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Ten Commandments and
Manav-dharm-shastra give way to kama-conscious India
From:
"jagbir singh" <www.adishakti.org@gmail.com>
Date: Thu Dec 9, 2004 9:16 am
Subject: The Ten Commandments and
Manav-dharm-shastra give way to kama-conscious India |
—- In
shriadishakti@yahoogroups.com,
boyini girish
<girish_1480@y...> wrote:
>
> jai shri mata ji,
> hai, i am girish . iam from india
> doing sy from one year.i have some doughts regarding
> the ten commandments.
> in one of the commandments init said that one
> should not coommit adultry that is sex should be only
> with your married partner. but in todays world of high
> competition it is impossible for a guy or a lady to
> get married till the age of 27 . my question is how is
> it possible for any one to abstain from sex tiill that
> age.
> if any one can send me a reply i will be thankful
>
> girish
>
That's a very good question Girish. Can someone answer
this one?
Perhaps this Asia Times report title "India rediscovers
kama" by
Sultan Shahin and "When sex gets out of the cupboard" by
Siddharth
Srivastava destroys the myth that India is a land of
religiously
prudish and spiritually moral people. India is indeed
fast catching
up with the West in both artha (wealth creation) and
kama (sensual
pleasure). All the more reason for the Adi Shakti to
descend and
renew the dharma, the Great Event ordained for humanity.
Jai Shri Mataji,
jagbir
India rediscovers kama
At the height of its civilization, India was the land of
the Kama
Sutra, Koke Shastra, Ananga Ranga - the sacred
literature teaching
ways and means of heightening sexual pleasure, not only
with one's
own spouse, but also with other partners.
It was the land of Mahabharat, the greatest epic known
to mankind,
where Lord Krishna, whose divine exhortations are
contained in the
Bhagwad Gita, could be worshipped with his beloved Radha,
who was
someone else's spouse, perhaps that of his maternal
uncle. It was
the land of Khajuraho temples depicting copulating
couples and
multiples on its inner walls that prudes consider
pornographic. It
was the land of Kalidasa, one of the greatest Sanskrit
poets who
celebrated sex with an openness unparalleled in world
literature.
With its decline, for some obscure reason ascribed to a
natural
cycle of the rise and fall of civilizations, India
turned prudish
and guilt-ridden about free sex. The introduction of
Islamic and
Judeo-Christian morality did not help. India ceased to
be proud of
Khajuraho and Kalidas. Krishna and Radha were still
worshipped
together, but children would not be told about their
open illicit
love affair. Both kama (sensual pleasure) and artha
(wealth
creation), the two essential aspects of the Indian way
of life
(dharma) suffered. India ceased being itself.
But as artha was revitalized with the introduction of
new economic
policies of liberalization and globalization and new
technologies
such as computers and the Internet in the early 1990s,
it seems now
that kama too has made a comeback. Perhaps the two go
together.
Several sex surveys carried out recently point to a
definite
resurgence of guilt-free extramarital sex, as much on
the initiative
of women now as it was on the bidding of men before.
Commenting on
the findings of the KamaSutra Cross Tab Sex Survey 2003,
conducted
in association with Indiatimes, published on Thursday,
sex expert
Prakash Kothari said, "One can easily kiss that crummy
era goodbye.
A nation of 1 billion is getting sexy and kicking the
guilt."
Psychiatrist Sanjay Chugh, MD, is jubilant: Finally,
"it" is
happening in India.
Permissiveness is at an all-time high. Respondents
across India
(Bangalore 27 percent; Chennai 28 percent; Delhi 22
percent;
Hyderabad 20 percent; Kolkata 32 percent; Mumbai 24
percent) feel
that both partners should be free to have extramarital
sex with the
spouse's consent. Delhiites are most likely to have done
it at a
younger age than their counterparts in other cities.
Hyderabadis and
Mumbaikars show the maximum inclination to infidelity,
summarized
Anubha Sawhney, breaking the news of the survey in
Thursday's The
Times of India.
While the survey reveals that breasts are the No 1
sexual-arousal
point for Indian males, followed by overall looks and
butts, the
Indian woman prefers good looks, eyes, and a muscular
physique in
her man. Nationwide, experimentation is the name of the
game.
Although the missionary position continues to be the
preferred one
of couples engaging in sex, respondents to the survey
reveal that
they are open to other options. As for the average age
at which
Indians have their first experience of sex, figures
indicate that
virgins are a dying breed.
There is no bar on age, time or place. Indians want sex
again and
again. The Hyderabadis have sex 17.1 times a month. This
is a
national record. Comparing the results of this survey
with the
figures furnished by the Durex Global Survey, which
accords top
position to the French for having sex 167 times a year,
Sawhney
concludes that this could even be a world record.
This month the second-largest-circulated newsmagazine
Outlook
carried out a survey in several Indian metros to come up
with
similar results. Its correspondents interviewed sex
specialists and
psychologists in Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai and
Ahmedabad,
among other cities, to discover that in the business of
sex now,
women are indeed on top, literally. Titled "Woman on
top: Eves do it
too", the Outlook cover story on May 5 said: "It's not
just Adam for
Madam. The Indian woman storms another male bastion as
she seeks
sex - and solace - outside her marriage."
The authors of the story, Madhu Jain and Soutik Biswas,
concluded: "Adultery 2003 is really about women taking
the lead.
It's also about adultery going middle-class, to
small-town India,
going commonplace, even going boring. Dangerous liaisons
used to be
for the aristos and the plebs. Those in between, the
middle classes,
were tethered by moral chastity belts - only their
fantasies could
roam freely. Or it was all within the family, the
extramarital
dalliances, that is. The scarlet letter is now fading
fast: stigma
is getting passe and guilt for an increasing number is
no more than
a twitch.
"We are probably more adulterous now than ever before,
with women
catching up with the men on the adultery stakes. Says D
Narayana
Reddy, a sexologist and marital therapist in Chennai, 'I
have been
practicing since 1982. In those days, my women clients
would say a
strict No to anything outside marriage. By 1992, the
attitude was
What's wrong if I did it? By 2002, they were daring to
explore.'"
The real source of the massive urge for sexual
exploration that
Indians, particularly women, have developed suddenly is
as
mysterious as the reasons for the rise and fall of
civilizations. But
one thing has come out clearly in the survey. New
technology is an
important factor encouraging the phenomenon. Internet
and
mushrooming cyber cafes have helped, as have mobile
phones and SMS
(short message service) facilities. Women and men have
suddenly
heard from old flames, childhood friends, former
classmates, whom
they may have fancied once, dates have been fixed, and
one thing has
led to another. In most cases straight, unembarrassed
initiatives
have come from women, as men twiddled their fingers
thinking of
creative ways of broaching the subject.
Wife swapping, relatively unknown in India until
recently, has made
an appearance. Adventurous couples are advertising in
newspapers
their desire to meet like-minded people for wife and
husband
swapping.
Indian cinema was known for its kid-glove treatment of
female
sexuality. Indian woman being shown having sex outside
marriage
would be considered unpatriotic. And if at all the
heroine committed
that misdemeanor, premarital sex, she would have to try
committing
suicide, only to be rescued by the hero and his parents
agreeing to
marriage.
Now in the age of cable television's soaps, nearly all
the
characters in family dramas are shown as having pre- or
extramarital
sexual relations; most marriages are shown to be
illegal, in the
sense that the couple had been married before and not
divorced. This
creates more room for the scriptwriters to push in
intrigue and
blackmail, keeping families, including kids, glued to
their
television sets throughout the evenings.
Vijay Nagaswami, a Chennai-based psychiatrist and author
of
Courtship & Marriage: A Guide for Indian Couples, was
quoted by
Outlook as saying that couples expect a healthy sex life
and are
less inhibited about discussing their sexual experiences
now. "Sex
is no longer a taboo word and more people, particularly
women, are
more willing to talk sex with their partners."
India's sex guru Prakash Kothari, who heads the
department of sexual
medicine at the Kem Hospital and the GS Medical College
in Mumbai,
added: "Thirty years ago, I said most Indian men use
their women as
sleeping pills. Today Indian women feel their sexual
desires are
basic human rights, and they need to be respected."
Hyderabad-based andrologist and impotence expert
Sudhakara
Krishnamurti told Outlook that a decade ago couples
would come to
him after failing to consummate their marriages for
10-15 years.
Today wives often drag their husbands into the clinic
within the
first week of their marriage. "With women being more
demanding in
the bedroom, it puts a lot of pressure on normal guys,"
he said.
Even visitors from the liberated West are flummoxed.
They have seen
nothing like this before. Carin Fisher, a
German-American lawyer who
moved to New Delhi about a year ago, has been quoted as
saying: "The
acceptance of adultery here was, and sometimes still is,
quite
shocking to me. So many married men here tell me that
even Krishna
cheated and that I am stuck in some sort of
Judeo-Christian cultural
context. The god had a good time and he was not
condemned for it,
they say. And some women I have met, mostly the educated
middle-
class ones - if you can believe it - tell me, 'Look at
our heritage.
It is natural. Look at Krishna.'"
Well-known socialite Bina Ramani talks of her conversion
to the fast-
growing creed of adultery: "I was shocked when I first
came back to
India some years ago. Everybody seemed to be having
extramarital
affairs. You don't do that in the West. You have serial
monogamy.
But I have changed my mind. If there is a Krishna in
men, there is a
Radha in women. Why can't I be both: a wife and Radha?
We are born
with it. Men are doing their Krishna thing, aren't
they?"
Middle-class India is having a whale of a time,
obviously. But it
must also beware. Not everybody is happy. Some spouses
are hurt.
Detective agencies, particularly the new breed of cyber
detectives,
are being flooded with requests for snooping on the
activities and e-
mail accounts of married men and women. They are busy
documenting
illicit affairs, hacking computers of married people
engaged in such
affairs. Some agencies report having to deal with 10-15
new cases
every day. All for the convenience of divorce lawyers
who may need
them.
Not surprisingly, divorce is rampant. About 5,000
divorces a year
are being reported from Haryana, with a population of 17
million. In
some cities, Kolkata for instance, the number of divorce
cases has
doubled. A total of 13,037 divorce cases were filed in
the city
between January and August last year, nearly double the
number filed
in all of 1999. ...
Even in ancient India, though, at the height of its
glory, there
were laws with similar contradictions. In fact the
British jurists
who made our present laws based Hindu law on Manu-smriti,
also known
as Manav-dharm-shastra (Laws of Manu), which ranks in
its scriptural
sanctity with Ramayana and Mahabharata.
The laws of Manu provide a fascinating glimpse of the
life and times
of ancient India and how people (other than Brahmins)
tried to beat
the law even then to engage in adultery: "[Verse 352] If
men persist
in seeking intimate contact with other men's wives, the
king should
brand them with punishments that inspire terror and
banish them.
[353] For that gives rise among people to the confusion
of the
castes, by means of which irreligion, that cuts away the
roots,
works for the destruction of everything.
"[3556] If a man speaks to another man's wife at a
bathing place, in
a wilderness or a forest, or at the confluence or
rivers, he incurs
[the guilt of] sexual misconduct. [357] Acting with
special courtesy
to her, playing around with her, touching her ornaments
or clothes,
sitting on a couch with her, are all traditionally
regarded as
sexual misconduct. [358] If a man touches a woman in a
non-place [a
place other than the hand], or allows himself to be
touched by her,
with mutual consent, it is all traditionally regarded as
sexual
misconduct.
"[359] A man who is not a Brahmin deserves to be
punished by the
loss of his life's breath for sexual misconduct, for the
wives of
all four castes should always be protected to the
utmost. [360]
Beggars, panegyrists, men who have been consecrated for
a Vedic
sacrifice, and workmen may carry on a conversation with
other men's
wives if they are not prohibited [from doing so by the
scriptures].
[361] But a man who has been prohibited should not carry
on a
conversation with other men's wives; if a man who has
been
prohibited converses [with them], he should pay a fine
of one gold
piece.
"[362] This rule does not apply to the wives of
strolling actors or
of men who live off their own [wives]; for these men
have their
women embrace [other men], concealing themselves while
they have
them do the act. [363] But just a very small fine should
be paid by
a man who carries on a conversation secretly with these
women, or
with menial servant girls who are used by only one man,
or with
wandering women ascetics."
India rediscovers kama
https://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/EE24Df09.html
When sex gets out of the cupboard
By Siddharth Srivastava
NEW DELHI - It is an episode that has stirred the roots
of Indian
society: two senior students of a prestigious private
school in
Delhi indulged in an intimate sexual act in the
chemistry
laboratory. In the age of adolescent sex and
uninterrupted Internet
access, this should not be unnatural or untoward, even
in a
predominantly conservative society such as India, except
for one
detail. Earlier, such sexual encounters - whether it be
school sex
or children exposed to pornography on the Internet, in
magazines or
videos - formed part of informed discussions and
intellectual debate
on how best to tackle the issue.
This time there is a difference. The boy happened to
possess a
camera cell phone, and without the knowledge of the
girl, recorded
the proceedings, passed them on to a few friends to show
off his
exploits, who in turn forwarded them to a few more,
forming an
endless chain, with the said two-and-a-half-minute clip
now being
sold on the Internet and becoming the hottest-selling
compact disc
(CD) at Delhi's Palika Bazaar, where all such stuff is
sold.
It is certainly not the first time that teenagers have
indulged in
sex, but the fact that everybody can see it happening
has, as would
be expected, created a different impact. The reactions
that have
engulfed almost everybody who can be heard have been to
blame
somebody. The boy and girl in question have been
suspended from
school, so have been the boy's friends who received the
clip. Others
have blamed the school administration for allowing
students to carry
cellular phones, and those too with a camera. Parents
who indulge
their wards by buying cell phones for them too are the
culprits. The
government, which has been lax in coaxing schools to
keep students
in check, has been blamed. Most important, it is the use
and abuse
of technology that progresses at a rapid pace, opening
young minds
to detrimental effects, that have come under the glare.
More have talked about the decadence of Indian culture
and values in
the face of the aggressive import and copying of the
liberal
sections of people, such as in the West, who do not set
the best
example to youngsters around the world. Then there is
the all-
encompassing satellite television and the film industry
to be
pointed at. In short, everybody is lashing out at
somebody for an
episode that may not be as unnatural as it has been made
out to be.
In the seamier world at Palika Bazaar, on the other
hand, business
is brisk as more and more clips come into circulation.
There are
reports of employees having caught their colleagues in
the act, a
manager and his secretary purportedly from a major
multinational,
bathroom and bedroom scenes, honeymooning couples ...
the school
episode has opened a virtual Pandora's box of sexually
explicit
clips now making the rounds, recorded on the sly by
youngsters and
amateur cameramen out to make a fast buck, with or
without the
knowledge of the partner.
When sex gets out of the cupboard
https://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/FL09Df04.html |
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