On Krishna’s chariot stands Shikhandi

Shikhandi embodies all queer people – from gays to lesbians to Hijras to transgendered people to hermaphrodites to bisexuals. Like their stories, his story remains invisible. But the great author, Vyasa, located this story between the ninth night and the tenth day, right in the middle of the war, between the start and the finish. This was surely not accidental. It was a strategic pointer to things that belong neither here nor there. This is how the ancients gave voice to the non-heterosexual discourse.


Shikhandi embarrases us today. Sthunakarna who willingly gave up his manhood frightens us today. But neither Shikhandi nor Shthunkarna embarrassed or frightened Krishna or Vyas. Both included Shikhandi in the great narrative. But modern writers have chosen to exclude him. That is the story of homosexuals in human society. Homosexuals have always existed in God’s world but more often than not manmade society has chosen to ignore, suppress, ridicule, label them aberrants, diseased, to be swept under carpets and gagged by laws such as 377. They have been equated with rapists and molesters, simply because they can only love differently.

 It was the ninth night of the war at Kurukshetra. The exact midpoint of the legendary 18-day bloodbath. Not the start, not the end, but the middle. The war had been inconclusive. Sometimes the Kauravas led by the old sire Bhisma had the upper hand; sometimes the Pandavas led by the young warlord, Dhristadhyumna, Draupadi’s twin brother, had the upper hand. A see-saw that was going nowhere.

“Bhisma loves us too much to defeat us,” said the Pandavas.

“Yet not enough to let us win,” reminded Krishna. “He must die, if dharma has to be established.” But Bhisma had been given a boon by his father that he could choose the time of his death. No one could therefore kill him. “If we cannot kill him, we must at least immobilize him.”

“But no one can defeat him,” said the Pandavas. “Even the great Parashurama could not overpower him in a duel. So long as he holds a weapon in his hand he is invincible.”
“Then we must make him lower his bow,” said Krishna.
“He will never lower his bow before any armed man.”
“What about an armed woman?”
“A woman? On the battlefield?” sneered the Pandavas, forgetting they themselves worshipped Durga, the goddess of war and victory. “But it is against dharma to let women hold weapons and step on the battlefield.”
“Who said so?” asked Krishna.
“Bhisma says so. Dharma says so.”

“Dharma also says that old men should retire and make way for the next generation so that the earth’s resources are not exploited by too many generations. But Bhisma did the very opposite. He renounced his right to marry, so that his old father could resume the householder’s life,” argued Krishna.

“He was being an obedient son.”
“He was indulging his old father at the cost of the earth. That vow spiraled events that has led to this war. It is time to be rid of him, by force or cunning, if necessary. We must find someone before whom the old patriarch will lower his bow. If not a woman, then someone who is not quite a man.”

“What about Shikhandi!” said Dhristadhyumna. “He is my elder brother. He was born a woman. But my father, Draupada, was told by the Rishis that he would one day become a man. Though born with female genital organs, Shikhandi was raised a son, taught warfare and statecraft. He was even given a wife. On his wedding night, the wife, daughter of king Hiranyavarna of Dasharna, was horrified to discover that her husband was actually a woman. My father tried to explain that actually Shikhandi was a man with a female body and that Rishis had told him he would someday acquire a male body. The woman refused to listen. She screamed and ran to her father and her father raised an army and threatened to destroy our city. A distraught Shikhandi went to the forest, holding himself responsible for the crisis, intent on killing himself. There he met a Yaksha called Sthunakarna who took pity on him and gave him his manhood for one night. With the Yaksha’s manhood, Shikhandi made love to a concubine sent by his father-in-law and proved he was no woman. The wife was therefore forced to return. Now, it so happened, that Kubera, king of the Yakshas, was furious with what Sthunakarna had done and so cursed Sthunakarna that he would not get his manhood back so long as Shikhandi was alive. As a result what was supposed to be with him for one night has remained with him till this moment. My elder brother, Shikhandi, born with a female body, has a Yaksha’s manhood right now. What is he, Krishna? Man or woman?”

Krishna knew things were more complex. Shikhandi, may have been raised as a man and may have acquired a manhood later in life, but in his previous life, he was a woman called Amba, whose life Bhisma had ruined. Bhisma had abducted her along with her sisters and forced them to marry, not him, but his weakling of a brother, Vichitravirya (a name that means ‘queer masculinity’ or ‘odd manliness’). When she begged Bhisma to let her marry the man she loved, he let her go. But the lover refused to marry Amba, now soiled by contact with another man (Bhisma). Distraught she returned, only to have Vichitravirya turn her away, and Bhisma shrugging helplessly. “When you have taken the vow of never being with a woman, what gave you the right to abduct me,” she yelled. Bhisma ignored her. Amba begged Parashurama, the great warrior, to kill Bhisma but he failed. Exasperated, irritated, she prayed to Shiva. “Make me the cause of his death,” she begged. Shiva blessed her – it would be so, but only in her next life. Amba immediately leapt into a pyre eager to accelerate the process.

“I think, Shikhandi should ride into the battlefield on my chariot. Let Arjuna stand behind him,” said Krishna. The tenth day dawned. The chariot rolled out. Behind Krishna stood the strange creature, neither man nor woman, or perhaps both, or neither, and behind him, Arjuna.

“You bring a woman into this battlefield, before me,” roared Bhisma seeing Shikhandi. “This is adharma. I refuse to fight.”

Krishna retorted in his calm melodious voice, “You see her as a woman because she was born with a female body. You see her as a woman because in her heart she is Amba. But I see her as a man because that is how her father raised her. I see her as a man because she has a Yaksha’s manhood with which he has consummated his marriage. Whose point of view is right, Bhisma?”

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