Author: Rita Banerji
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 2008
Language: English
Pages: 417
ISBN/UPC (if available): 9780143064718
Description
‘Sex underlies Human Existence. And if Human Life is Sacred, How can sex not Be?.
As squeamish as India is today about sex, this is also the land where queens once copulated with dead horses at religious ceremonies, where the art of love-making was declared the revelation of the gods and recorded in elaborate detail in the kama sutras and prostitution was a form of sacred offering at temples adorned with erotic sculptures.
Using India as a paradigm, Rita Banerji illustrates that sexual morality is not an absolute but a facet of living that undergoes periodic upheavals. She delineates four major periods in Indian history when there were significant shifts in the collective social perception of sex and sexuality, and the associated customs and beliefs. What causes this revision in sexual ethos? To explain this, Sex and Power proposes a modified version of Nietzsche’s slave versus master morality theory. The theory, which is tested against the dynamics of each of the four defined periods, establishes that the moral overview of any given period is determined not by a set of pre-existing ethics but by the existent power structure of the period in question.
The accepted moral code actually serves the party in power. How would this theory play out in the context of India today? Banerji examines this question at length as one of extreme urgency, and concludes that the three most burning issues facing the country today – population explosion, AIDS and female genocide – are the manifestations of a collective sexual malfunctioning of society and need to be redressed in the context of an existent social and economic power hierarchy.
Contents
Acknowledgements
INTRODUCTION
The Maligned Serpent
In Defence of Sex
Sex: The Ultimate Power weapon
Origins of new Sins and Shame
Sacred Master, Sex Slave: Cycles of Morality
The Chronicla of Sex: An Indian Tale
PART I
THE VEDIC PERIOD: SEX AS A SACRED DUTY
Hinduism’s Family Tree
Sex and the Creation Theory
The Altar to Virility
Divine Semen
Women in the Vedic Sex Equation
Harnessing the Slave
Jung and the Penil Archetype
PART II
THE BUDDHIST PERIOD: SEX AS A PRISON
The Precipitants of a New Sacredness
Breakdown of the Vedic Patriarchy
The Search for Change
Buddha, the Revolutionary
New, Rebellious Ideas
Buddhism: The Slaves’ Civil Disobedience
The Expulsion of Sex
Evolution of the Collective Consciousness
Why Buddhism Failed in India
The Mind at Odds with the Body
PART III
THE GOLDEN PERIOD: SEX AS SALVATION
When the Slave Became Master
Love: The People’s Movement
The Resurrection of the Love God
Repositioning Sex in Society
Sex as Art and Science
Sex and the Creative Drive
The Psychological Dimension of Sex
Women on the Warpath
Tantra: Undoing the Duality
Emergence of the Lingam-Yoni
Embracing the Human Expression of Nirvana
PART IV
THE COLONICAL PERIOD: SEX AS SHAME
The Arrival of Islam
The Birth of Hinduism and a New Moral Incentive
Hypocrisy of the New Master Class
The British Prelude
Safeguarding the Chaste
The Indispensable Sin
Sex in the Power Equation
Redefining Women
The Indian Woman Awakens
Gandhi: The Moral Architect of Modern India
PART V
THE DEMOCRATIC PERIOD: A SEXUAL PARADOX
Two Worlds, One Nation
Who Will Be Master of the Democratic World?
Women as Sex objects for the Patriarchy
Killing the ‘Other’
The Puzzle of the Lingam –Yoni
India at a Crossroads: Which Way will It Go?
Notes
References
Index