In this article, we will explore the illicit aspects of the love between Radha and Krishna as it emerges from the Gitagovinda but before we do, we'll look at the socially constructed context of extramarital affairs.
Extramarital Affairs in Cultural Contexts
Every society imposes rules on its members, including rules that restrict and specify when and with whom sex is allowed. All societies restrict sexual relations between some members. At the very minimum, and almost everywhere, sexual relations with very close relatives (such as between parent and child or between siblings) are restricted. And once married, people are generally expected to live up to whatever rules their society has laid out- although choosing a sex partner is also not always tantamount to choosing a spouse. Some people may marry in order to gain citizenship of a certain country, in which case the marriage will often remain sexless. But either way, once married, there are specific rules and conventions to live by. These rules are sometimes based on a double standard, where women are expected to be sexually faithful to their husbands, while these husbands are allowed extramarital relations. Ironically, women might, instead of criticizing the double standard, excuse their husband's wanderings. Remember for example Hillary Clinton, who publicly excused her husband's affair. Or, deceived women might blame the other woman instead of the husband. In those cases, the other woman is held responsible while the man's behavior is interpreted as the result of his inability to control his sexual urges. This happens in parts of Greece as well as in some gangs, where a girl who sleeps with the boyfriend of another girl in the gang is a more likely recipient of the betrayed girl's fury than the boyfriend. Joan Rivers summed it up: "A man can sleep around, no questions asked, but if a woman makes nineteen or twenty mistakes she's a tramp."
Polygyny or Polyandry
These double standards might be most clearly expressed in the practice of polygyny, which allows men to be married to two or more partners. Men living in polygynous communities might explain their infidelity as efforts to locate a second or third wife.
Polygyny is relatively common, but there are, as always, exceptions. In some communities in the south of India, parts of Tibet, the Himalayas and in certain areas in Nigeria, polyandry allows women have more than one husband. Often this allowance is motivated by economic reasons - brothers share a wife.
The Allure of Secret Love in Bhakti Poetry
Let us go back to the Gitagovinda. In the poem, Radha and Krishna transcend the profanity of everyday life to pursue their desire for each other. But Radha is another man's wife and in plain terms, she an adulterer. We commented earlier on the harsh consequences of adultery in Indian society, even in mythology. There are a few examples of mythological tales of adulterous love between married women and male Gods (the women were on occasion described more as prey of the male God rather than as enthusiastic accomplices), in which the woman pays dearly for her role in the affair. And for many Indian women, the thought of an illicit affair is enough to evoke fear and anxiety. Yet Jayadeva elevated their departure from the moral norms and conventions of the everyday. Interestingly, the idealization of the illicit is not exclusive to the East. The European Medieval troubadours also sung the joys of the illicit, and the European Court of Love (located in Champagne, of all places) ruled in 1174 that:
"Love cannot exercise its powers on married people", because "lovers grant everything, mutually and gratuitously, without being constrained by any motive of necessity. Marries people, on the contrary, are compelled as a duty to submit to one another's wishes." (as cited in Kakar and Ross, 2005, p.196)
Jayadeva, joined by many other poets of the classical period looked down on marriage for the very same reason as the European Court of Love- because it fulfills, in their view, merely a social and religious duty. Poets, male and female alike, wrote relentlessly in admiration of the rapture of the illicit. Yet, as we noted before, Jayaveda was a Bhakti
poet. While the classical poets highlighted the joys and delights of illicit love, the meaning Bhakti poets gave to the illicit was a bit loftier. They depicted the adulterous as sacred. While Radha is, on the one hand, an adulterer, her intense longing for reunion with Krishna and her pain in his absence, also personifies something great something that transcends the conventions of the community.
At the Root of the Allure of the Illicit
Perhaps at the root of the allure of the illicit, expressed by Jayadeva, the Medieval troubadours and Court of Love, as well as by contemporary soap opera's and romantic literature, is the desire for freedom from those all too familiar factors that inhibit sexual desire. The illicit is free from the restrictions and structures of the conjugal, and the few stolen hours in which the illicit finds expression are also free of demands for intimacy on levels other than the sexual. In this liberty, the expression of desire flourishes. Sudhir Kakar and John Ross (2005) note an additional level of freedom, especially in the Indian context, where convention calls for male supremacy within marriage. The adulterous is free of hierarchical distinctions between men and women. Kakar and Ross (2005) point out that Radha can address Krishna as "tu chora" ("You Thief!") only because their relationship is illicit. It would simply be unthinkable that she would address her spouse as such.
"The body" write Kakar and Ross, "shackled by social and moral restraints and enmeshed in a web of unconscious expectations and attitudes from the past, glimpses in the adulterous a newfound emancipation and expansiveness. Therein it is liberated by the spontaneous, vivid, if transient, encounter." (Kakar and Ross, 2005, p. 197)
For more about sexuality in a historical context, you might also like to read Kerry Kublius'
References
Sudhir Kakar and John Munder Ross. The Cloistered Passion of Radha and Krishna. In: Akhtar, S. (2005). Freud Along the Ganges. (pp. 177-204) N.Y.: Other Press
