By Sultan Shahin
NEW DELHI - Indian civilization is on the move, and it may be coming into its own after a millennium and a half of decline. At the height of its civilization, India was the land of the Kama Sutra, Koke Shastra, Ananga Ranga - the sacred literature teaching ways and means of heightening sexual pleasure, not only with one's own spouse, but also with other partners.
It was the land of Mahabharat, the greatest epic known to mankind, where Lord Krishna, whose divine exhortations are contained in theBhagwad Gita, could be worshipped with his beloved Radha, who was someone else's spouse, perhaps that of his maternal uncle. It was the land of Khajuraho temples depicting copulating couples and multiples on its inner walls that prudes consider pornographic. It was the land of Kalidasa, one of the greatest Sanskrit poets who celebrated sex with an openness unparalleled in world literature.
With its decline, for some obscure reason ascribed to a natural cycle of the rise and fall of civilizations, India turned prudish and guilt-ridden about free sex. The introduction of Islamic and Judeo-Christian morality did not help. India ceased to be proud of Khajuraho and Kalidas. Krishna and Radha were still worshipped together, but children would not be told about their open illicit love affair. Both kama (sensual pleasure) and artha (wealth creation), the two essential aspects of the Indian way of life (dharma) suffered. India ceased being itself.
But as artha was revitalized with the introduction of new economic policies of liberalization and globalization and new technologies such as computers and the Internet in the early 1990s, it seems now that kama too has made a comeback. Perhaps the two go together.
Several sex surveys carried out recently point to a definite resurgence of guilt-free extramarital sex, as much on the initiative of women now as it was on the bidding of men before. Commenting on the findings of the KamaSutra Cross Tab Sex Survey 2003, conducted in association with Indiatimes, published on Thursday, sex expert Prakash Kothari said, "One can easily kiss that crummy era goodbye. A nation of 1 billion is getting sexy and kicking the guilt." Psychiatrist Sanjay Chugh, MD, is jubilant: Finally, "it" is happening in India.
Permissiveness is at an all-time high. Respondents across India (Bangalore 27 percent; Chennai 28 percent; Delhi 22 percent; Hyderabad 20 percent; Kolkata 32 percent; Mumbai 24 percent) feel that both partners should be free to have extramarital sex with the spouse's consent. Delhiites are most likely to have done it at a younger age than their counterparts in other cities. Hyderabadis and Mumbaikars show the maximum inclination to infidelity, summarized Anubha Sawhney, breaking the news of the survey in Thursday's The Times of India.
While the survey reveals that breasts are the No 1 sexual-arousal point for Indian males, followed by overall looks and butts, the Indian woman prefers good looks, eyes, and a muscular physique in her man. Nationwide, experimentation is the name of the game.
Although the missionary position continues to be the preferred one of couples engaging in sex, respondents to the survey reveal that they are open to other options. As for the average age at which Indians have their first experience of sex, figures indicate that virgins are a dying breed.
There is no bar on age, time or place. Indians want sex again and again. The Hyderabadis have sex 17.1 times a month. This is a national record. Comparing the results of this survey with the figures furnished by the Durex Global Survey, which accords top position to the French for having sex 167 times a year, Sawhney concludes that this could even be a world record.
This month the second-largest-circulated newsmagazine Outlook carried out a survey in several Indian metros to come up with similar results. Its correspondents interviewed sex specialists and psychologists in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and Ahmedabad, among other cities, to discover that in the business of sex now, women are indeed on top, literally. Titled "Woman on top: Eves do it too", the Outlook cover story on May 5 said: "It's not just Adam for Madam. The Indian woman storms another male bastion as she seeks sex - and solace - outside her marriage."
The authors of the story, Madhu Jain and Soutik Biswas, concluded: "Adultery 2003 is really about women taking the lead. It's also about adultery going middle-class, to small-town India, going commonplace, even going boring. Dangerous liaisons used to be for the aristos and the plebs. Those in between, the middle classes, were tethered by moral chastity belts - only their fantasies could roam freely. Or it was all within the family, the extramarital dalliances, that is. The scarlet letter is now fading fast: stigma is getting passe and guilt for an increasing number is no more than a twitch.
"We are probably more adulterous now than ever before, with women catching up with the men on the adultery stakes. Says D Narayana Reddy, a sexologist and marital therapist in Chennai, 'I have been practicing since 1982. In those days, my women clients would say a strict No to anything outside marriage. By 1992, the attitude was What's wrong if I did it? By 2002, they were daring to explore.'"
The real source of the massive urge for sexual exploration that Indians, particularly women, have developed suddenly is as mysterious as the reasons for the rise and all of civilizations. But one thing has come out clearly in the survey. New technology is an important factor encouraging the phenomenon. Internet and mushrooming cyber cafes have helped, as have mobile phones and SMS (short message service) facilities. Women and men have suddenly heard from old flames, childhood friends, former classmates, whom they may have fancied once, dates have been fixed, and one thing has led to another. In most cases straight, unembarrassed initiatives have come from women, as men twiddled their fingers thinking of creative ways of broaching the subject.
Wife swapping, relatively unknown in India until recently, has made an appearance. Adventurous couples are advertising in newspapers their desire to meet like-minded people for wife and husband swapping.
Indian cinema was known for its kid-glove treatment of female sexuality. Indian woman being shown having sex outside marriage would be considered unpatriotic. And if at all the heroine committed that misdemeanor, premarital sex, she would have to try committing suicide, only to be rescued by the hero and his parents agreeing to marriage.
Now in the age of cable television's soaps, nearly all the characters in family dramas are shown as having pre- or extramarital sexual relations; most marriages are shown to be illegal, in the sense that the couple had been married before and not divorced. This creates more room for the scriptwriters to push in intrigue and blackmail, keeping families, including kids, glued to their television sets throughout the evenings.
Vijay Nagaswami, a Chennai-based psychiatrist and author ofCourtship & Marriage: A Guide for Indian Couples, was quoted by Outlook as saying that couples expect a healthy sex life and are less inhibited about discussing their sexual experiences now. "Sex is no longer a taboo word and more people, particularly women, are more willing to talk sex with their partners."
India's sex guru Prakash Kothari, who heads the department of sexual medicine at the Kem Hospital and the GS Medical College in Mumbai, added: "Thirty years ago, I said most Indian men use their women as sleeping pills. Today Indian women feel their sexual desires are basic human rights, and they need to be respected."
Hyderabad-based andrologist and impotence expert Sudhakara Krishnamurti told Outlook that a decade ago couples would come to him after failing to consummate their marriages for 10-15 years. Today wives often drag their husbands into the clinic within the first week of their marriage. "With women being more demanding in the bedroom, it puts a lot of pressure on normal guys," he said.
Even visitors from the liberated West are flummoxed. They have seen nothing like this before. Carin Fisher, a German-American lawyer who moved to New Delhi about a year ago, has been quoted as saying: "The acceptance of adultery here was, and sometimes still is, quite shocking to me. So many married men here tell me that even Krishna cheated and that I am stuck in some sort of Judeo-Christian cultural context. The god had a good time and he was not condemned for it, they say. And some women I have met, mostly the educated middle-class ones - if you can believe it - tell me, 'Look at our heritage. It is natural. Look at Krishna.'"
Well-known socialite Bina Ramani talks of her conversion to the fast-growing creed of adultery: "I was shocked when I first came back to India some years ago. Everybody seemed to be having extramarital affairs. You don't do that in the West. You have serial monogamy. But I have changed my mind. If there is a Krishna in men, there is a Radha in women. Why can't I be both: a wife and Radha? We are born with it. Men are doing their Krishna thing, aren't they?"
Middle-class India is having a whale of a time, obviously. But it must also beware. Not everybody is happy. Some spouses are hurt. Detective agencies, particularly the new breed of cyber detectives, are being flooded with requests for snooping on the activities and e-mail accounts of married men and women. They are busy documenting illicit affairs, hacking computers of married people engaged in such affairs. Some agencies report having to deal with 10-15 new cases every day. All for the convenience of divorce lawyers who may need them.
Not surprisingly, divorce is rampant. About 5,000 divorces a year are being reported from Haryana, with a population of 17 million. In some cities, Kolkata for instance, the number of divorce cases has doubled. A total of 13,037 divorce cases were filed in the city between January and August last year, nearly double the number filed in all of 1999.
Divorce lawyers' earnings have doubled. But many are not happy with the provisions of Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code, which says: "Whoever has sexual intercourse with a person who is and whom he knows or has reason to believe to be the wife of another man ... such sexual intercourse not amounting to rape, is guilty of the offense of adultery, and shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to five years, or with [a] fine, or both."
Commented Soma Wadhwa: "The Indian law on adultery, formulated circa 1860, sounds antediluvian in the 21st century. It's mostly about men settling scores with those who dared sleep with their wives. Women can't litigate against their errant husbands or their husbands' lovers, under the law. And, in turn, women can't be sued for being adulterous."
"Section 497 is based on Old Testament values," said Mumbai-based feminist lawyer Flavia Agnes. "It doesn't protect the rights of women, only protects the proprietorial rights of men over their wives' bodies." Considering that men and women can both cite their spouses' infidelity as reason for seeking divorce, there is no legal rationale, feel many such as Agnes, for a criminal law on adultery that "spares" wives for being adulterous and then "disallows" them from suing their husbands/husbands' paramour for adultery.
Chennai-based advocate Geeta Ramaseshan had, in fact, challenged these gender inequalities in the procedure to file complaints of adultery. Counsel for the Revathy vs Union of India case in 1988, Ramaseshan had argued that Revathy be given the right to lodge a complaint of adultery against her husband. The apex court dismissed the case: "Spouses ought not to be filing complaints against each other ..." This convinced Ramaseshan that "the law on adultery should be scrapped ... It is outdated, mostly misused to harass women, not based on substantive equality, and treats women like male possessions," said she.
Even in ancient India, though, at the height of its glory, there were laws with similar contradictions. In fact the British jurists who made our present laws based Hindu law on Manu-smriti, also known as Manav-dharm-shastra (Laws of Manu), which ranks in its scriptural sanctity with Ramayana and Mahabharata.
The laws of Manu provide a fascinating glimpse of the life and times of ancient India and how people (other than Brahmins) tried to beat the law even then to engage in adultery: "[Verse 352] If men persist in seeking intimate contact with other men's wives, the king should brand them with punishments that inspire terror and banish them. [353] For that gives rise among people to the confusion of the castes, by means of which irreligion, that cuts away the roots, works for the destruction of everything.
"[3556] If a man speaks to another man's wife at a bathing place, in a wilderness or a forest, or at the confluence or rivers, he incurs [the guilt of] sexual misconduct. [357] Acting with special courtesy to her, playing around with her, touching her ornaments or clothes, sitting on a couch with her, are all traditionally regarded as sexual misconduct. [358] If a man touches a woman in a non-place [a place other than the hand], or allows himself to be touched by her, with mutual consent, it is all traditionally regarded as sexual misconduct.
"[359] A man who is not a Brahmin deserves to be punished by the loss of his life's breath for sexual misconduct, for the wives of all four castes should always be protected to the utmost. [360] Beggars, panegyrists, men who have been consecrated for a Vedic sacrifice, and workmen may carry on a conversation with other men's wives if they are not prohibited [from doing so by the scriptures]. [361] But a man who has been prohibited should not carry on a conversation with other men's wives; if a man who has been prohibited converses [with them], he should pay a fine of one gold piece.
"[362] This rule does not apply to the wives of strolling actors or of men who live off their own [wives]; for these men have their women embrace [other men], concealing themselves while they have them do the act. [363] But just a very small fine should be paid by a man who carries on a conversation secretly with these women, or with menial servant girls who are used by only one man, or with wandering women ascetics."
Let us end this piece reminding ourselves of how sexy ancient Indians were at the height of their glorious civilization. Adultery was even then in the air. Women would initiate many an affair, even then. But there were faithful, long-suffering wives, ready to forgive their adulterous husbands, if for nothing but to beat the chill of the cold winter. Alas, in the world of hot-air blowers, ready to beat the cold, such poetry may not be composed anymore.
The great Sanskrit poet Kalidasa, India's answer to William Shakespeare, reports on sex in a typical Indian winter and blesses the couples trying to beat the chill:
Women whose husbands continue unfaithful
though bitterly chided again and again,
note them flustered, visibly shaken by guilt:
yet, yearning to be loved (in the chill of winter),
they overlook these wrongs.
Enjoyed long through the long night in love-play
Unceasing by their lusty young husbands
in an excess of passion, driving,
unrelenting, women just stepped into youth
move at the close of night slowly
reeling wrung-out with aching thighs.
With breasts held tight by pretty bodices,
Thighs alluringly veiled by richly dyed silks,
and flowers nestling in their hair, women serve
as adornments for this wintry season.
Lovers enjoying the warmth of budding youth,
pressed hard against breasts glowing golden,
saffron-rubbed, of lively women gleaning sensuous,
sleep, having put to flight the cold.
Young women in gay abandon drink at night
with their fond husbands, the choices wine,
most delicious, exhilarating,
heightening passion to its pitch:
the lilies floating in the wine deliciously
tremble under their fragrant breath.
At dawn, when the rush of passion is spent,
one young woman whose tips of breasts are tight
from her husband's embrace, carefully views;
her body fully enjoyed by him
and laughing gaily, she goes from the bed-chamber
to the living-apartments of the house.
Another loving wife leaves her bed at dawn:
elegant and graceful, slender-waisted,
With deep navel and ample hips;
the splendid mane of hair with curling ends
flowing loose, the wreath of flowers slips down.
With faces radiant as golden lotuses
and long, liquid eyes; with lustrous lips
and hair playing enamored round their shoulders,
women shine in their homes these frosty mornings,
bearing the semblance of the goddess of beauty.
Young women burdened by their ample loins,
and drooping a little at the waist,
wearied bearing their own garments worn at night
for love's sweet rites,
they put on others suited to the day.
Staring at the curves of their breasts covered by nail marks,
touching gingerly the tender sprout of the lower lip bruised by love-bites,
young women rejoice to see these coveted signs of love's fulfillment,
and decorate their faces as the sun rises.
The wintry season that abounds with sweet rice,
and sugar-cane,
and mounds of dark palm-sugar dainties:
when Love waxes proud
and love's sport is fever-pitch;
when the anguish is intense of parted lovers:
May this season be to you ever auspicious!
(Translated from the original Sanskrit by Chandra Rajan)
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