“Love's Rite: Same-Sex
Marriage In India & The West ”
By Ruth Vanita
 Love’s Rite: Same-Sex Marriage in India and the
West is an exciting new book by University of Montana
professor Ruth Vanita. No longer simply a debated concept,
same-sex marriage is fast becoming a reality in Hinduism
today—both in India and the West. Hundreds of
gay and lesbian Hindu couples are literally “tying
the knot” in wedding ceremonies both public and private,
with family approval or not, and increasingly with the blessings
of officiating Hindu priests. In her latest book to
date, Vanita examines this phenomenon from a religious, social
and more importantly, human perspective.
Love’s Rite:
Same-Sex Marriage
in India and the West
By Ruth Vanita
370 pages, softcover – Rs. 295
Penguin Books India
ISBN: 0144000598
While most Hindus remain opposed to same-sex unions and have
not thought about the topic very deeply or on a personal level,
this is changing. For instance, when a Shaiva priest
from India was asked to perform a wedding for two women in
2002, he hesitated at first but then agreed. Vanita: “He
told me that when the women requested him to officiate at their
wedding he thought about it and, though he realized that other
priests in his lineage might disagree with him, he concluded,
on the basis of Hindu scriptures, that, ‘marriage is
a union of spirits, and the spirit is not male or female.’” (p.
147)
Srinivasa Raghavachariar, a well known Sanskrit scholar and
Hindu priest of the major Vaishnava temple in Srirangam, India,
deliberated upon the same issue and came up with a similar
response: “Same-sex lovers must have been cross-sex lovers
in a former life. The sex may change but the soul remains
the same in subsequent incarnations, hence the power of love
impels these souls to seek one another.” (p. 147)
Swami Bodhananda Saraswati, a Vedanta master who took sannyasa initiation
from Swami Chinmayananda and is the founder of the Sambodh
Foundation with branches worldwide, had this to say on the
subject of same-sex marriage: “There is no official position
in Hinduism. From a spiritual or even ethical standpoint,
we don’t find anything wrong in it. We don’t
look at the body or the memories; we always look at everyone
as spirit…Different priests may or may not perform same-sex
weddings—it is their individual choice because there
is no one position or one head of Hinduism. I am not
opposed to relationships or unions—people’s karma brings
them together.” (p. 307)
Ruth Vanita also quotes Swami B.V. Tripurari, a sannyasi in
the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition: “My opinion regarding
gay and lesbian devotees is that they should be honored in
terms of their devotion and spiritual progress. They
should cultivate spiritual life from either a celibate status,
or in something analogous to a heterosexual monogamous situation…Although
my Guru Maharaja (Srila Prabhupada) frowned on homosexuality
in general, he was also very practical, flexible, and compassionate. One
of his earliest disciples was a gay man who once related how
he had ultimately discussed his sexual orientation with Srila
Prabhupada. He said that at that point Srila Prabhupada
said, ‘Then just find a nice boy, stay with him and practice
Krishna consciousness’…I believe that Hinduism
originally held a much more broadminded view on sexuality than
many of its expressions do today.” (pp. 308-309)
Of course, not all opinions are so favorable and open-minded. Swami
Pragyanand of Avahan Akhara, for instance, had this
to say for a reporter from the Hinduism Today newspaper: “Gay
marriages do not fit with our culture and heritage. All
those people who are raising demand for approving such marriages
in India are doing so under the influence of the West…we
do not even discuss it.” (p.308) The diverse nature
of Hinduism allows adherents to agree or disagree on this controversial
issue. Quite often, members of the same organization
or temple will have varying opinions. This is an advantage
for gay Hindus who can then “vote with their feet” by
avoiding priests with negative attitudes, such as the one above,
and seeking out those with more compassionate and inclusive
viewpoints.
Love’s Rite presents a refreshing array of
new and encouraging material that will help this emerging debate
along. It is well written and thorough, covering all
areas of discussion, but at the same time quite easy to read. Divided
into ten chapters, Love’s Rite explores such
interesting questions as—How is marriage defined, now
and in the past? Who defines it? What are the differences
between marriage in India and the Euro-American West? Is
the spirit gendered? What are the differences between
marriage and friendship? Who is qualified for child rearing? What
happens to couples when they are forcibly separated or pressured
into unwanted marriages? All of these questions are thoroughly
addressed in Vanita’s new book.
The personal dimension of Love’s Rite is enormously
moving. In particular, Vanita examines the recent phenomena
of joint suicides in India committed by (mostly) female couples
encountering violent opposition to their relationships. In
the following example, a poverty-stricken lesbian couple on
the verge of suicide bequeaths their last few rupees to the
local Krishna Deity: “Among the items Lalitha and Mallika
left behind was a greeting card showing a man and a woman kissing
in silhouette against a sunset. This card was not new;
someone else had already used it. Mallika had pasted
a piece of paper over the sender’s name and written her
own name on the paper. Inside was her message to Lalitha,
giving her ‘a thousand kisses in public.’ Lalitha’s
note also stated, ‘The Rs. 25 placed in the diary is
to be given as offering to Guruvayoorappan.’ Guruvayoorappan
refers to the icon of Krishna in the temple at Guruvayoor,
a famous temple town and pilgrimage site very close to the
girls’ hometown, Trichur.” (p. 50)
Another incident occurred at a yoga center in Tamil Nadu: “Sumathi,
26, and Geetalakshmi, 27, had been living at a Yoga Centre
in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, for three years. Since they
were somewhat beyond the conventional age for marriage, and
were living away from their parents, it appears that their
religious way of life allowed them to remain respectably single. But
the people at the Yoga Centre found out about their intimate
relationship, and threw them out. They had to part and
return to their parental homes. Unable to bear separation,
they decided to commit suicide. In a letter to their
guru at the Centre, they wrote, ‘We did a mistake because
of which you threw us out…We cannot survive in this
society. That is why we arrived at this decision. Please
forgive us.’” (p. 135-136)
Not all of the relationships end so tragically, though, especially
when they gain the support of their families and local villages. Vanita
notes that in India, custom and community support far outweigh
any legal validity—in fact, unlike the West, Indian law
does not require marriage licenses, whether for the couple
or officiating Hindu priest, and the majority of marriages
conducted in India are not directly registered with the state. The
importance of family and community support in India cannot
be underestimated and is something that is slowly increasing: “More
intriguing than parents who oppose same-sex marriage are those
who come around to supporting it. Newspaper reports represent
several parents participating in their daughter’s weddings. In
some cases, the weddings appear to have been elaborate affairs,
attended by many guests. In none of these cases was any
gay rights movement or organization involved. The arguments
that convinced these parents were not, then, those that might
have been put forward by gay rights advocates. The family
members quoted in the newspaper reports represent themselves
as wanting to make their daughters happy, and becoming convinced
that they would be happy only if they married one another.” (p.
146)
Love’s Rite offers several examples of same-sex
Hindu marriages performed in both India and the West, along
with heartwarming photos of the happy couples and their weddings. Some
of the ceremonies are private while others are lavish celebrations
attended by many relatives and friends. Most of the weddings
make use of traditional Hindu rites such as invoking fire as
a witness, exchanging garlands and vows, chanting sacred mantras,
tying garments together, taking seven steps around the fire,
and so on. In 2001, a Hindu priest of the Srivaishnava
lineage conducted a commitment ceremony for a Hindu lesbian
couple in Sydney, Australia. He mentioned that in the Ramayana,
a partnership ceremony between Lord Rama and Sugriva is described
whereby Hanuman lights a fire and the two friends exchange
vows, circle the fire together, etc.—very similar to
a Vedic marriage ceremony. The priest was of the opinion
that such a ceremony was appropriate for gay couples. Other
Hindu priests model their same-sex weddings after more traditional
Hindu gandharva or vivaha types.
The book contains many nice summaries of Hindu tradition and
philosophy, especially in regard to ancient textbooks and their
many gender-bending narrations involving Hindu deities. In
Chapter Five, the reader is treated to not one but three renditions
of the story of Maharaja Bhagiratha’s miraculous conception
by two females—a Bengali edition of the Padma Purana and
two separate versions of the Krittivasa Ramayana. In
Chapter Eight, there is an interesting examination of same-sex
love between females as recorded in Rekhti, Indo-Muslim
literature from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Using
these and other textual references such as Kama Sutra and the Puranas,
Vanita demonstrates how same-sex love and unions are by no
means anything new to the Indian subcontinent.
In Chapter Seven, Love’s Rite explores the
modern-day marriage arrangements in India of gay men and lesbians
to opposite-sex partners. Vanita writes: “It
is well known that in India and other supposedly traditional
societies, large numbers of people live as apparently traditional
heterosexuals, while secretly engaging in homosexual liaisons
or leading lives of quiet desperation. That the same
is true in the West is less often acknowledged because many
people assume that the openly gay community is synonymous with
the entire gay population. In fact, this is very far
from being the case.” (pp. 218-219) My one critique
of this section is that Vanita fails to provide any scriptural
evidence supporting or contradicting this modern day practice. For
instance, the Hindu concept of svadharma, or living
according to one’s own nature and duty (as mentioned
in Bhagavad Gita), seems to disagree with it, and verses forbidding
the marriage of homosexual men to women can be found in Hindu
texts such as Narada-smriti. The story of goddess
Bahucara, who curses her husband for dishonestly marrying her
(he refuses her love and goes to other men instead), also comes
to mind. Nevertheless, Vanita recognizes the embedded
tradition as highly questionable: “While demonstrating
that same-sex desire has existed in the past and still does
exist within traditional families, I do not mean to suggest
it flourishes there. Among the gay Indians I know who
have entered heterosexual marriage without telling their spouses,
almost all have been plagued by fear, guilt, shame or regret…The
few exceptions are those where both spouses are bisexual, or
one is heterosexual and the other gay or bisexual, but they
reach a mutual agreement not to be monogamous. I do not
have the data to examine the relative happiness of MOCs [marriages
of convenience].” (p. 243)
Undoubtedly, this book will greatly assist anyone wishing
to better understand the difficult and complicated topic of
same-sex marriage from a Hindu perspective. For most,
the question will not be solved until one day, at some point
in time, a dearly beloved friend or relative faces this issue
in the most personal of ways. This is exemplified by
a soul-searching swami in the book’s final chapter: “A
couple of years ago, an eastern European devotee named Damodara
hanged himself in a Vaishnava ashram in the US, after an Indian
ashram had cancelled his trip to India when they found out
he was gay. Gaudiya Vaishnava monk Bhakti Tirtha Swami,
wrote a soul-searching letter: ‘Recently, I have been
making so much more effort in trying to open up my heart to
be more available in understanding and serving all Vaishnavas…After
hearing of Damodara’s suicide…I must say that
I have seen the light…’” (p. 306) Another
swami, Bodhananda Saraswati, reveals a similar mood: “We
have to face this issue now…I’m sure spiritual
persons will have no objection when two people come together. But
it is a social stigma…So what is required is a debate
in society. I have not debated it enough. I have
to do that. I have a lot of people confiding in me, ‘I
am very worried. I am gay. What should I do now?’” (pp.
307-308)
In the beginning of her book, Ruth Vanita quotes San Francisco
mayor Gavin Newsom, who, while presiding over that city’s
civil disobedience against California’s discriminatory
marriage laws in 2004, said: “Put a human face on it. Let’s
not talk about it in theory. Give me a story. Give
me lives.” In this light, I offer many thanks and pranams to
Ruth Vanita for doing just that—she addresses the important
debate of same-sex marriage in her new book, Love’s
Rite, from a perspective that is not only scholarly but
deeply personal.
Note: The page numbers quoted in this review are from
the Indian edition of Love’s Rite, sold only
in the Indian subcontinent, Malaysia and Singapore. A
Western edition is available elsewhere around the world through
bookstores such as Amazon.com:
Love’s Rite:
Same-Sex Marriage in India and the West
By Ruth Vanita
288 pages, hardcover - $65
Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 1403970386
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