Hindi Belt: A different life in letters

October 17, 2014 04:32 pm | Updated May 23, 2016 07:30 pm IST

Kuldeep Kumar

Kuldeep Kumar

The issue of same-sex relationships has been occupying considerable space in public discourse for quite some time. It was fiercely debated when in December last year, the Supreme Court of India overturned a Delhi High Court ruling and re-criminalised same-sex marriages and homosexual acts invoking an archaic Victorian law that was enacted by the British rulers in 1861.

Interestingly, such laws have been thrown out of the window in the United Kingdom. At present, 17 countries, including two from Latin America, have granted legal recognition to same-sex marriages. A few days ago, the United States Supreme Court legalised such marriages in five States.

In this context, one must remember that Johanna Sigurdardottir, who was Iceland’s longest-serving Member of Parliament and served her country as its Prime Minister between 2009 and 2013, was openly lesbian.

In India, the land of the Kamasutra, Tantra and the Khajuraho temples, we somehow shy away from discussing these issues. Organisations and individuals espousing Hindutva, Islamist or Christian causes fulminate at the mention of same-sex relationships. Therefore, it came as a very pleasant surprise when I chanced upon a book written in Hindi jointly by Jagadishwar Chaturvedi and Sudha Singh who teach at the Hindi Departments of Calcutta and Delhi Universities respectively.

Titled Kamukta, Pornography aur Streevad (“Sexuality, Pornography and Feminism”), the book was published several years ago but was not accorded the attention it deserved by the sprawling Hindi academia where Bhaktikal is a never-ending epoch. This is perhaps the first and the only book of its kind that seriously discusses and analyses various modern theories and methodologies that have emerged on the intellectual scene since Simone de Beauvoir published her classic The Second Sex in 1949. It also explores and lays bare the phenomenon of pornography and its close relationship with the corporate structures.

I have read Lihaaf (“The Quilt”), the famous short story of Ismat Chughtai, that had kicked up a storm in the Urdu literary world after its publication in 1942 as it had very obvious suggestions of lesbianism. However, it came as news to me that in 1947, a woman writer Asha Sahay had written a full-length novel Ekakini (“The Recluse”) in Hindi. The novel did not have mere suggestions of lesbianism but frankly portrayed two young women in an intense lesbian relationship. Thus, it was the first Hindi novel on lesbianism written from a feminist perspective.

One was even more surprised to read that Acharya Shivpujan Sahay, one of the top Hindi writers and editors of his time, had written the novel’s foreword praising its beautiful “modern style”.

As a work of art, Lihaaf is perhaps miles ahead of Ekakini . However, in Ekakini , Asha Sahay expresses her thoughts through heroine Kala who questions male dominance in every sphere of life and rebels against it. “We are nothing in ourselves. We have no separate existence of our own. Even if we sacrifice everything for the man, we receive only his indifference and neglect. On top of it, we are called Devi.”

Kala describes the status of a Devi (goddess) as a curse. When her lover Arati decides to marry a man, Kala says, “So, you want a male life-partner, not a female. But, will he love you even more than I do?” The novel also makes it clear that Arati is not a lesbian by her natural orientation and has got into a relationship merely because she and Kala are childhood friends.

In fact, Begum Jan of Lihaaf too does not seem to be a natural lesbian. She becomes one because of her loneliness resulting from the neglect shown by her husband who seems to be fond of young boys. Loneliness seems to be the main problem of Kala too.

The way Asha Sahay questions and negates male hegemony, discards the institution of marriage and portrays the intimate bonding between two female lovers is unparalleled in the annals of Hindi literature. However, it speaks volumes about the prevailing ideological ethos in the world of Hindi literature and academia that the novel is virtually unknown to this day.

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