Shikhandi: And Other Tales They Don?t Tell You
Devdutt Pattanaik
Zubaan
R299
Pp 179
Devdutt Pattanaik?s Shikhandi and Other Tales They Don?t Tell You is not so much an exploration of how Hindu mythology treats queerness, as it is a reader on what gender constructs have stayed on in the Hindu multiverse, no matter how feeble their hold is, given the fact that many of these stories are now marginalised in both the texts and tellings. That aside, the 30 short stories in the book are precursors for a more detailed examination of how Hinduism appropriates queerness within the binary paradigm of the sexes. In a nutshell, Shikhandi and Other Tales will educate the non-academic reader enough and perhaps set off their curiosity to search for how and why Hinduism, despite its so-called ?liberalness?, doesn?t attempt to understand queerness beyond cross-dressing.
In his opening essay, Pattanaik draws from other mythologies?Greek, Egyptian, Nordic, etc?to explain how pagan religions and histories treated queerness in an egalitarian manner vis-a-vis heterosexuality and cis-genderness, and how Hinduism, too, mirrored this treatment, at least until the less tolerant approaches dislodged it. However, most of Pattanaik?s tales validate this assumption only partially, just to the extent of shifting genders and gendered roles. When the issue is problematised to consider cis-gendered expressions and how queer sexuality finds reconciliation with these, the aforementioned assumption falls flat. All the stories, the examples that Pattanaik cites as evidence of Hinduism?s liberal understanding of queerness, limit sexuality within the confines of the gender binaries?male and female. For instance, a Brahmin youth, Samavan, marries his male friend Sumedhas after being transformed into a woman. Nowhere do the other stories suggest that a supposedly sexual relation is established without the gender, or rather the sex, of one of the partners being switched. Similarly, the legend behind the Shudri-Brahmani tirtha, the unabating friendship of Ratnavali and Brahmani, doesn?t explicitly state the nature of the relationship between the two women. An easy interpretation of this ambivalence is that this is evidence of a mythology-derived sanction for lesbianism. But given how restrictive Hinduism?s narration?as is the case with other religions?of female sexuality (even when heterosexual) can become, chances are such an interpretation could be erroneous.
This is not to say the relevance of these tales in understanding queerness is marginal. In fact, the many stories that deal with transgender characters could perhaps be part of the explanation for why the tolerance of transgender expression, for example, hijras, far exceeds the tolerance of homosexual orientation.
Pattanaik does succeed, though, in raising many pertinent questions and observations for understanding queerness and its implications for social organisation. This is where the author correctly situates the realities of queerness. So, one wonders whether these portions were made to seem like the subtext in the book.
In Shikhandi and Other Tales They Don?t Tell You, there seems to be an attempt to juxtapose a tolerant, even accepting, Hinduism against a rigid, dogmatic and persecuting one. To some extent, the merits of this are appreciable. But an unfortunate fallout is that this also juxtaposes Hinduism as an inherently tolerant contemporary of other existing religions, not all of which might be seen in a similar standing. Queerness needs to be understood both politically and scientifically. A religion?or mythology-based understanding?can, at best, be a supplementary approach.
