“Different people discover and invent different things because people have different notions of what constitutes nature.” These are the lines that have been quoted from the novel: “Shikhandi”, the book that we have chosen.
This book talks about different Hindu stories on the uniqueness of queers.
The idea of samsara (the wheel of birth and death) and karma (the impact of past actions on the present circumstances and the present actions on future circumstances), in a world where one believes that there are many lives to live, and not just this one, where there is also believed that this is the only life to live. Continuous mental battles have been fought about these.
Here, in the karmic worldview, one tends to be queer because of karma, and it may be because of one’s good deeds or bad, basically, a boon or a curse.
In the one-life worldview, one becomes to be queer out of choice, to stand out, express their individuality or defy the authority (God/Devil).
Hindu mythology has made constant references about queerness, and the idea of questioning the notions of masculinity and femininity.
There have been stories about men who become women, women who become men, men creating children without women and women doing the same.
Chosen character: SHIKHANDI
Shikhandi is a character from the Hindu epic, Mahabharata. The significance of Shikhandi’s character is that it is the earliest trans-character in mythology.
Shikhandi was born to King Dhrupad of Panchala as a girl, Shikhandini. She was meant to be born a male to avenge an insult she faced in her past life as Amba, but was reborn as a female, and raised as a male. Since she was raised as a male, her father taught her the battlefield rules right from the start and therefore, Shikhandi also fought in the war of Kurukshetra, on behalf of the Pandavas along with his father Dhrupad and brother Dhritadhyumna.
In her previous life, Shikhandi was a woman called Amba, who was a princess who wanted to marry a man called Shalva, who was an ordinary man (not a king or a prince). During the time she wanted to get married to him, Bhishma abducted her and her sisters and took them to Hastinapur where he wanted her to get married to his younger brother Vichitravirya. Amba did not want to get married to him and instead wanted to marry her love, Shalva, therefore she rejected this marriage proposal and Vichitravirya let her go.
Without any further delay, Amba goes back to her love, Shalva but he refuses to marry her and accepts her as his wife. When she finds no way, she goes back to Vichitravya and asks him to marry her. He also rejects her and tells her that she was a gift given away, which cannot be taken back. After this, Amba goes to Bhishma, to marry him but even he rejects her because he is a sanyasi. He instead proposes to her two conditions- Either to stay here as a maid or go back to her father.
She feels that no one can help her anymore so she prays to lord Kartikeya, the god of war, who granted her a garland of lotus and he tells Amba, that whoever will accept/ wear this garland, will kill Bhishma. She tried to convince many great warriors to a battle with Bhishma but no one accepted the call, as Bhishma was considered very powerful. She goes asking for help from Dhrupad, who was a powerful king of Panchala, but even he refuses to help her. She went seeking help from Parshuram, who agreed to help her but failed. She then goes to lord Shiva, who tells her that she will be the cause of Bhishma’s death, but in her next birth, she enters into the fire and dies so that she can take revenge in her next birth.
The second birth of Amba was the game changer in the lives of many people, most importantly in her own life. She was born as the daughter of Dhrupad. The important thing in this situation was that Dhrupad wanted a son so that he could take revenge on Dronacharya since Lord Shiva had promised him that. Instead, Amba was born as a girl again so Dhrupad told everyone that it was a boy and therefore, he raised and trained her exactly like a boy. He named the boy Shikhandi.
Later in life, Shikhandi got married to a woman and the woman who she was married to, obviously came to know that he was also a female. So Shikhandi’s wife goes to her father, Hiranyavarna, and tells him the truth about Shikhandi being a female. This makes Hiranyavarna very angry and he gathers his army. The only option left by Shikhandi’s father, Dhrupad was to prove that his daughter was actually a man, which was impossible. Shikhandi becomes very sad because of all this and starts blaming herself for this mess. She goes to the forest and tries to kill herself but a yaksha called Sthuna saves her. On hearing Shikhandi’s story, Sthuna lent her his manhood for one night, with which, Shikhandi could prove his masculinity to anyone who wanted to test it.
Hiranyavarna sent his courtesans who sent back a positive report. Understanding that his daughter had made a mistake, Hiranyavarna apologised to Dhrupad and sent his daughter back, and Shikhandi could perform husbandly duties for his wife.
Kubera, the king of Yakshas, was very angry with Sthuna for lending out his manhood because such things were not to be done. But Shikhandi comes back to Sthuna to return the borrowed organ. This made Kubera so happy with his integrity that he allowed Shikhandi to use Yaksha’s manhood for as long as he lived. This is how Shikhandi became a man from a woman.
Motive
My motive for choosing this character is that acceptance of transgenderism and love between the same gender is still an issue in most human minds and has been a topic of conflict because of this reason. Some favour the idea, whereas others feel disgusted about the same. Some do not really understand the concept that clearly and are hence confused and do not have an opinion.
There can be many reasons behind this, Age being one of them. In modern times, we cannot expect an older person (someone aged 65 and above) to understand things in a way a millennial would, even though they have lived in this world way longer than the millennials have. There would always be a generation gap and the idea of understanding transgenderism and love between same gender could be problematic.
Mahabharata is a very old epic, where mythology, the study of stories, symbols and rituals about culture, diversity, and nature is evident. When all of these become rigid, and enforced by a body that claims access to a supernatural authority (“god”), they constitute a religion.
Taking these situations over a hundred years back, people accepted what is considered “unnatural” in the present time, queerness. There were different ways in which one would present himself as a queer.
Shikhandi is a very impactful character in Mahabharata, who is very influential and inspiring because of how he dealt with the many problems he faced being a woman and a man.
Being a woman, Amba, when she was already in love with someone, she was still abducted and was forced to say yes to a prince, even though she did not want to and was very clear about marrying the man she loved. This in a way also shows that men, being powerful and in a superior position would try to dominate and force women to do what they wanted, even if it is to happen against their own will.
Amba still got out of that and went back to the man she loved, who later rejected her because of a strange reason, and was none of her fault.
Amba repeatedly got rejected by three men and was still so determined that she had fixed one motive in her life, taking revenge on Bhishma, and dedicated her life to that motive. This shows the feminine quality, of how when a woman decides to dedicate her life to something, nothing can change it. She was so determined towards the revenge that she walked into the fire, killing herself.
Again, being born as a woman in her next life, since she was practically trained to be a man. It was her father, Dhrupad’s orders to raise her as a boy since he was convinced that lord Shiva would not lie to him when he said that he would be blessed with a boy.
This misconception of her father was also something she went through by living like a boy and growing up like a man. She was taught all the skills necessary for war and everything a man was supposed to know back then until one day she was married to a woman, who was the one to discover that Shikhandi is actually a female.
Understanding the fact that she was actually a woman and not a man, must have been traumatizing in itself for Shikhandi and adding on to that, his new wife also felt betrayed knowing this would have been a burden on her, even though she was taught to feel like a man. All of this would have been eating him up, which put him on the path of depression and suicide.
Shikhandi was on a very different path because in order to have his wife back and avoid a war, he would have to prove her manliness, which was quite impossible since he was a woman.
It was when Shikhandi was going to kill herself, that he met a man who was ready to give her his manhood for one night, due to which he was able to prove to his wife and other courtesans of his wife’s father that he was in fact a man.
All of this also shows the masculine quality of Shikhandi because of how he deals with everything, including performing his husbandly duties to the satisfaction of his newly wedded wife.
The government also now provides rights to the queer, which they were not previously given, under ‘section-377 of the Indian penal code’, which criminalized all “unnatural” sexual acts between men and other homosexuals. This act was introduced by the British colonial authorities in 1861. On September 6, 2018, the Supreme Court of India declared that the application of Section 377 to consensual homosexual sex between adults was irrational, and hence removed it.
It has been a long struggle for queers and people who supported queerness since there was still a majority who thought of queerness as a crime, which has finally reduced, though not completely diminished.
This step shows that we live in an open atmosphere, where people are free to make their own decisions and live in a way that pleases them. People have the liberty to think, feel, live and act in the way they want, and are not binned to a particular kind of mindset or a particular way of thinking.
There were a lot of celebrations when section 377 was abolished, because it meant different things to different people, like for queers, it meant that they were not criminals anymore. Whereas for others, it marked the onset of a huge change in the mindset of the rule-makers which is a very big and important thing. It also meant that people who were a third, or fourth gender (not male or female), would now have a separate identity, which would be accepted nationally and would no longer be a laughing stock or treated weirdly.
In the context of Shikhandi, I would say he was a very strong character because of the kind of personality that he had. He is also considered to be the game changer of Mahabharata, and I second that statement. Shikhandi, when he was Amba, wanted to defeat and kill Bhishma, which was unsuccessful, therefore she took her own life, born again and with the same motive to finish Bhishma in order to take revenge on him for interfering in his marriage that Amba wanted to perform with her love, Shalva. Also, during the era of Mahabharata, it was not an easy task to accept the ‘queers’ among them. But there were still some people who accepted them as what they were, rather than pointing out differences among them.
This shows that there was resentment, as well as acceptance at that time.
CHAPTER- 2
OUTSTANDING MANAGERIAL ASPECTS
Leadership
A “leader” is supposed to be someone who “leads or commands a group.” While working on this report, we thought that we should have one leader who directs us, and guides us through the entire assignment because having a leader makes division of work easier and there is always someone to look out for the entire group whenever someone happens to be stuck onto something or struggle with something. A leader makes sure that the work is done uniformly and correctly and avoids conflicts among the group (if any).
In our group, Aditya has been a leading body because of the way he helped out all of us during the occurrence of any problem. He has always been available over text and calls to help me out whenever I was stuck anywhere in any chapter. He has been kind enough to explain to me the idea behind this book and also the story, in a way that cleared all my doubts.
Our group worked in harmony and therefore we did not have any major or minor conflicts. We all distributed work among ourselves equally, so that nobody feels overburdened or out of things to do.
The book selected by us was also suggested by Aditya as it was his idea to think out of the box since he thought that everyone would choose a book that would either be fiction or non-fiction stories, while we opted for a mythological one. We were all familiar with the idea of Mahabharata, but none of us knew the character of Shikhandi so deeply. Some of us had never even heard that name before. In this also, Aditya stepped forward and helped us all out to get acquainted with the character and also the idea of queerness in Mahabharata time, which has proven to be helpful for all the members of the team.
Choosing this book was definitely a good decision because we got to understand Mahabharata, a little more closely, the character and personality traits of so many people that are mentioned in the story.
We could understand each individual with our sense of understanding and deciding which one proves to be the most motivational.
Also, the fact that this choice of Aditya was based on the modern time where there is still a constant struggle in understanding and accepting queerness, this could be an impactful step towards more knowledge and better understanding of queerness for us and our fellow members.
Motivation
The idea of queerness is something people have never openly been able to accept or be open about. In some minds, it is a myth, a taboo, whereas in other minds it is sickness. In some minds, the concept of queerness is not clear and therefore there is no idea. It is rather easy for the queers to hide their identities and feelings/ emotions that bring it out to a world where they would be judged or made fun of.
Taking Shikhandi as an example, had Shikhandi not been able to prove his masculinity, people would not have supported or accepted the idea that Shikhandi, being a girl, is in love with her wife, who is also a girl because same-gender love was not a very natural thing even though there are many stories and happenings based on this.
The difference between the times of then and today is major in that earlier people did not speak out loud about their judgements or what appeared wrong to them. They would rather just think to themselves, and talk to someone close to them and that’s where it would end.
Another reason why this would have happened back then is because of acceptance and tolerance, which were very low in those times, especially regarding these things. On the other hand, what happens today is that people are more open to new thoughts and ideas and allow and accept when someone tries to bring something new to the table.
Also, another difference between the people of that time and the people of today is that there is a lot more awareness in today’s time, as compared to the previous times. People in the earlier times simply used to believe what they were told, without really thinking about it or putting any kind of effort into understanding the reality or truth behind something. Here, we talk about the majority. There were some people back then, too, who believed in a better world and promoted change, which is why the world is what it is today.
People today are a lot aware of things, that one should know. They do not completely rely on rumours or what came to them, without properly understanding the reality behind something, which is a good thing. With the passage of time and more awareness among people, even the government provided them with rights that every citizen can enjoy, which shows how even the superior bodies are progressive in modern times. Justice and peace have taken newer sides, which is a factor of motivation in itself.
Since there wasn’t really a team in this context, I would not say that there was any kind of teamwork involved. Shikhandi was the only person to stand up for himself and face everything on his own.
Strategy
There were not many conflicts that Shikhandi faced, but there sure were many mishaps that took place with Shikhandi in both of his lives. Earlier when he was Amba, he was living a peaceful life and was dreaming of spending the rest of it with the man she loved until Bhishma abducted her, due to which, when she came back to her love, he rejected her. One by one, she faced rejection from all men and nobody wanted to accept her as their wife.
The anger in Amba intensified because nobody was accepting her as a wife and she felt that she had nowhere to go, and only Bhishma was to be blamed for all of this. She was extremely angry and wanted to defeat and kill Bhishma, who was immortal.
She prayed to several lords, who helped her, giving her different kinds of tactics to kill him, until she was finally told that she would be able to kill Bhishma on her own, but in her next birth. This is when Amba kills herself, and Shikhandi is born. The most important thing is that throughout this whole process of life, death and suffering, Shikhandi did not give up. The flame of revenge from Bhishma kept burning inside his soul until he was finally able to assassinate him. Shikhandi had been through so much- Rejection, sadness, and depressive thoughts that he decided to take his life at the first birth. In the second life, being born as a girl, her own father did not accept that and brought her up as a male child. Due to this, Shikhandi had become a man caught in a woman’s body. The secret leaked when on the night of his marriage his wife finds out that Shikhandi is Shikhandini, which infuriates his wife as well as her father. The entire blame for this situation also comes over to Shikhandi and makes him depressed. But the fact that Shikhandi stayed strong during this entire time, suffered and lived through all the mishaps is a commendable thing, with or without any strategy.
CHAPTER- 3
OTHER PERSONALITY ASPECTS
Being a woman of that time involved a lot of challenges. It was difficult for Shikhandi, in his first birth as Amba because of all the hardships she faced like getting abducted by a powerful man, and still having the strength to fight for her rights and the involuntary act of being able to tell them that she wants to marry the one whom she chose.
After this, she faced rejection several times and still kept on trying, which shows how determined she was to not have lost hope during all this time.
Another personality aspect Shikhandi held was to have stuck to that one thing he always wanted to do, for which he was born the second time, Revenge. Now, revenge is not supposed to be a positive personality aspect, but again the determination that he had in order to assassinate the man because of whom she faced so many rejections, was something commendable.
A good thing about Shikhandi was that he did everything he could to keep everyone happy and at peace, which is a selfless quality. On the night of his marriage when his wife found out that he was a woman, he accepted the manhood of Sthuna, whom he did not know, just to keep his wife happy and to avoid the war that would have happened if he or his family were unable to prove that he was a man.
CHAPTER- 4
WEAKNESS
There have been times in the story when Shikhandi has been seen as weak like when during his first life as Amba, when she tried to kill himself due to all the rejections that she faced for marriage.
She still managed to somehow stop taking that huge step because she found a little motivation when she was given the garland and told that whoever wears this (her groom), will be able to kill Bhishma, who was immortal.
She again goes to warriors and kings and struggles for acceptance of the garland that nobody wants to wear because of the fear of the supremacy of Bhishma.
This again makes her suicidal and she again tries to kill herself, where again she finds a little motivation that she will be able to kill Bhishma in her next birth, which makes her keen and determined to take the step that she did.
Another time that Shikhandi tried to kill himself was when his wife found out that he was a woman, which made her furious and her father claimed that he would send an army if he was unable to prove his manliness.
Other than this, there was hardly any instance where Shikhandi was seen as weak. As we have talked about earlier, Shikhandi is among the strongest characters of Mahabharata and has mostly been seen as someone ideal, strong and brave.
CHAPTER-5
LIFE LESSONS
The character of Shikhandi is very relevant in present times. This is because there are a lot of people, especially queers, who are still struggling for an identity in the world. They are not very openly accepted in society, even today.
Shikhandi was someone who brought about a change in the minds of people, by being a trans-gender, since the idea of a trans-gender was very rare during that time. Shikhandi is a strong character because he had the boldness to ignite a change in firstly himself, and then society. By becoming a trans-gender, Shikhandi opened the eyes and minds of so many people that it just proves the saying “You are the change that you wish to see”.
Shikhandi, by taking his own stand, firstly as a woman (Amba), in a situation where women could not speak anything, has shown how courageous of a woman she was. Later, being a woman who had borrowed manhood from someone and become a trans-gender, shows how carefree he was, to be able to put himself into a situation where he could have been judged, mistreated and made fun of. All of this requires a lot of courage and this is an important lesson that I have learnt from this book.
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