CA Tripp Attitudes Toward Sex. Indian

• INCIDENCE, FREQUENCY, AND THE KINSEY 0-6 SCALE certingly apart. In fact, orgasm is reached shifting kaleidoscope. in only about half of female homosexual Attitudes toward Sex. Indian contacts (and in a still smaller portion of history, geography, and demography all female heterosexual contacts). exhibit a rich diversity of traits, making Moreover, female sexualitytends generalizationshazardous. Sexualattitudes to be far morepliant, and thusmorechange and practices also show considerable vari able, thanequivalentmaleresponses. Thus ation, ranging from the classic sex while the sexual revolution made no ap affirmingKamasu tra andtheworld-famous preciable change in the male percentages erotic sculptures of ancient temples tothe cited above (Gebhard, 1969), certain extreme prudishness of ascetics who con changes in female responses, especially demned all forms of seminal emission and regardinghomosexual try-outs, have been a modern educated elite which still de noted subsequent to Kinsey's 1953 find rives its inspiration from Victorian Eng ings (Bartell, 1971; Tripp, pp. 271, 272). land. The reasons for these and a host of other ShakuntalaDeviobservedin 1977 complex matters in both male and female that IJany talk concerning homosexuality sexualitycontinueto intriguesexresearch is altogether taboo" and that "serious ers, and continue to validate the Kinsey investigations on this subject in India are 0-6 Scale as a much needed and appreci almost nil." This taboo, which applies ated measuring and descriptive device. with somewhat less rigor to discussion of sex in general, canbetracedbacktoatleast BIBLIOGRAPHY. Gilbert D. Bartell, theBritish colonialoccupationoftheeight Group Sex: A Scientist's Eyewitness Report on Swinging in the Suburbs, New eenthandnineteenthcenturies.Independ York: David McKay, 1971; Paul H. ence, which came in 1947, has done noth Gebhard, ed., Youth Study, unpublished ing to loosen it. manuscript, Bloomington, IN: Institute Thestrength of this taboo is such for Sex Research, ca. 1968; Alfred C. as to lead noted Indologist Wendy Kinsey, Wardell B. Pomeroy, and Clyde E. Martin, Sexual Behavior in the O'Flaherty to describe India as "a country Human Male, Philadelphia: Saunders, that has never acknowledged the exis 1948; Alfred C. Kinsey, Wardell B. tence of homosexuality." While Ghi Pomeroy, Clyde E. Martin, and Paul H. Thadani was right to call this observation Gebhard, Sexual Behavior in the Human "factually incorrect" in an unpublished Female, Philadelphia: Saunders, 1953; C. A. Tripp, The Homosexual Matrix, new paper, as a broad generalization it is not so ed., New York: New American Library, far from the truth; one must search far and 1987. wide to find the exceptions. C. A. Tripp Any discussionofhomosexuality in India must be placed against the back ground of the Indian social system, which INDIA is centered on the extended family. The The Republic of India includes first obligationof any Indian is to hisorher over 800 million people crowded onto the family, not to his own goals. Everyone is Indian subcontinent, an appendage of the expected to marry las arranged by the Asian mainland which it shares with families) and procreate sons. Until the Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Bhutan. marriage takes place (often to a complete Historically, the Indian cultural zone has stranger), the modem Indian of either sex included all of thesubcontinent as well as is expected to remain celibate and avoid the island of Sri Lanka, and at times large masturbation, though some allowance is areas of Southeast Asia, though India's made for the involvement of males with politicalboundarieshave beena frequently female prostitutes. Nevertheless, there 586 :':':''f''''':' INDIA + may be a significant amount of well-hid withdrawal of women from public life. den homosexual activity among unmar The free and open Indian attitude toward ried boys and young men. (heterosexual) sex which had character AncientIndia. The oldest surviv ized the ancient period now gave way to ing literature is the set of scriptures called Islamic semiprurience. theVedas, thefirstofwhichltheRig-Veda) At the same time, theHindu (and is usually dated from 1500 to 1200 B.C. later the Buddhist) religion saw therise of These textswere composed by the Aryans Tantrisml with its hospitality toward sex who invaded India from Central Asia. A as a means of liberation and its explicit common view is that of the Czech scholar endorsement of cross-genderrole-playing. Ivo Fiser, whoreviewed theirreferences to The ColonialPeriod. TheBritish, sex and concluded that lIin the Vedic pe who came first as traders and stayed to riod ... homosexuality, in either of the conquer the subcontinent (eighteenth and sexes, was almost completely unknown nineteenth centuries), were scandalized and if there were such cases, the Vedic by the sexual customs of the Indians, but literature ignores them.1I inkeepingwith theirpolicy ofminimizing Later, but still ancient legal and interference in the local mores,. they did religious texts, howeverl starting with littleabout them. The educational~vstem Buddhist codes going back at least to the they establishedl however, eventu~Uy third century B.C., seem to take homo created a new Indian elite which enthu~l>, sexualityfor granted as a ratherminorpart astically absorbed British ideas, including " " of common life. The Buddhist monastic the more prurient attitudes of theVictori- code cites various instances of homosex ans toward sex. This elite, in tum, im ual behavior among the monks (all of posed their new antisexuality on the In- which, like heterosexual behavior, was dian middle class. prohibited). A jaundiced description of Indian VatsyayanalwritingtheKamasu Muslimsexualitywaswrittenby theDutch tra in thefifth century of our era, included Admiral John Splinter Stavorinus in the a whole chapter on the practice of fellatio 1770s. Referring to the Islamic Bengalis, as performed by eunuchs. Other erotic Stavorinus opined that "The sin of Sodom manuals suggested that sodomy was is not only in universal practice among commoninKalinga (southernOrissastate) them, butextends toa bestialcommunica and Panchala lin the Panjab}. In general, tion with brutes, and in particular with sexfor pleasurewas explicitlyvalidated (at sheep. Women even abandon themselves leastfor malesl andoften, aswithVatsyay to the commission of unnatural crimes.1I anal for females as well) and not necessar III do not believe that there is any ily linked to procreative function. country upon the face of the globe," the The Medieval Period. Indian Dutchman continued, "where lascivious medieval history (twelfth-eighteenth intemperancel and every kind ofunbridled centuries) saw the North Indian cultural lewdnessl is so much indulged inl as inthe heartland dominated by Islamic conquer lower provinces of the empire of Indostan. ors, who did not succeed in converting [This] extends likewise to the Europeans, mostoftheHindu masses but did leave an who settle, or trade there." indelible imprint onIndianlife. Enough of AccordingtoAllenEdwardes, who their subjects became Muslims for large based his book The Jewel in the Lotus areas ofIndiato become primarily Islamic (New York: Julian, 1959) largely on nine in character (becoming the nations of teenth-century sourceslpederastywasrare PakistanandBangladesh in 1947and 1971). among the Hindu majoritYI though "ram TheMuslims brought with them pant"amongtheMuslims andSikhsof the the institutionof pederasty, and forced the Panjab, Deccan, and Sindh. Sir Richard INDIA + oldest extant law codes, therefore, are not the colonial administration. The 1861 decrees by kings but sacred texts written legislation which changed the British by Brahmin·class priests. Often conflict· penalty for sodomy from hanging to life ing with each other, they were held in imprisonment became Section 377 of the widely varying degrees of reverence by IndianPenalCode afterindependence. This different communities and social groups; law prohibits "carnal intercourse against in many kingdoms theywere not followed the order of nature" and continues to pre· at all. scribe imprisonment up to life as well as The earliest surviving text on whippings and fines. Any sexual act in· Indian law is the ArthashastrQ, a manual volving penetration of the anus or mouth on statecraft by Kautilya, a ministerofthe by a penis, whetherhomosexualorhetero· Mauryan Empire of the fourth centuryB.C. sexual, makes both partners criminal, Kautilya set out fines of 48 to 94 panas for according to Indian courts. In addition, male homosexual activity and 12 to 24 intercrural (between the thighs) sex has panas for lesbian acts. These fines were been held byIndian courts to be banned by much lower than those for many hetero· thislaw. Lesbianactivities, and heterosex sexual offenses. ual cunnilingus, however, are legal. The Code of Manu, which dates Indianlegaltradition justifiesthis from the first to third centuries of our era law with the argument that "the natural and is the best known of the sacred law object of camal intercourse is that there texts, prescribes that an upper.class man should be possibility of conception of "who.commits an unnatural offense with human beings, which in the case of un· a male ... shall bathe, dressed in his natural offence is impossible." Indian Ie· clothes." The same purification ritual is gal scholars, however, trace it to English prescribed for one who has intercourse beliefs that /Iall emission other thanin vas witha female inthedaytime.

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