuality breaking down society. If every member of the family has sex with everyone else, then the family ceases to exist. Since that’s the bedrock of our society, we can’t let that happen.
hmm, as for vasectomy to prevent offspring… I am still thinking why that should be unacceptable to society.
I agree to the point that you are making. Hindu philosophy is broad enough to accomodate same-sex unions. However I do not think that there is any reference of the vivah-samskars done for such marriages. so in that sense this is little different that different-sex marriages. (of course there are multiple categories of vivahas as well some of which do not have any usual samskara associated with them.) Hence I think same-sex relationships in Hindu philosophy is not treated as marriage but is accepted as a fact as it is.
I can accept that RSS and VHP may have ultra-conservative people, however I disagree with your categorization of RSS as ultra-conservative Hindu orgaznization. This would be a gross generalization mistake. I would say that to undestand you should experience it. Intellectually you may give a try to understand by reading a book “Bunch of Thoghts by M. S. Golwalkar”.
I think RSS is opposing same-sex marriage legalization, but RSS is not supporting active pesecution of same-sex couples, nor they have hatred against such people. One should understand this difference to understand what they are opposing.
Excerpts from: Section 377 and all that by Swapan Dasgupta:
The arguments made by religious leaders that these acts will destroy society is highly hypocritical since a lot of acts performed by the same idiots don’t help society.
In the same vein perhaps the next time when they ask for faith based reservations or quotas, the general public should ask them to shut up.
@AG,
“More interesting, however, is the tension between one school of thought in hindu dharma towards gruhasthi and the other, more liberal school of thought.”
From a historian’s standpoint that would be a very interesting analysis as to how ancient society balanced the two. Well said AG!
This is interesting . Did this give impetus to this new genesis. This is very very pro UPA web site.
http://ibnlive.in.com/news/rahul-gandhi-becomes-the-new-gay-icon/93307-3.html
Whatever said in history or depicted in Khajuraho, homosexuality is unnatural. Sex is akin to animal instinct but animals do not go out to seek same gender. Only enlightened idiots like Sri Sri Ravishankar can justify homosexuality with their stupid talks (Not only homosexuality, he can also promote cannibalism with some spiritual mumbo jumbo). Having said that, I do not hold anything against homosexuals as long as they do something which is in private. If Section 377 is repealed, Court should have provision of death sentence for those accused of homosexual crimes unless they prove that they are not guilty without any iota of doubt.
The main reason sited by NAZ foundation for asking the high court to strike down the sec 377 was
1)so that gay can come out and get open access to HIV & AIDS.
2)As its a concsensual act between two adults in private place
ITS ABOUT TIME THAT ON THE BASES OF ABOVE TWO POINTS WHICH ARE VERY MUCH APPLICABLE ON “PROSITUTION”… THEN SHOULDNT PROSITUTION SHOULD ASLO BE LEGALIZED?
*** NOTE By MODERATOR ***
This and subsequent comments on prostitution have been moved here. Pl. continue the discussion on the new thread.
*** NOTE By MODERATOR ***
This and subsequent comments on prostitution have been moved here. Pl. continue the discussion on the new thread.
Rohit, Incognito, Patriot and Mahesh: Pl. continue the discussion on Prostitution etc on this new thread:
Should prostitution be de-criminalised in India?
Pl limit the discussion on this thread to Homosexuality, Religion and 377. Thanks
As an aside, Mizo transvestites draw ire of church leaders:
Transvestites in Mizoram, who enjoys considerable freedom in society in respect of sartorial choices, are caught in a bind after the powerful local church opposes the Delhi High Court verdict legalising consensual gay sex.
The transvestites, known locally as Tuais, sport the very latest in female hot couture which till now no one objected, though the church authorities sometimes cast a glare.
But the court verdict has snapped their fine line of tolerance, or so it seems. The leaders of the local Presbyterian Church and some social organisations have said they are seeking ways to invoke the executive order of the colonial British rulers issued in 1909 which criminalised homosexuality.
# 30 is an update… Does it take ahead the discussion? Religious (Christians and Muslims) torchbearers are expected to oppose such rulings with unmatched vehemency.
@Rohit,
Animals do exhibit homosexual behavior patterns.
As for punishment, could you be satisfied with bobbiting?
And, CC, there are many communities in India that are suffering the ill effects of consanguineous marriages – which have social sanction. So the idea we have of incest/proscribed relationships needs a rewriting from both sides, a toning down in Haryana, and a tightening up in South India. Again, this is a moral quagmire. Can we bring eugenics into play in a relationship like marriage? Deny love to two people because they are close relatives? Deny a woman the right to give birth to her lover’s child? Give her the right to give birth to a deficient child doomed to misery in an unkind world? If you remember, amniocentesis came into being as a test to find out mainly if the foetus had genetic disorders – so we could decide to abort the mongoloid kid (or the daughter -the greatest birth defect). I am not particularly pro-life or pro-choice, but if it was my kid, I would not be able to make a decision either way if I had to.
Very rare words used Jayadevan… Would have loved if you kept simple… bobbiting (I could not find the word in freedictionary)… To sum, I cannot reply back till you come up with replies to my comments in simple words so I now what position you are taking.
A few points worthy of mention:
1. There is no doubt at all that anti-sodomy laws, among others, were motivated by Christian morality. For the court, however, however, it is important to remember that proper legal interpretation enjoins that weight be given to the purpose of the law rather than to what we might consider amounts to “doing the right thing”.
2. Ruth Vanita’s arguments were made by rights activists to claim that this was contrary to Indian tradition. Maybe but let us be quite clear: the impetus for this social movement has not come from our traditions but rather from a movement that originated in Europe and now has an extended global presence. It is therefore a disingenuous claim.
3. One thing not to forget is what the implications are for other forms of proscribed sexual conduct. Should any sexual activity be regulated by the state at all or as S.Gurumurthy argued in Organiser a while ago, should be for society to police? This is a very important question because laws relating to adultery, obscenity, sex with children are all on the line here. This is also one of the issues that you will virtually never hear from activists. The decision to de-link homosexuality from others was a strategic one made by their counterparts in the West decades ago because that way, they saw a greater chance of popular acceptance. The same thing is now repeating itself here.
4. Lastly, do read this detailed critique of the Delhi High Court judgment which was based almost entirely on extraneous and questionable premises. Whatever one thinks of homosexuality, the proper answer is a public debate and legislative change, not amendment through judicial sleight of hand.
Courtesy, Sarvesh K Tiwari:
See HINDU VIEW OF HOMOSEXUALITY by classicist Bharat Gupt.
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Arthashastra 3.18.4 prescribes a fine for those who persecute a homoerotic person
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kAmasUtra 2.9: then there is a 3rd sexuality further of 2 kinds, malelike, femalelike|dvividhA tritItyAprkritiH strIrUpiNI puruSharUpiNI cha
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An old post: “Raskhan: A Homosexual turned Hindu Bhakta” http://wp.me/pf3lw-4C
Excerpts from an email by Radha Rajan-ji dt 15th Dec ’13 on this subject:
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Let me begin to untangle this LGBT bullshit. It is so clever to package Lesbians, Gays, bi-sexuals with Transgenders. The transgenders alone in this group are so by birth. They are natural. Here I make the distinction between transgenders and transvestites. Transgenders are those people whose gender cannot be defined precisely – from birth it is undefinable if they are male prominent, female prominent or male and female and equal portions. These people are what they are by birth. Like any other physical, mental and psychological abnormality, they and society have the responsibility to live with it with dignity. Trans-vestites are thise who surgically have opted to change their gender.
But Lesbians, Gays and bisexuals do not fall into this category. They have chosen their sexual proclivities. They choose to have female, male and both male and female sexual pertners to gratify their desire for abnormal sex. Arnab Goswami descended on poor Rahul Easwar like a ton of bricks for the word “mainstream”. While all of us understand what mainstream is and while that is not the right word, Times Now too must accept that there is “normal” and there is “abnormal”.
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These individuals have a desire for abnormal sex. Yes let those of us who are unafraid to speak honestly, say the word – abnormal. Hindu society has not burnt people at the stakes, has not crucified them and has not killed them for being different. People indulging in sexual abnormalities which impact upon thre larger society and they do impact society and society means all of us besides this individual who wants abnormal sex, as long as they are kept quiet behind locked doors, has never been harassed or persecuted by the law.
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What matters is a sensible discussion if decriminalising homosexuality posesd any danger to the national ethos? Yes it does and in several ways.
Why have we first of all allowed the sexual abnormals to peg themselves with the transgenders? First let us confine this debate to those who want abnormal sex by choice – Gays, lesbians and bisexuals. They themselves say they are not physically malfunctioned, they do not suffer from any mental disorder. So then this means they are sexually abnormal/unnatural because they choose to be so.
Now let us look at other abnormal sexual preferences. And these too are abnormal because they are not the norm. How about sex with brothers and sisters, how about sex with fathers and mothers, with grandfathers and grandmothers. How many of you are cringing now? How about sex with animals? Except for sex with animals all other abnormal sex can come under the category of “consensual sex”, If sex with brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, grand fathers and grandmothers is also consensual can these people ask the larger society, the nation to legitimise that too?
If not tell me how asking me to legitimise same gender sex is normal or right? An individual can choose to live the way he wants behind closed doors. But he cannot form him’herself into a mob, backed by foriegn funded NGO lobby and other funding agencies to force us to accept the abnormal to be normal and in-your-face. If we legitimise this now, then in a few years time we will be asked to legitimise incest. We are already perpetrating the worst kind of cruelties on animals legally. Sex with animals is illegal now and a crime. Not even a non-bailable crime. We cannot lower the bar on societal norms just to please a small section. Let us begin by de-linking these by-choice people from the by-birth people. And it is time some of us began to say this lo(u)d and clear – not every NGO agenda can be twisted and tortured to look like fundamental rights, human rights or minority rights. RR
Excerpts from My position on gay “marriage†summarised in a table by Sanjeev Sabhlok:
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I’ve made it clear that it is inappropriate for such folk to want to get “married”. They can sign contracts and do other such things, but not marriage. But marriage is a term with long-determined meaning. The idea of changing the very meaning of a word to suit some people is undesirable.
The terms marriage, विवाह, nikah, etc., are not terms of convenience.
Like the precision attributable to the term liberty, these terms connote a precise meaning: in this case a valid union between man and woman with its many rights and obligations. It is just the way it is defined. For thousands of years, the precise nature of this institution has been worked out. It stands for certain things.
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I understand that “gay” people want to be “regularised” by society. Sure. That’s perfectly OK. I’ve got NOTHING against any “gay” or non-gay person. As adults people can voluntarily trade/contract, subject to not harming any other person (that’s crucial).
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Note also that this contractual relationship can’t demand any right to adopt or produce technology-created children. Children DON’T enter the equation in this relationship. They are simply out of question.
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Marriage is NOT any ordinary contract between any two consenting adults.
Marriage is a PARTICULAR type of contract, and in most societies, a sacrament.
It has a spiritual basis in the minds of most people. Regardless of whether there is a God or not, people deserve their beliefs to be treated with some respect, so long as they are not harming anyone.
By trying to get “married” the gays are entirely upturning the meaning of marriage. That’s an inappropriate ambition. Such ambition has NOTHING to do with liberty or the “regularisation” of the “rights” of “gays” to pursue happiness.
There are ways to be free (and happy) without disrupting the entire society, AND nature!
Above all let’s respect the laws of biology and of nature.
Counter-point to Sanjeev Sabhlok http://aayushi-notsosimple.blogspot.in/2013/01/sanjeev-sabhloks-arguments-against.html
Here’s Radha Rajan-ji’s comment on Sri Sri’s tweet:
Via @SriSriSpeaks
“Homosexuality has never been considered a crime in Hindu culture. In fact, Lord Ayyappa was born of Hari-Hara (Vishnu & Shiva). #Sec377”
Radha Rajan-ji writes:
“Sri Sri Ravisnakar’s observation exposes a remarkable misinterpretation of just about everything – dharma, laws of nature besides being guilty of adding fuel to the fire.
There is an inherent danger to commenting on important issues with one-liners which add to the confusion or adds fuel to the fire. This remarkin unbecoming in a religious leader.
Our devas are the manifest (svarupa) form of the male and female components of all creation. It is my understanding that the unmanifest divinity or pure consciousness is beyond gender. This brahman does not require the principles of gender to create; the infinite wisdom of Hindu civilization has bestowed manifest divinity with male and female characteristics to account for the different stages of mental evolution of humans.
Born to Shiva and Vishnu, Sri Sri says. But wasnt Bhagwan Iyappa born to Vishnu as Mohini? If Vishnu can change form cant he change gender? Just as we refer to Narasimha as Narasimha, Varaha as Varaha, we should correctly refer to Vishnu as Mohini. To insist that Bhagwan was born to two men is to corrupt and even pervert Hindu consciousness and understanding.”
Here’s another viewpoint:
From Section 377: A Hindu view of alternate sexuality by Sandhya Jain, 14 Dec 2013:
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Several texts, including the Kama Sastra and Narada smriti, and medical texts like the Caraka Samhita (4.2), Sushruta Samhita (3.2) and Smriti Ratnavali, and Sanskrit dictionaries and lexicons like Amarakosa and Sabda-Kalpa-Druma include references to tritiya Prakriti (eunuchs, or persons who cannot be exclusively categorised as male or female). This third gender has generally been held to include bisexuals, homosexuals, intersexuals, transexuals and asexuals. Patanjali takes notice of the third sex, as do some medieval era Jaina Acharyas who note that third-sex desire can be very intense.
The overall attitude has been one of accommodation. The Dharma sastra and dharma sutra texts maintain that the third gender should be minimally maintained by their family members as they usually do not have children (Manu smriti 9.202, Arthasastra 3.5.30-32), and do not inherit property. The Vasista Dharmasutra advises the king (State) to maintain third-gender citizens with no family members and the Arthasastra forbids vilification of third-gender men or women (3.18.4-5). In the Mahabharata, king Virata shelters Arjun as the eunuch Brihannala; he teaches dance to the royal princess who later becomes his daughter-in-law.
In totality, ancient India was not enthusiastic about same sex relations, but persecution was generally absent in Hindu society. This, as the Supreme Court noted, is the reason why there have been barely 200 prosecutions of homosexuals under a law that has been around for over 150 years. Thus, it may be desirable to amend the Criminal Procedure Code to accommodate same sex relations, but it is puzzling why this should be the priority of a tottering regime.
Placing this link here for the record, Shouldn’t NYT Editors Practice Same Care about Hindu Epics As With Other Religious Texts? from which the extract below..
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These thoughts came back to us when we read this week’s article in the New York Times titled Love and Gender, According to the Hindu Epics. This article links the Ramayan to the recent decision by the Indian Supreme Court. The Court argued that issues of homosexuality and sodomy should be decided in the legislative arena rather than in the judicial arena and sent back the issue to the Indian Parliament.
Our basic question is – Which NYT Editor is competent to judge whether the discussion in this article about Ramayan is accurate or not? Which NYT Editors can honestly proclaim that they know enough about the Ramayan to decide whether the writer is wrong, misguided or perhaps defamatory? Did the NYT Editors send this article to Indian scholars for their review or did they simply publish it without the slightest concern about it being inaccurate or insulting? Our bet is the latter.
Shree Ram is one of the two most sacred, most revered figures in Indian culture. He is an Avatar of Bhagvaan Vishnu, the embodiment of the Supreme Entity or God within the Indian Trinity. This NYT article casually mixes up the stories of two different Samraat (emperors) named Dileep (spelled in the true British-obedient fashion as Dilipa by the author) who were ancestors of Shree Ram.
This is an important topic and so we will provide some history to explain the error by the NYT author:
The near lineage of Shree Ram is well understood in India. His father was Dasha-Rath whose father was Aja whose father was the famous Raghu. Raghu as so great that the entire Solar dynasty came to be known as Raghu-Vamsha or the descendants of Raghu. Raghu’s father was the celebrated Samraat Dileep. The story of how Dileep & his wife Sudakshina conceived Raghu is told in the great poem Raghu-Vamsha by Kalidas, taught in virtually every school and university that teaches Sanskrut. It is a story of immaculate conception, one of many that are found in Indian Epics. The story of this Dileep is told in the various Puraan as well. So when people talk of Dileep as an ancestor of Shree Ram, this is the Dileep they mean.
There was a much earlier Dileep whose tale the author tells in his NYT article. This was the father of Bhagirath who brought the Ganga from heavens onto earth. This Dileep was the son of Anshuman, the only surviving grandson of Emperor Saagar whose sons perished because of the shraap (curse) of a sage.
The author of the NYT article blithely mixes up these two figures either due to ignorance or for some other reason. The author also uses a book titled Same Sex Love in India as the main support of his thesis. That is his choice.
But what about NYT Editors? Did they notice that the book is written by authors named Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai, authors with Christian-Jewish & Muslim names? The author’s last name is D’Souza which speaks to a Portuguese Christian heritage. So here you have an article about the most revered, most sacred Hindu epic written and supported by people with Portuguese-Christian, Christian-Jewish and Muslim names.
Did any NYT editor notice this and go hmm? Did NYT editors think some Hindu Scholar should review this article to determine whether the discussion was accurate or not?
The above stories about the two Dileep are well-known to informed readers of Indian epics. The topic of the two Dileep is also discussed with references by D.K. Ganguly in his History & Historians in Ancient India. In his preface, Ganguly writes:
“The key to writing the history of ancient India lies in proper processing, assessment and understanding of the data and in formulating concepts and generalisations underlying the body of data. It is around the source materials, their merits, demerits and some allied problems that the present work evolves”
Can NYT Editors honestly assume that non-Hindu writers possess the “proper processing, assessment and understanding” of Hindu Epics?
Adding this here for the record: On Krishna’s chariot stands Shikhandi by Devdutt Pattnaik
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Another link (added, Sept ’18)
Section 377 No More: Evolving A Uniquely Hindu Perspective On LGBT Rights by S Venkataraman and H Voruganti, Sep 06, 2018