Faith between the covers

Sex and Religion: Teachings and Taboos in the history of world faiths
 

Author: Dag Oistein Endsjo
 

Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books
 

Price: Rs 499   

Pages: 332

Hippolytus cuts a rather tragic figure in Greek antiquity. He was the son of a powerful father, Theseus, who was king of Athens and one of its most valorised heroes, widely feted for his slaying of the Minotaur. But the story of Hippolytus, the one with which this book begins, is more of a cautionary tale. It was widely used as a parable against abstinence.
 

Hippolytus had earned the wrath of the goddess of love and sexuality, Aphrodite, because he had sworn allegiance to her rival, Artemis, the goddess of the hunt. Like his patron goddess, he chose life in the wilderness, with animals and nature for company, and even declared that Aphrodite was not worthy of anyone’s attention. 
 

The gods are particularly sensitive to such insults, and an enraged Aphrodite set out to destroy the young man. She conspired to have his stepmother, Phaedra, fall in love with him and then falsely charge him with rape. Left with no option but to flee the palace, Hippolytus sped away on his chariot, hoping to ride far from his father’s executioners. 
 

Aphrodite sent a monster chasing after him, whose appearance so rattled the horses drawing the chariot that they flung Hippolytus into the sharp rocks of the cliffs around them, bringing about his instant, violent death.
 

The gods abhorred abstinence and even though the consequences were not always as dire as the one that Hippolytus faced, abjuring sex never went unpunished or unreformed in the ancient world. In Mesopotamian mythology, wild man Enkidu had to be tamed by one of the priestesses of Ishtar called Shamhat. She made him give up his isolationist, animal-like existence so that the great kingdom of Uruk could be saved from doom. 
 

In the Indian context, the story of how the sexual initiation of Rishyashringa (the horned sage) by a band of women, sent by the king Romapada, helped end drought and famine in the kingdom of Anga fits a similar pattern.
 

The world in these stories seems light years away from the present one, but scratch the surface and the prejudices underlying these tales are not that different from those underwiring modern-day policies around sexual freedoms and the taboos around homosexual relationships. 
 

Religion and sex are old bedfellows, and this book offers a fascinating account of the disingenuous manner in which the two have conspired to create a hypocritical social order around sex and desire. As the stories above show, men were encouraged to lose their virginity, while women were killed for the same. For married women too, other men were taboo unless their husbands asked them to find other partners. Sexual promiscuity was acceptable only if it was sanctioned by the husband or the family elders. Men, on the other hand, were free to choose as many sexual partners as they wanted.
 

Religious duplicity around sexual behaviour is visible in the Indian epic Mahabharata, for instance, where Kunti is castigated for bearing a son from the sun god before her marriage, but praised for doing so with other gods when her husband Pandu demands that she provide an heir for the kingdom. Pandu was cursed into impotence and could not perform his role of husband and father.
 

Women were subjected to stringent punishment for perceived sexual transgressions because only they knew the father of the child, and by controlling her partners, the family controlled its future heir. Also, as author Dag Oistein Endsjo writes, most religions gave men a higher status than women and thereby ensured that men were granted control over women’s sexuality.
 

Such attitudes rip through the veneer of gender equality even today — in the way abortion rights are being taken away from women in many countries, in the rise in honour killings, and on the taboos on premarital sex. They are also in evidence in the dress codes that are inflicted upon women by powerful men and women across faiths.
 

The book covers a wide range of ideas and issues around sex and religion, and draws attention to the arbitrary and blatantly unfair treatment of the weak and disenfranchised sections of society by a handful of self-proclaimed religious and political leaders.
 

In America, for instance, unequal attitudes towards men and women were further heightened by the systemic inequalities enforced through racism. Slaves lacked the legal right to marry and hence, any ceremonies they conducted to create bonds with each other did not have legal status. Slave owners routinely separated such couples, making it impossible for them to practise what was normal heterosexual behaviour.
 

Banning inter-racial marriages, and in countries such as India, the mobilisation against inter-religious and inter-caste alliances, are all examples of racist ideologies percolating into the bedroom. Such discriminatory behaviour perpetuated in the name of religion and tradition has further mangled the old, convoluted ideas around sexuality and created abusive institutions of power. The tragedy is that the writ of such institutions is on the rise worldwide.