SSM Hindu Tradition

same-sex weddings, Hindu traditions and modern India
Author(s): Ruth Vanita

Source: Feminist Review, No. 91, south asian feminisms: negotiating new terrains (2009),
pp. 47-60
Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.
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91 same-sex weddings! Hindu
traditions and modern
India
Ruth Vanita
abstract
This article examines the phenomenon of same-sex unions, both joint suicides
weddings, mostly among young, low-income, non-English speaking women, that h
been reported from many parts of India over the last three decades. Most of t
women were Hindus and many of the weddings took place by Hindu rites. None
these women had contact with any LGBT or women's movement or activists bef
their weddings. Ancient as well as modern texts show that people can and do draw
traditional Hindu ideas about love (as the product of attachments formed in forme
lives), rebirth (attachments persist from one birth to another) and marriage (which
supposed to outlast one lifetime) to legitimize socially disapproved unions, b
cross-sex and same-sex. Right-wing Hindu forces today mistakenly argue that t
idea of same-sex love and marriage, and indeed of marriage based on love itself,
Western imports. In fact, same-sex marriages were reported from rural areas a
small towns long before the Indian LGBT movement took cognizance of the issue. W
families accept them, female couples are generally able to stay together but wh
families violently oppose them, often with the collusion of local police, couples ma
be forced to separate or driven to suicide, even though law courts have uniform
upheld the right of consenting adults to live together. Modern Hindu teachers a
priests are divided on the question of the validity and desirability of same-sex
marriage; a doctrinal debate is now developing.
keywords
same-sex marriage; lesbian; gay; suicide; Hindu; India
feminist review 91 2009 47
(47-60) © 2009 Feminist Review. 0141-7789/09 www.feminist-review.com
introduction
Over the last three decades, Indian newspapers have reported same-sex weddings
and joint suicides taking place all over the country, both in urban and rural
areas. Most of the couples are non-English speaking young women from lower-
income groups. Most of them are Hindus (not surprising since Hinduism is the
majority religion in India); there have been a few Sikhs and Christians, and some
inter-religious as well as many inter-caste unions.
At first glance, this phenomenon might appear related to the push for gay
marriage in the West, but in fact, it is not. None of these young women were
connected to any movement for equality; most of them were not aware of
terms like lgay' or 'lesbian1. Many of them framed their desire to marry in terms
drawn from traditional understandings of love and marriage, saying, for example,
that they could not conceive of life without each other, and wanted to live
and die together. The closest counterparts to these same-sex unions are
heterosexual Move-marriages1 and joint suicides that are also regularly reported
in the Indian press.
In Love's Rite: Same-Sex Marriage in India and the West (2005), the only book-
length study of these phenomena, I examine the legal, religious and historical
dimensions of same-sex marriage and suicide, in the context of Indie notions of
love, friendship and family. In the present essay, I focus on such unions that have
occurred since the 1990s, in the context mainly of Hindu thought and practice.
I demonstrate how traditional, canonical Hindu doctrines have often been drawn
upon to enable same-sex marriage; I also consider trends within modern Hindu
life and ideology that are opposed to same-sex unions. I thus problematize
conventional understandings of tradition as backward looking and modernity as
progressive.
modern homophobia or traditional

authoritarianism?
In our book, Same-Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History (2000,
updated Indian edition forthcoming 2008), Saleem Kidwai and I demonstrated
that: (a) same-sex desire and even sexual activity had been represented
and discussed in Indian literatures for two millennia, often in a non-judgmental
and even celebratory manner; but (b) a new virulent form of modern homophobia
developed in India during the colonial period, more specifically after the decisive
crushing of indigenous cultures, such as the urbane culture of Lucknow, following
the revolt of 1857.
This homophobia was part of a more generalized attack on Indian sexual mores
and practices undertaken by British missionaries as well as educators. It is
48 feminist review 91 2009 same-sex weddings, Hindu traditions and modern India
evident not only in the anti-sodomy law introduced by the British in the Indian
Penal Code of 1860 but also in the deliberate heterosexualization of entire
literary canons and genres (such as the Urdu ghazal or love poem, which
traditionally gendered both lover and beloved as male) undertaken by literary
critics, educators and writers (Vanita and Kidwai, 2000).
Most Indian nationalists internalized this homophobia and came to view

homosexuality as an unspeakable crime, even as they also attacked polygamy,
courtesan culture, matriliny, polyandry and other institutions that were seen as
opposed to heterosexual monogamous marriage. Prior to this, homosexuality had
never been considered unspeakable in Indian texts or religions.
The new silence surrounding homosexuality is one reason why modern institutions
such as the police force, and educational as well as religious organizations today
typically respond to same-sex unions with horror and even violence. However,
I would argue that in contrast to these public institutions, most families respond
to same-sex unions in the same authoritarian spirit that they respond to
disapproved heterosexual unions. Most Indian families tend to be suspicious of
and resist love marriages of all kinds - not just cross-caste, cross-class, cross-
religion or international marriages, but even eminently 'suitable1 marriages that
they themselves might have arranged. The degree of resistance varies widely from
family to family.
Female-female unions are always love unions. Hence families respond to them as
they do to male-female love unions. Depending on family dynamics, the
responses range from wholehearted acceptance to hesitant tolerance to virulent
opposition. When female couples elope and marry in temples, their families often
enlist the help of police to track them down and separate them. Such families
usually invoke not the anti-sodomy law but the law against abduction, which is
also commonly used against eloping heterosexual couples. In both situations,
parents typically misreport an adult daughter's age, to make her appear a minor
and thus a possible victim of abduction.
When two adults elope together, police cannot legally prevent them from living
independently, so they employ extralegal means of browbeating them. For
instance, while supposedly investigating the alleged abduction, they put them
into a police lock-up or into governmental rescue homes for women, where the
living conditions are usually horrendous and where they must consort with
criminals. The combination of these tactics with emotional blackmail by families
and punitive moralizing by police and other authority figures often results in
frightening young people, who have never lived away from their families, into
submission.
An example is that of Shilpi Gupta, 22, and Usha yadav, 20, who eloped in 2004
from Allahabad in north India to Gujarat in western India where they lived
together for six months (Rastogi, 2005; Sharma, 2005). Shilpi's parents filed a
Ruth Vanita fern i n ist review 91 2009 49
police case, falsely alleging that Usha (the more 'masculine1 appearing of
the two) had kidnapped their minor daughter. The police brought Shilpi and
Usha back from Gujarat. They declared to the police their deep love for each
other and their determination to commit suicide if separated. But after they
were kept in a police lock-up, their resolve broke, and when produced in
court they agreed to return to their parents. Shilpi's parents then placed her
under house arrest, not allowing her to use the telephone or otherwise
communicate with Usha. Although Shilpi is an adult and Usha a computer
teacher, and both live in a metropolitan city, which is a major Hindu sacred
place, and which also boasts one of the oldest and largest law courts in India
(established in 1868), neither the forces of modernity nor those of tradition were
able to liberate them.
An additional factor in some recent cases has been the violent intervention of
right-wing Hindu organizations, which are much more political than religious and
are a product of modernity. This opposition has the effect of strengthening
parental opposition and inhibiting traditional types of compromise. Thus, when
19-year-old Seeta attempted suicide by poisoning in Meerut in January
2006, because her bride, 18-year-old Vandana, whom she had married in a
Shiva temple, had been locked up in her parental home, the local activists of two
right-wing organizations, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (World Hindu Association)
and the Shiv Sena, held a rally outside the district magistrate's office. In an
uncanny echo of the demonstrations at Matthew Shepard's funeral, they
also protested outside the hospital where Seeta lay battling for her life, shouting
slogans like, lStop perverse marriages, stop anti-social impulses' (Telegraph,
2006).1 Both young women are from poor families and were workers 1inMatthew
a Shepard
was a 21-year-old
hosiery factory. gay student at the
University of
It is important to remember that these same Hindu right-wing organizationsWyoming
are who was
beaten and tortured
also opposed to cross-sex dating and romance. For over a decade, they have
to death by two
men, in Laramie,
been violently protesting against Valentine's Day every year. They commit
Wyoming, in October
arson on establishments that offer Valentine's Day cards, gifts, flowers or because he
1998,
was gay. His murder
meals for sale, and they attack young heterosexual couples who go out together
created national
to celebrate. outrage and a

demand for hate
crime legislation.
Homophobia is thus only one aspect of their larger opposition to all forms Right-wing
of anti-gay
Christian groups
erotic love outside marriage, which they view as products of globalization,
demonstrated at his
funeral, claiming
Western neo-imperialism and market forces that commercialize sex. They forget
that he deserved to
that there is a tradition in Hinduism, dating back two millennia, of worshiping die
theand had gone to
hell.
God of love, Kamadeva, especially at spring festivals like Madanotsava, from
which the modern festival of Holi, which has strong erotic overtones, descends.
Young couples thus violently separated are then generally pushed into family-
arranged marriages. On the eve of such a marriage or following it, they often
commit joint suicide.
suicide: assertion and resistance
Couples, both heterosexual and same-sex, commit joint suicide

escape enormous pressure exerted by their families and communitie
them and force them into family-arranged marriages. They often pe
wedding rituals before killing themselves, and leave behind notes th
suicide as a type of wedding in death. A typical example is that of
teacher Ranu Mishra, 21, and college student Neetu Singh, 19, who
poison together in May 2005, when RanuJs parents forcibly arranged h
to a man. Before taking poison, the women married each other priv
applying sindoor (vermilion) to Ranu's forehead (Sharma, 2005). Ap
sindoor is a common ritual in many Hindu weddings.
Love suicide has a long history in most cultures in India. While all r
to condemn it (with some exceptions, such as the one-sided ver
suicide that has come to be termed Setti), most cultures also celebra
this condemnation. Celebratory legends draw heavily on religious
representing the lovers as reunited in heaven or in the next life. P
Hindu and Buddhist narratives as well as modern Hindi movies
heterosexual couples as well as same-sex friends committing suicid
reborn in the next life with the same spouse and/or the same frie
2005, chapter 4).
Female couples who commit joint suicide in India today appeal to t

often writing in their suicide notes that they prefer union in the
separation in this life. Some couples have requested joint funerary
some families have complied with this request.
compromise and acceptance

However, not all families oppose love marriage or even same-sex marriage. Many
families first resist and then accept a marriage, incorporating it into that flexible
arena called 'tradition'. This pattern involves initial suspicion, dissuasion and
emotional pressure. If the couple persists, these give way to negotiation and
ultimately acceptance, with the family then going on to conduct a traditional
ceremony, with all the appurtenances of a family-arranged marriage. The eleventh-
century Kathasaritsagara contains stories of parents going through this process of
negotiation and accepting remarkably radical cross-caste, cross-class marriages
(between, e.g., a princess and a so-called 'untouchable1) by telling themselves that
the two must have been married to each other in a former lifetime (Vanita, 2005).
Like families, Hindu priests too adopt a range of attitudes to love marriages,
including same-sex love marriages. In north India, family-arranged weddings
generally take place at home, while a wedding disapproved of by parents often
takes place in a temple rather than at home. Runaway heterosexual couples
frequently get married in temples. However, in many parts of south India,
weddings are traditionally conducted in temples. Female couples have been
marrying in temples all over the country, from the first such reported case in 1987
(when two policewomen, Leela Namdeo and Urmila Srivastava, married in a
temple in Bhopal, central India), to the present day.
Many cases have been reported of families coming to accept same-sex unions
and participating in as well as arranging wedding ceremonies for the couple. The
process of negotiation, whereby families move from initial disapproval to later
acceptance, is sometimes explicit, as in the case of policewomen Leela and
Urmila. After they were suspended from their police jobs, Urmila's family
arranged a wedding ceremony to console them, and also allowed them to live as
a married couple in the family home (Dixit, 1988). Later still, they were
compelled to deny their relationship in order to be reinstated in their jobs, which
they badly needed, as Leela, a widow, had three children to support.
The flexibility of so-called 'tradition1 may be read between the lines of newspaper
reports about same-sex unions. For example, in November 2006, papers reported
that two Kondh tribal women, Bateka Palang, 30, and Maleka Nilsa, 25, had
married each other in a village in Orissa. The reporter emphasized that they
had defied community norms. A.B. Hota, director of the Tribal Research and
Training Centre in the capital city, Bhubaneswar, was quoted as saying, 'The
phenomenon of same-sex marriages is new in tribal society. Tribal tradition is
totally opposed to same-sex marriages1 (Pattnaik, 2006).
A closer reading, however, suggests a more complicated situation. The women

were married 'in a traditional ceremony, in the presence of family1. Following
their tribal custom of bride price (the opposite of the mainstream custom of
dowry), the family of Bateka, the 'groom', gave a cow and wine to the family of
the 'bride1 Maleka. Bateka's mother said, 'We resisted their marriage because it
was against our tradition. But they were in no mood to listen and eloped. ...
Finally, we were compelled to get them married according to our tradition. I have
accepted Maleka as my daughter-in-law1.
Another recent case bears witness to the assimilative and flexible nature of
Indian religious practice. In October 2007, two young women, Kumari, 19, and
Varalakshmi, 18, in Vizag (Visakhapatnam), got married in a temple in the
presence of Varalakshmi's mother and another witness. The two women, who
belong to the goldsmith community, were workers in a church and they also
exchanged Bibles in accordance with local Christian practice. When the church
found out about their intimacy, they were dismissed from their jobs. They then
found work in a nursery and rented an apartment (Deccan Chronicle, 2007). The
report does not clarify whether the two women are Hindus or Christians. In either
case, they clearly felt an affinity with both religions.
'Adjustment' and compromise tend to be highly valued in Indian families, and,
like Bateka's mother, parents often feel 'compelled1 to accept their children's
wishes. In today's context, this compromise may be aided or inhibited by forces
at play in the public arena. Popular Indian TV talk shows have begun to highlight
gay and lesbian issues, and have come out in support of persecuted couples. In
some instances, police have shown signs of realizing that they do not have the
right to compel adults to separate from their lovers.
Hinduism and democracy

I identify three forces that have helped female couples (as well as heterosexual
couples in cross-caste and cross-religion unions) in different ways - the law
courts, the media and some Hindu spaces. Whenever female couples have
managed to get past local police and appeal to the law, the courts have
consistently upheld their right to live together. If the women have some economic
resources and social support, they may then be able to live independently without
police harassment. However, if local communities or their families subsequently
harass them, courts have not been able to offer timely protection. Nevertheless,
the courts' declaration that two women have a Constitutional right to live
together as consenting adults is important.
The national, English-language media have helped by generally portraying the

women's feelings and relationships sympathetically, upholding their right to
liberty, and also by bringing them to public attention, thereby putting them in
touch with civil liberties and sexuality rights organizations, who have assisted
some of them. I discuss two such cases later in this essay. Media publicity is a
double-edged weapon; it can draw the attention of right-wing groups as well.
However, on balance, these two democratic institutions - the courts and the free
press - have proved helpful to female couples.
Hindu spaces, often seen by the Indian Left as irredeemably reactionary, have in fact
often worked in tandem with these democratic institutions to support female couples.
Both in India and Nepal, many female couples have married in Hindu temples. The
media, the women themselves and their supporters have also used Hindu vocabulary
and doctrine to legitimize these marriages. Among these doctrines are Hindu ideas of
llove marriage', Hindu notions of the transient, fluid nature of gender (and of caste,
class, species) in the perspective of the doctrine of rebirth, as well as the belief that
attachments persist from one lifetime to the next (Vanita, 2005).
Hindu ideas of love and marriage

Ancient and medieval Hindu scriptures list between eight and twelve forms of
marriage. The two best known today are family-arranged marriage and
gandharva vlvaha: marriage based on mutual love and attraction between two
individuals. The Sanskrit term gandharva is routinely used in modern Indian texts,
including popular cinema and newspapers, to indicate a marriage based on
romantic love. Gandharva marriage is constituted by mutual consent and requires
no witnesses, no officiant and no parental consent.
Gandharva marriages are often celebrated with truncated or symbolic Hindu

rituals such as an exchange of garlands or walking around the fire together. In
the Sanskrit play, Avimarakam, by third-to-fourth-century playwright Bhasa, the
hero secretly enters the heroine's bedchamber, walks around the fire with her and
then declares that since they have taken seven steps with fire as witness, they
are now married (Menon, 1996). A famous example of such a marriage in a Hindi
film occurs in lAradhana7*Worship', [1969]: when pregnancy results from one-
time premarital intimacy, the lovers wed in secret by exchanging garlands and
praying together.
Hindu sacred texts debate the status of gandharva marriage - while it has a
lower status in law books, some texts consider it a superior form. For example,
the fourth-century Kamasutra, which is a sacred text, states that gandharva is
the best form of marriage because it is based on mutual attraction (anuraga).
Perhaps the most famous gandharva marriage from an ancient text is that of
'Shakuntala'; the story highlights both the pleasures and the risks of gandharva
marriage, as the hero, who weds the heroine with a ring but without witnesses,
disowns her when she gets pregnant by him but is unable to produce the ring.
While many homosexually inclined individuals in India signal their difference by

refusing to enter a family-arranged marriage, the female couples who marry
choose a path that may be more difficult, or may be easier, depending on their
particular family dynamics. When they declare that they will marry each other,
they are perceived as choosing a somewhat unusual but nevertheless
comprehensible form of gandharva marriage.
Many Hindu texts insist that everyone has a duty to marry and have children. If
one renounces the world, one may be freed of this duty, but not otherwise. It is
this social dharma that powerful family members invoke to bully the individual
into submission, whether to separate him or her from a lover or to force him or
her into marriage or into the family business or into conformist behaviour.
However, this doctrine of dharma has always been in conflict with the doctrine of
individual dharma (in the sense of the law of one's being), which is inseparable
from the doctrine of rebirth. An individual is reborn in order to work through
attachments from previous births, and thus move towards freedom from
attachment, which enables liberation from the cycle of rebirth. This urge to work
through one's attachments constitutes individual dharma; it is inborn and cannot
be erased. If an attachment is forcibly suppressed in one lifetime, the individual
will be reborn with the same attachment in the next life.
Repeatedly, in Hindu narrative, authority figures who oppose an individual's
passionate love are compelled to give in when they realize that this love is
irresistible. As the eleventh-century Sanskrit story-cycle, the Kathasaritsagara,
states in the context of an intense male-male attraction at first sight: lVakti
janmaantarapritim manatí snihyadakaaranam' ('Affection [that arises] in the
heart without a cause speaks of love [persisting] from a former birth'.
Durgaprasad and Parab (1930: 86), translation mine). As mentioned earlier,
medieval texts depict parents deciding to accept their childrens' cross-caste and
cross-class marriages on the basis that these young people must have been
spouses in a former lifetime.
While modern Hindu families' initial response to socially disapproved love affairs,
cross-sex or same-sex, tends to spring from the perspective of outraged social
dharma, the second perspective - that of individual dharma - often creeps in
and helps families adjust and compromise with the couple.
The idea of love as an irresistible force has a strong resonance with modern
Indians. The ancient Greeks viewed Aphrodite and Eros as irresistible, and the
Hindu God of love, Kama, who shoots flowery arrows is similar to Eros. One
difference, however, is that the love induced by Kama is not so much of a 'divine
madness' as the love induced by Eros; rather, it is an arousal of slumbering
attachments from an individual's former births.
The story of Kama, at the behest of the other Gods, shooting an arrow at Shiva,
exemplifies the complexities of the Hindu view of love. Shiva is meditating when
Kama shoots him; the arrow is effective because Shiva falls in love with and
marries Parvati. Shiva is destined to marry Parvati because she is the
reincarnation of his dead first wife, Sati. yet, Shiva gets so enraged that he burns
up Kama with his third eye. As a God, Kama cannot be killed but he becomes
bodiless (one of his names is Ananga, the bodiless one). As an invisible figure, he
is arguably even more powerful.
In this story, Shiva represents the Hindu ascetic tradition that must succumb to
the demands of social dharma and the universal force of desire, which Kama
represents. The conflict between the ascetic tradition, which views sex as
permissible only for reproduction, and the mainstream tradition that celebrates
the amorous exploits of the Gods, such as those of Shri Krishna with the
cowherd women, continues to animate modern Indian debates about sexuality
and marriage.
Islamic Sufism, a major shaper of medieval (and modern) Indie ideas of the
erotic, also incorporated Plato's idea of love as an innate human response to
human beauty that reflects divine beauty. It is no accident that Ghalib's couplet
remains hugely popular today: llshq par zor nahin, hai yeh voh atish Ghalib/Ki
lagayen na lagen aur bujhaye na bañen' ('Love cannot be forced - it is a flame,
says Ghalib/Which cannot be ignited at will or quenched at will'). In 2004, when
I quoted this verse on a New Delhi-based television talk show, lWe the People',
that was focused on same-sex love, it was greeted with spontaneous
applause, because, I think, the idea of love as irrepressible appeals to the
Indian cultural imagination.
the beginnings of doctrinal debate

Apart from these more popular views of love based in Hindu doctrine, there are
also specifically religious views expressed by priests and teachers in modern
India, which consciously draw upon ideas derived from ancient texts. In her 1977
book, The World of Homosexuals, mathematician Shakuntala Devi recorded an
interview with Srinivasa Raghavachariar, Sanskrit scholar and priest of the major
Vaishnava temple at Srirangam in south India. Sri Raghavachariar, himself
married and father of thirteen children, said that 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 (Devi, 1977).
In 2002, I talked to a Shaiva priest from India who conducted the wedding of two
Tamil Brahman women in Seattle. This priest combines in himself many features
of the modern and the pre-modern. He comes from a long lineage of priests, but
he works as a computer engineer in Seattle to earn a living. He told me that he
donates all his earnings from priestly work to the Shiva temple in his village in
India, so that the merit or demerit accrues not to him but to Shiva. He also
explained that when the women requested him to officiate at their wedding he
thought hard about it and, although 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'.
This formulation is amazingly close to that in a remark made by a village

schoolteacher named Sushila Bhawasar who happened to be the neighbour of
Leela and Urmila, the two policewomen who married in 1987. When questioned by
a journalist, she responded: 'After all, what is marriage? It is a wedding of two
souls. Where in the scriptures is it said that it has to be between a man and a
woman?1 (Panchal, 1988).
The beginnings of a debate were evident at the Kumbha Mela in 2004, when Rajiv
Malik, a reporter for Hinduism Today, asked several Hindu Swamis gathered there
for their opinion on same-sex marriage. This configuration is itself suggestive of
the modern and the pre-modern, the global and the local forces that meet in
contemporary Hinduism. Hinduism Today is a magazine published in the US (it is
based in Hawaii). Rajiv Malik asked the Swamis a number of questions; the
question about same-sex marriage was clearly inspired by the Euro-American
debate around this issue. But the fact that he did not ask about other
Euro-American issues, such as abortion or race relations, suggests that same-sex
marriage is an issue for Hindus globally and in India in a way that these other
issues are not. For example, Mala Nagarajan and Vega Subramaniam, the two
Indian women who married in Seattle, subsequently became petitioners, along
with other couples, in a lawsuit that went to the Washington Supreme Court,
seeking the legalization of same-sex marriage in the state of Washington.
The Swamis did not agree on the question of same-sex marriage. They disagreed
even with others from their own lineages who were present. The answers ranged
from Swami Avdheshananda's condemnation of same-sex marriage as unnatural
and unheard-of, to Mahant Ram Puri's remark: 'There is a principle in all Hindu
law that local always has precedence. In other words, the general rules and the
general laws are always overruled by a local situation. I do not think that this is
something that is decided on a theoretical level. We do not have a rule book in
Hinduism. We have a hundred million authorities' (Malik, 2004: 30-31).
This remark is highly perceptive on a number of levels. First, the emphasis on the
local is important. Global or even national forces may insist on moving in
one direction, but people at the local level, especially in a country like
India, often ignore those forces and act in accordance with their own
understanding, particularly in matters relating to human relationships, such as
marriage, family and friendship. Political parties of all persuasions often find
this tendency frustrating, but it is also a positive tendency, which allows people
to negotiate locally.
Second, the Swami rightly points out that Hinduism has la hundred million
authorities1. Like other religions, Hinduism has multifarious traditions and
lineages, which, despite an underlying unity, maintain their own distinct
practices and doctrines (see Vanita, 2007). However, unlike some other religions,
Hinduism has not one but thousands of sacred texts. If a line disapproving of
same-sex unions can be found in one text, a story celebrating it can be found in
another. Modern Hindu right-wing organizations are attempting to stamp out this
diversity by imposing a uniform authoritarian version, with little scriptural
backing, from above. The range of practices and community responses around
female-female unions is just one small example demonstrating the ultimate
futility of this attempt.
Third, the Swami's understanding of Hindu law coincides with that of legal
historians, because custom in all schools of Hindu law does in fact take
precedence over written laws. This principle was recognized even by the British
rulers, and is enshrined in post-independence law, such as the Hindu Marriage
Act, 1955, which recognizes as valid any marriage performed by a ceremony
customary in one of the partners1 communities, regardless of whether a licence is
obtained or the marriage registered with the State. I have argued elsewhere that
female-female marriages performed by customary ceremony and with community
participation are legal under the provisions of this Act, even if the State refuses
to register or recognize them.
In 2004, I interviewed Swami Bodhananda Saraswati, a Vedanta teacher, on the

question of same-sex unions, and he said, '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. ... It's a Christian idea that it is wrong. From a Hindu
standpoint, there is nothing wrong because there is nothing against it in
scripture. ... 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. Sexual attraction is not under your control. ... Everyone comes into the
world with their own set of needs and talents, and tries to fulfil their needs and
express their talents in relationship with others. The problems are the same,
whether in a gay marriage or a heterosexual marriage' (Vanita, 2005: 307-308).
negotiating with family! polity! religion

Two narratives about female couples who made use of a range of tactics to
defend themselves against persecution, one with a happy and the other an
unhappy ending, may be used to study the complex processes of negotiation
between female couples and society. The first is that of two young women from
Kerala who employed the ancient threat of love suicide in conjunction with
modern means of communication to achieve support for their union. In February
2004, Savvy magazine Valentine's Day issue ran a cover story about two women
from Kerala: Sheela, 23, and Sree Nandu, 21. Their story was also widely reported
in the national press. These two women twice used the threat of suicide to assert
their right to live together. Sheela, a Christian, who had had a child out of
wedlock, was harassed, abused and imprisoned by her family. She and Sree
Nandu, a Hindu, then pretended to consume poison, as a way to compel their
families to let them live together. The families sent them to hospital, from where
they escaped. Sree Nandu dressed as a man, and they lived as husband and wife
in Waynadu, Kerala, for two months. When a local tabloid exposed and defamed
them, the police threatened them with prosecution under Section 377 IPC, and
insisted that Sheela return to her father.
With the help of some activists and journalists, the two girls then convened a
press conference in 2003, where they declared: lWe will live together till our
death. No force on earth can separate us. If society and you press people don't
allow us to live as lovers, we have no option but to commit suicide' (Nair, 2004:
12-22). This turned the tide in their favour, and they found shelter with a
sexuality rights organization in Bangalore. Later, they returned to Kerala and still
later, broke up for personal reasons, but continue to live independently and work
for lesbian rights.
The other story is that of two Sikh women, Baljit Kaur, 21, and Rajwinder Kaur,
20, high school graduates from Bátala in Punjab. Having failed to persuade their
families to accept their relationship, they eloped to Vaishno Devi, a major Hindu
pilgrimage place in Jammu, where a male army officer helped them get married in
a temple. They then visited the Golden Temple, and proceeded to Chandigarh, the
capital of Punjab. Fearing for their lives, because their families, who are Jat
Sikhs, had threatened to kill them, they decided to appear before the media at
the office of their friend, Arvinder Bhatti, who runs a social welfare organization,
the Improvement Trust, and declared that they loved each other and would die
for each other. They also said they planned to migrate to Canada, with the help
of a Toronto-based female friend (Ratual, 2007).
Before they could do so, Rajwinder's family abducted her and imprisoned
her in an unknown location. In despair, Baljit attempted suicide and the
police filed criminal charges against her, as attempting suicide is a crime in
Indian law. A lesbian rights organization from Delhi is now helping her contest
the charges.
This couple and their community stand at several intersections of global and
local, past and present, modern and traditional, religious and secular. While Jat
Sikhs do practice 'honour' killings, they also are a very powerful community in
Punjab, with strong links to government, and have a history of migration to the
West, especially Canada, where they have established highly successful
communities. Jat Sikhs also have a famous martial tradition and a history of
high representation in the Indian army. Though not highly educated, Baljit
and Rajwinder were able to call upon allies from these sites (the army, Canada,
the Improvement Trust), and, in accordance with Punjab's syncretic Hindu-Sikh
past, also drew on both Hinduism and Sikhism, seeking blessings at both
Vaishno Devi and the Golden Temple. Although, thanks to the media, gay rights
organizations found out about both couples, help came too late for Rajwinder
and Baljit.
As these recent cases indicate, some female couples today may have access to
resources outside their families or towns and villages, and even outside the
country. But most still continue to sink or swim depending on the degree to which
their families are willing to accept them. Continued study of the patterns of
marriage or joint suicide as options available to cross-sex and same-sex,
especially female, couples, has the potential to reveal, as if in a microcosm, the
many intersections, continuities and transformations in modern Indian society,
religion and polity.
author biography
Ruth Vanita, Professor at the University of Montana, former Reader at Delhi
University, founding co-editor of Manushi (1978-1990), is the author of several
books, including Sappho and the Virgin Mary: Same-Sex Love and the English
Literary Imagination (1996, Indian reprint 2007); Same-Sex Love in India (with
Saleem Kidwai, 2000), which will be reprinted shortly by Penguin India (2008);
Love's Rite: Same-Sex Marriage in India and the West; and Gandhi's Tiger and
Sita's Smile: Essays on Gender, Sexuality and Culture. She has translated many
works of fiction and poetry from Hindi and Urdu to English, and published essays
on Shakespeare in several journals, most recently in Shakespeare Survey, 2007.
references
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2007/10/lesbian-wedding-stuns-vizag-andhra.html, (last accessed September 2008).
Devi, S. (1977) The World of Homosexuals, Delhi: Vikas.
Dixit, N. (1988) 'Bride grooms bride' Savvy Magazine, 21 February 1988.
Durgaprasad, P. and Parab, K.P. (1930 [1852]) editors The Kathasaritsagara of Somadevabhatta,
Bombay: Nirnaya Sagara Press.
Malik, R. (2004) 'Discussions on dharma' Hinduism Today, October-November-December 2004.
Menon, K.P.A. (1996) Complete Plays of Bhasa, Vol. Ill, Delhi: Nag Publishers.
Nair, J.R. (2004) 'I believe: an unusual love story' Savvy Magazine, February 2004, 12-22.
Panchal, C. (1988) 'Wedded women cops to challenge sack' The Times of India, 23 February 1988.
Pattnaik, S. (2006) 'Two Orissa girls defy norms, get married' The Times of India, 5 November 2006,
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/322874.cms, (last accessed September 2008).
Rastogi, V.K. (2005) 'Lesbian couple sparks debate in Uttar Pradesh state' Sify News, 19 April 2005,
http://sify.com/news/offbeat/fullstory.php?id=13721145, (last accessed September 2008).
(tatuai, D. (2007) 'Another Lesbian couple ties knot' Express India, Punjab Pulse, 20 June 2007,
http://cities.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=241926, (last accessed September 2008).
Sharma, A. (2005) 'Women in love marry each other, enter suicide pact' Indian Express, 10
May 2005, http://www.indianexpress.com/fulLstory. php?content_id=70060, (last accessed
September 2008).
The Telegraph (2006) 'Meerut lash on lesbian couple' 12 January 2006, www.telegraphindia.com/
1060112/asp/nation/story_5711541.asp, (last accessed September 2008).
Vanita, R. (2005) Love's Rite: Same-Sex Marriage in India and the West, New York: Palgrave-
Macmillan; New Delhi: Penguin.
Vanita, R. (2007) 'Hinduism' in Siker, J.S. (2007) editor, Homosexuality and Religion: An
Encyclopedia, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.
Vanita, R. and Kidwai, S. (2000) Same-Sex Love in India and the West: Readings from Literature
and History,, New York: Palgrave Macmillan (updated version forthcoming Penguin India, 2008).
doi:10.1057/fr.2008.45

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same-sex weddings, Hindu traditions and modern India

Author(s): Ruth Vanita

feminist review 91 2009 47

(47-60) © 2009 Feminist Review. 0141-7789/09 www.feminist-review.com

modern homophobia or traditional

Most Indian nationalists internalized this homophobia and came to view

Ruth Vanita fern i n ist review 91 2009 49

to celebrate. outrage and a

Couples, both heterosexual and same-sex, commit joint suicide

Female couples who commit joint suicide in India today appeal to t

compromise and acceptance

Ruth Vanita fern i n ist review 91 2009 51

A closer reading, however, suggests a more complicated situation. The women

Hinduism and democracy

The national, English-language media have helped by generally portraying the

Hindu ideas of love and marriage

Ruth Vanita fern i n ist review 91 2009 53

Gandharva marriages are often celebrated with truncated or symbolic Hindu

While many homosexually inclined individuals in India signal their difference by

Ruth Vanita fern i n ist review 91 2009 55

the beginnings of doctrinal debate

This formulation is amazingly close to that in a remark made by a village

Ruth Vanita fern i n ist review 91 2009 57

In 2004, I interviewed Swami Bodhananda Saraswati, a Vedanta teacher, on the

negotiating with family! polity! religion

Ruth Vanita fern i n ist review 91 2009 59

Deccan Chronicle Lesbian wedding stuns Vizag' 1 November 2007, http://www.pressmart.net/blog/

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