[Advaita-l] true colour of Chameleon

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

On Thu, 20 Sep 2018, Swati Gupta via Advaita-l wrote:

> After the 377 ruling I was wondering what our scriptures say.
>
> One of my friend mentioned this book which supposedly has references to 
> LGBTQ acceptance in our scriptures.

LGBTQ is a foreign political term (and an inconsistent one too.  It's 
currently LGBTQIA in uptodate circles.) so I would not use it when 
discussing our shastras.  But it does go to show that those in this thread 
who say "it doesn't matter" or "what is the relevance." are being 
dangerously naive.  There is an agenda going on.  The experience in the 
West is that these people are all meek and mild pleas for tolerance when 
they are in the minority but when they gain power its a different story. 
Will mandirs and maths be coerced into supporting adharma?  We must be 
vigilant.


> https://www.amazon.com/Tritiya-Prakriti-People-Amara-Das-Wilhelm/dp/1413435343
>

I have read this book.  While the author obviously favors one view, I 
think when citing sources he has tried to be fair and accurate and avoid 
propoganda.  The author is an ISKCON devotee so that slants his 
interpretations somewhat.  And he has that annoying tic they have of 
calling everything "Vedic" even though he is mainly citing post-Vedic 
shastras.

But overall I consider this an argument in good faith.  Here are things  I 
remember.

Much of the evidence he cites from dharmashastras deals with two types of 
people.  shaNDha - those who are intersex (i.e have the genitalia of the 
opposite sex or both sexes or neither.) and kilba - those who are impotent 
or infertile. (i.e. unable to procreate.)  Potentially a third type is the 
eunuch.  All these types are referred to as napumsaka "neuter" which is 
also the third grammatical gender in Sanskrit.

Intersex symptoms occur naturally in a very small proportion of births. 
Amaradasa claims shaNDha could also include those who acted effeminately 
as well as the truly intersex.

Impotence was a much bigger deal as one fulfills the rna to the pitrs by 
having a son who can perform shraddha and carry on the family line.  They 
do not have adhikara to perform yajnas or other rites.  Though they could 
do bhakti I suppose.  Also a kliba is not fit for marriage.  This is an 
important point for the author as apparently many homosexuals are forced 
into marriages against their will.  Not only is this unjust he says but it 
is actually contrary to dharma.  However I think historically more people 
who were attracted to the same sex chose to get married than you might 
think.  "Love" was not the most important factor in a marriage, succession 
and property rights, the need for support in old age etc. were also 
factors.

Amaradasa claims that many who would be in the shastraic category of kliba 
were in fact gay or lesbian.  This seems plausible but there isn't any 
real way of telling and it would make no difference for their adhikara 
anyway.

An interpretive problem is that words in Sanskrit are often used 
figuratively.  For example dvija in theory means any man, Brahmana, 
Kshatriya, or Vaishya who has undergone upanayana.  However it is often 
merely a synonym for Brahmana.  In the same way shaNDha, kliba, napumsaka 
etc. are often used imprecisely or interchangably.  This means that some 
of the authors interpretations could be legitimate but we cannot be 
certain.  (This applies to the negative interpretations too of course.)

Amaradasa also claims that the custom of castrating men to make them 
eunuchs is a post-Muslim tradition and early references to them should be 
understood as to homosexuals instead.  I find this to be dubious.  Eunuchs 
existed in many pre-Islamic cultures.

The Kamasutra and its tika Jayamangala explicitly mention homosexual acts. 
It is said that certain men resort to male prostitutes for pleasure or 
sexual relief.  The impression I get is that this is viewed as a bad 
habit more than anything. A fact of life but certainly nothing to be 
"proud" about.  A more interesting passage says that there are some men 
who form more formal and long-term relationships with their male lovers. 
The word used is panigraha.  There is the interpretive ambiguity again. 
This ("clasping hands") can mean marriage. The central rite of the 
vivaha samskara is when the groom takes the brides hand and they do agni 
pradakshina.  However the Kamasutra also does use the word vivaha so 
it seems to me this particular panigraha is something different.  How
different?  We don't have any historical or literary evidence to say for 
sure. It is known in the literatures of many culture of deep and abiding 
friendships between men. (and women too though less so perhaps because 
less is recorded about women in general.)  Were they all "gay?"  To say 
yes is stretching the evidence too far.

The episode in Mahabharata is analyzed where during the Pandavas exile, 
Arjuna, having rebuffed the advances of the Apsara Urvashi is transformed 
into a Shanda by her curse.  Under the name Brhannala he goes to the court 
of King Virata where he becomes a dancer and attendant in the womens 
quarters.  Brhannala is described as being dressed and ornamented as a 
woman, having a feminine voice and gait etc.  The author says this shows 
that the term Shanda was not restricted to intersexed people alone but 
also transgender.

So far the book has been pretty even-handed but unfortunately in part two 
it goes off the rails.  There is a bunch of stuff about Prabhupada 
which is irrelevant for those who aren't in ISKCON.  He tries to show that 
"Vaishnavism is very liberal" but the quotes display quite the opposite to 
this reader.  And what is important is "Krishna consciousness" not 
"fundamentalist" attachment to the shastras which contradicts the 
earlier chapters of the book and again is opposite of what Vaishnava 
teachers teach.

Examples are given of devatas and practices in various parts of India are 
given as evidence of the tritiya prakrti. In most cases this just amounts 
to cross-dressing.  For example many North Indian Vaishnava sampradayas 
believe bhaktas are reincarnations of the Gopis and Sakhis of Krshna 
Bhagavans time in Vrndavana.  Some devotees identify so strongly that they 
dress up in womens clothing either for utsavas or in rarer cases all the 
time.  But atleast from my personal observations of such people they are 
completely supportive of traditional gender roles in society at large. 
This is a theological issue for them.

So overall this book is a mixed success.  All in all what we can say 
is that dharma has more than zero but less than 100% acceptance of 
non-heterosexual behavior and that's it.

-- 
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>