Homosexuality in Ancient India

The Indian worldview since ancient times has had space for every imaginable entity. These entities range from social to scientific and from imaginary to mathematical. No way of looking at the world has been excluded. This is why it is curious in modern times to find certain ways of life described as unnatural or taboo. This is something India of yore does not share with modern India. We have stories of Narada falling into a pond and emerging from it as a woman. This is how he discovers the meaning of Maya. Another story tells of Shiva bathing in the Yamuna to become a woman and dance with Krishna. In Ahmedabad, there is a temple belonging to Bahujara, a goddess who rides the rooster. It is said that there was a pond here that could turn women into men. Those who seek a male child still visit this dried-up pond and seek blessings from Hijras, men who have chosen to dress like women. A ritual held every year in Pondicherry remembers the marriage of Arjuna's son, Arvan, who was going to be sacrificed for the sake of victory in the Mahabharat war. Krishna turned into a woman called Mohini and married him. She even wailed for him when he was sacrificed. In the Kritivas Ramayan, there is a story of two women who make love to each other in the absence of their husband and produce a child without bones. One way to understand these stories is to appreciate that in ancient India, lines dividing male from female and heterosexual from homosexual were blurred. These tales were told without guilt or shame and are not uncommon by any means. Where do these stories stem from? Perhaps they have their roots in Indian metaphysics. In a world where all manifestations of the divine are said to exist, there is space not only for men and women but also for men with a woman's heart and women with a man's needs. Masculinity and femininity are only labels that are applied to bodies being occupied by eternal souls. The Hindu view of the world has always been friendly towards different ways of being and seeing. In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna tells Arjuna not to be arrogant. He tells him that there is much more to this universe than the human mind can fathom. Though the human mind creates boundaries, reality is diverse and can contain everything. This is the point being made by Hindu temples when they juxtapose beautiful Apsaras with bloodthirsty demons in their architecture. They teach us that there is nothing unnatural in nature and that every way of being is a manifestation of the divine.