India's Gods of Incest: Bollywood's Myth, India's Reality, exposes the global pervasiveness of the practice of incest from time immemorial - from the time of the gods and goddesses of the Vedas to the protagonists of the Bible and of the holy books of other cultures. For instance, Brahma, Hinduism's god of creation is quoted as saying in the Rudrasamhita of the Shiva Purana, "O Vishnu, on seeing my daughter I was highly fascinated. I looked at her with distorted vision since I had been deluded by your Maya and Sandhya, his daughter admitted: Seeing me as a lady in the prime of my youth, even at my nativity, my father (Brahma) prompted by Kama, cherished a lustful desire for me.I too had the unconventional lustful feelings, on seeing them, towards my own father and brothers as towards a husband" Then there is the case of Yama and Yami who were the first human pair and originators of the race but who were twin brother and sister. Confirming that such a union had divine blessing, Yami, in seducing Yama, says, "yea, this the immortal seek of thee with longing, progeny of the sole existing mortal.Then let thy soul and mine be knit together and as a loving husband take thy consort." While there are other examples of divine and quasi divine incestuous relationships in the holy books of Hinduism, and while the phenomenon of social media has revealed that rape in India is a virtual way of life there, Bollywood, its film industry, continues to gloss over it turning a blind eye to it in what amounts to a silent approval of this heinous crime. It raises the question of whether it is true as revealed in a study that if a girl child in India reaches the age of ten and she is still a virgin it is because she has no male relatives - no father, brother, uncle etc - close enough to violate her, while Bollywood's no touching of hand, no kissing portrayal of their stars is an apparent desire to maintain a holier than thou status quo because the guilt factor of their gods also exists behind the lens of the silver screen, thus making it an untouchable, unspeakable, un-filmable issue? While Hollywood of the West has explored the incest question, it has done so from a pornographic perspective for the voyeurism of its x-rated clientele. The Bible, for example, is also replete with incest question, of Father Abraham taking for wife, his sister Sarah and of Lot's daughters seducing him in a cooked up story that it was an altruistic act on their part to fulfill the divine injunction to go forward, multiply and replenish the earth - they being the only people around, when in fact the earth was already peopled and that there were regions nearby where they could have sourced mating partners for themselves. But the question arises about their origin: were they not from Sodom and Gomorrah and could it be denied that their life there might have been influenced by that free for all environment? There is also the incident in the Bible where Am'non rapes his sister Tamar which he didn't have to do as he could have had her legitimately as she said to him, "Speak to the King (their father) for he will not withhold me from thee." The mere fact that incest is not included in the "thou shalt nots of the ten commandments while adultery and coveting they neighbour's wife did, shows that it was not considered a major Biblical offence. One wonders if like the LGBT community which is now on its way to receiving universal acknowledgement, the Abrahams and Sarahs and the Brahmas and Sandhyas would not seek validation by coming out of their own closets - what with New Jersey in the USA already making it legal for consenting adults who are closely related to marry?
About the Author: L. Siddhartha Orie is a Trinidadian of Indian/Hindu ancestry and is the author of a Dictionary of Hindi, Muslim and African Names; The Man who Dares; Even the Gods; Ananda: son of Hesse's Siddhartha; Guyana: A tour Guide; and Among the Best: The Vampires of El Dorado