Bav­ina Sookdeo�

While many politi­cians and the main po­lit­i­cal par­ties have de­cid­ed to shy away from LGBT (les­bian, gay, bi­sex­u­al and trans­gen­der) is­sues, the Cen­tre for In­dic Stud­ies (CIS) is deal­ing with the is­sues head-on.

At a con­fer­ence held at the Di­vali Na­gar re­cent­ly the po­si­tion on LGBT is­sues based on Hin­du teach­ings were dis­cussed.

Dr Arvind Singh's pre­sen­ta­tion was ti­tled LGBTH (where the 'H' stood for Hin­du). Singh is the found­ing di­rec­tor of the CIS. He is al­so a lec­tur­er at UWI in Elec­tri­cal and Com­put­er En­gi­neer­ing who has stud­ied San­skrit for over ten years. Singh, in his pre­sen­ta­tion high­light­ed the Hin­du shru­ti-sm­ri­ti par­a­digm of knowl­edge in which spir­i­tu­al­i­ty in the quest for the tran­scen­dent truth is not con­cerned in the least with gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty.

"More im­por­tant­ly per­haps, it de­mands that so­ci­etal laws be con­tin­u­ous­ly up­dat­ed with the state of knowl­edge in the world, to move to­ward a free and fear­less so­ci­ety where peo­ple en­joy the max­i­mum amount of con­trol over their lives. So even though Hin­du so­ci­ety, like all oth­ers, has seen many ter­ri­ble bi­as­es through his­to­ry, there is a more im­por­tant meta-tra­di­tion of root­ed­ness in the eter­nal with con­tin­u­ous re­new­al of the rel­a­tive. This stands in stark con­trast to pop­u­lar be­lief of Abra­ham­ic faiths that at times seem to fol­low a more bi­na­ry rule based pro­gramme for get­ting in­to heav­en or hell," he said.

Singh drew from scrip­tur­al sources to show that in Hin­duism, sex­u­al­i­ty was seen as flu­id and nat­ur­al in all its man­i­fes­ta­tions. Con­se­quent­ly, he not­ed, the de­mon­i­sa­tion of and leg­is­la­tion against the LGBT com­mu­ni­ty is sim­ply wrong.

"The con­tin­ued de­nial of rights is cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly un-Hin­du" he said.

"There­fore to re­spond to the mass 're­li­gious' out­rage about im­moral­i­ty: It is the leg­is­lat­ing against peo­ple's fun­da­men­tal na­ture and ways of be­ing that is im­moral and has no place in so­ci­ety. The con­tin­ued de­mon­i­sa­tion of the LGBT com­mu­ni­ty and their dis­en­fran­chise­ment in law is square­ly against the Hin­du spir­i­tu­al tra­di­tion."

Krys­tal Ghisyawan, the hold­er of a dou­ble ho­n­ours BA in An­thro­pol­o­gy and South Asian Stud­ies spoke about the re­al chal­lenges same-sex lov­ing women face try­ing to rec­on­cile their sex­u­al­i­ty with their re­li­gion and fam­i­ly life. Ghisyawan has re­cent­ly re­turned from a fel­low­ship at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Toron­to and is cur­rent­ly read­ing for her PhD in So­ci­ol­o­gy at UWI. Her re­search fo­cus­es on same-sex lov­ing women in Trinidad and their space-mak­ing prac­tices with­in the state, fam­i­lies, re­li­gion and dis­course. She al­so stud­ies gen­der and sex­u­al­i­ty in Hin­duism.

Ghisyawan said dur­ing her pre­sen­ta­tion: "They (same-sex lov­ing women) of­ten turn to a more per­son­al, in­di­vid­ual, less in­sti­tu­tion­al form of the faith as they pull from sev­er­al Hin­du sto­ries con­tin­u­ing to find sources of strength as well as in­spi­ra­tion in im­ages of Arad­ha­narish­vara, where both male and fe­male prop­er­ties form part of the whole, of Kr­ish­na's play where he dress­es and be­haves as Rad­ha, in Vish­nu's in­car­na­tion as Mo­hi­ni.

"Though main­stream Hin­duism es­poused by many pun­dits seems at odds with their sex­u­al iden­ti­ty, the equal­ly-valid Hin­duism they find strength in, through which they ne­go­ti­ate, is sup­port­ive."

Al­so dis­play­ing her work at the con­fer­ence was Shali­ni Seereer­am–an artist who has been cre­at­ing vi­brant, un­du­lat­ing por­traits of women and men for the past 14 years of her ca­reer. She has been con­sis­tent­ly il­lus­trat­ing for mag­a­zine spreads such as Caribbean Air­lines In-flight Mag­a­zine and has been fea­tured in Caribbean Belle, Ma­co Caribbean Liv­ing and more.

She is a fea­tured artist in The House of An­gos­tu­ra Gallery Book 2014, the Na­tion­al Mu­se­um and Art Gallery Book 2011 and has been award­ed the ASTT–Art So­ci­ety of T&T Prize for paint­ing in 2000. Her work has been ex­hib­it­ed in­ter­na­tion­al­ly in the USA and Lon­don.

Seereer­am's lat­est ex­hi­bi­tion is ti­tled In­ti­mate Mo­ments, which fo­cus­es on the in­ti­ma­cies be­tween women. She chose to fo­cus on the sen­su­al, rather than sex­u­al na­ture of fe­male re­la­tion­ships where love is a spir­i­tu­al as well as phys­i­cal ex­pe­ri­ence. She spoke of the cul­tur­al propen­si­ty of In­di­ans to bot­tle up, sup­press and not speak of hurt, pain, vi­o­lence and how dam­ag­ing this can be.

"Through ac­cep­tance of that hurt and pain, one can tran­scend it and it can be a cre­ative process" she said. She al­so spoke about the very re­al risk she was tak­ing putting her ex­hi­bi­tion out but the need to speak about her own ex­pe­ri­ences as a woman. She saw the work as nec­es­sary, say­ing "if it can touch just one young per­son's life so they feel less ashamed, less afraid, more se­cure in be­ing them­selves then I would con­sid­er the work a suc­cess."

More in­fo

The Cen­tre for In­dic Stud­ies (CIS) is a fledg­ling, non-prof­it or­gan­i­sa­tion ded­i­cat­ed to de­vel­op­ing a de­cen­tralised knowl­edge net­work to prop­a­gate tra­di­tion­al knowl­edge sys­tems of In­dia in the fields of Lan­guage, Phi­los­o­phy and the Arts. The or­gan­i­sa­tion has sev­er­al ini­tia­tives in­clud­ing: Be­gin­ner and Ad­vanced Lev­el San­skrit class­es; In­ndova­tion: an In­no­va­tion in Cul­ture dri­ve and most re­cent­ly So­cial Is­sues in Hin­duism. Check out the Cen­tre for In­dic stud­ies on Face­book.?