HINDUISM
Cultural
The queer cultural history within Hinduism is one of ambivalence. On the one hand, its homoerotic practices and mysticisms are extremely evident, but on the other hand, any association of queerness has been vehemently denied throughout much of India’s history. Even in modern democratic India, LGBT+ rights are a hot-button issue whose liberalization and criminalization ebb and flow like the tide.
One of the main reasons for this appears to be the issue of labeling. Since ancient times, queerness has played an outward role in Hindu tradition. Even in the Kama Sutra, the legendary how-to book on mate attraction and lovemaking, its second-century author details male-male and female-female intimate acts and describes effeminate and masculine third-gender individuals as well as lesbians who were referred to as a svairini (independent woman). 142 Nevertheless, all forms of queerness are neither seen nor acknowledged under our modern labels of LGBT+, and so when modern Indian society discusses the issue of LGBT+ rights, it becomes contentious and confusing because who and/or what does Hindu culture consider LGBT+?
The most internationally famous example of LGBT+ Hindus are the hijra. In the simplest of explanations, a hijra is what we’d recognize as a transgender woman. In India and Pakistan they are legally recognized as a unique gender separate from male and female, and their presence in the region has existed since antiquity, even being documented in the Kama Sutra, where they are shown taking both the active and passive roles in sexual intercourse. Although ostracized by most of society, they tend to live in all-hijra communities and work as prostitutes for survival. While some hijras eventually get married to heterosexual men, most simply have noncommitted sexual relations with men, and these men, so long as they act as the “tops,” socially maintain their heterosexuality and masculinity in the eyes of Hindu society. Most of these men tend to be married to biological females and carry out their extramarital affairs with hijra mistresses in secret. 143
What makes hijras a prime example of labeling confusion is the fact that they do not consider themselves as homo- or heterosexual. Biologically, they are what Westeners consider males (and sometimes intersex), and sexually, their desire for other biological males would make them homosexuals in Western eyes. But since they are culturally seen as neither males nor females, their sexual desires cannot be labeled as gay or straight. In fact, the self-defining characteristic of being a hijra is being born as a biological male yet not sexually desiring women. To be gay would mean being born a male and sexually desiring another male—and therein lies all the difference. The Western world doesn’t make a distinction between men not being sexually attracted to women and men being sexually attracted to other men; they are simply assumed to go hand in hand. But in Hindu culture, they are distinctly different classifications of sexuality and sexual identity. 144
Because of Hindu society’s historical lack of acknowledging homosexuality as opposed to the more nebulous “non-heterosexuality,” legal recognition and protections are largely absent in the subcontinent. Consequently, India has experienced a growing movement of men who identify as “gay” in the Western sense of the word who aim to make the vocabulary and concept more mainstream so that they can obtain much-needed government recognition and protection. The success of their movement has been both widely beneficial and widely detrimental to gay Hindu society.
It has been beneficial in the sense that homosexuality and gayness are now widely understood and recognized as an actual sexual preference, thus making advocacy for gay rights much easier and more organized. However, it has been detrimental in the sense that it’s also responsible for the growing trend of shame and disapproval associated with being gay in Hindu society. The reasoning for this might seem odd at first, but it’s similar to the viewpoint of non-native homosexuality shared by many African nationalist movements. Since the modern notions and labels of gayness and homosexuality were historically never recognized as a distinct sexual orientation in precolonial India, it is seen as a Western import from the era of British colonial rule. 145
Nevertheless, if we look into Hindu cultural mythology, we find numerous examples of queerness, transgenderism, and homoeroticism between the gods. At times the gods condone acts of gayness among each other, and at other times they vehemently disapprove, thus making the theologically sanctioned attitude toward queerness in Hindu society one of moral ambiguity. Still, sexuality is never considered a static thing. Just like the gods, mortals, too, can change their sex, and through the belief of reincarnation, it is generally accepted that one has been male and female and third gender many times over in the wheel of samsara.
In fact, within the pantheon of the many deities that are in Hinduism, there exists a god who represents the infinity that lies beyond the duality of male and female. This special divinity is Ardhanarishvara, whose name best translates to “the lord who is half woman.” This deity is considered to be simultaneously man and woman and is seen as the fusion of Shiva (god of creation and destruction) and his lover Parvati (mother goddess of fertility, love, and devotion). Hindus look to Ardhanarishvara as an intercessor that bridges the gaps between seemingly opposite things such as between men and women and between mortals and gods. 146
Despite the myriad of sexually fluid gods and innumerable gender transformations of mortals and gods in Hindu mythology and texts, which we will explore in a second, modern Hindu culture is quite hostile toward the queer community. The major cultural shift of Hindus condemning queerness as a social evil largely came about in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s spearheaded by, of all people, Mohandas Gandhi. For all his virtues, Gandhi had many faults, and one of them was his vociferous homophobia, which historians generally believe he developed from his years of being educated in Britain, where homosexuality was a known thing and ingrained into him as utterly deplorable.
As the leader of India’s independence movement from Great Britain, Gandhi advocated for a return to traditional Hindu values and ways of life and against all things seen as a negative British import, homosexuality being one of them. To help disassociate homosexuality with Hinduism and emphasize its association with colonial rule, he ordered his followers to go through Hindu temples and destroy all artwork and literature that represented homoerotic acts or positive references to transgenderism and homosexuality as understood in Western terms. Thanks to the intervention of philosopher and writer Sir Rabindranath Tagore, many of these sacred sites were saved from such queerphobic vandalism, but in the psyche of Hindu society the damage was already done. Blind idolatry of Gandhi made his teachings nearly infallible, and thus his position on homosexuality as a Western-imported plague upon Indian society became unofficial cultural doctrine that still survives today in the subcontinent. 147
Hindu Takeaway:
Sacredness of the Divine Feminine
We haven’t really talked about this in Hinduism yet, but it’s a major recurring theme in the upcoming deities and legends section. Forgive me for jumping the gun a bit, but it’s an important lesson. As you’ll see, many of the Hindu male gods honor the sacredness of their own femininity.
This is similar yet opposite to the divine masculine takeaway we learned from the Vikings. This time we have to learn to accept the divine feminine in the form of our own inner effeminacy and attraction toward effeminacy. For gay men in particular, this is often difficult. The cult of masculinity places a high value on masculine men: being tall, muscular, with facial hair, the more like a “straight man” the better. Many gay men don’t want to be seen as effeminate because they associate effeminacy with weakness. But, in fact, being an effeminate man is highly courageous and transgressive. In a society of toxic masculinity, it is an act of rebellion to be a male that embraces his own inner feminine, a very punk-rock statement to society. Many Hindu male deities exemplify this in spades; on the mortal plane, revolutionary artists Prince and David Bowie perfectly embodied how a man’s embracing of his inner effeminacy exuded an even more powerful sexual masculinity.
Women are not exempt from this, either. In a time where women are still having to fight for their equality, those women who embrace feminine stereotypes are seen as traitors. Beauty pageant contestants, girls obsessed with the color pink, cheerleaders, and more are all seen as empty, vapid, and shallow in the eyes of many progressive women. There is nothing wrong with women openly embracing stereotypically effeminate things. People like what they like, and as long as they aren’t actively trying to turn back the clock on women’s rights, let them enjoy what makes them happy. The divine feminine comes in many forms.
And this all goes for magic, too. Think of the well-known goddesses Aphrodite and Artemis. They’re two very different aspects of the divine feminine, but is any one form better than the other? When we do spellwork, especially queer spellwork, we have to be open to the dynamic range in which feminine energy can present itself. It can just as easily manifest in a warrior woman as it can in a beauty queen or even in a male who honors and unleashes his inner divine feminine, as many of the Hindu deities do.
So, for your next magical activity, do a ritual in your tradition that honors the most stereotypically effeminate deity in your pantheon. The “dark” goddesses and more transgressive female deities are usually the most popular, but the pretty-in-pink ultra-femme ones are just as divine. Again, all deities can teach us something, so get in touch with the most effeminate one you know and see what there is to learn.
Deities & Legends
Agni
Agni is the god of fire, wealth, and creativity. He is an interesting queer Hindu deity because he engages in homoerotic acts not for reasons of sensual pleasure but for reasons of magic. Appearance-wise, he is depicted as somewhat of a wanderer with a long beard and riding atop a ram, but he also has flaming red skin, multiple arms, several tongues, and sometimes two faces. While he is technically the husband of the goddess Svaha, he is often shown having a side relationship with Soma, god of the moon, where he delights in swallowing Soma’s semen.
Agni’s thirst for semen doesn’t end there, though. Another major myth involves him volunteering to accept the semen of Shiva (god of creation and destruction) after Shiva is forbidden to ejaculate into Parvati (mother goddess) due to the other gods’ fear that if they conceive, their child would be too powerful. So, Shiva gets around this prohibition by using the pull-out method and having Agni eagerly catch his divine semen and lap it up. Modern mythographers believe Agni’s obsession with semen represents sacrifices to the gods, usually done by tossing the sacrifice into a fire. 148
In worship, Agni’s correspondences are staffs, rams, and fire. He is particularly celebrated in rituals involving fire, especially rite-of-passage ceremonies and cremations.
Ganesha
As the god of wisdom, beginnings, removing obstacles, and prosperity, Ganesha is one of Hinduism’s most popular deities. To non-Hindus he is easily recognizable as being the chubby deity with four arms and an elephant head. Generally, he is thought to be androgynous more than anything since his head is that of a female elephant, yet his body is of a human male. And because he is overweight, his chest has the appearance of “man boobs” that are sometimes believed to lactate, further adding to his androgyny. And while his trunk is often seen as a phallic symbol, it is always depicted as flaccid and never erect, as are most Hindu phallic symbols.
Ganesha is also deity of the root chakra, which is located at the perineum, between the genitals and anus. Because of this, he is said to preside over ritualistic anal sex among certain cults in an effort to release Kundalini energy. And because of his notoriety for having the power to both bless and curse as well as crossing the boundary between masculinity and femininity, he is associated with eunuchs, who, in Indian society, are also believed to have those same magical abilities. 149
In worship, his correspondences are elephants, mice, axes, nooses, hibiscus, and the colors red and yellow. His devotees are known to leave offerings of modak dumplings and chant the sacred sound “om/aum.”
Krishna
Like Ganesha, Krishna is another popular Hindu deity who is also well-known to Westerners thanks to the popularity of the Hare Krishna movement in the West since the 1960s. He is the god of love, beauty, knowledge, and divinity. He is portrayed as blue-skinned and forever young. Involved in countless myths, he is commonly known to change his gender and be sexually fluid, seducing anyone and everyone regardless of gender, as befitting a deity of love. In one myth he even seduces himself and makes love to his own reflection in a lake.
Many of Krishna’s devotees see him as the symbol of feminine masculinity, the supreme representation of a man embracing the divine feminine within him. It is further believed that all men are like this underneath their self-imposed macho exterior, and to strive for this balance of gentle femininity and sexualized masculinity is a goal for his male worshippers. 150
In worship, his correspondences are butter, flutes, rubies, basil, bees, and cows. His circular, sharp-edged throwing weapon, the chakram, is well-known to the LGBT+ community as the signature weapon of the 1990s lesbian pop culture icon Xena, warrior princess.
Shikhandi
In the Mahabharata Shikhandi is a female-to-male transgender hero. According to the texts, Shikhandi, in a past life, was once a woman who obsessed over avenging her honor after the great warrior Bhishma publicly rejected her and deemed her unmarriageable. Being but a mere woman (because remember, this all took place in ancient India), she had no way of enacting her revenge over the mighty Bhishma and ended up killing herself after Krishna promised that her reincarnation would be able to carry out the vendetta.
But in a plot twist for the ages, Shikhandi is reincarnated as a biological female again, rather than as a male, as she was led to believe. She was adopted by King Drupada who, desiring an heir, raised her as he would a son, fooling everyone into believing that Shikhandi was actually a boy. Eventually he married her off to a princess who finds out about Shikhandi’s true gender and complains to her own father that they’ve been duped. Fearing her father-in-law’s wrath, Shikhandi runs off to the forest, where a sympathetic nature spirit agrees to swap sexes with her. Now a biological male, Shikhandi finds himself in the epic battle of Mahabharat, wherein he plays a pivotal role in bringing about the demise of Bhishma, just as Krishna had foretold. 151
142. Parin Shah, “Homosexuality and the Hindu Society,” Random Rants, Feb. 6, 2016, https://parinvshah.wordpress.com/2016/02/06/homosexuality-and-the-hindu-society/ (accessed Feb. 12, 2017).
143. Serena Nanda, “Hijra and Sadhin,” in Constructing Sexualities, ed. S. LaFont (Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, 2002).
144. Roscoe, Queer Spirits.
145. Sheena Asthana and Robert Oostvogels, “The Social Construction of Male ‘Homosexuality’ in India: Implications for HIV Transmission and Prevention,” Social Sciences & Medicine 52:5 (2001).
146. Krish Jeyakumar, “Ardhanarishvara,” Beyond the Binary, Sept. 12, 2016, http://beyondthebinary.co.uk/ardhanarishvara/ (accessed Aug. 19, 2017).
147. Amara Das Wilhelm, “India’s Slow Descent into Homophobia,” GALVA-108: Gay & Lesbian Vaishnava Association, 2014, http://www.galva108.org/single-post/2014/05/09/Indias-Slow-Descent-Into-Homophobia (accessed Aug. 19, 2017).
148. Amara Das Wilhelm, “Hindu Deities and the Third Sex (2),” GALVA-108: Gay & Lesbian Vaishnava Association, 2014, http://www.galva108.org/single-post/2014/05/04/Hindu-Deities-and-the-Third-Sex-2 (accessed Aug. 19, 2017).
149. Christopher Penczak, Gay Witchcraft: Empowering the Tribe (San Francisco: Red Wheel/Weiser, 2003).
150. Devdutt Pattanaik, The Man Who Was a Woman and Other Queer Tales from Hindu Lore (New York: Routledge, 2012).
151. Krishna Dharma, Mahabharata: The Greatest Spiritual Epic of All Time (Imperial Beach: Torchlight Publishing, 1999).