The current Gender Discourse in India and in Hindu Intellectuals

After yesterday's verdict of Delhi High Court on the issue of Homosexuality I found this article interesting. However, it does not support my views at any level.

by Devdutt Pattanaik

In his Navagraha Kirti, the great 19th century Carnatic music composer, Muthuswami Dikshitar describes Budh (the planet mercury) as Napumsakam or
one who is not quite male or female. He alludes to a story in the Puranas where Brihaspati (the planet Jupiter) discovers that his wife Tara (the goddess of stars) is pregnant with the child of her lover, Chandra (the Moon-god). He curses the love child to be born neuter. Budh later marries Ila, a man who becomes a woman when he accidentally trespasses an enchanted grove. From that union springs the Chandra-vamsa, or the lunar dynasty of kings. So says the Mahabharata.
As in the story of Ila, Indian lore is full of tales where men turn into women and women turn into men. Narada falls into a pond, becomes a woman, discovers the meaning of worldly delusion or maya. Shiva bathes in the Yamuna, becomes a gopi, a milkmaid, so that he can dance the raas-leela with Krishna — an idea that has inspired the temple of Gopeshwarji in Vrindavan. At a short distance from Ahmedabad, is the temple of Bahucharji, the rooster-riding goddess, once where it is said there was a pond that turned a woman into a man, a mare into a horse and a bitch into a dog. The pond has dried up, but women still visit this shrine seeking a male child. They seek the blessings of bhagats (some call them hijras) who though men believe they are women and choose to live their life wearing a sari.
Near Pondicherry, in the village of Koovagam, every year the transgendered alis dance and sing in memory of an event that took place during mythic times. Aravan, the son of Arjuna and his serpent wife, Ulupi, had to be sacrificed to ensure victory of the Pandavas at Kurukshetra. But he refused to die without a taste of marriage. As no woman was willing to marry a man doomed to die, Krishna took a female form, Mohini, became Aravan’s wife, spent a night with him and then wailed for him as widow when he was beheaded.
In the Valmiki Ramayana, there are descriptions of Rakshasa women who kiss women on Ravana’s bed on whose lips lingers the taste of their master. Krittivasa Ramayana is the story of two widows who drink a magic potion and, in the absence of their husband, make love to each other and end up bearing a child without bones (traditionally believed to be the contribution of semen).
How does one interpret these stories? Are they gay stories? They certainly shatter the conventional confines of gender and sexuality. Ancient Indian authors and poets without doubt imagined a state where the lines separating masculinity and femininity often blurred and even collapsed. Though awkward, these were not stray references. Such tales were consistent and recurring, narrated matter-of-factly, without guilt or shame. Such outpouring has its roots in Indian metaphysics.
As the wheel of rebirth turns, Indians have always believed, the soul keeps casting off old flesh and wrapping itself anew. Depending on one’s karma, one can be reborn as a tree, as a rock, as a bird, a beast, a man, a woman, a man with a woman’s heart, a woman with a man’s heart, even as a god or demon...endless possibilities exist in the infinite cosmos. The wise see masculinity and femininity as ephemeral robes that wrap the sexless genderless soul. The point is not to get attached to the flesh, but to celebrate its capabilities, discover its limitations, and finally transcend it.
The question before us is: does the human mind have the empathy to include gender and sexual ambiguity in civil human society? It does. In every Yuga new rules come into being that redefine world order. Mahabharata mentions a Yuga when there was no marriage — women were free to go with any man they chose. This changed when Shvetaketu instituted the marriage laws. We have lived through a Yuga where we left unchallenged laws of old imperial masters that dehumanised and invalidated sexual minorities. This has to change —hopefully now.

in Times of India, 3rd July, 2009

(The writer is the author of The Book of Ram, Seven Secrets of Hindu Calendar Art and other books on sacred lore.)

Blue all the shades of Blue.

Vision from the Blue Plane-Window

by Ernesto Cardenal



In the round little window, everything is blue,
land bluish, blue-green, blue
(and sky)
everything is blue
blue lakes and lagoons
blue volcanoes
while farther off the land looks bluer
blue islands in a blue lake.
This is the face of the land liberated.
And where all the people fought, I think:
for love!
To live without the hatred
of exploitation.
To love one another in a beautiful land
so beautiful, not only in itself
but because of the people in it,
above all because of the people in it.
That's why God gave us this beautiful land
for the society in it.
And in all those blue places they fought, suffered
for a society of love
here in this land.

One patch of blue looks more intense...
And I thought I was seeing the sites of all the battles there,
and of all the deaths,
behind that small, round windowpane
blue
all the shades of blue.

translated by Jonathan Cohen


DAWN

Now the roosters are singing.
Natalia, your rooster's already sung, sister,
Justo, yours has already sung, brother.
Get up off your cots, your bed mats.
I seem to hear the congos awake on the ohter coast.
We can already blow on the kindling - throw out the pisspot.
Bring an oil lamp so we can see the faces.
A dog in a hut yelped
and a dog from another hut answered.
Juana, it's time to light the stove, sister.
The dark is even darker because day is coming.
Get up Chico, get up Pancho.
There's a horse to mount,
we have to paddle a canoe.
Our dreams had us separated, in folding
cots and bed mats (each of us dreaming our own dream)
but our awakening reunites us.
The night already draws away followed by its witches and ghouls.
We will see the water very blue; right now we don't see it. - And
this land with its fruit trees, which we also don't see.
Wake up Pancho Nicaragua, grab your machete
there's a lot of weeds to cut
grab your machete and your guitar.
There was a owl at midnight and a hoot owl at one.
The night left without moon or any morning star.
Tigers roared on this island and those on the coast called back.
Now the night bird's gone, the one that says: Sc-rewed, Sc-rewed.
Later the skylark will sing in the palm tree.
She'll sing: Compañero
Compañera.
Ahead of the light goes the shade flying like a vampire.
Wake up you, and you, and you.
(Now the roosters are singing.)
Good morning, God be with you!

translation by Mark Zimmerman
from Flights of Victory/Vuelos de Victoria

Language is Liquidated

Words and War

Tuesday 09 June 2009

by: Norman Solomon, t r u t h o u t | Perspective

A July 2008 bombing outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul. (Photo: Getty Images)

It takes at least tacit faith in massive violence to believe that after three decades of horrendous violence in Afghanistan, upping the violence there will improve the situation.

Despite the pronouncements from high Washington places that the problems of Afghanistan can't be solved by military means, 90 percent of the spending for Afghanistan in the Obama administration's current supplemental bill is military.

Often it seems that lofty words about war hopes are boilerplate efforts to make us feel better about an endless warfare state. Oratory and punditry laud the Pentagon's fallen as noble victims of war, while enveloping its other victims in a haze of ambiguity or virtual nonexistence.

When last Sunday's edition of The Washington Post printed the routine headline, "Iraq War Deaths," the newspaper meant American deaths - to Washington's ultra-savvy, the deaths that really count. The only numbers and names under the headline were American.

Ask for whom the bell tolls. That's the implicit message - from top journalists and politicians alike.

A few weeks ago, some prominent US news stories did emerge about Pentagon air strikes that killed perhaps a hundred Afghan civilians. But much of the emphasis was that such deaths could undermine the US war effort. The most powerful media lenses do not correct the myopia when Uncle Sam's vision is impaired by solipsism and narcissism.

Words focus our attention. The official words and the media words - routinely, more or less the same words - are ostensibly about war, but they convey little about actual war at the same time that they boost it. Words are one thing, and war is another.

Yet words have potential to impede the wheels of war machinery. "And henceforth," Albert Camus wrote, "the only honorable course will be to stake everything on a formidable gamble: that words are more powerful than munitions."

A very different type of gamble is routinely underway at the centers of political power, where words are propaganda munitions. In Washington, the default preference is to gamble with the lives of other people, far away.

More than 40 years ago, Country Joe McDonald wrote a song, "An Untitled Protest," about war fighters: who "pound their feet into the sand of shores they've never seen / Delegates from the western land to join the death machine." Now, tens of thousands more of such delegates are on the way to Afghanistan.

In pseudo-savvy Washington, "appearance is reality." Killing and maiming, fueled by appropriations and silence, are rendered as abstractions.

The deaths of people unaligned with the Pentagon are the most abstract of all. No wonder The Washington Post is still printing headlines like "Iraq War Deaths." Why should Iraqis qualify for inclusion in Iraq war deaths?

There's plenty more media invisibility and erasure ahead for Afghan people as the Pentagon ramps up its war effort in their country.

War thrives on abstractions that pass for reality.

There are facts about war in news media and in presidential speeches. For that matter, there are plenty of facts in the local phone book. How much do they tell you about the most important human realities?

Millions of words and factual data pour out of the Pentagon every day. Human truth is another matter.

My father, Morris Solomon, recently had his ninetieth birthday. He would be the first to tell you that his brain has lost a lot of capacity. He doesn't recall nearly as many facts as he used to. But a couple of days ago, he told me: "I know what war is. It's stupid. It's ruining humanity."

That's not appearance. It's reality.

In South Asian countries,

Wed, 06/10/2009 - 02:40 — Uday Prakash (comments)

In South Asian countries, 'appearances' are nightmares and dreams are apocalyptic. Time is rendered blurred by the violence of all sorts. Remember Norman, 'appearances' and 'dreams' together form 'reality'. Sometimes I think our lives as an inconclusive sentence growing and developing to make a complete ultimate sentence with any meaning..and this all is happening under certain grammatical rules. Syntax has its own rationality and logic. But think....when violence disrupts this process and perpetuates its own irrational, illogical 'reasoning'...when it interferes in side an evolving sentence...language itself is liquidated... That's the reason, we cry:'No more war!...no more violence..! Lets go to prayers...' and our cries don't carry any meaning because the language has been perished ... They are the 'powers' for whom the bell tolls..Certainly not for us, who have lost their abilities to form a complete sentence.. Norman, we are now deprived of any grammar. If we say 'PEACE' ...is there anyone who can comprehend it and translate it in their language.. Language of war, profits, trades and hegemony over others..?

My Autopsy

Michael Dickman

There is a way
if we want
into everything

I'll eat the chicken carbonara and you eat the veal, the olives, the small and
glowing loaves of bread

I'll eat the waiter, the waitress
floating through the candled dark in shiny black slacks
like water at night

The napkins, folded into paper boats, contain invisible Japanese poems

You eat the forks
all the knives, asleep and waiting
on the white tables

What do you love?

I love the way our teeth stay long after we're gone, hanging on despite worms
or fire

I love our stomachs
turning over
the earth

(Excerpt)

Poetry as Insurgent Art

I am signaling you through the flames

I am signaling you through the flames.

The North Pole is not where it used to be.

Manifest Destiny is no longer manifest.

Civilization self-destructs.

Nemesis is knocking at the door.

What are poets for, in such an age?
What is the use of poetry?

The state of the world calls out for poetry to save it.

If you would be a poet, create works capable of answering the challenge of apocalyptic times, even if this meaning sounds apocalyptic.

You are Whitman, you are Poe, you are Mark Twain, you are Emily Dickinson and Edna St. Vincent Millay, you are Neruda and Mayakovsky and Pasolini, you are an American or a non-American, you can conquer the conquerors with words

by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

English in postcolonial India is a language of liberation and modernity

(This article appeared in an abridged version in Economic Times of India under Face off column, a few days before)

‘Hindi hain ham vatan hai Hindostaan hamaaraa’, when Mohd Iqbal wrote in his most popular, accepted nearly as the third national anthem ‘Saare jahaan se acchhaa …’ before independence and much before the partition in 1947, Hindi had entirely a different implication and its connotation. Hindi at that time, in colonial India, suggested more about a civilization well spread from Indus valley to doaba. It certainly not evoked any specific language, race or religion in the minds at the time. Hindavi was a zubaan of ordinary people who formed second largest linguistic community on earth.

How the same Hindi was transformed in to a ‘raaj-bhaashaa’ and ‘raashtra-bhaashaa’ and made to get associated with a distinct religious community dominated by a couple of Hindu castes, is not that cryptic process. Anyone aware about the politics of last 60 plus years understands it even if chooses to remain quiet.

In 2007, it was the first time ever; I was invited to become part of the government delegation sent to take part in ‘Vishva Hindi Sammelan’ at New York. Hundreds of Hindi writers were provided with business class air tickets and were put up in 5-7 star hotels like Hotel Radisson, Hotel Pennsylvania and Inter Continental etc. Courtesy to Ministry of HRD. Millions of money was spent to project Hindi as ‘Vishva Bhaashaa’ (World Language). Five days long function was held in UN building. Even the Secretary General of the UN was there to attend inaugural ceremony and was applauded when he disclosed that his son in law speaks Hindi. He also mumbled a few sentences in Hindi. Needless to say, a demand was raised by the organizers, led by the AICC General Secretary, Anand Shrma, that UN should accept Hindi as its working language like English, French and other languages.

The same evening, My US friend and translator, who teach Hindi in Chicago University, had some official work with one Mr. Pandey, the office bearer of Nagari Pracharini Sabha, one of the oldest and prime Hindi institute located in Benares. We came to know that Mr. Pandey has been put in Hotel Pennsylvania. When he reached there and asked for Mr. Pandey at the reception counter of the hotel, the counter girl started laughing. She said, ‘Please tell me the first name because there are more than a dozen Pandeys staying over here.’

It was not a joke. It was a factual statement about ‘Vishva Bhaashaa Hindi.’ I realized soon that more than 85% of the participants and more than 98% of the apex body of the organizers of VHS belonged to one Hindu caste and its sub castes.

According to one survey in TV, electronic and print media, one single caste has more than 78% monopoly over Hindi. In literature and academics situation is more precarious. If you find this statement dubious and vague, I request you to go and check about the people occupying all the places related to Hindi in capital. You’d stand before your findings terrified.

I was a young student of school when Dr. Lohiya raised the slogan of ‘Hindi hataao’. I also took part in wall writing and blackening English hoardings and sign panels with passion. But now, when Mulayam singh has raised this slogan again, I desist in saying it a farce of Lohiya’s tragedy. I stand against it. In my opinion, there might have been reasons before independence for great politicians like Mahatma Gandhi, C. Rajgopalachari, Chittaranjan Das and others coming from non Hindi states supporting Hindi as a ‘Raashtra Bhaashaa’. They might have felt about the necessity of a common unifying language in a multi-linguistic and multi cultural subcontinent to consolidate their struggle against British. English at that time would have logically been perceived as the language of colonial rulers.

But after these many post colonial years, situation has entirely changed. Hindi is now the language of ‘sarkaar, bazaar and sanchaar’ (government, market and media) and it has been monopolized by the dominant caste and religious group. Official Hindi has become a vehicle of obscurantism, communalism, blind nationalism and to top all casteism. You can watch TV channels or can leaf through any newspaper, you will see pooja, tyohars, superstitions, obscene pictures and all imaginable inferior stuff to form your opinion.

English, in post colonial India, has become a language of modernity and empowerment. Poor and low caste people and minorities as well know that Hindi will make them ‘naukar’ and English will escort them to the seat of the Master. Even kaamwali baai and dhobi have learnt this mantra. Obviously this is the reason they are enrolling their kids in English medium schools in spite they have to go through a harsh, stingy ascetic life.

If you ask me to give a slogan now, it would be like this: ’angrezi laao, desh bachao.’

Uday prakash

Mass Suicides in Indian Villages

Over 1,500 farmers in an Indian state committed suicide after being driven to debt by crop failure, it was reported today.
The agricultural state of Chattisgarh was hit by falling water levels.
"The water level has gone down below 250 feet here. It used to be at 40 feet a few years ago," Shatrughan Sahu, a villager in one of the districts, told Down To Earth magazine
"Most of the farmers here are indebted and only God can save the ones who do not have a bore well."
Mr Sahu lives in a district that recorded 206 farmer suicides last year. Police records for the district add that many deaths occur due to debt and economic distress.
In another village nearby, Beturam Sahu, who owned two acres of land was among those who committed suicide. His crop is yet to be harvested, but his son Lakhnu left to take up a job as a manual labourer.
His family must repay a debt of 400 and the crop this year is poor.
"The crop is so bad this year that we will not even be able to save any seeds," said Lakhnu's friend Santosh. "There were no rains at all."
"That's why Lakhnu left even before harvesting the crop. There is nothing left to harvest in his land this time. He is worried how he will repay these loans."
Bharatendu Prakash, from the Organic Farming Association of India, told the Press Association: "Farmers' suicides are increasing due to a vicious circle created by money lenders. They lure farmers to take money but when the crops fail, they are left with no option other than death."
Mr Prakash added that the government ought to take up the cause of the poor farmers just as they fight for a strong economy.
"Development should be for all. The government blames us for being against development. Forest area is depleting and dams are constructed without proper planning.
All this contributes to dipping water levels. Farmers should be taken into consideration when planning policies," he said.