Same-sex love

In classical Indian literature

Lesbian action

By Sheo S Rai
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Foreword by Yawning Bread

This was the talk given by Sheo S Rai on 16 August 2005, as part of IndigNation, Singapore's
first gay and lesbian pride month.

It is often said by ignorant and/or homophobic people that same-sex relationship and love is a
Western import. The term Western itself is an anomaly as it assumes that the West is a
monolithic entity; but thats another issue.
In this essay, I will reveal that same-sex relationship and love is not an alien import but rather
has existed in Indian society throughout the ages [1]. That ironically, it was homophobia that was
an import from the West rather than homosexuality. Same-sex love has existed in Indian
society and culture and this can be seen if one were to do a literature survey.

This essay will have three parts, each touching on the literature of era, each giving a sampling of
the works of the particular era. You will notice that a lot of religious texts will be quoted as well
as religious icons will be mentioned. The reason for this is that when one talks about Indian
culture and literature, one cannot get away from the spiritual aspect. Indian society is deeply
intertwined with it, be it with Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism or Sikhism.
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I. Ancient (Before 8th C) and Medieval (8th to 18th C) Sanskritic, Buddhist & Jain Traditions

Friendship & Marriage

Friendship between same-sex (predominantly between men) was often expressed in intimate
terms. An example of this closeness is the relationship between Krishn and Arjun.

Krishn says to Arjun:

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 from thee.
(Vana Parva [2])
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On the last night before returning to Dwarka:

Krishn of great energy proceeded to the apartments of Dhananjay [3]. Worshipped duly and
furnished with every object of comfort and enjoyment, Krishn of great intelligence passed the
night in happy sleep with Dhananjay as his companion. (Aswamed Parva [4])

So sacred was friendship that it used the same symbolism as the seven circambulations made
around the sacred fire during a Hindu wedding. Saptapadam hi mitram or seven steps taken
together constitutes friendship. Ram and Sugriv walked round the fire seven times to seal their
friendship [5].

A prominent character in the Mahabharat, Bhisma, was actually quite against it. He said that a
man goes to a woman for the sake only of offspring as a one who overcomes all difficulties.
He also mentioned that sex and marriage came when the human race degenerated.

In the five books of the Panchatantra[6], what is to be noted is that all the characters (animals of
different species) are male and form close friendships. In one story, friendship triumphs
marriage.
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Births Other Than Natural

The obvious heterosexual pairing is absent in various instances. Sometimes it takes the form of
being born from the elements and sometimes from same-sex unions or designs. Sita (Ramayan)
and Draupadi (Mahabharat) were born from the earth and fire respectively. Jarasandh was born
as two halves from two women and later joined by a demoness (Mahabharat). Kartiki was born
by Agni swallowing Shivs sperm and hence is also know is Skanda from the verb skandri [7]
(Shiv Puran [8]). Ayappan was born out of the union between Shiv and Vishnu in the form of
Mohini (Bhagawat Puran). The latter depicts the fluidity of gender. Ganesh was born outside of
the womb (Shiv Puran).

Shiv ordered two women to have sex in order to have children after their husband died. Hence
Bhagirath (meaning of the two vulvas) was born (Krittivass Ramayan).

Dual mothering is also another form free from same-sex pairing. Agni is also known as dwimatri
or of two mothers. The gender of firesticks in Sanskrit is female. Friction, not penetration
produces fire.

Here is the gear for friction, here tinder made ready for the spark.
Bring thou the Matron, we will rub Agni in ancient fashion forth.
Mortals have brought to life the God immortal
The sisters 10, unwedded and united, together grasp the Babe, the new born Infant.
(Rig Veda [9])
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Sex Change

And then, among the many sex change stories, there are two that stand out Sikhandi and
Brihinala from the Mahabharat. Sikhandi was a woman in the previous birth reborn to avenge a
wrong done to her. Popular TV depicts Sikhandi as an effeminate man. Bhisma recognised the
woman in him and refused to wield a weapon against him. Bhisma said:

O joy of the Kurus, I will not use my arrows against a woman, one who was once a woman, one
whose name is like a womans or one who resembles a woman. For this reason, I will not kill
Sikhandi. (Mahabharat)

Brihinala was the name of Arjun when he, along with his brothers, spent their last year in exile in
incognito. He was a hermaphrodite he had a mans physique with a womans disposition.

Apart from the above two, another transformation stands out Vishnu in the form of Mohini. In
addition, there was also a term kimpurush, a what man a being that would be a man in one
month and a woman in another.
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Gender as a Construct

The Vimalakirtinirdesa, in Mahayana Buddhism, relates about a monk, who after being turned
into a woman by a goddess and then back to a man, is asked whether he felt anything different,
anything innate about being a woman. He reveals that nothing about gender is innate. The
goddess explained:

Just as you are not really a woman but appear to be female in form, all women also appear to be
female in form but are not really women. Therefore, the Buddha said that all are not really men
or women All things neither exist nor do not exist. The Buddha said there is neither existence
nor non-existence.

If there is nothing innate about gender, then is heterosexuality the one and only way?

Patajalis grammar [10] and Jain texts talk about the concept the third sex with various
ambiguous subcategories such as kliba, pandaka and napunsak. These have been part of the
Indian worldview for nearly 3,000 years.
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Other examples of explicit same-sex love and desire

Jain philosopher, Sakatayana, in the Strinirvanaprakaran said that a person was capable of being
aroused by the same-sex, opposite sex or even a non-human animal. Going further, Jain thinkers
said that there were three types of desires from men, women and the third sex. Hence desire
was fluid and transient.

In the Manikantha Jataka [11], the King of Serpents falls in love with a young ascetic. After a
while, when the King is gone, the young ascetic grew pale from missing him.

The Kamasutra [12] specifically caters for all inclinations. The book is instructional and not
prescriptive. It says that one should act according to local customs and ones own inclinations
and desires. It specifies three types of genders pums prakriti, stri pakriti and tritiya prakriti
men, women and the third sex. The third sex was further broken down to various categories
which included manly and effeminate gays and manly and effeminate lesbians. It is interesting to
note that the book says that manly gays who hid their desires fulfilled them by working as
masseurs and hairdressers. It even describes how masseurs work their clients to a achieve orgasm
for both of them.
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II. Medieval Materials Perso-Urdu Traditions

During this period, homoerotic men were mentioned in a non-pejorative way. There were poets
who wrote about their love for adolescent boys, sultans in love with their male slaves and Sufi
mystics who pined for their lord like female lovers. Gay men were well integrated into the
culture of cities like Delhi.

An example of a long term relationship was that between poet Mukaram Baksh and Mukkaram.
After the formers death, the latter observed a period of mourning observed by widows.

Sufi mystics believe in personal experience not dogma. To them, same gender love could
transcend sex and therefore not distract them from the ultimate aim of gnonsis. They would
adopt a female persona in their poems and songs when writing about God.

Urdu poets neither celebrated or denigrated homosexual love to the exclusion of other types of
passion. Marriage was seen as a legitimate sphere of sexual activity but not of experiencing
erotic energies. As long as a man fulfilled his duties of a householder, he was free to seek sexual
pleasure and emotional involvement elsewhere. Hence erotic commitment was not a threat to
marriage. One poet, Abru [13], when to such an extent to reject heterosexuality saying:

He who prefers a slut to a boy, is no lover, only a creature of lust.

Here are some examples same-sex attraction, love and liaisons:

Amir Khusrao, mystic poet-musician, mourned his mentors, Chishti saint Shaikh Nizamuddin
Aulias, death:

The beauty sleeps on the bridal bed, her tresses all over her face;
Come Khusro, lets go home, for darkness settles all around.

Looking at the empty bed, I weep day and night

Every moment I yearn for my beloved, cannot find a moments peace.

He has gone, my beloved has crossed the river,

He has gone across, and I am left behind.

Sultan Qutbuddin Khalji, like his father Alauddin Khalji, were in love with their slaves.
Qutbuddins slave was Khusrao Khan. Wrote a writer of their times:

He often wanted to put a sword through the Sultan and kill him while he was doing the immoral
act of publicly kissing him. This vile murderer of his father was always thinking of ways to kill
the Sultan. Publicly he offered his body to the Sultan like an immoral and shameless woman. But
within himself he was seething with anger and choking on a desire for revenge at the way the
Sultan forced himself upon him and took advantage of him.

When hauled before a king to explain a charge against him for dancing with crossdressers, said
the mystic Akhi Jamshed Rajgiri:
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I do not want a crown, I do not want a throne. I only want to rub my forehead in the dust and
dance with abandon over the earth. If the Sultan would show me favour, then I might be allowed
to dance even upon the winds Because those who denounce me are not real men in the
spiritual sense, they cannot accept love with all its consequences in their hearts. Oh my love,
there a thousand snares in every form; oh my love, one who is not a real man can never
experience true love!

Mughal emperor Babur wrote in his memoirs the Baburnama:

I maddened and afflicted myself for a boy in the camp-bazaar, his very name, Baburi, fitting in.
Up till then, I had had no inclination for any-one, indeed of love and desire, either by hear-say or
experience, I had not heard, I had not talked. One day during that time of desire and passion
when I was going with companions along a land and suddenly met him face to face. I got into
such a state of confusion that I almost went right off. To look straight at him or to put words
together was impossible. With a hundred torments and shames, I went on.

When Mughal emperor Jehangir asked poet-scholar Mutribi Samarqandi whether a fair young
man was more beautiful than a dark one, the latter replied when he saw a dark-skinned youth:
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A Hindu boy stole my wretched heart

He stole its tranquillity and its calmness
My reason, my judgement, my endurance, my patience
All of these he stole with his laugh.

He then saw a fair-skinned youth and said:

O moon-faced beauty in this beautiful night

So astonishingly desirable in the light if the candle
You have stolen Mutribis heart altogether
With a wink, guilelessness, playfulness and amiability.
Do not tell me to look at the splendour of the perfumed plants
My heart is your captive, what do I need from there?
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III. Modern Indian Materials (19th to 20th C)

There were basically two developments that occurred during this period. The first was the rise of
the homophobic voice in literature and the second, the sexual love between women becomes
more prominent while that between men is drastically reduced.

There are five words for homoerotically inclined women dugana, zanakhe, satar, chapathai
and chapatbaz.

Rekhti Poetry in Urdu

Rekhti, poetry written by male poets in the female voice and using female idioms, became
prominent in the late 18th and 19th C but in the 20th C, its was labelled as obscene.

An example of women loving women can be seen below. This is not imitating heterosexual love.
Although a dildo is mentioned, there is an emphasis on kissing, petting, passionate embraces and
clitoral stimulation. Shaikh Qalandar Baksh puts it in the following words:
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Id sacrifice all men for your sake, my life,

Id sacrifice a hundred lives for your embraces
How beautiful is it when two vulvas meet
This is the tale they tell each other all the time:

The way you rub me, ah!

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When you join your lips to my lips,

If feels as if new life pours into my being,
When breast meets breast, the pleasure is such
That from sheer joy the words rise to my lips:

The way you rub me, ah!

How can I be happy with a man as soon as he sits by me

He starts showing me a small think like a mongoose --
Id much rather have a big dildo
And I know you know all that I know

It must be noted that in pre-colonial India, not a single person was ever executed for homosexual
behaviour. In contrast, gays were vilified, tortured and/or executed. In 1860, the anti-sodomy law
came into being and incorporated in the Indian Penal Code (Section 377). While this proved to
be progressive for Britain because the killing stopped, it was retrogressive for India. British
educators and missionaries denounced Indian culture. The educated Indian elite became their
agents while not condemning the culture, they did not reject puritanical Victorian values which
were put on a pedestal. In fact they claimed that Indian culture was originally similar to the
Victorian one, which was both anti-pleasure and anti-sex.
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The homophobia was so internalised by educated Indians that Pandit Madhavacharya in 1911
introduced the Kamasutra by saying that people should read the book for the right forms of love
making and avoid the wrong ones.
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However despite all the attempts by prudes, life went on and same-sex love survived in
literature. One example is by Vikram Seth:

Some men like Jack

and some like Jill;
Im glad I like
them both; but still

I wonder if
this freewheeling
really is an
enlightened thing

or is its greater
scope a sign
of deviance from
some party line?

In the strict ranks

of Gay and Straight
What is my status?
Stray? or Great?
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Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad, a respected Muslim theologian, placed heterosexual and
homosexual desire on the same plane.

No one is worthy of being called a human unless he has crossed the Rubicon of love. He who has
not experienced the intensity of desire or the deluge of tears is less than human. When the ascetic
in the mosque bows his head in Namaz, despite all his piety and devotion, he cannot help
enjoying thoughts of smiling Houris and Ghilmaans of Paradise. Even the super-ascetics who
seek the truth in the recesses of the mosques are not free from these alluring images.

Sanskrit scholar and priest of the Vaishnav temple in Sri Rangam said that same-sex lovers must
have been heterosexual lovers in previous births. While the sex may change, the souls remain the
same and this impels the souls to seek out one another. He added:

Homosexuality is also a design of Nature. Earth is overpopulated by the human species and the
Earth Mother Bhoomi Devi is no longer able to carry the burden. So this is one of Mother
Natures way (sic) of combating population explosion. Nature will not allow any species to
dominate completely The sly human is exterminating vitally important insect, plant, and even
mammalian life in order to make life for himself more luxurious.
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Conclusion

Many examples on same-sex love and relationships exist in Indian history. I have done injustice
by only quoting a few. What was love so sublime has been tarnished by modernity. Like in many
other instances, what is glaring is ignored. Despite the various examples of same-sex love in
Indian literature, people choose to ignore it as it causes them discomfort or worse, cognitive
dissonance.
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Gays and lesbians are not special. They have been made so by homophobia.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Foreword by Yawning Bread

This was the talk given by Sheo S Rai on 16 August 2005, as part of IndigNation, Singapore's
first gay and lesbian pride month.

Footnotes

This essay is based heavily on the book Same-sex Love in India, edited by Ruth Vanita and
Saleem Kidwai. This amazing book is a seminal work on same-sex relationship in Indian
literature. It gives extensive examples throughout the ages.

From the Mahabharat, a Hindi epic written by Sage Vyas, reputed to be the longest work of
poetry in the world. This talks about a feud between two sets of cousins the Pandavs and the
Kauravs. Krishn, chief of the Yadav clan and the 8th incarnation of Vishnu aids the Pandavs. (ca.
8th BC 5th AD)
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Another name of Arjun.

From the Mahabharat.

From another Hindu epic, Ramayan, written by Sage Valmiki. (ca. 5th C BC 5th C AD). This
Sanksrit original was later translated to various Indian languages such as in Hindi by Tulsidas,
Tamil by Kamban, Bengali by Krittivas and others. This is the story of Ram, the 7th incarnation
of Vishnu, who was exiled and later defeated Ravan, the king of Lanka who abducted Sita,
Rams wife.

Panchatantra, written by Vishnu Sharma, is a collection of five volumes of stories written by a

teacher to help instruct the different aspects of kinghood for princes. The five volumes together
serve as a manual for a prospective king, to help him in deciding how to rule, how to choose his
fellow friends, fellow ministers, how to conduct himself in daily life etc. This was probably put
together around 300 AD.

That which is spilled or oozed, namely semen.

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The Purans are a class of literary texts, all written in Sanskrit verse, whose composition dates
from the 4th century BC to about 1,000 AD. The word "Puran" means "old". There are eighteen
major Purans and a few minor ones. Each is a long book consisting of various stories of the Gods
and Goddesses, hymns, an outline of ancient history, cosmology, rules of life, rituals,
instructions on spiritual knowledge. The other set of texts important to Hinduism are the
Upanishads. There are 108 Upanishads in all. Upanishad means the inner or mystic teaching. The
term Upanishad is derived from upa (near), ni (down) and s(h)ad (to sit), i.e., sitting down near.
Groups of pupils sit near the teacher to learn from him the secret doctrine. The most ancient
Upanishads are, in fact, part of the Vedas. They constitute the fundamentals, the essence of the
Hindu philosophy.

The Vedas are sacred knowledge transmitted orally and later compiled in four collection Rig,
Sama, Yajur and Atharva. (1500 1000 BC)

2nd C BC

The Jatakas are stories in Pali of the stories of Buddhas previous lives. Already well known
hundreds of years before, they were finally compiled in 5th C AD.

Written by Vatsyayana Mallanaga ca. 1st C to 6th C AD.

Pen name of Najmuddin Shah Mubarak. He came from a family of Sufi saints and scholars. A
modern critic described him as the chief of boy-worshippers.

In understanding Urdu Rekhti

Urdu Rekhti emerged in India under the background of Kahji rao Mandirs and Vastyanas Kama
Sutra and also Lazzatunnisa of Iranian Origin. History of Hindu Devdasis and Muslim Harems
also paved way for such erotic atmosphere in Urdu Rekhta and directly took part in heterosexual,
lesbianism, and gay sex affairs with extreme pervertism. Vintage Indian paintings help us
understand the tender feminist love for same sex and perverted heterosexual desires. Womenly
relation like, Baji, Anna, Apa, Goeyan, Buva, Begum, Dogana, Zanakhi, Elaichi etc. strong pure
as well as sexual crush for same and also for hetro sexual relations and desires.These samples
can also help undertand and imagine the real sentiments and cultural patterns of Urdu Rekhti.
The work of Saadat Yar kahn Rangeen, Insaha Allah Khan Insha, Muhsin Khan Rangeeli
Begum and Mir Yar Kahn Jansaheb and work of Mir Jaffer Zatalli containing vulgar and erotic
poetry can also be visualized through these pieces of art which was a part of Indian culture
during its declining moments. Although sacred family life and purity of relations has been a
dominant feature of Indian culture, the vulgarity and sexual encounters of debauchery gay sex
and lesbian affairs also prevailed outside Indian family life in private parties, parks and courtly
palaces.