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Infinite Variety: A History of Desire in India
‘The history of desire in India,’ writes Madhavi Menon in this splendid book, ‘reveals
not purity but impurity as a way of life. Not one answer, but many. Not a single
history, but multiple tales cutting across laws and boundaries.’ In Bhakti poetry,
Radha and Krishna disregard marital fidelity, age, time and gender for erotic love.
In Sufi dargahs, pirs (spiritual guides) who were married to women are buried
alongside their male disciples, as lovers are. Vatsyayana, author of the world’s most
famous manual of sex, insists that he did not compose it ‘for the sake of passion’, and remained celibate through the writing of it. Long hair is widely seen as a symbol of sexuality; and yet, shaved off in a temple, it is a sacred offering. Even as the country has a draconian law to punish homosexuality, heterosexual men share the same bed without comment. Hijras are increasingly marginalized; yet gender has historically been understood as fluid rather than fixed.
Menon navigates centuries, geographies, personal and public histories, schools of
philosophy, literary and cinematic works, as she examines the many—and often
surprising—faces of desire in the Indian subcontinent. Her study ranges from the
erotic sculptures of Khajuraho to the shrine of the celibate god Ayyappan; from army barracks to public parks; from Empress Nur Jahan’s paan to home-made kohl; from cross-dressing mystics to androgynous gods. It shows us the connections between grammar and sex, between hair and war, between abstinence and pleasure, between love and death.
Gloriously subversive, full of extraordinary analyses and insights, this is a book you will read to be enlightened and entertained for years.
not purity but impurity as a way of life. Not one answer, but many. Not a single
history, but multiple tales cutting across laws and boundaries.’ In Bhakti poetry,
Radha and Krishna disregard marital fidelity, age, time and gender for erotic love.
In Sufi dargahs, pirs (spiritual guides) who were married to women are buried
alongside their male disciples, as lovers are. Vatsyayana, author of the world’s most
famous manual of sex, insists that he did not compose it ‘for the sake of passion’, and remained celibate through the writing of it. Long hair is widely seen as a symbol of sexuality; and yet, shaved off in a temple, it is a sacred offering. Even as the country has a draconian law to punish homosexuality, heterosexual men share the same bed without comment. Hijras are increasingly marginalized; yet gender has historically been understood as fluid rather than fixed.
Menon navigates centuries, geographies, personal and public histories, schools of
philosophy, literary and cinematic works, as she examines the many—and often
surprising—faces of desire in the Indian subcontinent. Her study ranges from the
erotic sculptures of Khajuraho to the shrine of the celibate god Ayyappan; from army barracks to public parks; from Empress Nur Jahan’s paan to home-made kohl; from cross-dressing mystics to androgynous gods. It shows us the connections between grammar and sex, between hair and war, between abstinence and pleasure, between love and death.
Gloriously subversive, full of extraordinary analyses and insights, this is a book you will read to be enlightened and entertained for years.
360 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 2018
63 people are currently reading
740 people want to read
About the author
Madhavi Menon
6 books29 followersMadhavi Menon is Associate Professor of Literature at American University. She is the author of Unhistorical Shakespeare: Queer Theory in Shakespearean Literature and Film and Wanton Words: Rhetoric and Sexuality in English Renaissance Drama and editor of Shakesqueer: A Queer Companion to the Complete Works of Shakespeare.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews
August 2, 2022
I’m so done with misleading titles, especially since the author seems to have petulantly picked it (Because Foucault and his misleading titles. Go figure.) While there is variety, there isn’t much history in this book, no chronological order, and no connecting themes except for sexuality and desire. Which would have been fine because it simply reflects how varied and diverse the concepts of sexuality and desire have been in India (hint: at least as varied as its population) except that the title seems clickbait-y and I hate that. It might seem like I’m nitpicking here, but no, it’s important for understanding the structure of the book.
On the surface level, the different chapters of this book have nothing to do with each other. Menon draws from mythology, epics, Indian traditions, rituals, texts, and historical anecdotes to understand what ‘desire’ has meant within India. What’s important to note here is that, as Menon mentions early in the book, geographically and politically, India has not been ‘India’ for much of the history of this land. So, the primary sources that this book draws from are varied and their historico-geographical location is difficult to exactly locate at times, much to the chagrin of the Indian alt-right. The extremely politicized notion of ‘purity’ and ‘Indian values’ that seems to have gripped India now, is just a concoction of British prudery and minority Indian practices that harks back to the British political ploy which tilted the balance from permissiveness towards purity. I cannot appreciate the author enough for having highlighted this. So, talking about India and desire and how the latter evolved within the boundaries of the former is a Herculean task, not least because the boundaries seem to be ever-shifting. In hindsight, it is my whining about the title that was petulant.
I also liked that the author wrote extensively about intersexuality and emphasized on how the western notions of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ have historically failed to apply to India. However, I do think that a more contextual link between the chapters would have helped. I also wish that Menon would have written more on the relationship between bodies and identities in India - since it has been very important in the past and is such a driving force for the divisive politics in place now.
On the surface level, the different chapters of this book have nothing to do with each other. Menon draws from mythology, epics, Indian traditions, rituals, texts, and historical anecdotes to understand what ‘desire’ has meant within India. What’s important to note here is that, as Menon mentions early in the book, geographically and politically, India has not been ‘India’ for much of the history of this land. So, the primary sources that this book draws from are varied and their historico-geographical location is difficult to exactly locate at times, much to the chagrin of the Indian alt-right. The extremely politicized notion of ‘purity’ and ‘Indian values’ that seems to have gripped India now, is just a concoction of British prudery and minority Indian practices that harks back to the British political ploy which tilted the balance from permissiveness towards purity. I cannot appreciate the author enough for having highlighted this. So, talking about India and desire and how the latter evolved within the boundaries of the former is a Herculean task, not least because the boundaries seem to be ever-shifting. In hindsight, it is my whining about the title that was petulant.
I also liked that the author wrote extensively about intersexuality and emphasized on how the western notions of ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’ have historically failed to apply to India. However, I do think that a more contextual link between the chapters would have helped. I also wish that Menon would have written more on the relationship between bodies and identities in India - since it has been very important in the past and is such a driving force for the divisive politics in place now.
August 24, 2021
Book: Infinite Variety: A History of Desire in India
Author: Madhavi Menon
Publisher: Speaking Tiger Publishing Private Limited (10 May 2018)
Language: English
Paperback: 360 pages
Item Weight: 340 g
Dimensions: 20 x 14 x 4 cm
Country of Origin: India
Price: 355/-
Ours is an enormous country depicting extensive social, cultural and sexual deviations. Our perceptions of desire and of sexuality have advanced over time and have been immeasurably manipulated by an assortment of rulers and religions.
Our discernment of ‘desire’ and ‘sexuality’ is marked in our apparel, conduct, leisure, texts, monuments and religion. It has swayed the way we recognize our health, disease and device remedies for the same. In the modern epoch, with speedy globalization the inimitable concept of Indian sexuality is getting diffused.
This awfully remarkable book speaks of an India which has been formed by manifold cultures in which a) same-sex desire, b) polygamy, c) polyandry and d) polyamory as a general rule have been widespread. The porousness of sexual borders has been of a piece with the frankness of the geographical, trade and cultural boundaries of ‘India’ over the years.
Paradoxically, this is one of the reasons why the British found it so uncomplicated to colonize the subcontinent. They walked right in because the borders were open. And it is significant to note that many of them walked in as they could find in India the sexual licence that they had been denied in England.
But unlike the hundreds of thousands of people before them who too had walked in — the Greeks, the Ghaznis, the Mughals, the premature Syrian Christians, the Parsis, the Armenians, the Chinese, the Arabs—and woven their cravings with what they found here, the British colonizers did something different.
In response to the porousness of the borders that had let them in, they sought to close them down. In matters of desire, India was made part of an Empire that officially overlaid moral mores onto capitalistic concerns. Even as the colonial masters started to bleed India economically, they shored up their presumed moral superiority by policing what the ‘natives’ did sexually.
Unexpectedly, they introduced a ‘legal code’ against sexual proclivities that did not conduce to the reproduction of the missionary position. This continues to be the basis for the Indian Penal Code in effect in postcolonial India.
Famously, Kama, the Hindu god of romantic and sexual desire, is ‘ananga’ — without limbs, and consequently without a body. Which means that historically in India, desire is seen as ‘being everywhere’. Anything can be considered an object or subject of desire. Desire is not confined to a (human) body.
The legend goes that Kama (in one version, born of the creator, Brahma) is deputed to induce desire in Shiva’s breast so that an offspring of Shiva and Parvati might be created to defeat the demon Tarakasura. Shiva is so exasperated at being awoken from his yogic deliberations that he opens his third eye and burns Kama to ashes. Shiva relents when Parvati begs him to undo the effects of his rage. He allows Kama to live, but only without a body.
Thus is born the bodiless god of desire.
These mythological and even pre-historic traces of desire in India seem wonderfully modern. Archeologists in India have found pre-historic cave drawings showing female figures engaged in ‘cunnilingus’, which suggests early and cherished knowledge of what women might do sexually with other women.
Desire runs rampant across Indian Hindu traditions and texts, viz.
1) In the Ramayana, Rama is described as ‘Purushamohana Rupaya’— so gorgeous as to be pleasing even to men, which suggests more than a passing knowledge, several centuries ago, of what kind of man, might appear eye-catching to other men.
2) Tales of passionate, sometimes adulterous, play among Radha, Krishna and the gopis have provided the richest vein for artistic production across the centuries and across schools of dance, poetry, song and painting.
3) Kalidasa’s celebrated 5th century epic, the Kumarasambhavam (the Birth of Kumara), devotes an entire canto of 91 verses to a detailed description of Uma’s erotic pleasures with Shiva.
4) There are sculptures of anal sex — and bestiality and threesomes and orgies — on the walls of temples at Khajuraho dating from over 1000 years ago.
The Kamasutra’s elucidation of people in India who have anal sex even provides a geographical location for them—according to Vatsyayana, and perhaps appropriately enough, they live in the South.
In Indian Islamic traditions, Mahmud of Ghazni was openly celebrated for his love of his cupbearer, Ayaz. In Persianate lands, Mahmud and Ayaz were always mentioned as a pair, on par with heterosexual romantic partners like Laila and Majnuh, or Heer and Ranjha. Mahmud and Ayaz’s love story is the only one in the genre that has a happy ending for the lovers.
Some Mughal rulers commissioned paintings that were forthrightly sensual, like the paintings of women bathing in the harem that were produced during Jahangir’s reign. The 18th century Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah II commissioned miniature paintings of himself having sex with his mistress.
Such explicit desire extends from the court to the commons, from the secular to the sacred, and from the school to the street. In Saleem Kidwai’s translation of a 13th-century Hindavi poem, Amir Khusro addresses his Sufi master, Nizamuddin Auliya, thus:
My blossoming youth is red with passion
How can I spend this time alone?
Will someone persuade Nizamuddin Auliya,
For the more I coax him, the more he acts coy...
I’ll break my bangles and throw them on the bed,
I’ll set fire to this bodice of mine.
The empty bed frightens me
The fire of separation scorches me.
The numinous Sufis both celebrate the sexual allure of the body and make desire larger than the individual body before them. There are multiple Sufi orders or silsilas, each of which emphasizes a close—what many would today consider too close—bond between ‘pir and murid’, or master and disciple.
This is the relationship that Khusro writes about so fervently. And the flipside of this passion—nonchalance—also marks desire, as is evident in the 18th-century poem by the Urdu great Mir Taqi Mir:
‘If not him, there is his brother
Mir, are there any restrictions in love?’
The twenty essays that build up this book are all stand-alone. They are:
1. Dargahs
1.5 Fractions
2. The Zero
3. Ayyappan
4. Education
5. Grammar
6. Celibacy
7. Yoga
8. Suicides
9. Law
10. Parks
11. Army
12. Hair
13. Make-up
14. Psychoanalysis
15. Bhabhis
16. Grandparents
17. Sambandham
18. Paan
19. Dating
20. Sexology
The author has delved into marriage in detail. Marriage in India has a history. The author narrates an anecdote from the Mahabharata:
Svetaketu was a sage whose name was associated with specific sexual techniques (his father Uddalaka had been taught deep lessons of sexual mysticism by his guru, Dhaumya, and he passed those lessons on to his son). Svetaketu was also the author of a treatise on the kamashastra or arts of love that was a precursor to Vatsyayana’s Kamasutra. The sage lived during a time of unrestrained sexual union when people studied the arts of sex and practised them at will and without fetters. Notwithstanding this profound immersion in the realm of the sexual, however, the tale told by the Mahabharata is of a sage who put an end to what he saw as ‘the sexual licence of women by creating the institution of marriage’.
And this happened, or so it seems, because of a fight that Svetaketu had with his parents.
One day, he saw his mother walking off with a Brahmin man other than his father in order to have sex. Outraged, he turned to his father, who did not seem in the least bit upset. Instead, the father explained to the son that this had always been the practice because ‘female beings of all kinds are unhindered’.
There was, the father Uddalaka continued, no cause at all for offence. But here was a case of the younger generation being more conservative than the older one. Svetaketu would have none of his father’s explanation, and consistent with the legend, went on to inflict severe ‘monoandry’ on women.
And so, according to the tale and seemingly overnight, ‘Indian’ society moved from being an advocate of free love to an enforcer of restricted desire.
‘Hindu’ traditions, broadly defined, developed eight different kinds of marriages, each of which subjugated women’s desires to various degrees, and many of which reflect the continued and deep-rooted misogyny in India today. The most horrible among the eight kinds of marriage was the ‘paisacha’, where a raped woman was made to marry her molestor in order to be granted the social status of a wife.
I particularly loved the section entitled ‘Psychoanalysis’.
The Oedipus complex, often considered the cornerstone of Freudian psychoanalysis, describes a situation in which the little boy is threatened with stern upshots if he does not give up sexual interest in his mother. If he flouts then his punishment is castration. For Freud, the triumphant negotiation of the Oedipus complex—i.e. giving up sexual interest in the mother—is the conduit to masculine heterosexuality.
A noteworthy disparity, in this context arose between the founder of the Indian Psychoanalytic Society, Girindrasekhar Bose, and Freud.
According to Bose, Indian men do not dread ‘becoming women’. Thus the hazard of the Oedipus complex is not as strong. They hardly display the same fear of castration as their Western counterparts. Bose insists that Indian men have a subterranean psychic memory, toughened by religion and mythology, of the easy interchangeability of male and female bodies.
But what was Bose drawing on for his evidence? Perhaps on the Rig Veda, the oldest of the Hindu texts, dating from about 1500 BCE!!!
The conclusions maintained on DESIRE by the Rig Veda could easily be cited as the conclusions of this book. They could be expressed via the following points:
1) For the Rig Veda, desire is all over the place. It is at the very beginning and it is also in the present.
2) Desire is the all in all, that without which nothing can be.
3) But it is also nowhere because no one source for it can be identified.
4) It cannot be reduced to being the product of one body or another.
5) It is within this universe that we see a multitude of desiring positions undercutting the central importance of castration anxiety.
6) Desire might take on the local shape of man and woman. But male and female are not the primary nodes through which desire exists in the universe. Instead, desire is ‘tentative’, which means it is not limited to or defined by gendered bodies and roles.
This book narrates the history of Indian desire – from the oldest times to the age of internet.
A must read for any and every conscientious follower of Indian culture.
Author: Madhavi Menon
Publisher: Speaking Tiger Publishing Private Limited (10 May 2018)
Language: English
Paperback: 360 pages
Item Weight: 340 g
Dimensions: 20 x 14 x 4 cm
Country of Origin: India
Price: 355/-
Ours is an enormous country depicting extensive social, cultural and sexual deviations. Our perceptions of desire and of sexuality have advanced over time and have been immeasurably manipulated by an assortment of rulers and religions.
Our discernment of ‘desire’ and ‘sexuality’ is marked in our apparel, conduct, leisure, texts, monuments and religion. It has swayed the way we recognize our health, disease and device remedies for the same. In the modern epoch, with speedy globalization the inimitable concept of Indian sexuality is getting diffused.
This awfully remarkable book speaks of an India which has been formed by manifold cultures in which a) same-sex desire, b) polygamy, c) polyandry and d) polyamory as a general rule have been widespread. The porousness of sexual borders has been of a piece with the frankness of the geographical, trade and cultural boundaries of ‘India’ over the years.
Paradoxically, this is one of the reasons why the British found it so uncomplicated to colonize the subcontinent. They walked right in because the borders were open. And it is significant to note that many of them walked in as they could find in India the sexual licence that they had been denied in England.
But unlike the hundreds of thousands of people before them who too had walked in — the Greeks, the Ghaznis, the Mughals, the premature Syrian Christians, the Parsis, the Armenians, the Chinese, the Arabs—and woven their cravings with what they found here, the British colonizers did something different.
In response to the porousness of the borders that had let them in, they sought to close them down. In matters of desire, India was made part of an Empire that officially overlaid moral mores onto capitalistic concerns. Even as the colonial masters started to bleed India economically, they shored up their presumed moral superiority by policing what the ‘natives’ did sexually.
Unexpectedly, they introduced a ‘legal code’ against sexual proclivities that did not conduce to the reproduction of the missionary position. This continues to be the basis for the Indian Penal Code in effect in postcolonial India.
Famously, Kama, the Hindu god of romantic and sexual desire, is ‘ananga’ — without limbs, and consequently without a body. Which means that historically in India, desire is seen as ‘being everywhere’. Anything can be considered an object or subject of desire. Desire is not confined to a (human) body.
The legend goes that Kama (in one version, born of the creator, Brahma) is deputed to induce desire in Shiva’s breast so that an offspring of Shiva and Parvati might be created to defeat the demon Tarakasura. Shiva is so exasperated at being awoken from his yogic deliberations that he opens his third eye and burns Kama to ashes. Shiva relents when Parvati begs him to undo the effects of his rage. He allows Kama to live, but only without a body.
Thus is born the bodiless god of desire.
These mythological and even pre-historic traces of desire in India seem wonderfully modern. Archeologists in India have found pre-historic cave drawings showing female figures engaged in ‘cunnilingus’, which suggests early and cherished knowledge of what women might do sexually with other women.
Desire runs rampant across Indian Hindu traditions and texts, viz.
1) In the Ramayana, Rama is described as ‘Purushamohana Rupaya’— so gorgeous as to be pleasing even to men, which suggests more than a passing knowledge, several centuries ago, of what kind of man, might appear eye-catching to other men.
2) Tales of passionate, sometimes adulterous, play among Radha, Krishna and the gopis have provided the richest vein for artistic production across the centuries and across schools of dance, poetry, song and painting.
3) Kalidasa’s celebrated 5th century epic, the Kumarasambhavam (the Birth of Kumara), devotes an entire canto of 91 verses to a detailed description of Uma’s erotic pleasures with Shiva.
4) There are sculptures of anal sex — and bestiality and threesomes and orgies — on the walls of temples at Khajuraho dating from over 1000 years ago.
The Kamasutra’s elucidation of people in India who have anal sex even provides a geographical location for them—according to Vatsyayana, and perhaps appropriately enough, they live in the South.
In Indian Islamic traditions, Mahmud of Ghazni was openly celebrated for his love of his cupbearer, Ayaz. In Persianate lands, Mahmud and Ayaz were always mentioned as a pair, on par with heterosexual romantic partners like Laila and Majnuh, or Heer and Ranjha. Mahmud and Ayaz’s love story is the only one in the genre that has a happy ending for the lovers.
Some Mughal rulers commissioned paintings that were forthrightly sensual, like the paintings of women bathing in the harem that were produced during Jahangir’s reign. The 18th century Mughal emperor Muhammad Shah II commissioned miniature paintings of himself having sex with his mistress.
Such explicit desire extends from the court to the commons, from the secular to the sacred, and from the school to the street. In Saleem Kidwai’s translation of a 13th-century Hindavi poem, Amir Khusro addresses his Sufi master, Nizamuddin Auliya, thus:
My blossoming youth is red with passion
How can I spend this time alone?
Will someone persuade Nizamuddin Auliya,
For the more I coax him, the more he acts coy...
I’ll break my bangles and throw them on the bed,
I’ll set fire to this bodice of mine.
The empty bed frightens me
The fire of separation scorches me.
The numinous Sufis both celebrate the sexual allure of the body and make desire larger than the individual body before them. There are multiple Sufi orders or silsilas, each of which emphasizes a close—what many would today consider too close—bond between ‘pir and murid’, or master and disciple.
This is the relationship that Khusro writes about so fervently. And the flipside of this passion—nonchalance—also marks desire, as is evident in the 18th-century poem by the Urdu great Mir Taqi Mir:
‘If not him, there is his brother
Mir, are there any restrictions in love?’
The twenty essays that build up this book are all stand-alone. They are:
1. Dargahs
1.5 Fractions
2. The Zero
3. Ayyappan
4. Education
5. Grammar
6. Celibacy
7. Yoga
8. Suicides
9. Law
10. Parks
11. Army
12. Hair
13. Make-up
14. Psychoanalysis
15. Bhabhis
16. Grandparents
17. Sambandham
18. Paan
19. Dating
20. Sexology
The author has delved into marriage in detail. Marriage in India has a history. The author narrates an anecdote from the Mahabharata:
Svetaketu was a sage whose name was associated with specific sexual techniques (his father Uddalaka had been taught deep lessons of sexual mysticism by his guru, Dhaumya, and he passed those lessons on to his son). Svetaketu was also the author of a treatise on the kamashastra or arts of love that was a precursor to Vatsyayana’s Kamasutra. The sage lived during a time of unrestrained sexual union when people studied the arts of sex and practised them at will and without fetters. Notwithstanding this profound immersion in the realm of the sexual, however, the tale told by the Mahabharata is of a sage who put an end to what he saw as ‘the sexual licence of women by creating the institution of marriage’.
And this happened, or so it seems, because of a fight that Svetaketu had with his parents.
One day, he saw his mother walking off with a Brahmin man other than his father in order to have sex. Outraged, he turned to his father, who did not seem in the least bit upset. Instead, the father explained to the son that this had always been the practice because ‘female beings of all kinds are unhindered’.
There was, the father Uddalaka continued, no cause at all for offence. But here was a case of the younger generation being more conservative than the older one. Svetaketu would have none of his father’s explanation, and consistent with the legend, went on to inflict severe ‘monoandry’ on women.
And so, according to the tale and seemingly overnight, ‘Indian’ society moved from being an advocate of free love to an enforcer of restricted desire.
‘Hindu’ traditions, broadly defined, developed eight different kinds of marriages, each of which subjugated women’s desires to various degrees, and many of which reflect the continued and deep-rooted misogyny in India today. The most horrible among the eight kinds of marriage was the ‘paisacha’, where a raped woman was made to marry her molestor in order to be granted the social status of a wife.
I particularly loved the section entitled ‘Psychoanalysis’.
The Oedipus complex, often considered the cornerstone of Freudian psychoanalysis, describes a situation in which the little boy is threatened with stern upshots if he does not give up sexual interest in his mother. If he flouts then his punishment is castration. For Freud, the triumphant negotiation of the Oedipus complex—i.e. giving up sexual interest in the mother—is the conduit to masculine heterosexuality.
A noteworthy disparity, in this context arose between the founder of the Indian Psychoanalytic Society, Girindrasekhar Bose, and Freud.
According to Bose, Indian men do not dread ‘becoming women’. Thus the hazard of the Oedipus complex is not as strong. They hardly display the same fear of castration as their Western counterparts. Bose insists that Indian men have a subterranean psychic memory, toughened by religion and mythology, of the easy interchangeability of male and female bodies.
But what was Bose drawing on for his evidence? Perhaps on the Rig Veda, the oldest of the Hindu texts, dating from about 1500 BCE!!!
The conclusions maintained on DESIRE by the Rig Veda could easily be cited as the conclusions of this book. They could be expressed via the following points:
1) For the Rig Veda, desire is all over the place. It is at the very beginning and it is also in the present.
2) Desire is the all in all, that without which nothing can be.
3) But it is also nowhere because no one source for it can be identified.
4) It cannot be reduced to being the product of one body or another.
5) It is within this universe that we see a multitude of desiring positions undercutting the central importance of castration anxiety.
6) Desire might take on the local shape of man and woman. But male and female are not the primary nodes through which desire exists in the universe. Instead, desire is ‘tentative’, which means it is not limited to or defined by gendered bodies and roles.
This book narrates the history of Indian desire – from the oldest times to the age of internet.
A must read for any and every conscientious follower of Indian culture.
July 22, 2020
Desire in India dips into traditions of both ecstatic sensuality and stern asceticism; both an embrace and a shunning of sexuality; both pleasure and punishment. The ascetic tradition in India was judgmental about the 'excesses' of desire, and based its philosophy entirely on renunciation. But equally, the renunciates and the sensualists were not so far apart that they could never meet.
Across 21 chapters, Madhavi Menon traces the history of desire in India, an ambitious task. The chapters are all standalone essays and thus, in theory, can be read independent of the order (not advised though). It is a well-written, easy-to-read book that does justice to the topic. Desire is a complex topic but then so is India and Madhavi handles both well. She does not do the easy thing, which would be to put the Kamasutra at the centre and trace a descent into sexual conservatism into the present day, but leads you through multiple ups-and-downs in between. I felt I learnt a lot from this book and it made me look at quotidian aspects of desire that are now taken for granted, in a different vein - her chapter on Hair in particular and how, right from lyricists in Hindi movies to about-to-be-married youth, all are obsessed with good hair, and even the words we use to describe hair - luscious, abundant, cascading.
However, owing to her selection of topics, some essays flow and connect quickly but some of her musings seem a bit stretched to fit the bill. For eg. the chapters on Dargahs, Suicides, Hair, Makeup, and Bhabhis meet the criteria of desire instinctively but her chapter on Army being built on desire (since they police same-sex behaviour) and calendars embodying desire (by featuring Gods and mythological tales in them) are not that intuitive or convincing. I have another minor gripe in that Madhavi, in some chapters, labors over the same point multiple times and repeats it within pages, with no additional insight. But it is a minor thing and more a reflection on my fussiness as a reader.
Overall, I felt it was a solid book that should be read for its accessible content and interesting insights.
July 9, 2021
First there's no variety, the book is just about sexual desire but my mind started to hurt when she reduced the whole Sufism and Qawwali to her petty worldview in which respect or love or profound faith and even worshipping is only and only about sexuality.
//𝘉𝘶𝘵 𝘧𝘢𝘳 𝘣𝘦𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘨𝘦 𝘢𝘤𝘤𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘮𝘢𝘴𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘪𝘯 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘩 𝘨𝘰𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘥𝘦𝘷𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘮𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘥𝘦𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘦, 𝘚𝘶𝘧𝘪 𝘱𝘰𝘦𝘵𝘳𝘺 𝘰𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘯 𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘢𝘥𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘦 𝘣𝘺 𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘮𝘢𝘯. 𝘞𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘢𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘚𝘶𝘧𝘪 𝘱𝘰𝘦𝘵𝘳𝘺 𝘰𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘯 𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘵𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧 𝘢𝘴 𝘩𝘰𝘮𝘰𝘦𝘳𝘰𝘵𝘪𝘤. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘥𝘦𝘣𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘶𝘴 𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘢 𝘷𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘨𝘰𝘥𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘰𝘳 𝘢 𝘷𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘰𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘳𝘦. 𝘖𝘳 𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘩. //
The truth is from the early beginnings of Islam, the public sphere was an exclusively male domain. Women did participate in scholarship and even warfare in extraordinary conditions, but the realm of worship at best permitted of equal but separate action. Thus a musico-religious gathering contained ONLY MEN and this tradition has survived to this day.
Also, Qawwali as a form is used to convey a mystic religious message. To draw and hold the attention of a heterogeneous audience is the skill that the best Qawwal (performers of qawwali) excel at. Thus altering the state
of consciousness of the audience in order to make them more receptive to the content is one of the basic reasons for the existence of this vehicle.
//𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘚𝘶𝘧𝘪 𝘱𝘰𝘦𝘵𝘳𝘺 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘤𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘢𝘯𝘯𝘪𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯—𝘧𝘢𝘯𝘢—𝘪𝘴 𝘶𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘭𝘺 𝘦𝘳𝘰𝘵𝘪𝘤. //
Again Erotic what?
"Fana" in Sufism shares the closest analogue in the Buddhist faith being Nirvana.
Before I picked up this book I knew it's going to be just about sexual desire alone but I didn't expect that the author to paint everything and anything with sexuality.
Not recommended.
https://web.archive.org/web/200503280...
//𝘉𝘶𝘵 𝘧𝘢𝘳 𝘣𝘦𝘺𝘰𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘨𝘦 𝘢𝘤𝘤𝘰𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘮𝘢𝘴𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘺 𝘪𝘯 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘩 𝘨𝘰𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘥𝘦𝘷𝘰𝘵𝘦𝘦 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘨𝘳𝘢𝘮𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺 𝘥𝘦𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘭𝘦, 𝘚𝘶𝘧𝘪 𝘱𝘰𝘦𝘵𝘳𝘺 𝘰𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘯 𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘢𝘥𝘥𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘦 𝘣𝘺 𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘮𝘢𝘯. 𝘞𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘰 𝘴𝘢𝘺 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘚𝘶𝘧𝘪 𝘱𝘰𝘦𝘵𝘳𝘺 𝘰𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘯 𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘵𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘧 𝘢𝘴 𝘩𝘰𝘮𝘰𝘦𝘳𝘰𝘵𝘪𝘤. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘮𝘢𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘥𝘦𝘣𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘶𝘴 𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘥 𝘪𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦 𝘢 𝘷𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘭 𝘰𝘧 𝘨𝘰𝘥𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘰𝘳 𝘢 𝘷𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘰𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘪𝘳𝘦. 𝘖𝘳 𝘣𝘰𝘵𝘩. //
The truth is from the early beginnings of Islam, the public sphere was an exclusively male domain. Women did participate in scholarship and even warfare in extraordinary conditions, but the realm of worship at best permitted of equal but separate action. Thus a musico-religious gathering contained ONLY MEN and this tradition has survived to this day.
Also, Qawwali as a form is used to convey a mystic religious message. To draw and hold the attention of a heterogeneous audience is the skill that the best Qawwal (performers of qawwali) excel at. Thus altering the state
of consciousness of the audience in order to make them more receptive to the content is one of the basic reasons for the existence of this vehicle.
//𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘶𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘚𝘶𝘧𝘪 𝘱𝘰𝘦𝘵𝘳𝘺 𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘤𝘳𝘪𝘣𝘦𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘤𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘢𝘯𝘯𝘪𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯—𝘧𝘢𝘯𝘢—𝘪𝘴 𝘶𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘭𝘺 𝘦𝘳𝘰𝘵𝘪𝘤. //
Again Erotic what?
"Fana" in Sufism shares the closest analogue in the Buddhist faith being Nirvana.
Before I picked up this book I knew it's going to be just about sexual desire alone but I didn't expect that the author to paint everything and anything with sexuality.
Not recommended.
https://web.archive.org/web/200503280...
December 19, 2019
I finished reading this book last week & I am still trying to wrap my head around it. It's so beautifully written, well researched & breaks so many misconceptions that we have about desire & sexuality in India.
Today, we are learning from the East to accept homosexuality but we have forgotten that with our rich culture & heritage India has also been a home to multiple desires.
There are temples in India with explicit sexual carvings on the walls, dargahs where two men lovers are buried together, a history of polygamous marriages, mythological stories about desire in Gods, even Kamasutra was written here!! Through this book the author has tried to enlighten the readers about this history & navigate through centuries, geography & philosophy of this country. The topics are wide spread from yoga to pan, from dargahs to temples, history behind makeup, insights from Manusmriti & Kamasutra, movies to everyday lives of people.
Absolute delight, lucid, funny and brilliantly written!
Today, we are learning from the East to accept homosexuality but we have forgotten that with our rich culture & heritage India has also been a home to multiple desires.
There are temples in India with explicit sexual carvings on the walls, dargahs where two men lovers are buried together, a history of polygamous marriages, mythological stories about desire in Gods, even Kamasutra was written here!! Through this book the author has tried to enlighten the readers about this history & navigate through centuries, geography & philosophy of this country. The topics are wide spread from yoga to pan, from dargahs to temples, history behind makeup, insights from Manusmriti & Kamasutra, movies to everyday lives of people.
Absolute delight, lucid, funny and brilliantly written!
December 26, 2019
This book has much potential, and at times seems to reach for it. The writer says in the beginning something like "Because the infinite desire of India cannot be defined, I will not define anything either." (I'm paraphrasing.) Unfortunately, this comes across more as an excuse to avoid detail as the book meanders on. All in all, it is more a feeler and teaser for desire than a solid study or opinion piece on the history.
August 16, 2019
“The basic mandate of thesis book is to enlarge the horizons of desiring possibilities”, as the author states in one of the chapters. I think she achieved the mandate through several short chapters unravelling the complexity of sexual desire. While some chapters, especially the ones with a historic context such as dargahs, ayyappan and fractions are very interesting, others such as grandparents are shallow and some appear as mere page fillers. I am not sure if the East-West comparisons will hold up to historic scrutiny but there is certainly something to be understood from the history of desire in the subcontinent.
Read
February 21, 2019Illuminating. Must read for all, especially anyone who identifies as desi or Indian.
January 6, 2020
Comprehensive. A scholarly and at the same time naughty work.
February 15, 2020
An excellent study on a subject so slippery in a land so hard to break down into categories.
January 19, 2020
A remarkable book that maps out new space for thinking about sexuality and desire
Is desire oppressive or permissive? Repressed or expressive? Restricted or expansive? Does it lead to enlightenment or delusion? Freedom or enslavement? When is it the cornerstone of inner truth and when the distorted reflection of a society's twisted neurosis? And when was it all or any of these things? Over the past 3,500 years, the Indian subcontinent has been a fertile region that's nourished a heterogeneous profusion of complicated desires, and in "Infinite Variety: A History of Desire in India," author Madhavi Menon shifts subjects and scale, moving from macro to micro and back, until she's mapped out a unique space for extending the contours of thought and feeling about the topic.
Menon provides a panoramic understanding of desire in all of its multiplicity by examining the subject not just historically and philosophically, but in ways that real people might experience or understand it. This means exploring the range of desire not just in terms of law, colonialism, education, language, and institutions (such as the military), but also in terms of personal signifiers and expressions such as hair, make-up, burial practices, parks, or the voices of grandparents (people traditionally not seen seen as desiring subjects yet the very ones who can speak of desire over the lifespan).
The book succeeds not just because of its scholarship but also because of the uncommon connections made by the author. What exactly do math and fractions have to do with desire? More than you'd might expect. Menon creates a kaleidoscope of desire's fecundity, with fragments of myth, history, cruelty, liberation, agency, and tradition forming interconnected, mobile patterns that may at first defy comprehension but which soon cascade around a refreshing, multifaceted mental space for exploring the ways that desire is both a simple emotional need while simultaneously being a layered, nuanced, intricate phenomenon.
Near the end of the book, Menon writes that her work is a rejoinder to Foucault's grand, systemitizing "The History of Sexuality" (with emphasis on the "The"):
"I too would plot a history, but it would be a history of desire over time and space and category rather than the history of sexuality within segregated periods and times and classifications....it would locate itself in a land that has no fixed location. What counts as ‘India’ now was not ‘India’ when Vatsyayana wrote the Kamasutra. ‘India’ under the 11th-century Cholas included Sri Lanka but not present-day North India; British India included Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan."
While noting Foucault's contributions, she expertly identifies the limitations and gaps in his work while making significant contributions of her own. She points us towards a more promising horizon for understanding sexuality and desire than his remaining acolytes, with their hollow, echoing Foucauldian jargon, can possibly hope to do.
Is desire oppressive or permissive? Repressed or expressive? Restricted or expansive? Does it lead to enlightenment or delusion? Freedom or enslavement? When is it the cornerstone of inner truth and when the distorted reflection of a society's twisted neurosis? And when was it all or any of these things? Over the past 3,500 years, the Indian subcontinent has been a fertile region that's nourished a heterogeneous profusion of complicated desires, and in "Infinite Variety: A History of Desire in India," author Madhavi Menon shifts subjects and scale, moving from macro to micro and back, until she's mapped out a unique space for extending the contours of thought and feeling about the topic.
Menon provides a panoramic understanding of desire in all of its multiplicity by examining the subject not just historically and philosophically, but in ways that real people might experience or understand it. This means exploring the range of desire not just in terms of law, colonialism, education, language, and institutions (such as the military), but also in terms of personal signifiers and expressions such as hair, make-up, burial practices, parks, or the voices of grandparents (people traditionally not seen seen as desiring subjects yet the very ones who can speak of desire over the lifespan).
The book succeeds not just because of its scholarship but also because of the uncommon connections made by the author. What exactly do math and fractions have to do with desire? More than you'd might expect. Menon creates a kaleidoscope of desire's fecundity, with fragments of myth, history, cruelty, liberation, agency, and tradition forming interconnected, mobile patterns that may at first defy comprehension but which soon cascade around a refreshing, multifaceted mental space for exploring the ways that desire is both a simple emotional need while simultaneously being a layered, nuanced, intricate phenomenon.
Near the end of the book, Menon writes that her work is a rejoinder to Foucault's grand, systemitizing "The History of Sexuality" (with emphasis on the "The"):
"I too would plot a history, but it would be a history of desire over time and space and category rather than the history of sexuality within segregated periods and times and classifications....it would locate itself in a land that has no fixed location. What counts as ‘India’ now was not ‘India’ when Vatsyayana wrote the Kamasutra. ‘India’ under the 11th-century Cholas included Sri Lanka but not present-day North India; British India included Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan."
While noting Foucault's contributions, she expertly identifies the limitations and gaps in his work while making significant contributions of her own. She points us towards a more promising horizon for understanding sexuality and desire than his remaining acolytes, with their hollow, echoing Foucauldian jargon, can possibly hope to do.
March 12, 2021
In the beginning of the book the author says that desire is not to be understood in sexual context only. However, the book still goes on to explore the sexual or romantic desires. The good thing is that all the chapters are independent and there is no continuity between them. So the reader is not reading the same thing repeatedly. However, the book takes taking different course through different chapters to reach the place.
The book draws information from various ancient texts and stories but are not properly cited. Sometimes, the author is not clear enough to convey the thought and just goes on citing ancient information and stories which are sometimes interesting. However, to pick this book just for those interesting bits of information or interpretation is not recommended as I am sure one has read them or thought about them in their lifetime.
This book does not seem to be a serious read. It can be picked up casually to skim through a chapter while you are taking a break of 10-15 mins. The book is not immersive enough that a reader would look forward to reading it.
The book draws information from various ancient texts and stories but are not properly cited. Sometimes, the author is not clear enough to convey the thought and just goes on citing ancient information and stories which are sometimes interesting. However, to pick this book just for those interesting bits of information or interpretation is not recommended as I am sure one has read them or thought about them in their lifetime.
This book does not seem to be a serious read. It can be picked up casually to skim through a chapter while you are taking a break of 10-15 mins. The book is not immersive enough that a reader would look forward to reading it.
December 30, 2022
Well, she tried.
March 19, 2021
Brilliant insight into the general concept and all the dimensions desire may have (yes it is a multi-dimensional idea)! I love how the book is segregated in different aspects and desire is talked about through those :)
May 11, 2021
Sex - Erotica - Desire. A mere mention of these words STILL raises eyebrows in India which remains a largely sexually repressed society. And what a shame that is! Just read this book, and you will know how our ancestors were more fluid in their thinking and more sexually liberated in practice than our generation.
The book goes beyond Kama Sutra and Khajuraho. It’s an imperfect work, but I am glad academicians are making their findings available to a larger audience. Many paintings, posters, and photos are shown throughout the book, making the reading experience even better. Thank you, Professor Menon.
The book goes beyond Kama Sutra and Khajuraho. It’s an imperfect work, but I am glad academicians are making their findings available to a larger audience. Many paintings, posters, and photos are shown throughout the book, making the reading experience even better. Thank you, Professor Menon.
May 18, 2020
I got curious about this book largely due to the taxonomy of its chapters. Madhavi Menon covers various realms of desire which we normally would not think of as such. The chapter about grandparents or army, for example, were those i found particularly fascinating. I also appreciate the investment of the author into a more regional and consequently personal insights with the chapters on Sambandham or Swamy Ayappan. However, i consider many of her descriptions as stretched to cater to the chosen agenda, especially as far as grammar and the language usage is concerned.
January 1, 2019
So many revelations, deconstructions about desire, its many histories, and the way we came to perceive it in the contemporary world.
April 22, 2020
Madhavi Menon offers an interesting glimpse into the history of desire in India, where she juxtaposes the conservative elements of Manusmriti with the sexually liberatory texts like Kamasutra. The colonial state influenced by Victorian values rejected Kamasutra, the rich history of homoerotic relationships between Sufi saints and their disciples, practices of Sambandham of Nair women etc. in favour of a culturally conservative text - Manusmriti which aligned with their values and in some ways redefined South Asian practices relating to desire. Desire no longer was an end itself rather a source of procreation.
She also interestingly shines light on companionships as evidence of desire not limiting herself to sexual desire alone - quoting Freud from Three Theories of Sexuality - "sexual intercourse does not exhaust desire because our desire always exceeds the physical acts of sex". The focus is not on consummation of these relationships rather the intense desire shared by the two persons. To simply put, how does it matter if Amir Khusro and Khawaja Nizamuddin Auliya shared a spiritual or a carnal relationship - what matters is that they were buried together as lovers are.
She makes important theoretical contributions in the book. One relates to anxiety of castration imposed by the Oedipus complex among men. According to Freud, male homosexuality is a result of unresolved Oedipus complex. Getting over the interest in one's mother is compulsory for male heterosexuality otherwise the child will become like his mother. Quoting the letter written by G. Bose (founder of Indian Psychoanalytic Society) in 1929 to Freud she argues that since mythology and religion (cue Vishnu as Mohini/the Sufi disciple as the bride) provide a discourse on the easy interchangeability of male and female bodies, the men are less anxious about being castrated or becoming like women rather there is certain attractiveness to it - e.g. Krishna devotees being gopis irrespective of the body, the sufi disciple being the female adoring the pir/saint who is a male in poetry.
She also challenges Foucault's distinction of the ars erotica (erotic art) and scintia sexualis (science of sex) and its association with the East and West, respectively. According to Foucault, erotic art developed in the East where sex is for the sake of pleasure and a master adept in the arts of sex disseminates this secret knowledge. While science of sexuality developed in West where a discourse on sex is produced from the procedures of ancient confession to clinical testing (think of sexology). She challenges that distinction by arguing that Foucault falls in the trap of a binary of East and West. She cites Kamasutra which frustrates this binary because sex is both an art and science. While teaching the art of wooing, it also classifies sexual behaviour and how bodies should be organized. Further, there were strictures against the pleasures of sex in texts like Manusmriti against pre-marital sex and homosexual sex so East although more permissive about desire could also be rigid/conservative. Finally, she argues that Kamasutra was not a secret text rather a mass produced sex manual of its time (no master with secret knowledge of arts). Hence, she complicates the understanding of desire and cut and dry binaries of science and art by classifying Kamasutra as sexological treatise on pleasure.
However, for Menon desire operates in its own plane without the complications of caste and economic status. How does the political economy of certain time produces certain ideas of desire? Do the relations of production in an economic system impact the way desire is experienced? Judith Butler argues in her essay Merely Cultural that sexuality is not merely cultural rather it is produced by and in turn reinforces the current social order. Did the art of wooing as taught in Kamasutra allowed transgressions of the varna system?
The book is accessible and an easy read. It is recommended if one is interested to know about the infinite varieties of desire and seeing desire where it apparently does not exist. Seeing is also an act of power. We see what we are supposed to see, she unearths the unseen.
She also interestingly shines light on companionships as evidence of desire not limiting herself to sexual desire alone - quoting Freud from Three Theories of Sexuality - "sexual intercourse does not exhaust desire because our desire always exceeds the physical acts of sex". The focus is not on consummation of these relationships rather the intense desire shared by the two persons. To simply put, how does it matter if Amir Khusro and Khawaja Nizamuddin Auliya shared a spiritual or a carnal relationship - what matters is that they were buried together as lovers are.
She makes important theoretical contributions in the book. One relates to anxiety of castration imposed by the Oedipus complex among men. According to Freud, male homosexuality is a result of unresolved Oedipus complex. Getting over the interest in one's mother is compulsory for male heterosexuality otherwise the child will become like his mother. Quoting the letter written by G. Bose (founder of Indian Psychoanalytic Society) in 1929 to Freud she argues that since mythology and religion (cue Vishnu as Mohini/the Sufi disciple as the bride) provide a discourse on the easy interchangeability of male and female bodies, the men are less anxious about being castrated or becoming like women rather there is certain attractiveness to it - e.g. Krishna devotees being gopis irrespective of the body, the sufi disciple being the female adoring the pir/saint who is a male in poetry.
She also challenges Foucault's distinction of the ars erotica (erotic art) and scintia sexualis (science of sex) and its association with the East and West, respectively. According to Foucault, erotic art developed in the East where sex is for the sake of pleasure and a master adept in the arts of sex disseminates this secret knowledge. While science of sexuality developed in West where a discourse on sex is produced from the procedures of ancient confession to clinical testing (think of sexology). She challenges that distinction by arguing that Foucault falls in the trap of a binary of East and West. She cites Kamasutra which frustrates this binary because sex is both an art and science. While teaching the art of wooing, it also classifies sexual behaviour and how bodies should be organized. Further, there were strictures against the pleasures of sex in texts like Manusmriti against pre-marital sex and homosexual sex so East although more permissive about desire could also be rigid/conservative. Finally, she argues that Kamasutra was not a secret text rather a mass produced sex manual of its time (no master with secret knowledge of arts). Hence, she complicates the understanding of desire and cut and dry binaries of science and art by classifying Kamasutra as sexological treatise on pleasure.
However, for Menon desire operates in its own plane without the complications of caste and economic status. How does the political economy of certain time produces certain ideas of desire? Do the relations of production in an economic system impact the way desire is experienced? Judith Butler argues in her essay Merely Cultural that sexuality is not merely cultural rather it is produced by and in turn reinforces the current social order. Did the art of wooing as taught in Kamasutra allowed transgressions of the varna system?
The book is accessible and an easy read. It is recommended if one is interested to know about the infinite varieties of desire and seeing desire where it apparently does not exist. Seeing is also an act of power. We see what we are supposed to see, she unearths the unseen.
July 3, 2020
So , I finally finished the book A History of Desire in India and it is such a well researched book that it made me unlearn and interrogate the commonly accepted norms.
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Menon's research is about the messiness of India's sexual diversity but it is not a chronological account. Rather what the book does is to acknowledge sites of Desire which are hardly taken into account given our obesssion with hetrosexuality. There are 20 chapters traversing ideas of sexuality that can be located in the dargah, the Ayyappan temple,law or the army. The various sites of desire discussed in the book were intensely surprising such as
Did you know that Lord Ayyappan was born out a union between Shiva and Vishnu ? or
That Paan (an Indian obsession) is seen as an important part of seduction? or
What is the Indian obsession with elder bhabhi and why are they seen with lustful eyes ? or
That marriage has a very specific history and it wasn't the norm. Relations weren't monogamous as is the case now and there was a practice of 'sambandham' widely practiced amongst the Nair women of Kerala
The book is filled with unraveling information to make us comfortable about the diverse sexual practices widely prevalent in the Indian society which have been silenced through legislative interventions.
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Taking on from Michel Foucault (a French Philosopher) Menon has beautifully conveyed the message that the idea of discipline is intimately connected with the idea of sex and desire. The book is about the history of desire over time and space and category that cannot be fixed.
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Desire in India can be an embrace or a shunning of sexuality, it has been about sensualism or acsetisicm for centuries, but the laws around sexuality have only attempted to control the diversity and regulate bodies and desire.
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A couple of chapters did seem slightly out of context, but over all the book successfully wants us to know that desire ans sexuality has never been systematic in India as it has been presented.
🍁
Menon's research is about the messiness of India's sexual diversity but it is not a chronological account. Rather what the book does is to acknowledge sites of Desire which are hardly taken into account given our obesssion with hetrosexuality. There are 20 chapters traversing ideas of sexuality that can be located in the dargah, the Ayyappan temple,law or the army. The various sites of desire discussed in the book were intensely surprising such as
Did you know that Lord Ayyappan was born out a union between Shiva and Vishnu ? or
That Paan (an Indian obsession) is seen as an important part of seduction? or
What is the Indian obsession with elder bhabhi and why are they seen with lustful eyes ? or
That marriage has a very specific history and it wasn't the norm. Relations weren't monogamous as is the case now and there was a practice of 'sambandham' widely practiced amongst the Nair women of Kerala
The book is filled with unraveling information to make us comfortable about the diverse sexual practices widely prevalent in the Indian society which have been silenced through legislative interventions.
🍁
Taking on from Michel Foucault (a French Philosopher) Menon has beautifully conveyed the message that the idea of discipline is intimately connected with the idea of sex and desire. The book is about the history of desire over time and space and category that cannot be fixed.
🍁
Desire in India can be an embrace or a shunning of sexuality, it has been about sensualism or acsetisicm for centuries, but the laws around sexuality have only attempted to control the diversity and regulate bodies and desire.
🍁
A couple of chapters did seem slightly out of context, but over all the book successfully wants us to know that desire ans sexuality has never been systematic in India as it has been presented.
August 17, 2023
Well-written, interesting overview of the many forms and facets desire can take and has taken in India. Helps us get away from the monolithic way of looking at desire in terms of the patriarchal heterosexual married pair-- and in the various forms it has existed through time. This narrow restriction of desire is traced back to British prudery as well as certain minority upper-caste scriptural practices being reified into law.
Menon analyzes various myths, cultural institutions, as well as cultural beliefs to analyze how desire has never been 'pure' per se; and the multifaceted forms it has taken. There are chapters on how desire is conceptualized in the army, in parks, how love-suicides derive from Hindu beliefs in eternal love, how even celibacy is a revolt against society in a desire for God, how Ayyappan of the Sabarimala temple is a representative of male-male desire, how make-up used to be for both men and women, how the ideal male body was depicted as sensuous and soft, how a loose collage of sambandhams were the way Nair society was organized, how dating derives from a capitalist need to control desire temporally outside working hours. There are chapters on the sensuousness of paan, of hair, how Yoga and celibacy were seen as a way of sublimating desire into higher forms, how education as in the Guru-Sishya system may be seen as a sublimation into spiritual and intellectual forms of desire. How spirituality is also seeped through with desire, as evidenced by the indistinguishability of Indian love poetry and spiritual poetry, as well as the tradition of addressing God as one's beloved. Other chapters explore the hijra community, same-sex bonding which is strangely socially acceptable in India, the role grammatical gender plays in our conceptualizations of gender, how Freudian psycho-analysis may differ in India due to the different social structure. Lots of interesting anecdotes and insights in the book that help shatter any monolithic way of looking at the arena of desire.
Menon analyzes various myths, cultural institutions, as well as cultural beliefs to analyze how desire has never been 'pure' per se; and the multifaceted forms it has taken. There are chapters on how desire is conceptualized in the army, in parks, how love-suicides derive from Hindu beliefs in eternal love, how even celibacy is a revolt against society in a desire for God, how Ayyappan of the Sabarimala temple is a representative of male-male desire, how make-up used to be for both men and women, how the ideal male body was depicted as sensuous and soft, how a loose collage of sambandhams were the way Nair society was organized, how dating derives from a capitalist need to control desire temporally outside working hours. There are chapters on the sensuousness of paan, of hair, how Yoga and celibacy were seen as a way of sublimating desire into higher forms, how education as in the Guru-Sishya system may be seen as a sublimation into spiritual and intellectual forms of desire. How spirituality is also seeped through with desire, as evidenced by the indistinguishability of Indian love poetry and spiritual poetry, as well as the tradition of addressing God as one's beloved. Other chapters explore the hijra community, same-sex bonding which is strangely socially acceptable in India, the role grammatical gender plays in our conceptualizations of gender, how Freudian psycho-analysis may differ in India due to the different social structure. Lots of interesting anecdotes and insights in the book that help shatter any monolithic way of looking at the arena of desire.
Read
November 4, 2020Very interesting book, but not without flaws. First of all it should not have the word History in it's title, since the author does not talk about the historical development, but jumps between past and present. Some chapters are well-written, well-research and fascinating, with a lot of thought-provoking content and saucy tidbits. There are original uncensored versions of mythological stories, discussions of the morals pre and post colonialism, "hidden" stories of "different" desires, and discussions on what was sexy to ancient Indians. The chapter on Nair woman was especially fascinating for me, and it was clear how close this topic was to the author's heart. The topics of queer love hidden in plain sight was another very interesting topic. Other chapters however are poorly developed, like the death chapter -- the author basically quotes pages upon pages of love relationships ending in suicides because of familial abuse, and sums it up by saying that in India desire and death are closely connected. A better topic (and more suited to the subject matter) would be, in my humble opinion, a discussion about why death is seen as the last stage of love according to older texts. Also the book suffers from repetition and would have profited from tighter editing -- there are often paragraphs repeating something said a page back, while other interesting information is not expanded upon at all. There are a couple of pages devoted to who actually invented the zero -- we get it, it could have been the Indians but maybe also not, lets skip to the more interesting parts, shall we? Finally, I feel that some words and terms should have been explained (better), so that a non-Indian reader could follow along.
On the whole I heartily recommend this book, because, in spite of the couple of flaws, it is extremely interesting and a good read.
On the whole I heartily recommend this book, because, in spite of the couple of flaws, it is extremely interesting and a good read.
September 20, 2020
A high school essay based on Internet research.
The book is poorly researched; the author lacks a basic understanding of Indian history and mythology and the timeline; draws outlandish conclusions without any solid basis.
A few pearls from the book should convince you about the quality of the research:
1. In the Hindi blessing ‘Sada Sukhi Raho’ (given to newly married women), ‘sukh’ is understood to mean the state of marital/sexual bliss.
2. Yoga has a syncratic history.
3. The book quotes that there are 8 types of Hindu marriages, based on some obscure scripture, but forgets to mention the swayamvara marriage, a key marriage type described in the epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata.
4. The book cites as evidence a 2009 propaganda article by Pakistan Daily Mail that the Indian Army deployed an all-women unit in Kashmir to cater for the sexual needs of its soldiers. The point the author trying to make is armies find ways to satisfy desires of their soldiers.
The book is poorly researched; the author lacks a basic understanding of Indian history and mythology and the timeline; draws outlandish conclusions without any solid basis.
A few pearls from the book should convince you about the quality of the research:
1. In the Hindi blessing ‘Sada Sukhi Raho’ (given to newly married women), ‘sukh’ is understood to mean the state of marital/sexual bliss.
2. Yoga has a syncratic history.
3. The book quotes that there are 8 types of Hindu marriages, based on some obscure scripture, but forgets to mention the swayamvara marriage, a key marriage type described in the epics like Ramayana and Mahabharata.
4. The book cites as evidence a 2009 propaganda article by Pakistan Daily Mail that the Indian Army deployed an all-women unit in Kashmir to cater for the sexual needs of its soldiers. The point the author trying to make is armies find ways to satisfy desires of their soldiers.
June 16, 2020
One of those rarely enjoyed, non-fiction "page-turner". Menon's book is quite the quirky work; skipping from one topic to another but still each centered on the conception of desire & sexuality. More importantly, I've gained a greater insight into some elements or imagery incorporated in Hindi movies - without recourse to the explicit or pornographic - like the ecstatic worships performed at tombs of Sufi saints, use of betel leaf preparations, or the symbolism of lush, long hair. And also, for non-Hindu readers, it sheds much light on some aspects of Hindu mythology & their pantheon of gods. #Goodreads
December 15, 2018
Infinite Variety
A History of Desire in India
By Madhavi Menon
An enlightening account of desire across varied domains such as historical places, Bollywood movies, mathematics, gods and goddesses, education, celibacy, yoga, suicides, law, public places, army, physical appearance, relations and other fascinating categories through which one definitely gets to understand the context of desire from so many different subjects.
#BookLovers #LoveToRead
A History of Desire in India
By Madhavi Menon
An enlightening account of desire across varied domains such as historical places, Bollywood movies, mathematics, gods and goddesses, education, celibacy, yoga, suicides, law, public places, army, physical appearance, relations and other fascinating categories through which one definitely gets to understand the context of desire from so many different subjects.
#BookLovers #LoveToRead
March 16, 2020
It was the Victorian morality imposed by the British in India that stiffed variety and diversity of desire in the Indian society. before that though the desires were not named and categorized, they existed without causing any damage to the fabric of the society. This was not promiscuity as perceived by the Victorian mind of the British, but an infinite variety that reflected the life itself without entering into any type of taxonomy.
Read
June 24, 2022A brilliant journey through the relationship desire has with many everyday encounters - told with wit, personal anecdotes, in a fun, conversational style. Keep your sense of humour alive while peeking through this book - because among many other things, it allows us to take desire both less and more seriously while applying it to our lives. It's a lens through which the author looks at the world, and it's a happy one, a joyous one.
May 15, 2024
Found this book to be enlightening for the most part. Bite size chapters about different aspects of South Asian culture (Sufism, Education, Grandparents, etc.) and how they tie into desire and sex. I think some of the conclusions that Menon reached were a little far fetched (thinking of the Army chapter), but overall was an interesting read.
July 31, 2018
A book that not everyone will want to read/ be interested in, but it I something that we must read. India is a sexually confused country. With everything from homosexuality, public display of affection etc being condemned. Does our history agree with our actions. ..... No it does not.
April 18, 2020
I found this book after listening to the author on the excellent podcast: the seen and the unseen.
While I did find some comparisons, analogies and leaps in logic a tad bit overdone, I did enjoy reading and learning from this book.
While I did find some comparisons, analogies and leaps in logic a tad bit overdone, I did enjoy reading and learning from this book.
June 7, 2021
It's hard to judge the book, because of how vast the collection of ideas is. The author wrote brief chapters about a variety of topics while also trying to give us context for desire in India. Could be a nice slow burner.
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