Love’s Rite: Same-Sex Marriage in India and the West by Ruth Vanita

Love’s Rite: Same-Sex Marriage in India and the West Reviews

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  Abhïshék Ghosh

  I just finished reading Ruth's book and found some arguments on the social sanction of same-sex marriage to be super compelling. From the copious allusions to same sex affection and homoeroticity (Jai and Veeru in "Yeh Dosti" from "Sholay" in 1975) to the story of Bhagiratha being conceived from the union of two widows. Tales of how the sensuous language of Rekhti poetry was erased. Of how poetry, which often described the love of two female courtesans for each other, but often composed by men who also wove in female mennerisms in their performances, were subjected to a deliberate erasure of the "effete" post the defeat in the First War of Independence in 1857. Of how Madhubala in "Pyar Kiya To Darna Kya" in Mughal-e-Azam (1960) became a defining refrain in many queer circles, with the message of why there is no shame in love. While the book does focus a bit too much on relationships and togetherness as a proxy for alternate sexualities, I really enjoyed being re-introduced to a whole set of a rich tradition of being "open", and one that had much less room for labels, value judgements and boxing into categories!
• 
  Celeste

  Ruth Vanita looks at the history of the ideologies of same-sex friendship and marriage (both cross-sex and same-sex) in Western culture and Indian culture. She argues that current believes about marriage in the West, and to the idea of love-marriage in India as well, share more similarities with philosophies of friendship that early philosophies of marriage--the idea that one's spouse should be someone who is a kindred spirit, a companion, and an equal. She also gives some history and textual examples of same-sex love in India to counter the idea that homosexuality is a western import. In fact, she argues that it is homophobia that is truly alien to Indian culture and brought in from the west. I suspect that it is inaccurate to say that homophobia never existed in the India prior to Colonization, but it is important to see the influences that Victorian British culture had on Indian ideas about gender and sexuality.
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  l

  - discussion of different types of marriages
  - same sex friendships and friendship rituals
  - rekhti
  - bhagiratha