The liberated and the repressed

In Sex And Power, Rita Banerji, a freelance writer and photographer, retells the intriguing history of ‘sex’ in India. In this well-researched work, Banerji goes beyond the known facts of history and digs deeper into Indian mythology and literature to offer glimpses into the cultural, social and sexual beliefs and practices of societies during the various periods of history — from the Vedic to the modern.

The sexual philosophy in each era, she argues, is a direct rebuttal of the previous one, creating an intriguing ‘yo-yo’ effect. So if sex was a part of religious ceremonies in the Vedic period, it was banned from religion, seen as sinful, and as an obstruction to the attainment of salvation in the era of the Buddha. However, in the following Golden Period, it was embraced as a means of salvation, and linked to the creative drive, while in the colonial period sex was seen as something shameful.

India at present is slowly breaking away from its colonial past. Going by the ‘yo-yo momentum’ in sexual ethos from one historical period to another, after the extreme puritanism of the colonial period, democratic India will adopt a permissive approach to sex in the coming centuries, argues the author.

According to Banerji, the three most challenging issues facing India today — population explosion, AIDS and female infanticide — are the manifestations of a collective sexual malfunctioning in society, and this needs to be redressed in the context of existing social and economic power hierarchies.

The book talks in detail about the major changes in moral traditions in Indian society, and how religious institutions have always attacked human sexuality. Demonstrating that sex has been used a tool of community control, the book describes how ancient moral edicts pronounced by religious institutions on sex-related issues continue, even in modern times, to have direct control on the way societies think and function.

This is why most countries continue to have laws that define social boundaries with regard to homosexuality, marriage, divorce, pornography, dress code, nudity, adultery, prostitution and abortion. They all originate from religious injunctions.

“There are conflicting attitudes towards sex in modern India. The mind-boggling discrepancy between earlier periods of Hindu life (when figures in the act of intercourse were sculpted on to temple walls) and modern India (where a lip-lock on the movie screen causes the censor board to emerge scowling with hammer and axe) indicates a society that has undergone significant change in its moral outlook towards life,” the book says.

Covering 5,000 years of India’s history, the book concludes that the moral order has always reflected the priorities and needs of the dominating or master class.