Shikhandi and Other Tales They Don’t Tell You by Devdutt Pattanaik (review)

Devdutt Pattanaik’s collection of Hindu tales is an enjoyable and absorbing exploration of queer themes in Indian written and oral mythology, and it is an addition to the Zubaan-Penguin joint list of gender-focused publications. Queerness is understood by the author to question notions of maleness and femaleness, in terms of both gender and sexuality. Included in the book are stories of men who become women and vice versa, the creation of children without both a father and a mother, men who wear women’s clothes, and people who are neither male nor female or a little of both.

The book begins with a series of statements reflecting a variety of sexual and gender identities and some short introductory paragraphs that attempt to highlight the cultural filters of which scholars must be aware before understanding queerness in Hinduism. Pattanaik touches on the importance of yuga (eras) in Hindu mythology, suggesting that the literal approach taken by many Western scholars leads to the conclusion that Brahmanic hegemony is endorsed by Hindu mythology. The author gives us only a brief survey in these pages of Hinduism, its roots in the Vedic tradition, and its transformation as Puranic traditions later gained prominence. There is brief reference to the origins of the term Hinduism by British colonizers as a matter of administrative convenience, but in these few pages Pattanaik does not give us a sense of the academic debate surrounding this term when it comes to categorizing Hinduism as a unified religion. For this reason, readers new to the study of Hinduism may miss out on some of the cultural implications of this collection, especially with regard to the diversity of Hindu traditions.

Part I of the book also raises interesting questions regarding the “discovery” or “invention” of queerness. Pattanaik says that Hindu mythology reveals that patriarchy was invented, whereas feminism was discovered through the difference between the genderless soul and the flesh in Hindu thought. Pattanaik further claims that it was the invention of monastic orders that deemed women to be distractions from the divine. Hindu mythology, we are told, repeatedly refers to queerness. Pattanaik goes on to give a brief survey of stories with elements of queerness found in other regions of the world. Once again, this section is perhaps too brief to support the kind of general claims that the author seems to want to make, but readers will find this stimulating as an introduction to queerness in mythology. In particular, the issue of queer invisibility in Indian society is raised, along with attempts to “explain away” queerness in folklore and religious texts in metaphysical terms. Pattanaik’s use of the clap of the hijra (defined by the author as India’s third gender) as a metaphor for this invisibility, and queer resistance to it, is particularly effective.

Part II of the book is a collection of thirty stories that deal with aspects of queerness in Hindu written and oral tradition. Among others, we learn of Shikhandi, raised as a man and married to a woman, who became a man to satisfy her wife; Kali, who became a man to dance with milkmaids; Bhangashvana, who was a mother and a man; Ratnavali, who became the companion of her female friend; and Bahuchara, whose husband was an incomplete man. The final story is that of Ram, who included all genders in his kingdom. This tale comes from the oral tradition of the hijras, and Pattanaik draws together this and other stories by highlighting Krishna’s reference in the Bhagavat Gita to the unity of the world, which, he says, includes the queer. At the end of every story, Pattanaik provides context regarding the literary background of these tales and their reinterpretations and retellings, in addition to reflections on the queer themes in these stories. Some readers might question the generalizations made in some of these reflections; we are told, for example, that a queer person might see Bhangashvana as...