SEX AND POWER: DEFINING HISTORY, SHAPING SOCIETY
AUTHOR: RITA BANERJI
PUBLISHER: PENGUIN BOOKS, INDIA
RELEASED IN NOVEMBER 2008
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EXCERPTS
P.9 Yet, in its final evaluation of what constitutes ‘purity’ before god, religion does not regard any other bodily instinct as harshly as it does sex. Gluttony may be a sin, but eating is not and certainly not hunger. Sloth is a vice, but rest is not and nor is weariness…no other biological function has been more powerfully attacked by religious institutions than human sexuality…It is imperative to ask…why.
p.12 Sexuality as a concept is often thought of as a provocative exhibition of ones libido, or what in common parlance is termed as ‘sexy.’ However, sexuality is much more than that..an irrevocable form of expression for every individual…The power of sexuality is that it is far more than simply the mechanics of human physiology. Sexuality transposes the flesh into abstraction and causes it to become a vigorous tool of self-expression. It assumes a person’s distinctiveness and becomes his or her unique identity.
p.21 The lingam-yoni, possibly [is] one of the most blatant depictions of sex in formal worship…not only does the world Shiva-lingam mean ‘the Lord Shiva’s penis,’ but it is also sculpted in a particularly suggestive tubular shape. It stands erect on an ovoid, petal-shaped base called the yoni or ‘vagina,’ ..which is representative of Shiva’s female consort, Shakti…One wonders, what it is about the Indian psyche that continues to uphold the lingam-yoni as …a venerated symbol, while it also …reviles sex as profane.
p.44 For the Vedics, the most significant measure of a man’s power was his semen…[and] was treated like precious resource. Vedic men, still a little confused about ..human biology, hailed semen as the source of [immortality].. for men, women and the gods. They [believed] that while men carried their semen in their testicles, women..caried it in a ‘pot’ in their belly..Women it was presumed, were too greedy for semen…All women woanted to rob the semen from their husbands and hoard it for themselves.
p.101 What could possibly explain Buddha’s antagonism towards women? One rationalization is that he believed that women by virtue of their wombs are the cause of procreation and, therefore, the continuation of the cycles of rebirth. Indeed, the womb, even in later Buddhist literature, is often described as a ‘foul place’ or ‘unbearable stench,’ which makes women unfit for ordination and enlightenment.
p.145 Lust is not immoral, it was argued, but divine. How could it be immoral if it was a gift from the gods, the scriptures (of the golden period) asked…It was asserted that it was not for sons, but for the attainment of orgasms that both men and women had sex…Sex in humans was not just an instinct as in animals, and it was to understand these differences that people needed to study love-making as an art and as a science.
p.225 Like monitored hospital wards, the British set up prostitution camps for the restricted use of British officers. ..Three times a week, the prostitutes would be examined by army doctors, who would put them into quarantine if they detected any infections. The military police regularly patrolled the camp, and used the baton on any Indian male who dared even initiate conversation with these exclusively reserved prostitutes. Implicit here is a parallel with the British norm of reserving public spaces, clubs, cinemas, and malls for ‘whites only’ [in colonial India].
p.293 India’s impoverished masses are also the critical moral meter of the nation. Indian politics compulsively plays up to the moral impulses of the underprivileged. Politicians, whatever their personal preferences may be, are compelled to assume a social and moral persona that is acceptable to India’s conservative majority…A woman campaigner may wear jeans in her personal circle but her political image demands she is clad in a traditional sari..Yet the paradox is this: notwithstanding its demagogic puritanical front, it is India’s conservative section that indulges in an uncontested sexual permissiveness. It is an indulgence that is woven into antiquated traditions, customs, and beliefs…
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