Taming the sexual tiger

My Experiments With Sex could well have been the title of the other bestseller by Mahatma Gandhi.

Throughout his life and right into his old age, Gandhi tried to comprehend the power of sexual urges and shared his thoughts through his writings. Becoming increasingly spiritual as he progressed in life, he decided to become celibate after 36. As is well documented by Ved Mehta in Mahatma Gandhi And His Apostles and other books by Nirmal Kumar Bose, Erik H Erikson, and by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre in Freedom At Midnight, Gandhi put himself to the test by taking naked women to bed.

With rare courage, he confessed in his autobiography that during his sixteenth year, his mind was overwhelmingly preoccupied with sex, driving him repeatedly to the bedroom to his pregnant wife as his father lay dying in an adjoining room. He never forgave himself for missing the moment when his father died, all because of his "carnal desire even at the critical hour of my father's death, which demanded wakeful service".

Gandhi discussed his thoughts on sex somewhat candidly in spite of the highly conservative and reactionary environment of his times. He viewed himself as "a lustful though faithful husband" and as he said in his autobiography, "It took me long to get free from the shackles of lust, and I had to pass through many ordeals before I could overcome it."

The world has passed through multiple sexual revolutions since and India is just beginning to open up on this front. Sexual freedom is increasingly becoming a reality, especially for urban Indian men and women, and there is ample opportunity for experimentation, be it real or virtual.

As our society embraces new attitudes on sex, making it challenging particularly for the youth, the  fact remains that howsoever outdated and irrelevant Gandhi's thoughts may seem today, his focal point on managing one's sexual urges continues to be relevant. All the more for people in the public glare, who have high stakes in carefully cultivated images which are often just facades.

Tiger Woods is but the latest in the long string of notables from any and every country whose image has been shattered by the revelation of his sexual escapades. It was Bill Clinton before him who made headline news on the same subject. Both Clinton and Woods projected the image of ideal family men but confessed that they had erred in weak moments.

Our present ethic on fidelity in marriage can be traced to the traditions of the Catholic Church and 18th century America which "condemned sex outside marriage and exalted family solidarity". As it stands, marriage has emerged as more than a practical institution; it is a bond of trust among couples that weakens, if not breaks, with the discovery of infidelity.

The matter of suppressing sexual urges has been central to practically all religions, although virtually all religious orders have failed in trying to keep their priests and pundits celibate, as is evidenced from scandal upon scandal.

It may be argued that Hinduism, which gave the world the manual of sex, the Kama Sutra, has been tolerant of this primal urge, advocating the middle path and "the withdrawal of the senses in a weak moment" just as "a tortoise pulls itself under its shell in times of danger".

The American philosopher Will Durant described sex as "our strongest instinct and greatest problem" after hunger. He strongly disapproved of the gross stimulation provided to this instinct by modern civilisation through advertisement and other means and looked upon marriage as a solution "to take our minds off sex, and become adult".

It may be forcefully argued that the traditional emphasis on suppressing the sexual urge has, on the contrary, fuelled the sex industry and, as a consequence, the trafficking of children who die young or end up as unwilling  prostitutes. Legalising prostitution is one way of coming out of our denial and this thought was expressed recently by the Supreme Court.

Way back on August 28, 1968, Osho (then known as Acharya Rajneesh) bravely and brilliantly delivered his 'Sambhog se samadhi ki ore' (From sex towards superconsciousness) lectures at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan and at Gowalia Tank in what was then Bombay. Beginning with the question, what is the meaning of love, he lambasted religious doctrines for their destructive approach to sex, holding them responsible for man's biggest obsession.

Echoing the thoughts of Sigmund Freud, Rajneesh described the sex drive as the fundamental energy in man and demanded that society must demystify sex for its children; accept and embrace this mysterious force as a friend. Rather perceptively, he had said, "The more you embrace sex in its true spirit, the greater will be your freedom from it; the more you deny it, the greater will be your destruction."