The Two Rasa Lilas, Again

I got into a bit of a debate with Sachin Gupta, a devoted follower of Vivekananda and Hindu nationalist, on Facebook. He posted a review of Wendy Doniger's book History of the Hindus, which reiterated criticisms that sensitive Hindus have had about her work almost since the beginning.

Fair enough. She has attracted a lot of attention ever since she wrote Shiva, the Erotic Ascetic for raking up every juicy bit of erotica she can find in the Puranic mythologies. There is a lot of defensiveness amongst some Hindu nationalists who resent it when scholars point out the sexual nature of much of Hindu symbolism and mythology.

My intention here is not to defend Doniger in what she says, as the accusations leveled against her ("Doniger's is not a prayerful, thoughtful approach, but a whimsical, frivolous approach to both the mundane as well as the esoteric.") in all likelihood do have some merit; nevertheless, to totally deny the explicit sexuality of much of the content of Puranic mythology and iconography, etc., is to be deliberately obtuse.

There are two basic points to be made here. The first is that the Puranas and epics are a copious body of literature. There are so many stories that mutually contradict each other. These stories about God in mythical form are written by human beings and may in some respects be inadequate metaphorically. After all, why must every one of the puranas, for instance, be accepted as especially insightful about the highest nature of transcendence?

Often enough they are blatant manipulation of different social groups by brahmins, of women by men, and so on. They may have been simply stories meant to titillate and amuse. And they may just as well be more revealing about a particular human psychological or sociological phenomenon within the larger landscape of religious thought in India than of some deep eternal or philosophical truth.

Why do some people feel it necessary to defend every bit of the Indian literary tradition in order to save their faith in Hinduism?

But Sachin responds to me in the following spirit, which I give here for the amusement of any readers, and to which I will respond with my second and more important point:

You are Wendy Freudian Doniger's das. I don't think you are Krishna devotee. You have shown it earlier too with many of your foot-in-mouth comments. Is for you Krishna a Casanova and playboy, seducing other women? And Jayadeva's Gita Govinda porn and sexual literature? Is this your understanding of Krishna? Have you never heard of allegoric meaning? It portrays the divine ecstatic love of the soul for the Supreme Soul through that of Radha as embodied soul longing for Supreme Soul, Krishna. The truth behind is hidden from the profane mind and intellect!

Now this is the typical argument: These sexual escapades of the gods are meant to be metaphorical in some way. Admittedly, in many cases that is true, particularly where the Bhagavata Rasa-lila is concerned. But to plead metaphor in every instance is in fact an obfuscation.

Simply calling these stories allegories is to only see half of the picture. The literal depiction of sexuality as a purushartha has to be given its due, and the depiction of the highest gods, whether it is Shiva or Krishna, as sexual beings is an essential part of the discourse on spirituality AND sexuality in India. So Doniger's attempt to understand these tales in sexual terms, even Freudian terms, is a legitimate exercise.

Both these elements are there and their juxtaposition needs to be understood. One is not there to the exclusion of the other. If one says that the linga and yoni are representative of Shiva and Shakti, the Great God, then one is saying, in effect, that sexuality itself is in some way representative of God.

I doubt that Sachin has ever read Gita Govinda and is simply repeating what he has heard others say about it. This is the usual technique of putting something on a pedestal and honoring it from a healthy distance, bracketing instead of investigating. Where in Jayadeva's Gita Govinda can you find any hint of an allegorical attitude to the story? One would expect something --anything -- but there is nothing, not even in the commentaries.

We must therefore take it as a depiction of what could be called "archetypal humanity." It is not mystical, but a celebration of human love and sexuality projected onto the Divinity as the archetypal manifestation of such relations. Since the 19th century, the attempt in Bengal has consistently been to portray Vaishnavism as a humanism: sarvopari manushya sattva, tar upari nai. That is the position of Rabindranath Tagore, Aurobindo, and even Vivekananda, even as they look askance on the sexual aspects of the lila and bracket it as an allegory or as irrelevant to contemporary circumstances.

Even now I am looking at the new Asiatic Society reprint of the 1924 Kalna Chaitanya Charitamrita where Ramakanta Chakrabarty writes in his foreword:

[First,] Chaitanya and his followers attached great importance to human life. It is said that of all the sports of Krishna, the best were those in which he accomplished as a Man, and that the human shape of a milkman (sic) was his essential form. This is certainly a glorification of humanity, in which there is no difference between God and Man.

I am saying that this is the current BENGALI view of Chaitanyaism. And yet they have found it necessary to wipe out any sexuality from Krishna, when madhura rasa is the very essence of the humanity of Krishna. Not madhura rasa as debauchery, but as the fullest and purest manifestation of love.

The trouble is in reconciling this Gita-govinda Rasa-lila with the Bhagavata version, which is more overtly metaphorical, even though, strangely enough, there is a deep resistance on the part of Gaudiya Vaishnavas to state this. No commentary, from Sridhara to Vishwanath, says explicitly, "This is an allegory of the soul and Supersoul." Sanatan Goswami even says directly that he rejects the adhyatmika or allegorical explanation.

So Ramakanta Chakrabarty's next sentence, which is also correct, still makes a confusing jumble out of what Vaishnavism is.

The second concept is bhakti, or the principle of devotion, a truly civilizational ideal, in which untruth, unseemly behavior, sex, gluttony and rustic manners have no place.

In both the allegorical interpretation (where the upameya still validates the upama) and the literal interpretation (where the presence of sexuality in the divinity is seen as a literal manifestation of God's experience of the best that life offers in the association of his hladini shakti), the sexual element, particularly in its parakiya manifestation, is placed at the pinnacle of human emotional experience.

Now it is this parakiya rasa that causes so much trouble, the "rustic" (gramya) element that has "no place" in bhakti.

This is where the real problem arises. I could go into great detail, but it is not enough to just point to Victorian English mores and blame them. It is in the very nature of the patriarchal vision of male-female relations in India.

India has the social institution of prajapatya-vivaha, which is arranged marriage meant to serve a social function of family continuance. Osho says, rather dourly, that Hindus may play lip service to love, but the custom has always been that the moment a boy and girl fall in love, their families do everything they can to destroy it. What Bengali girl of past generations has not been married to a man she did not love when she had already developed feelings of love for another? It is taken as an inevitable rite of passage.

And yet, when the Vaishnavas pointed to natural love as being the best, they were condemned for being debauched and pornographic. Are we not to assume it has only been accepted as true because of the dominant society's successful propaganda?

I recently heard a report from a lady in Vrindavan, who has been living there amongst the local community for many years and has come to know the sexual behaviors of the local people quite well. It is not pretty: Basically she informed that widespread homosexuality is the norm. The separation of men from women before marriage means that both seek satisfaction from their own sex, and even after marriage this tends to continue because there is so little mutual understanding. Needless to say, this kind of "prison homosexuality" does not lead to real social cohesion.

If I say that all human failure is a failure of love, it is nowhere more apparent than there where we most directly seek love, in our sexual relations. As such, the models provided in both Rasa-lilas are important for holistic spiritual development.