Lesbian Love Essay

Term Paper

The first reference to lesbian love in Indian Literature was in the Rig Veda. According to Gita Thalani there were legislations against lesbian love, validating only procreative sex. The code of Manu contains the punishments meted out to women engaging in homosexual acts, a virgin girl who engages in love-making with another deserves the punishment of being fined and beaten. Thus we see that lesbianism and homosexuality were not only present in ancient India, but were also suppressed and punished.

Same-Sex Love in India: A Literary History edited by Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai, explores the history of Indian literary tradition from the viewpoint of homoerotic love. The book begins with ancient Puranic texts with tropes indicating same-sex attachments. In the Mahabharata for example the relationship between Krishna and Arjuna goes beyond that of friendship and has homoerotic tones. Another homoerotic trope is that of rebirth, in Somadatta’s Kathasaritsagara, Somaprabha falls in love with the princess Kalingasena and attributes to it to their previous birth where he must have been her close female companion.

Same sex desire amongst women is illustrated in the Bengali text Kritivasa Ramayana i.e. Ramayana written by Krittivasa, the sage Bhagiratha’s birth is ascribed to the sexual union between two females as his father died before his conception, his birth occurs through divine sanction of the god Sankara, “You two have intercourse with one another. By my blessings one of you will have a lovely child”

The book further talks about the multi-dimensional portrayal of gods in the Bhakti tradition where the gods appeared in male, female or even in neuter and animals forms , carrying tones of an homoer...

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...lore their sexuality, the lack of appropriating spaces and discourses for homosexual relations. As Radha states, “There is no word in our language to describe what we are to each other.”

Lihaaf and Fire represent two highly controversial literary, artistic works, Chughtai argued that purdah had already been imposed on her, but her tongue would be a naked sword, unrestrainable. While Chughtai faced obscenity charges for her story, Fire loosely based on Lihaaf was strongly condemned by right –wing parties like the Shiv Sena and the Bhartiya Janta Party as being foreign to Indian culture, with acts of vandalism performed at the theatres. However the voice of female sexuality proved to be an indomitable one. Over the years writers like Kamala Das , Arundhati Roy and Manju Kapur have explored forbidden female desires ranging from the homoerotic to the incestuous.