by Ira Trivedi
It was time to see for myself what strange love stories were taking place in the country today. At the campus of an engineering college in Delhi, I am judging the Mr and Ms Rendezvous competition, where students from all over India participate to win the coveted titles and be declared the most eligible bachelor and bachelorette on campus. Here I meet Prayag, who captures the title and steals the show with his energetic, albeit heavily accented rendition of Michael Bolton’s ‘When a Man Loves a Woman’, which would have made Bolton proud.
Prayag, twenty, is in the final year of his engineering course. He is good-looking in a dorky sort of way, with a thin, lithe body (from his years playing state-level badminton) and glasses framed in thick, red plastic. He sings, plays the guitar, and is also an expert chess player. His family lives in Nagpur and is strictly middle class: his father has a government job, and his mother is a housewife. His parents are keen that he take the IAS exam but young Prayag aspires to more. He wants to be an entrepreneur; it is his dream to become the country’s next tech tycoon. For my parent’s generation, and the one before that, a government job was considered the epitome of success. Not anymore. Most of the hundreds of young people whom I interviewed consider government jobs to be dull and boring. Job security, health insurance, benefits, prestige—these things don’t matter so much. What seems to matter above all is money, which allows them to indulge in the country’s burgeoning consumer culture.
On a sunny winter day in Delhi, I sit with Prayag and his new girlfriend Pia at the canteen.
Pia, a third year student, is studying computing and mathematics. She is plain-faced, her most dominant feature being her long, thick, frizzy hair with bangs that touch the frame of her glasses. After a courtship that included dates at McDonald’s and Pizza Hut (where they always split the bill), Prayag captured her heart and ‘proposed’ to her, she became his girlfriend. Prayag is Pia’s first boyfriend.
As we sit and talk, a pretty girl strolls by. She has bright blonde highlights in her hair, and is dressed rather provocatively—in an abbreviated skirt and a tight top that shows off her generous breasts. Prayag bristles like a hound in heat, and turns reflexively to stare at her. Pia doesn’t notice this; she is busy prattling away to a classmate of hers. Prayag furtively whispers to me that the name of the girl who has walked past us is Charu. She is a humanities student and is hot stuff on campus. I casually ask him if she has a boyfriend, and he nods vigorously.
‘She does,’ he says, his eyes continuing to follow Charu’s progress.
‘You like her?’ I tease him. Prayag tears his eyes away from Charu and looks guiltily at the floor.
‘No, ma’am,’ he says finally.
‘Why not? She’s pretty,’ I whisper, making sure Pia, plain as a chapatti, cannot hear us.
‘She is not a good girl,’ he whispers back, cool and granular, his tone different from the flushed teenager of a few seconds ago.
‘What do you mean?’ I ask him wondering what misdeeds Hot Stuff Charu could possibly be up to.
‘She’s just, how do I say this, a bad girl, if you know what I mean,’ says Prayag.
He explains in his normal voice, as Pia has just wandered off with her girlfriend: ‘There are girls who are good, and then there are girls who are bad. Pia is a good girl. Charu is a bad girl. I mean, I guess, there are girls who are in-between. Sakshi was like that, but she was really special. I guess other girls can be too.’
Sakshi is someone Prayag speaks of often, his first girlfriend, a girl whom he fell deeply in love with, but who after three months, left him for a friend of his from Delhi University.
Prayag says he loves Pia too, though they have been dating only for a month. But he says that he could never feel for anyone the way he did for Sakshi.
Prayag, like many of his contemporaries, has grown up dividing women into two categories: ‘good girls’ are not sexually forthcoming or active and ‘bad girls’ are and while he lusts after the latter, he could not imagine being romantically involved with them. During his campus courtship of Sakshi, though, he had been forced to redefine his ideas about the sexuality of modern women. Sakshi seemed to Prayag like his mother—idealistic, strong and trustworthy, but at the same time uncommonly sexy, with her ‘traditional’ good looks, slender, graceful figure and large breasts. To Prayag, Sakshi was the perfect Indian woman, just the right blend of conservative and modern. She wore salwaar-kameez to class but managed to look sexy in the well-fitted, low-cut outfits, with their diaphanous dupattas. Her hair was lustrous and long, and she kept it in a loose, long braid with escaping wisps that created a halo around her head, giving her a beatific aura. After his three-month relationship with Sakshi he knew though she was seemingly modest and conservative she was capable of posing in the nude in dorm rooms, performing fellatio in empty classrooms, and conducting a secret affair with another boy while being committed to him. A lovelorn Prayag was torn—how could he love a ‘bad’ girl so intently.
Many of these views by my fellow Indians on ‘good’ and ‘bad’ stem from a deep sense of sexual repression. For example, masturbation, which most sexologists consider to be healthy, is considered by most to be terrible—something which you must never talk about, or no one should see you do. Even something sexually titillating, like a woman wearing a short skirt, or talking to someone of the opposite sex is looked down upon. On the other hand, the celibate—the holy man, the virgin bride—are considered good and pure. It is this innate repression, this mistrust of the sexual which is then thrust on to women, or men, and relationships.
Prayag’s confused views on sex are typical of the average urban Indian, broadly speaking. There appear to be two paradigms of good and bad, ‘fast’ and ‘slow’, pure Sita and frolicking Radha.17
As scholar Heidi Pauwels observes in her comparison of the two: ‘If Sita is Rama’s wife, Radha is Krishna’s love. If Sita is chastity incarnate, Radha is sensuality incarnate. She is Krishna’s paramour, and in most interpretations, their relationship is a clandestine one.’ Whereas Sita is legitimately married, Radha is said to be married to another while she conducts her romance with Krishna though this is a hotly debated issue. ‘If the mutual love of Rama and Sita is an example of happy monogamy, Radha’s relationship with Krishna is famously fraught with the issue of his unfaithfulness and her jealousy of his other loves and wives. If Sita is a queen, aware of her social responsibilities, Radha is exclusively focused on her romantic relationship with her lover. Thus we have two opposite role models. Hindu women then have to navigate between ideals from both ends of the moral universe: the loyal, chaste wife and the adulterous lover.’18
What of the modern Indian woman then? She constantly struggles with the pulls and pushes of both extremes. On the one hand owning up to the desire to have sex would make a girl bad. Refraining from sex before marriage is a way to show virtue and commitment; you are expected to wear your virginity like a badge of honour. On the other hand, in some circles that are considered ‘cool’, the notion of purity and virginity is an atavistic notion of the past. Today’s urban Indian girls, like Prayag’s first love Sakshi and his girlfriend Pia are stuck somewhere in between. They are no longer like Sita enclosed in a Lakshman Rekha when her mate leaves to hunt, but are more like a modern day Radha, hanging out with her lover in malls and running out of her dorm room for a midnight rendezvous. And, like Radha, sex is typically not casual or adventitious. It is something that is done when you are deeply in love, in a committed relationship that one hopes will lead to marriage. Statistics published in a 2007 report on Youth in India, published by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, prove this: 61 per cent of men in urban India want to marry their premarital partner (42.3 per cent men do end up doing it), while 78.2 per cent of women intend to marry their partner (86.3 per cent end up doing it). This extensive study showed that the majority of youth who engage in a premarital romantic partnership had expectations of a longer-term commitment. The hook-up and one-night stand culture still seems to be ra
re in India and though there is burgeoning curiosity about sex among the country’s youth, they appear to want to experience it within a serious relationship.
Traditionally, Sita has been looked upon as the female role model. She is gracious, inspiring, pure and, most importantly—sacrificing. But today the Indian woman is beginning to protest against this long-standing role model which both men and women have idealized for centuries.
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Besides these religious underpinnings to the country’s sexual heritage, the most famous treatise on love, that had its origins in ancient India was of course the Kamasutra—the famous exposition on lovemaking and repository of wisdom—erotic and more. As scholar Wendy Doniger writes in her book On Hinduism, ‘It [Kamasutra] is a book about the art of living—about finding a partner, maintaining power in a marriage, committing adultery, living as or with a courtesan, using drugs—and also about the positions in sexual intercourse.’
Vatsyayana, the author of the Kamasutra (kama means sensuality and sutra means rules of), lived during the third century CE in the city of Pataliputra, which later became the home of the highly cultivated and eroticized Gupta court. It is unclear whether Vatsyayana himself was as highly sexual as the Kamasutra’s protagonist, the nagaraka, who can be thought of as an urbane playboy. Some maintain that Vatsyayana was actually a virgin yogi. Regardless, he wrote his book out of a concern that sexual learning in his time was slowly disappearing.
Through depicting the life of the nagaraka, the Kamasutra offers suggestions on many subjects, from how to freshen the breath by chewing betel leaves to how to treat a prostitute. But it is, of course, an enormously detailed manual on every aspect of lovemaking. Vatsyayana describes twenty-six different styles of kissing and details on how to arouse each part of the body. He discusses the types of sounds one makes during sexual intercourse, how to begin and end lovemaking, and how to use the nails and teeth as a source of pain to further stimulate the body. He discusses the sexual compatibility of individuals depending on their body and genital size and the intensity of desire. Vatsyayana mentions homosexuality, and writes about the importance of women’s pleasure in a way that implies that women could benefit from reading the Kamasutra. He discusses the G-spot and the woman’s climax. To pleasure the woman, he advises a man to use his index and middle fingers inside the vagina while rubbing the clitoris with his thumb.
We have to keep in mind that the Kamasutra was passed along as an oral tradition, so it was subject to a lot of interpretation along the way. Yet the fact that it has survived for so long (for over 2,000 years) and has been a resource for other erotic commentaries is proof enough of its immense value.
However, in Hinduism kama is only one of three goals (trivarga) of human existence of which the other two, dharma (duty) and artha (purpose), are often given more importance because of their emphasis on duty towards society.
It is clear that dharma was more important and complex than artha or kama,19 and the liberal and sensuous strand running through ancient Indian society had to contend against law-givers, scholars and teachers who wanted to mould society in quite different ways. One of the most well-known dharmashastras is The Laws of Manu (in Sanskrit the Manusmriti) composed around 100 CE. It is said to be written by Manu, but that is almost certainly a pseudonym20 since Manu is the son of the Self-born One, the Creator, the Indian version of Adam, a mythical construct but not a god; the one who defines the beginning of the human species.2
Manu’s monkish attitude was at the opposite end of the spectrum from Vatsyayana’s Kamasutra. Manu saw sex as a strictly procreative, monogamous activity, as opposed to the pleasure-giving experience Vatsyayana encouraged. Vatsyayana writes that a woman who is not pleasured may hate her man and leave him for another while Manu states: ‘a virtuous wife should constantly serve her husband like a god, even if he behaves badly, freely indulges his lust, and is devoid of any good qualities’. Whereas the Kamasutra has an entire chapter on ‘Other Men’s Wives’, The Laws of Manu warns ‘if men persist in seeking intimate contact with other men’s wives, the king should brand them with punishments that inspire terror and banish them’. Vatsyayana saw adultery as merely a means of providing pleasure, while Manu worried about the possible uprooting of the caste system should pregnancy occur with an unknown father of the wrong caste.
Manu’s was not the only text opposing the erotic views of the Kamasutra. Many Hindu texts of the time like the Bhagvad Gita, composed a little before the Kamasutra (all dates in ancient Indian history are vague, so we don’t know for sure) denounces indulging in the senses as being evil. Ironically the Bhagvad Gita is a discourse given by the grown-up Krishna, who once frolicked with cow-girls in Vrindavan.
Buddhism and Jainism, religions which were flourishing in the third century, rejected the physical world. Ashvaghosa’s Life of the Buddha which may be a hundred years or so older than the Kamasutra warns that ‘the one who they call Kama-deva here-on-earth, he who has variegated weapons, flower-tipped arrows, likewise they call him Mara, the ruler of the way of desire, the enemy of liberation.’ For Buddhists, Mara was the ultimate tempter and was even known as the lord of death.22
Semen was widely regarded as an enormously precious substance, and meant to be preserved. The most famous example of the power of semen is Shiva, who is often represented as an erect phallus, a symbol of power and fertility. Shiva holds back his seed so his ‘lingam’ remains erect as a potential destructive force. Semen retention by celibacy was further impressed upon in Ayurveda, an ancient Indian system of medicine which advised limiting sexual intercourse to two or three times a week during youth and once or twice a month later on.23 Fortunately, the heavy-handedness of texts like The Laws of Manu were offset from time to time by the works of famous playwrights like Kalidasa whose fourth century Raghuvamsa is a masterpiece of erotic verse.
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The definitive history of Indian sexual culture is yet to be written. And to do that, anyone who attempts to research the history of the country’s sexuality in the ancient or medieval period is doomed to grow increasingly frustrated as I did. Certain periods are well documented, but vast portions are maddeningly vague. Finally, I turn to James McConnachie, British author who has written a well-regarded book on the Kamasutra entitled The Book of Love: The Story of the Kamasutra, to get a better understanding of the country’s sexual beginnings, so to speak.
‘There is a massive gap in history,’ he begins. ‘We just don’t know much about India’s sexual history. Piecing together India’s sexual history is really a struggle, especially because it is so vast, and while we have some pieces of the puzzle, there are so many that we do not have.’
I am glad I am not the only one who felt that way. Sources from the same time period were often fundamentally at odds with each other—some were highly erotic, others religious, and then there was the material that was both religious and erotic.
McConnachie tells me about sexual culture in India’s medieval period (eight to eighteenth century CE). He explains the ‘twin-tracks’ mindset which dominated much of this period. Essentially he described the erotic-ascetic tension that I had found throughout my research. One line of the twin tracks says that sex is religious, sacred and profound, whereas the other line says that sex is just sex.
‘My assumption is that in the medieval period, sex was largely used by religious thinkers as a metaphor. Sex was spiritualized, and made into something sacred. We have sex explicit on temple walls, in Tantric texts, and in theatre. But at the same time, you get the odd poet who goes down and dirty, and then you get the handbook on sexual postures,’ says McConnachie.
While the Tantric shastras from the Kamakhya Devi temple saw sex as sacred, we also had texts like Amaru’s eighth-century Amarusataka, a famous erotic love poem. Other well-known erotic works from the medieval period include the Ananga Ranga (Stage of Love) written by Kalyana Malla in the fifteenth century. The Koka Shastra (fifteenth or sixteenth century CE) was a well-known sex manual that
referenced the Kamasutra and predicted how a woman would be as a wife and sexual partner.
The Mughal period (1526-1857) saw the creation of a new, less conflicted sexual culture. From the twin-tracks mindset, there was now a middle-track mindset. Even though Islam has a mild anti-sexual element, and had its ups and downs so far as society’s attitude towards sex and sexuality was concerned, during most periods of Mughal rule, sex wasn’t frowned upon. In fact, the Mughal period had a more balanced view on sex and sexuality than the era that had preceded it. The sexually explicit artwork of the time shows that sexual love in most Islamic societies was marked by a cheerful sensuality.
McConnachie explains further, ‘What really strikes me about the erotic miniatures and writings of the Mughal era is that despite being separated from the Kamasutra by more than 1,000 years, and by religion and culture, they show us a strangely similar world to the one we see in the Kamasutra—they show us sex that is unabashedly luxurious, resolutely non-spiritual, filled with sensual pleasure—and slightly acrobatic!’
There was however a slight disruption in the ‘middle-track’ sexual culture with the more erotic productions of the Rajput ateliers of northwestern India which created an entire sensual genre in the fifteenth century with an erotic hero, the nayaka, and heroine, the nayika sometimes referred to as Krishna and Radha.
The real change in sexual mores seems to have come about with the advent of the British in the eighteenth century; they brought new energy to the twin-track conflict culture.
‘It was a marriage of two cultures—Indian and Victorian, which were oddly similar, and had the same deep-set tension. For all their prudery, the Victorians were surprising salacious, and were responsible for printing and publishing enormous numbers of sexual texts. The two cultures met each other through British imperialism and colonial adventures and brought the same problems together. They didn’t destroy anything, they just gave a new energy to something that had always been there,’ explains McConnachie.
