An Interview with Ruth Vanita, author of Same Sex Love in India

By Elyse Weingarten

Only recently in human history has the heterosexual, monogamous partnership, recognized through the institution of marriage, become socially normative. Previously, many societies, including India, celebrated same-sex friendships, viewing them as a compatible union alongside a heterosexual marriage or as a person’s primary emotional attachment. In her ground-breaking book, Same-Sex Love in India, scholar and activist Ruth Vanita breaks the silence of heterosexism, tracing the two thousand year-old homoerotic tradition in Indian society.

“Love need not take an explicitly sexual form, but it is nearly always expressed in language of poetic excess and metaphoric power,” Vanita writes in the preface of Same Sex Love in India. In following with contemporary Western convention, it is generally believed that love can be either and only, familial or sexual, and that passionate love is singularly borne from difference. But there is a special love that can only emerge through sameness; a love, not necessarily sexual, but a passionate love, nonetheless. This same-sex friendship is a love that has been legitimated, and often celebrated, through out most of India’s literary history. Explicit and implicit references to homoeroticism appear consistently through out ancient Indian texts. While the majority of Indians believe that homosexuality is a perversity that was introduced in India through British colonialism, in Same-Sex Love in India, Vanita attempts to reclaim this history by presenting homoerotic examples in literature from the ancient time until the present.

In addition to co-authoring Same-Sex Love in India (Palgrave, 2000), Ruth Vanita is the editor of Queering India (Routledge, 2002), a collection of essays exploring same-sex love in India’s popular culture, law, literature and film. Her next book, Love’s Rite: Same-Sex Marriage in India and the West will be published this summer (Palgrave, New York ; Penguin India, New Delhi). Formerly a Reader at Delhi University, Vanita is currently Associate Professor of Liberal Studies and Women’s Studies at the University of Montana. Here, Vanita speaks about her work, the homoerotic content in ancient myth and homophobia in present-day India.

What motivated you to write the book, Same Sex Love in India?

My co-author, Saleem Kidwai and I grew up and were educated in India and taught at Delhi University for 20 years. We found that same-sex love was almost never mentioned in the academy or in public forums. Most educated Indians thought it was a Western idea and practice, absent in ancient India, and imported by foreigners later. We both had been separately collecting Indian literature and media references to homosexuality for years. We wrote the book to demonstrate that there is a 2000 year old textual tradition in India of discussing and representing same-sex relationships. The book contains translations and analyses of texts written in 15 Indian languages. Some of the texts are condemnatory, some are non-judgmentally descriptive and several are celebratory.

Is the appearance of homoeroticism in ancient texts unique to India or is it prevalent in other parts of the world, as well?

It is not unique. There is well-researched evidence from many ancient civilizations, including Egypt, Greece, Rome, Persia, China and Japan, of poetic and artistic celebration of same-sex relationships. Even in ancient and medieval Christian Europe, a tradition of celebrating homoerotic love did emerge, despite Christianity’s condemnation of sodomy.

The only unusual aspect of Indian traditions may be that, despite breaks, they are relatively continuous from the ancient to the modern period. Hinduism, unlike the ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman religions, did not become extinct. In Hinduism, as in those religions, everything in the universe is in some sense divine and there are Gods or Goddesses representing most aspects of human and non-human life. Thus, some of the fourteenth-century sacred texts are still recited by thousands of Indians, and various versions and translations of the Kamasutra are sold on the streets, providing the only sex education many Indians receive. Some temples with erotic sculptures are still in use.

In Same-Sex Love in India, you emphasize the importance of same-sex friendship in ancient India. Can you elaborate on this?

Friendship in ancient Indian texts is as a life-defining relationship, without which a good life for any human being was thought to be incomplete. Similar ideals existed in ancient Greek texts and in medieval Christian texts as well. Friendship was seen as the overarching relationship, other relationships, including marriage, being types of friendship. Human relationship with Gods and with other creatures was also ideally one of friendship. This was the way Aristotle defined friendship, and so did ancient Indian texts. As late as the nineteenth century, Austen used the word “friends” to include family. It is only in the twentieth century that family and friends became split off from each other. In the eleventh century Sanskrit story compendium, the Kathasaritsagara, there are examples of life-long friendships. The friends live and die together, risk their lives for each other, and share everything. Their union defines and shapes their lives. In one case, one friend marries a woman but the other friend does not. When the married friend dies, both his wife and his male friend commit suicide to be with him, and all three are reborn together.

Can you give some examples of homoeroticism in ancient texts?

The fourth-century Kamasutra, a Sanskrit text, categorizes men who desire men as a “third nature” (tritiya prakriti) and further divides them into those who are masculine-appearing and those who are feminine-appearing. It suggests that the masculine-appearing ones can work as masseurs or hairdressers to make contacts with men. It then gives an extended, explicit sensuous description of oral sex between two men. It also notes that men who are not of the third nature may engage in sex with one another and unite if they trust and love one another and are friends. It mentions that women in the women’s quarters have sex with one another, using dildos of various kinds.

The first century Sanskrit medical text Sushruta Samhita states that if two women make love and their sexual fluids unite, one of them may become pregnant and produce a boneless child. Several fourteenth-century sacred texts in Bengali and one in Sanskrit narrate the story of two widowed queens who make love with divine blessings and produce a child who grows up to be a heroic king and brings the river Ganga from heaven to earth. In some versions of this story, the child is born boneless but is healed by a sage as part of the Gods’ plan.

Ancient temple sculpture at Khajuraho, Konarak and elsewhere beautifully depicts same-sex eroticism. One such sculpture from the eleventh-century, shows Kama, God of Love, shooting an arrow at two women who are embracing each other. All three figures have blissful smiles on their faces.

On a more personal note, what was the experience of being a public lesbian in India like for you? Did you experience a lot of persecution? How accepting was your family when you first came out?

I was not exactly a “public lesbian.” Some of my work on gay and lesbian themes was published in India from the early 1980s onwards, and was well received. I did not experience any overt persecution. My colleagues at the university were welcoming and supportive of my work. I would say that what I experienced was heterosexism rather than homophobia. But the overwhelming social silence about homosexuality made it very difficult to form lasting relationships. For a long time, I felt isolated and lonely, but then I found several very close gay and lesbian friends who were and still are crucial to my emotional survival. My parents are very supportive of and close to my partner and me. They stayed with us for a year in the U.S. and we visit them often in India.

What is the current legal status of homosexuals in India?

Homosexuality as such is nowhere mentioned in the law. But there is a law banning “intercourse against the order of nature,” which is defined as penetration, and includes anal sex between men and between a man and woman. This law, Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, was introduced in 1860 by the British and remains on the books. It is generally used to harass and blackmail gay men and has also been used to threaten lesbians. Suparna Bhaskaran has written an essay tracing the case history of this law, in Queering India. There is now a movement in India, led by LGBT organizations and human rights organizations, to get the law repealed. Two cases filed in the Supreme Court to get the law declared unconstitutional, have been dismissed on technicalities. So while it is not illegal to be a homosexual, or even to marry a person of the same sex (such a marriage is not legally recognized but is not illegal and may be socially recognized) certain sexual acts are illegal. And the law against those sexual acts is often misused to harass homosexuals.

Since the 1980s, the Indian press has been reporting cases of same-sex couples who marry each other by religious rites, and also same-sex couples who commit suicide together when their families separate them. Most of these couples are lower middle class women in small towns, who have no contact with any gay movement. My next book, Love’s Rite: Same-Sex Marriage in India and the West will appear this summer and discusses the idea, practice and history of same-sex union in India, and the legal, religious and political issues it raises in India today in the context of the international debate on same-sex marriage.