Of Matters Religious and erotic
Whenever young people toying with the idea of starting a publishing house come to
consult me. I tell them “if you do not have government patronage to publish text-books
for schools or colleges, your safest bets to start with are books on religion and
sex. Begin with, the Bhagavadgita and stories from the Mahabharata and Ramayana.
It will earn you respectability and since there is no copyright nor royalties to
pay to anyone, the profits will come to you.” There will always be buyers for religious
texts. Though few read them, they like keeping them lying about their homes so that
visitors think they are God-fearing, good people. The same is true of ancient texts
on sex – Indian, Chinese, Japanese or Arabic. No copyright, no hassles with authors
dead and gone over the centuries. They are pretty unreadable but since they have
assumed the status of classics or shastras men will buy them to appear learned.
They are without exception poor erotica and throw-away garbage. It is quite different
with writings of recent times beginning with Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, D.H.
Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover. Both were banned for many years as pornographic.
In the last 20 years erotica and pornography have lost their under-cover appeal:
just about every other novel, has plenty of both. And if it is lucky enough to be
banned by the government, it will become a bestseller.
From extensive reading of this gene of literature (if it can be so called), I have
come to the conclusion that women are better at erotic writing than men. Quite a
few of them were prostitutes with a flair of writing. They put together their day
to day (that should read night by night) experience, which made compelling reading.
Two stay in my mind: The Adventures of Fanny Hill and Suzie Wong a Hong Kong professional.
Their main shortcomings were thet were semi-literate women unable to handle the
language with finesse. It is different with the latest on the literary scene: Call
Girl A true Account by Jeanette Angell (Unistar). Here we have a lady with a doctorate
in social anthropology and professor at a university who decided on her own to become
a part-time prostitute. A couple of assignments a weak earn her more money than
her month’s salary as a professor. And there were no emotional hassles of any kind.
She proves sex can be fun without love being any part of it.
Society has double standards in judging men and women who engage in sex for money.
Men who pay for it go unscathed: women who receive it are condemned as harlots.
I go along with Angell’s opinion printed on the jacket: “I am appalled, even now,
at the ideas and misconceptions concerning prostitution and women’s participation
in it. I am baffled by and angry at the common assertion that men enjoy prostitution
are normal but that the women who engage in the trade somehow are not.” In short,
here is nothing to choose between the whore and the whore-monger.
Call Girl is readable pornography. When you go to buy the book, be sure to take
some brown paper to wrap it in. You won’t want to let your wife, children and friends
see what you are so engrossed in reading.
Scholar extraordinaire
He never went to school or college; instead he sat at the feet of pundits, maulvis,
ustads, lawyers and other men of learning and became a scholar of Sanskrit, Persian,
Gurmukhi, law and musicology. His genius was recognized by Maharaja Hira Singh of
Nabha whom he served for 32 years in different capacities – from private secretary,
minister and judge of the High Court. He appeared as the State’s Counsel before
the Privy Council in London and was the Chief Collaborator and mentor of Max Arthur
Macauliffe, whom he helped to understand and translate hymns in the Guru Granth
Sahib. The hymns were published under the title “The Sikh Religion” in six volumes,
by Oxford University Press in 1907. Macauliffe assigned the copyright of his volumes
to him. This extraordinary man was Bhai Sahib Bhai Kahn Singh of Nabha (1861-1938)
whose 60th death anniversary falls on November 23.
Kahn Singh’s four volume Mahankosh Encyclopaedia of Sikhism was published in Gurmukhi
in 1930. It took him 15 years to compile it and it remains the standard book of
reference on all aspects of Sikh history and religion. Since then it was never translated
into English, nor brought uptodate. This was the principal reason for Professor
Harbans Singh to produce his four volumes: The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism (Punjabi
University, Patiala) in English in 1998. He relied heavily on Kahn Singh’s work.
Another work of Kahn Sigh which remains untranslated in Guru Martand on Sikh ritual
(Maryada) in two volumes published in 1938. For good reasons the one book associated
with his name is a slender volume entitled “Ham Hindu Nahi Hain – We are not Hindus”,
published in 1898. He took great pains to establish that Sikhs were not simply keshdhari
Hindus but a community apart from the Hindus. It was a daunting task since the Sikh
scared scripture, the Adi Granth, is largely devoted to the praises of God mostly
with Hindu names: Hari, Ram, Govind, Madhava, Murari, Prabhu, Bhagwan, Vitthal and
others. The same is true of the Dasam Granth, compiled by the last Guru, Gobind
Singh. In it, apart from invoking Lord Shiva to grant him the boon of courage, Day
Shiva bar moi ehai there are praises of Chandi and Durga. What Sikh scholars of
today are unwilling to accept is that while Sikh theology is basically Hindu, it
evolved a parallel tradition of the militant Khalsa which is the only thing which
gives it a seemingly separate identity. As long as the debate on whether or not
Sikhs are Hindus goes on, the name of Bhai Sahib Bhai Kahn Singh of Nabha will remain
in people’s minds.
Khushwant Singh