Painting of forceful disrobing of Indian mythical character Draupadi

by Raja Ravi Varma (1848-1906)
Source : Wikipedia

It is risky for a woman to deal

with Female Sexuality in India

“You are known for pushing the envelope, openly discussing female sexuality in your stories and novels in a way that hadn't been done before . Isn't that risky?”

This was the last question of Linda Lowen, the
well-known feminist media person of America, to me in her interview for “The New York Times” owned portal About.Com

In India most of the female writers either quit writing or make them more adjustable to male dominated values, after their marriage। You find shyness in their voice while relating the truth and exposing their innerself।Even their weaknesses or love relations are also not expressed clearly in fear of social scandal of their character। A typical womanish shyness prevents them to write their actual feelings towards sex and love।This is not only due to any restriction imposed by their family, but many times we find that an idea of being a good girl pursues them to hide their own feelings and experience

In “The Second Sex”, Simone also discusses three particular inauthentic attitudes of women in which they hide their freedom in: "The Narcissist," "The Woman in Love," and "The Mystic." In all three of these attitudes, women deny the original thrust of their freedom by submerging it into the object; in the case of the first, the object is herself, the second, her beloved and the third, the absolute or God.The patriarchy society also tries to incorporates multiple myths of woman in her mind (such as the myth of the mother, the virgin, the motherland, nature, etc.) and attempts to trap woman into an impossible ideal by denying the individuality and situation of all different kinds of women.
In India the ‘chastity’ means a lot for a woman and it is always demanded that a female should keep her ‘chastity’ pure and perfect. (It is another issue that nobody asks a man for the purity and perfection of his chastity). In case of poetry, one can hide herself with mystic metaphor or myth, but in fiction, one has to open herself completely. So, it is difficult for a woman to write any fictions sincerely hiding her experiences and reactions.

Kuntala Kumari Sabat (1900-1938) was remembered in Oriya Literature for mystic strain and reformative zeal in her romantic poetry . Before marriage she developed an extra marital affairs with a fatherly person Dr.Kailash Chandra Rao and after her marriage to Krushna Prasad Das alias Brahmachari, she shifted to Delhi .Her pre or post marital life were not so peaceful and her life was dangling between love, sex , oppression and harassment by male dominated mentality of feudal India .But we never find any sexual agony or her own saga .of life in her poems rather than a coated version of mysticism in the form of Sufi ideology

In the June 1998 issue of Harper's Magazine Francine Prose wrote an essay "Scent of a Woman's Ink: Are Women Writers Really Inferior?” She expressed her agony for neglecting female writers by insisting that despite the sales success of middlebrow "women's fiction" -- as epitomized by Oprah Winfrey's hugely successful television book club -- women writers of "serious literary fiction" can't get no respect. Not, at least, from "the more cerebral book-review pages and the literary prizes."
Prose has revived the debate by asking whether women writers are really more prone to "diminutive fictions, which take place mostly in interiors, about little families with little problems," and are they really more inclined toward a soft, self-absorbed emotionality or not . Actually, Prose maintains, male writers do all of that, just as women produce works that are "fiercely unsentimental, sharply observed, immensely ambitious and inclusive."
In reviewing my anthology of short stories once Jatindra Kumar Nayak , an Oriya critic wrote : (my) stories are as “a labyrinth.of the emotional lives of woman” Readers -- and especially critics -- are the ones who persist in seeing a fiction as inevitably colored by its author's gender, and the male critics always think that the domestic issues, love -- are of less consequence then the depth of thought produced by male writers? In short, it is a big question now , who will determine the difference in importance between a woman's inner or outer life and a man's? The answer, until recently at least, has been men.
Uma Parmeswaran once wrote an article on Kamala Mrakandeya at Sawnet , where she described that Salman Rushdie in his novels Shame and The Satanic Verses raised the issues of race riots in Britain .But before 20 years of Rushdie , Kamala Markendeya talked not only about the violence of racism but also about other diasporic realities - educational degrees that are not given accreditation, the resistance of immigrants to the expectations of the »host« culture, chasms of communication between generations, cultural values and needless cultural baggage. But the male dominated literary criticism placed Rushdie as a pioneer of diasporic struggle.
In India, a female writer is always considered as an inferior writer in comparison to male .(In any office or educational centers where male and female employees work together, you can easily notice a male subordinate never makes any ‘wish’ or ‘good morning ‘ to his female superior boss) The traditional readers have tendency to find out the hidden love affairs that have been hiding beyond a fiction of a woman writer. Till now , their mind is not prepare to accept a woman as a thinker or as a philosopher , whereas in Vedic period there were female philosophers like Madalsa,Gargi and Maitryi.
There were some interesting happenings with my story writings.Gambhiri Ghara (The Dark Abode), the most controversial novel of mine was first written in a story form and it was written for a special issue of an Oriya periodicals. Before the publication of the short story it was rejected and I was asked to submit another story in place of The Dark Abode.While inquiring the reason of the rejection of my story, I was told that the editor would talk to my husband.This comment of the chief editor made me irritated and I asked the chief editor whether my husband has an authority over my writer self ?The patriarchy idea of the chief editor made me to transform the short story to a novel.
Once I was also insulted and forced to beg apology for writing the story Jalhad (The Butcher) by the staff council of my college। It was about the rape story where the victim was an infant, the girl child of a working woman. .It was also a story of harassment faced by a working woman from the masculine sphere around her .The story was also about the imbalanced situation of a working woman who finds herself dangling between home and working place ,But the story was asserted as an obscene one and a petition was moved to remove me from my service of lectureship from the college .

And at last my answer to Linda was:

:”Yes, it is risky for a woman writer to deal with these themes in an Eastern country, and for that I face much criticism। But still I believe someone has to bear this risk to accurately portray women's feelings - the intricate mental agony and complexity which a man can never feel - and these must be discussed through our fiction।”

Yes , They are Others

Statue of the type of the Capitoline Venus. Marble, Roman copy of ca. 100-150 CE after a Hellenistic variant of the Cnidian Venus. Excavated in 1794 by Robert Fagan at Campo Iemini, near Torvaianica, Lazio, Italy.

Plato once said in his Republic that " the only difference between men and women is one of physical function- one begets, the other bears children। Apart from that, they both can and should perform the same functions (though men on a whole, perform them better) and should receive the same education to enable them to do so; for in this way society will get the best value from both.”
Our society has grown into a polar dichotomy system of male and female, where the former oppressing the latter and behave them as ‘other’ or similar to lower caste.
Patriarchy is just one of the hierarchies, where females are most oppressive in the traditional system. Feminist argument for sexual equality works in two directions. First, it exposes the ways in which patriarchy exploits the sexual difference to create systems of inequality and exposes the facts of sexual politics, which later leads to Feminism to fight against male hegemony. It also claimed that so long as the standard of equality is the male body, the discriminatory sexual difference remains in play. Second, it acts as a prime source for the gender theories ‘others’ theory developed by Simone de Beauvoire in later period.
Simone adopted the idea of ‘others’ from Hegelian theory. The German philosopher Hegel was among the first to introduce the idea of the other as constituent in self-consciousness, he wrote of pre-selfconscious Man: "Each consciousness pursues the death of the other", meaning that in seeing a separateness between you and another, a feeling of alienation is created, which you try to resolve by synthesis. The resolution is depicted in Hegel's famous parable of the master slave dialectic While giving stress to explain woman's definition as man's ‘other’ or her consequent oppression ,the same time Simone tackles the way in which the preceding analyses (biological, historical, psychoanalytic, etc.) contribute to the formulation of the myth of the "Eternal Feminine." This paradigmatic myth, which incorporates multiple myths of woman under it (such as the myth of the mother, the virgin, the motherland, nature, etc.) attempts to trap woman into an impossible ideal by denying the individuality and situation of all different kinds of women. In fact, the ideal set by the Eternal Feminine sets up an impossible expectation because the various manifestations of the myth of femininity appear as contradictory and doubled .But it is also true that for their "Eternal Feminine" women are forced to relinquish their claims to transcendence and authentic subjectivity by a progressively more stringent acceptance of the "passive" and "alienated" role .
I fully agree with Simone that only the women could free herself by “thinking, taking action, working, creating, on the same terms as men; instead of seeking to disparage them, she declares herself their equal." But my point of disagree that though women need the same status to man as Human being, I think, they have their own identity and they are different from man. They are ‘others’ in real definition but this is not in context with Hegelian definition of “others”.. It is, not always due to man’s "active" and "subjective" demands. They are the woman, unknowingly accept the subjugation as a part of ‘subjectivity’’
Simone herself also denied her statement in the discussion of The Ethics of Ambiguity .She discusses three particular inauthentic attitudes in which women hide their freedom in: "The Narcissist," "The Woman in Love," and "The Mystic." In all three of these attitudes, women deny the original thrust of their freedom by submerging it into the object; in the case of the first, the object is herself, the second, her beloved and the third, the absolute or God.I don’t believe its only masculine activities, but some biological facts also responsible for these slavery. But it is true that some of the social structures made the woman as “others”, if we consider these “others” as slave (as Hegel used the word to describe the actual position of slave) and I fully agree with Simone that only the women could free herself by “thinking, taking action, working, creating, on the same terms as men; instead of seeking to disparage them, she declares herself their equal." Another point of disagree that though women need the same status to man as Human being, I think, they have their own identity and they are different from man. They are ‘others’ in real definition but this is not in context with Hegelian definition of “others”.
I always want to paint the sexuality opposite to Indian patriarchy concept, where women sexuality is used for raising of children only and there was no seat for the womens’ sexual desire . . I think, sexuality has a major role in understanding feminism..Let us consider a girl’s condition in adolescent period.If she becomes pregnant, the male partner is not blamed for his role. It is the girl, who has to suffer. If she accepts the child, she has to suffer a lot in socially and if she goes for any abortion, she has to suffer emotionally for the rest of her life.In case of married woman, there are many restrictions with respect to sexuality whereas her male partner is free from these restrictions.Even now a days in Oriental countries, you can find most of the married woman are un known about their feeling of orgasm.If a female admits about her sexual pleasure, there may be every chance to misunderstand her as a bad woman by her own husband.She may be misunderstood for having pre marital sex.In the time of menopause, though except some biological phenomena, nothing has changed in sexual life , but a woman has to suffer a lot mentally thinking herself disable for sexually meeting with her husband. I think till now in Asian and African countries ,the patriarchy society has its control over sexuality .So, the women need two type of liberation. One is from financial slavery and another from sexuality. Women are always victims; men are oppressors. I believe in theory that "a woman's body, a woman's right.” that means women should control their own bodies and people should take them seriously.

(Venus of Willendorf : a woman looking down at her own body : an 11.1 cm (4 3/8 inches) high statuette of a female figure , carved from an oolitic limestone , discovered in 1908 by archaeologist Josef Szombathy at a paleolithic site near Willendorf, a village in Lower Austria near the city of Krems ।)

A Feministic View on Sexuality

It is an interesting fact that any concept before occupying any philosophical frame , came to literature first. Gender problem was discussed in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando and Radclyff Hall’s The Well of Loneliness, much before Judith Butler. Sexuality was also acceptable in literature in Joyce’s Ulysses or Thomas Hardy’s novel.Before writing The Second Sex, Simone’s two fictions “She Came to Stay” and “The Blood of Others” were published , where a reader can find the topics related to some how sexuality. But it is undoubtedly true that before The Second Sex, the sexed body was not an object of phenomenological investigation. Simone changed that. Her argument for sexual equality works in two directions. First, it exposes the ways in which patriarchy exploits the sexual difference to create systems of inequality and exposes the facts of sexual politics, which later leads to Feminism to fight against male hegemony. She also claimed that so long as the standard of equality is the male body, the discriminatory sexual difference remains in play.Second, her book acts as a prime source for the gender theories developed by Judith Butler or others in later period.
I think regarding sexuality, Simone seems to be most prominent in her essays, specially in The Second Sex or in Coming the Age than her novels. Simone’s few short stories and her novel ‘The Blood of Others’ are an attempt to establish a right to abortion and her first novel ‘She Came to Stay’ provides a fictional portrait of her unconventional relationship with her lifelong partner, Sartre, and her protégé, Bianca Bienenfeld .Mandarin is a love story examining the complex dilemmas posed by love and marriage (i.e., existential relationships are easier in theory than in reality) on fictionalized account of Simone’s passionate affair with Algren. Her ‘Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter’ offers an intimate picture of growing up in a bourgeois French family, rebelling as an adolescent against the conventional expectations of her class, and striking out on her own with an intellectual and existential ambition exceedingly rare in a young woman in the 1920s.In my opinion Sexuality is more prominent in the writings of Erica Jong and Germaine Greer, if we consider them as writer of later period.
I always want to paint the sexuality opposite to Indian patriarchy concept, where women sexuality is used for raising of children only and there was no seat for the women’s sexual desire .In my novel Upanibesh (The Colony) I have taken the symbol of “Shiva Linga” as the sexual desire of women. Medha, the protagonist of Upanibesh, was a bohemian. In her pre-marital stage, she was thinking that it was boring to live with a man life-long. Perhaps she wanted a chain free life, where there would be only love, only sex and wouldn’t be any monotony. In my various stories I have painted lesbian sex, rape, abortion, infertility, failed marriage and menopause in my story. I was also much more criticized to use the word ‘fuck’ in my story “Rape”.

I can say only in Oriental perspective. I think, sexuality has a major role in understanding feminism. Let us consider a girl’s condition in adolescent period. If she becomes pregnant, the male partner is not blamed for his role.it is the girl, who has to suffer.If she accepts the child, she has to suffer a lot in socially and if she goes for any abortion, she has to suffer emotionally for the rest of her life.In case of married woman, there are many restrictions with respect to sexuality whereas her male partner is free from these restrictions.Even now a days in Oriental countries, you can find most of the married woman are un known about their feeling of orgasm.If a female admits about her sexual pleasure, there may be every chance to misunderstand her as a bad woman by her own husband.She may be misunderstood for having pre marital sex.In the time of menopause, though except some biological phenomena, nothing has changed in sexual life , but a woman has to suffer a lot mentally thinking herself disable for sexually meeting with her husband.I think till now in Asian and African countries ,the patriarchy society has its control over sexuality .So, the women need two type of liberation. One is from financial slavery and another from sexuality. Women are always victims; men are oppressors. I believe in theory that "a woman's body, a woman's right."that means women should control their own bodies and people should take them seriously.

An Oriental View on Western Feminism

Once Lois Wendland Banner, the American feminist writer wrote me: I have always believed that in the drive to dispose with the concept of patriarchy, academic feminism does an injustice to the historical record--and to the reality of the present. I think the concept of "essentialism" is very much overblown by those who apply it.
I have asked her whether she has broadened her search in Asian and African countries, specially in Muslim society .In her next letter, Banner admitted that she thought that was the issue in Muslim countries, which she studied in her book Finding Fran. A feminist interpretation of the Koran was possible, as was true of many founding religious texts, but of course that was not the predominant interpretation of current time.
The next example was from a student of Orleans University. Cathy Nelson was preparing her project on feminism and asked me if I feel that feminism in India different from feminism in the west? If so, how?
I answered her with the example of ancient Vedic India where we find there was equal rights of man and woman and even there were feminist law makers like Gargi and Maitreyi , but I think India in later Vedic period had grown into a polar dichotomy society of male and female , where the former oppressing the latter and behave them as ‘other’ or similar to lower caste . Patriarchy is just one of the hierarchies, where females are most oppressive in the traditional system. In India, arranged marriages are always prefered and love marriages are considered as a matter of social sin and shame. Many Indians contend that arranged marriages are more successful than marriages in the West, particularly given the latter's staggering divorce rates. Romantic love does not necessarily lead to a good marriage, and often fails once the passion dissipates and real love flows from a properly arranged union between two individuals , they argue. An unmarried daughter -- pronounced a spinster even in her late twenties -- brings shame upon her parents, and is a burden. But once married, she is considered the property of her in-laws. In this context un-wed mothers, separated, single or unfaithful women are considered outcasts. Living out of wedlock with a partner is still virtually unheard of . During their marriage , the bride’s father has to pay dowries in the form of lots of money, furniture, jewelry, and expensive household items and even homes and expensive foreign holidays to the bride groom and still the phrase "bride burning" was coined in India after several young brides had their saris lit on fire in front of a gas stove either by their husbands or in-laws because of their father's failure to meet demands for a bigger dowry .As there is custom and tradition of joint family, a bride has to face her tyrannical in-laws and still traditional Hindu society rejects divorcees .In case of sexuality, the the active role of woman has been always denied and it is considered that woman should not be open to their sexual desires.For which you can find many of women have crossed their menopausal stage without having a single orgasm in any day. In religious rituals and customs also females are barred to take part in all worship. In Kerala, females are not allowed to enter in the Ayeppa temples. They are also barred to worship the God Hanuman and in some regions they are barred to even touch the ‘linga’ idol of Lord Shiva. In recent politics also though all political parties have assured to reserve 33% of seats in legislation in their manifesto, still it has not been transformed to law as the male dominant political parties are opposing the bill. In financial matter, though women are allowed to work out side, but their rights on any house hold matters always have been denied. A woman has to take charge of the kitchen, even if she is a earning member and she has to go out side for her job .The husband will not take charge of kitchen , though he remain un employed , as it is supposed for a man to cook for her family is against his manhood .Legally, though according to Court, sons and daughters have equal rights on patriarchal property but still now as per practice, ownership changes hands from father to husband to son and the role of a daughter or a daughter in law is denied.
My long answer was sufficient to make the girl wonder how male hegemony still exists in the Oriental countries. Since that day I was planning to write this essay on feminism for the western readers. The two queries always worry me that whether the term feminism always defined with respect to socio-economic scenario of Europe and America and the rest of world is meaning less and the second one is most important for me as it always a query in my mind whether it is at all any essential for west as the Western feminist like Banner raised the question?
I am not a theorist but a writer and hence I find myself more nearer to the first wave feminist Mary Wollstonecraft than to Simone de Beauvoir. Mary Wollstonecraft’s essay like Thoughts on the Education of Daughters or A Vindication of the Rights of Woman seem to be more practical in context with Asia and Africa , though I know my colleagues of third wave feminism in Europe may laugh at my comments. It is undoubtedly true that before The Second Sex, the sexed body was not an object of phenomenological investigation. Beauvoir changed that. Her argument for sexual equality works in two directions. First, it exposes the ways in which patriarchy exploits the sexual difference to create systems of inequality and exposes the facts of sexual politics, which later leads to Feminism to fight against male hegemony. She also claimed that so long as the standard of equality is the male body, the discriminatory sexual difference remains in play. Second, her book acts as a prime source for the gender theories developed by Judith Butler or others in later period. But what about her novels and short stories? Simone’s few short stories and her novel ‘The Blood of Others’ are an attempt to establish a right to abortion and her first novel ‘She Came to Stay’ provides a fictional portrait of her unconventional relationship with her lifelong partner, Sartre, and her protégé, Bianca Bienenfeld. Mandarin is a love story examining the complex dilemmas posed by love and marriage (i.e., existential relationships are easier in theory than in reality) on fictionalized account of Beauvoir’s passionate affair with Algren. Her ‘Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter’ offers an intimate picture of growing up in a bourgeois French family, rebelling as an adolescent against the conventional expectations of her class, and striking out on her own with an intellectual and existential ambition exceedingly rare in a young woman in the 1920s.In my opinion Sexuality is more prominent in the writings of Erica Jong and Germaine Greer, if we consider them as writer of later period.
Erica Jong’s novel Fear of Flying or Germaine Greer’s novel The Female Eunuch were two prominent books which dealt with sexual desire of woman. Greer once told the New York Times in 1971, "Women have somehow been separated from their libido, from their faculty of desire, from their sexuality. They've become suspicious about it. Like beasts, for example, who are castrated in farming in order to serve their master's ulterior motives — to be fattened or made docile — women have been cut off from their capacity for action. It's a process that sacrifices vigour for delicacy and succulence, and one that's got to be changed."
I admit, sexual liberty is a major question for third wave feminist in Europe and it is an important question but for the Asian African feminist, still the questions once raised by Mary Wollstonecraft have their own importance. I think, the essentiality of feminism always adhered to the liberation of the woman of the world, not of only women of Europe or America.So, when Erica Jong’s protagonist tells: my nipples stand up and salute the inside of my bra (or in this case, dress--since I'm not wearing a bra)...it becomes meaningless for the woman of Asian and African countries, because for them leaving the bra is not a question of revolt rather than wearing a bra against their social custom.
I think, my western feminist friends should think over the matter again with perspective to Asia and Africa.

SEXUALITY AND SPIRITUALISM IN INDIAN LITERATURE (2)

The nude photo of Saroj Bal, the avant-garde Oriya writer, made a source of controversy for a long time in Oriya Literature and still now I am astonished, why the media as well as the critics considered the nude photographs as a serious set back in our social values .It is not that the masculine nudity was not displayed before, but I think it is the display of masculine nudity in context with Eastern or Oriental culture which worried our male dominated social gurus.I think, this pics has a strong relevant with sexuality.
In India, most of the people mingle sexuality with passion and physical co-adhearance and some extent to perversion with a hidden concept of sin in their puritan mind .But the term sexuality has a wider aspect.Sexuality involves not only passion and perversion but also biological or physiological sex, gender, gender identity, gender roles and sexual orientation In an Oriya news paper Dharitri, they termed this activities as Sexual Orientation , which I consider a very wrong concept .Sexual orientation is different from sexual behaviour because it refers to feelings and to self-identity, rather than only actions. Persons may or may not express their sexual orientation in their behaviours..Sexual orientation refers to emotional, romantic, sexual and/or affectional attraction from one person to another person or persons. Someone’s sexual orientation is categorized according to the gender(s) or biological sex of the people he/she has these feelings for, that is, it describes whether a person is attracted primarily toward people of the same or the opposite sex, or to both. Sexual orientation exists along a scale that ranges from exclusive homosexuality to exclusive heterosexuality and includes various forms of bisexuality. Sexual orientation is an important part of a person’s total self-identity: how we see ourselves and how others see us. A person’s experience and understanding of her/his sexual orientation can vary during their life. In my opinion Saroj Bal's self nude picture display refers to his sexual behaviour not his sexual orientation.
You have certainly marked,that most of our world famous writers from Flaubert to Sartre are at their most creative when trying to get a date — for better or worse. So sexual behaviour is core element of humans’ sexual nature , but not sexual orientation It does not mean that sexual orientation has no role in creativity. . In other words, sex is often the spark behind creativity, even you’re not having sex. For instance you can look at the erotic sculptures of the Konark or Khajuraho or you can access the 'Shringar Kavyas" of "Riti Yuga " in Indian literature.They are more of the sexual behaviour of an artist than his sexual orientation.Same kind of art can be found in western countries also. It’s tame enough you can show it in temples, children can view it in the art museum, it even came up on computer with "safe search" turned on. But there’s no denying there’s a sexual behaviour behind it.They are the artistic expressions by an artist where a woman with her clothes off. There’s a sexual element every time an artist depicts the human body, naked or not. Human bodies are shaped by sex, and not just the sex organs. Muscles, hair, skin, posture, everything about us is shaped to a degree by our sexual behaviour. So every painter or photographer is in some way engaging his/her sexual behaviour when they depict a human being. And not just in visual arts, but also in drama, literature, music, dance, sports, every form of art. Art that depicts humans depicts sexuality. Same thing can be found in Western Art.In Botticelli’s Venus or .Georgia O’Keefe’s flower paintings, Or Henry Dreyfuss’s styling of steam locomotives for the New York Central, we find either sexual behaviour present in explicit form or in implicit form.. Shakespeare filled his plays with sexual double entendres and allusions. In every play he finds 10 ways to make a joke on the word "coxcomb." In his day the word "nothing" was slang for female sex organs, so the title "Much Ado about Nothing," takes on a second meaning in a play about virginity and trust.Other times the sexual behaviour is virtually hidden. Take the last movement of Beethoven’s fifth symphony. The rhythm has an unmistakable sexual energy. And the modulation, up a fifth, when the theme is repeated, feels sexually rooted also. Or take Piet Mondrian’s paintings. There’s no explicitly sexual reference in most of them. Yet I sense a strong sexual impulse behind them. I imagine him painting in the same mood you might have making love, with the same intensity, creativity, the desire to really connect. Well, you might disagree about Piet Mondrian. But it’s kind of obvious to say that sexual behaviour is an huge element in art. I think that’s a good thing. The world would be a lot poorer without sexual energy in art, music, literature., drama, architecture, design, poetry, cooking.

(Sculpture of the goddess LAJJA GOURI)

SEXUALITY AND SPIRITUALISM IN INDIAN LITERATURE (1)

Generally in Greco-Semitic family, God is described in masculine terms.but in the Indic family, we find God is considered as both masculine and feminine form. In Taoism, Yin and Yang and in Hinduism Prakriti and Purusha are considered feminine and masculine .The concept of Ardhanariswar form of Lord Shiva in Hinduism ia also considered as the major factor of gender equality and for this in ancient India we find evidence of homosexuality, bisexuality, androgyny, multiple sex partners and open representation of sexual pleasures in artworks like the Konark,Khajuraho temples, being accepted within prevalent social frameworks .
In Samkhya Philosophy, the concept of Prakriti and Purusha was later accpted in buddhism and Bhagwat gita .We may define thi Prakruti as ‘female’ or negative charge and purusha as ‘male’ poitive charge. This Prakriti is all pervasive but complex primal substance, which is transformed into multifarious nature. The primal entity is not perceived in its original form, for then it is in a state of equilibrium, and as such remains non-modified. This eternal and infinite principle is insentient and consists of three interdependent and interchangeable elements called the gunas. These are sattva, rajas, and tamas. These gunas are not the qualities but the constituent parts of Prakriti. They give complexity to Mula (original) Prakriti.But Purusha is inactive and passive, but sentient and also infinite and eternal . Under the inscrutable influence of Purusha; the equilibrium in Prakriti is disturbed and the whole universe of unlimited permutations and combinations comes into existence. The first modification of Prakriti - primordial nature - is called as Mahat or Cosmic Intelligence. It further involutes into two forces, 1) Akasha, the primal matter, and 2) Prana, the primal energy. Akasha forms the material basis, and Prana the energy basis of creation. From the interaction between Akasha and Prana are formed five subtle elements, crudely translated as Ether, Fire, Air, Water, and Earth. In various proportions, these are the constituents of all the material existence in the universe. As can be seen, even Mahat or Intelligence is matter consisting of three gunas, and five elements.
In Physics also we find an atom is made up of proton and electron..Proton is a positive charged particle and electron is negatively charged particle .The attraction between Proton and Electron made the existence of an atom possible.
Later, this concept laid to the Shiva and Shakti dual theory of creation. Adi Shankaracharya, the founder of non-dualistic philosophy (Advaita – ‘not two’) in Hindu thought says in his ‘Saundaryalaairi’ –“ Shivah Shaktayaa yukto yadi bhavati shaktah prabhavitum na che devum devona khalu kushalah spanditam api” i.e. It is only when Shiva is united with Shakti that He acquires the capability of becoming the Lord of the Universe. In the absence of Shakti, He is not even able to stir.
In Vrihadaranyakopanishad ,it is stated that the genesis started from the sexual intercourse of the Creator and a cow.the cow was running from the Creator with a fear to being raped and ‘she’ was transferming ‘herself’ in different forms and but the Creator was finding out ‘her’ and every time from the sexual intercourse (or we may describe it as a ‘rape’) the genesis started. I don’t find any reason why we the Indian people get so much worried about Wendy Doniger .I do admit that the western thinkers portray Hinduism inappropriately through Greco-Semitic concepts and categories .I often find my western Philosophers examine Bhagwat Gita as a negative terms of Arjuna killing his relatives because of his Hindu outlook .But as Hindus, we are also very much sensitive regarding sexuality , especially when it is quoted with our religion and spiritualism.But we have to admit that sexuality is often described in our myths, Puranas and in our religious text, above all in our literatures from medival age to this post modern age .In this serial eassy,I will try to justify the role of sexuality from different angle and also try to compared it with the European/American concept of sexuality.
(To be continued)

(The Cover Art of the novel GAMBHIRI GHARA)

SEXUALITY AND ORIYA LITERATURE

Hearing my tom boy experiences of adolescence , one of my Portuguese philosopher friend once asked , whether this had any impact in my sexuality in later life or not.Such questions could not be asked in Orissa, because here any query about sexuality can not be shared publicly and more over it is an offense to ask any lady on that question. What ever Judith Butler may say, but it is true that my ‘tomboy activities’ had no impact in my later life.Regarding sexuality I am straight, though you find the gayness in one of my story ‘Nepathye’.Later it is included by my English story collection as “Behind the Scene”. But I am far from such instinct. In my adolescence, though I wore the boyish dress, but whenever I was sent to mill by my father for supervision of work on his absence, a strange shaky and shy feelings gripped me ,because the workers were looking at me with curiosity and their eyes were telling a lot. It seemed they were looking for a girl under a boyish disguise and the girl hood inside me felt abused. Perhaps, a girl was always living in me under the boyish garment. But our society is not so smart to discuss these things.
Sexuality is something that can be related to a lot of other aspects of culture, tightly woven into an individual life, or into the evolution of a culture. Any one’s class or ethnic or geographic identity could be closely tied to his/her sexuality, or any one’s sense of art or literature. Sexuality is not just an entity in itself. But still ,either in west or in east, there is a reluctant outlook towards sexuality and society has always tried to hide it from any open forum .The censorship on speech, and adding decorum to dress and declaring the sexual organs as obscene ,the society has imposed a ban on it.However, inspite of such self imposed censorship, sexuality has its place in public forum in religious and spiritual texts to establish any philosophical notion, judiciary and legislative documents and bills often used to restrict the sexuality, medical text books to explore the human body and lastly in literature.
But neither the society, nor the legislative ,even the judiciary also do not stand by the side of sexuality to support it.In the west,James Joyce’s Ulysses or even Raddyff hall’s Lonliness in the Well or Verginia Wolf’s Orlando are some examples which have to suffer a lot for describing sexuality in literature.In the west, sexuality in literature grew with feminism.Simone De Beauvoir in her book The second Sex, first elaborately described the Gender role and problem away from the biological differences.Later Judith Butler explored the Gender Problem in to queer theory and the total west experienced a new’third sex; genre come in to exist.It does not mean that there was no sexuality in literature previously. The literature of every corner of the world has its sexual affixation,but those were not in form of any movement or did not base on any manifestation.
In Indian literature, like the west,sexuality comes with the growth of feminism but unlike to west very few has been written on transsexual experiences.the sexuality still in the heterosexual form as it was in the past.But the voice has changed a lot.No doubt, the sexuality in current literature is different from erotic descriptions of the text we found in the last centuries.
In Oriya Literature, the kavyas of Ritiyuga have deep associations with Shringar rasa which leads to sexuality in erotic forms.After 1947,the descriptions of eroticism in liberal way in fiction was first started by Surendra Mohanty
The publication of a literary magazine “Uan Neo Lu” in sixties.The magazine bears some stories of Annada Prasad Ray, in that magazines, which were blamed as vulgar and obscene. Krushna Chandra Behera’s story “Bedi” created a controversy in sixties and he has to resign from the editorship of Jhankar.In 1989, my story “Rape” (later translated in many of the Indian languages and anthologized in Harper Collins Book of Oriya Short story) made a controversy .It is to be considered as a premier story of feminism, where the sexuality of female was justified. I used the word “fuck” for the first time in Oriya fiction and since now, I was remembered for that controversy.In 90’s some stories made controversy for making sexuality as a common factor of human life.Pratibha Ray’s SHAPYA,Jagadis Mohanty’s “NIAN, Yashidhara Mishra’s “REKHA CHITRA and Ashish Gdnaik’s BHOKA are such type of stories among which “NIAN” of Jagadish made a debate that continued for long time.In the beginning of 21C, the young writers started a movement on sexuality based short stories, named as “Dehabadi Galpa”. Saroj Bal, the editor of “Galpa Patrika” made a collection of short stories (it anthologized twelve stories of different writers, such as :Sarojini Sahoo, Ashish Gadnayak, Saroj Bal,Sadanada Tripathy,Paresh Patnaik,Satyapriya Mahalik, Chintamani Sahu,Paramita Satpathy,Ajay Swain,Pabitra Panigrahi,Nibaran Jena and Prakash Mohapatra) December 2004.After publishing of such anthology, where it is pronounced that the writers dare to admit their writings related with sexuality, which is one of the essential factor of the life.
In 2005, one of my novel ‘Gambhiri Ghara was published in the Puja Special issue of Galpa Patrika and later it was published as a book form in2006.The novel gained a popular response and was considered as a “Dehabadi novel”, though .Later in my interview with AMARI GAPA, I denied it as a novel of sexuality(Dehabadi Upanyas) . In 2006 AMARI GAPA, a little magazine of Oriya in its May-July issue; published a cover topics on “Sarojini Sahoo and the Sexuality in Literature”, where apart from a long interview with me, a controversial essay of Aparna Mohanty was published in support of sexuality. Though in the interview of AMARI GAPA, I have categorically denied that I don’t want to brand as any trend, neither to feminism nor to sexuality. I don’t know why, still many of the critics like to associate me with feminism and sexuality. Perhaps that is because of my frankness to say everything and my ‘tomboy activities’ is still remaining in me and I do not get rid of the young naughty girl living inside me.