[Reader-list] on krishna's chariot stands shikhandi

[A Khanna]

hi all,

in the context of the claims of the likes of baba ramdev and bp  
singhal on queerphobia as a marker of 'indian culture', this  
interesting piece by devdutt patnaik.

akshay

http://devdutt.com/on-krishnas-chariot-stands-shikhandi


On Krishna’s chariot stands Shikhandi

Published in Sunday Midday, Mumbai, 12 July 2009

15It was the ninth night of the war at Kurukshetra. The exact midpoint  
of the legendary 18-day bloodbath. Not the start, not the end, but the  
middle. The war had been inconclusive. Sometimes the Kauravas led by  
the old sire Bhisma had the upper hand; sometimes the Pandavas led by  
the young warlord, Dhristadhyumna, Draupadi’s twin brother, had the  
upper hand. A see-saw that was going nowhere.

“Bhisma loves us too much to defeat us,” said the Pandavas.

“Yet not enough to let us win,” reminded Krishna. “He must die, if  
dharma has to be established.” But Bhisma had been given a boon by his  
father that he could choose the time of his death. No one could  
therefore kill him. “If we cannot kill him, we must at least  
immobilize him.”

“But no one can defeat him,” said the Pandavas. “Even the great  
Parashurama could not overpower him in a duel. So long he holds a  
weapon in hand he is invincible.”

“Then we must make him lower his bow,” said Krishna.

“He will never lower his bow before any armed man.”

“What about an armed woman?”

“A woman? On the battlefield?” sneered the Pandavas, forgetting they  
themselves worshipped Durga, the goddess of war and victory. “But it  
is against dharma to let women hold weapons and step on the  
battlefield.”

“Who said so?” asked Krishna.

“Bhisma says so. Dharma says so.”

“Dharma also says that old men should retire and make way for the next  
generation so that the earth’s resources are not exploited by too many  
generations. But Bhisma did the very opposite. He renounced his right  
to marry, so that his old father could resume the householder’s life,”  
argued Krishna.

“He was being an obedient son.”

“He was indulging his old father at the cost of the earth. That vow  
spiraled events that has led to this war. It is time to be rid of him,  
by force or cunning, if necessary. We must find someone before whom  
the old patriarch will lower his bow. If not a woman, then someone who  
is not quite a man.”

“What about Shikhandi!” said Dhristadhyumna. “He is my elder brother.  
He was born a woman. But my father, Draupada, was told by the Rishis  
that he would one day become a man. Though born with female genital  
organs, Shikhandi was raised a son, taught warfare and statecraft. He  
was even given a wife. On his wedding night, the wife, daughter of  
king Hiranyavarna of Dasharna, was horrified to discover that her  
husband was actually a woman. My father tried to explain that actually  
Shikhandi was a man with a female body and that Rishis had told him he  
would someday acquire a male body. The woman refused to listen. She  
screamed and ran to her father and her father raised an army and  
threatened to destroy our city. A distraught Shikhandi went to the  
forest, holding himself responsible for the crisis, intent on killing  
himself. There he met a Yaksha called Sthunakarna who took pity on him  
and gave him his manhood for one night. With the Yaksha’s manhood,  
Shikhandi made love to a concubine sent by his father-in-law and  
proved he was no woman. The wife was therefore forced to return. Now,  
it so happened, that Kubera, king of the Yakshas, was furious with  
what Sthunakarna had done and so cursed Sthunakarna that he would not  
get his manhood back so long as Shikhandi was alive. As a result what  
was supposed to be with him for one night has remained with him till  
this moment. My elder brother, Shikhandi, born with a female body, has  
a Yaksha’s manhood right now. What is he, Krishna? Man or woman?”

Krishna knew things were more complex. Shikhandi, may have been raised  
as a man and may have acquired a manhood later in life, but in his  
previous life, he was a woman called Amba, whose life Bhisma had  
ruined. Bhisma had abducted her along with her sisters and forced them  
to marry, not him, but his weakling of a brother, Vichitravirya (a  
name that means ‘queer masculinity’ or ‘odd manliness’). When she  
begged Bhisma to let her marry the man she loved, he let her go. But  
the lover refused to marry Amba, now soiled by contact with another  
man (Bhisma). Distraught she returned, only to have Vichitravirya turn  
her away, and Bhisma shrugging helplessly. “When you have taken the  
vow of never being with a woman, what gave you the right to abduct  
me,” she yelled. Bhisma ignored her. Amba begged Parashurama, the  
great warrior, to kill Bhisma but he failed. Exasperated, irritated,  
she prayed to Shiva. “Make me the cause of his death,” she begged.  
Shiva blessed her – it would be so, but only in her next life. Amba  
immediately leapt into a pyre eager to accelerate the process.

“I think, Shikhandi should ride into the battlefield on my chariot.  
Let Arjuna stand behind him,” said Krishna. The tenth day dawned. The  
chariot rolled out. Behind Krishna stood the strange creature, neither  
man nor woman, or perhaps both, or neither, and behind him, Arjuna.

“You bring a woman into this battlefield, before me,” roared Bhisma  
seeing Shikhandi. “This is adharma. I refuse to fight.”

Krishna retorted in his calm melodious voice, “You see her as a woman  
because she was born with a female body. You see her as a woman  
because in her heart she is Amba. But I see her as a man because that  
is how her father raised her. I see her as a man because she has a  
Yaksha’s manhood with which he has consummated his marriage. Whose  
point of view is right, Bhisma?”

“Mine,” said Bhisma.

“You are always right, are you not, Bhisma? When you allowed your old  
father to remarry, when you abducted brides for your weak brother,  
when clung to future generation after future generations like a leech,  
trying to set things right. There is always a logic you find to  
justify your point of view.  So now, Shikhandi is a woman – an  
unworthy opponent. That’s your view, not Shikhandi’s view. He wishes  
to fight you.”

“I will not fight this woman,” so saying Bhisma lowered his bow  
without even looking towards Shikhandi.

17“Shoot him now, Shikhandi. Shoot him, now, Arjuna,” said Krishna,  
“Shoot hundreds of arrows so that they puncture every inch of this old  
man’s flesh. Pin him to ground, immobilize him so that he can no  
longer immobilize the war.”

“But he is like a father to me,” argued Arjuna.

“This war is not about fathers or sons. This is not even about men or  
women, Arjuna. This is about dharma. And dharma is about empathy.  
Empathy is about inclusion. Even now, he excludes Shikhandi’s feelings  
– all he cares about his version of the law. Shoot him now. Rid the  
world of this old school of thought so that a new world can be  
reconstructed.”

And so Arjuna released a volley of arrows. Hundreds of arrows  
punctured every limb of Bhisma’s body, his hands, his legs, his trunk,  
his thigh, till the grandsire fell like a giant Banyan tree in the  
middle of a forest. It is said that the earth would not accept him for  
he had lived too long – over four generations instead of just two. It  
is said the sky would not accept him because he had not fathered  
children and repaid his debt to ancestors. So he remained suspended  
mid-air by Arjuna’s arrows.

With the fall of Bhisma, the war moved in favor of the Pandavas. Nine  
days later, the Kauravas were defeated and dharma had been established.

Without doubt, Shikhandi changed the course of the war and played a  
pivotal role in the establishing of dharma. He was without doubt a key  
tool for Krishna. A cynic would say, Shikhandi was used by Krishna. A  
devotee will argue, Krishna made even Shikhandi useful. But his story  
is almost always overlooked in retellings of the great epic  
Mahabharata, or retold rather hurriedly, avoid the details. Authors  
have gone so far as to conveniently call the Sthunakarna episode a  
later interpolation, hence of no consequence.

Shikhandi embodies all queer people – from gays to lesbians to Hijras  
to transgendered people to hermaphrodites to bisexuals. Like their  
stories, his story remains invisible. But the great author, Vyasa,  
located this story between the ninth night and the tenth day, right in  
the middle of the war, between the start and the finish. This was  
surely not accidental. It was a strategic pointer to things that  
belong neither here nor there. This is how the ancients gave voice to  
the non-heterosexual discourse.

Shikhandi embarrases us today. Sthunakarna who willingly gave up his  
manhood frightens us today. But neither Shikhandi nor Shthunkarna  
embarrassed or frightened Krishna or Vyas. Both included Shikhandi in  
the great narrative. But modern writers have chosen to exclude him.  
That is the story of homosexuals in human society. Homosexuals have  
always existed in God’s world but more often than not manmade society  
has chosen to ignore, suppress, ridicule, label them aberrants,  
diseased, to be swept under carpets and gagged by laws such as 377.  
They have been equated with rapists and molesters, simply because they  
can only love differently.

Indian society, however, has been a bit different from most others.  
Like all cultures, Indian culture for sure paid more importance to the  
dominant heterosexual discourse. But unlike most cultures, Indian  
culture did not condemn or invalidate the minority non-heterosexual  
discourse altogether. Hence the tale of Shikhandi, placed so  
strategically. Hence the tale of Bhangashvana, retold by none other  
than Bhisma to the Pandavas, after the war before he chose to die.

Yudhishtira asked, “Grandfather, who gets more sexual pleasure – men  
or women? What is sweeter to the ear – the sound of father or mother?”

Bhisma replied, “No one knows really. Except perhaps Bhangashvana, the  
only one who was both man and woman. Bhangashvana was a great king,  
with many wives and many sons. Indra cursed him to be a woman. So he  
lived as a woman, took a husband and bore him children. He was thus a  
man to his wife and a woman to his husband.  He thus had two sets of  
children, one who called him ‘father’ and another who called him  
‘mother’. He alone is qualified to answer your questions.” Such ideas  
will never find mention in most scriptures around the world. But they  
are part of our cultural inheritance.

Clearly many keepers of culture have not heard the stories of  
Shikhandi, or Bhangashvana or of Yuvanashva, the king who accidentally  
became pregnant and delivered the great Mandhata, or of the two queens  
who made love to each other to produce a child without bones (bones  
being the contribution of sperm, according to mythology), or of  
Mohini, the female form of Vishnu, who enchanted even Shiva, the great  
hermit. Clearly they have chosen to ignore that every year, in  
Brahmotsavam festival, the image of the Lord Venkateshwara Balaji, who  
is Vishnu on earth, is dressed in female garments reminding us all of  
Mohini. Clearly they are oblivious of how Shrinathji in Nathdwara is  
lovingly bedecked with a sari, the stri-vesha or women’s attire, in  
memory of the time he wore Radha’s clothes to appease her. Clearly  
they are not aware of Gopeshwarji of Vrindavan, Shiva who took the  
form of a milkmaid so that he could dance the raas-leela with Krishna.  
And they certainly have turned a blind eye to the rooster-riding  
Bahucharji, of Gujarat, patron goddess of many Hijras.

Western religions have, and will, look upon Hinduism’s cross-dressing  
gods as vulgar and perverted. The British mocked us so much during the  
Raj that we went into apology and denial. Now an entire generation  
does not even know about these tales and these deities and these  
rituals. Westernization did not change bedroom habits; it has led to  
an embarrassed denial of our sacred scriptures.

One thing we must grant the homosexual – he has united the  
cantankerous right wing. He has done what the constitution of India  
could not do – bring the radical Islamic cleric, the saffron robed  
yogis, the Bible-bashing clergyman to same side of the table. Together  
these self-proclaimed guardians of culture would like the homosexuals  
to be made invisible once more.

Baba Ramdevji would for sure celebrate the celibacy of Bhisma. If he  
would have his way, he would, perhaps, drag Shikhandi to the mental  
asylum and teach him breathing exercises until the Yaksha’s appendage  
drops and he/she chokes and gasps into heterosexuality. But not  
Krishna. On Krishna’s chariot, Shikhandi – as he/she is – will always  
be welcomed.

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