At a time when interest around gender identity has accelerated due to the passage of the problematic ‘The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2016’ in the Lok Sabha, the present collection of essays comes as a timely intervention. The book under review brings together twenty-one essays that attempt to bring together illustrations and biographical accounts of androgynous practices and female impersonation from several parts of India. It begins with a brief foreword by noted filmmaker Sangeeta Datta. The essays are divided into two segments: Part I titled ‘Concepts and Forms’ forms the major part of the book with seventeen chapters, and Part II titled ‘Performers’ has four chapters which are biographical accounts of eminent artists who have excelled at female impersonation.
The introduction by Tutun Mukherjee and Niladri R Chatterjee sets the tone of the book by discussing the universality of androgynous examples that are available across geographical regions, cultures and religions, and the respect which is accorded to masculine females and feminine men. The authors postulate the non-western androgynous understanding of the self as foundational challenge to the western dichotomous understanding of sex-gender system. In fact, the ability to traverse from one gender to another through female impersonation that is found in several Indian cultural practices gives a tangible dimension to Butler’s theorization of ‘gender as performativity’. The authors argue that though crossing gender does not inherently challenge hetero-normative patriarchy, yet it demystifies the linearity with which sex, gender and sexuality are construed. In doing so, the authors have put together a set of essays that portray how dress, behaviour, expression and expectations guide notions of femininity.
An interesting feature of the volume remains the recurrence of the concept of Ardhanariswara to which most of the authors return. Alka Pandey’s chapter ‘Ardhanariswara’ with which Part I begins, therefore, provides an excellent prelude to the succeeding chapters. Pande traces different instances in Hindu religion and art where Ardhanariswara is represented, though the nomenclature could vary. The chapter emphasizes that the primeval concept of Ardhanariswara helps us to acknowledge the possibility of transcending the binary understanding of gender. Since androgyny is inherent to our being, the male artist does not impersonate the female being, instead unravels the feminine residing within. ‘Unacceptability of Transgender Heroes in Indian Classics’ by Nilanjana Sikdar Dutta discusses the marginal position accorded to transgender figures like Brihannala, Shikhandi, Bhangasvan, King Ila and Rksharaja within Indian Classics like the Mahabharata, Ramayana, Kama Sutra, Mrichhakatikam and Harshacharitam. For Sikdar Dutta, these figures are merely discussed but are not elevated to the status of respectable ‘heroes’. HS Shivaprasad’s ‘The Soul in Between: Gender, Androgyny and Beyond in Bhakti Poetry−The Example of the Karnataka Veerashaiva Tradition’ discusses the uniqueness of the Veerashaiva Bhakti poetry vis-à-vis Vaishnavite Bhakti poetry as it reverses the bridal mysticism that rests upon the deity as male and the devotee as female. Using the compositions of Akkamahadevi, Andal, Nilambike, Marula Shankara Deva and Manikkavachakar as illustrations, Shivaprasad argues how the man-woman hierarchy is inverted, thereby projecting a varied form of androgynous experience between the deity and the devotee. Malashri Lal’s chapter ‘Rabindranath Tagore and the Androgynous Identity’ marks the shift to modern Indian literature and the exploration of cross-gendering in three of Tagore’s works. Lal uses ‘Streer Patra’, ‘Urvashi’ and ‘Hungry Stone’ to situate Tagore as the poet par excellence whose ambiguous gendering of characters re-inscribes the androgynous ideal of Ardhanariswara to subtly subvert patriarchy.