A Second Self: Traditions of Romantic Friendship

Abstract

In 2001, a Hindu priest in the Srivaishnava lineage conducted a friendship ceremony for two Hindu women in Sydney, Australia. A gay man wrote to ask him if a same-sex couple could have a gandharva marriage. The priest replied, “Marriage (vivaha) by definition is between male and female, the purpose being reproduction and the performance of one’s duties as householders. There is a commitment ceremony for friendship as described in the Ramayana between Rama and Sugriva—it is not the same as a ‘marriage’ but has some of the same ritual elements—holding hands, exchanging garlands and walking around the sacred fire—taking seven steps together etc., the purpose being to confirm and validate one’s commitment to the friendship-relationship. So the question of gandharva or any other form of ‘marriage’ cannot arise within the Hindu context between members of the same sex.”1

He who is not touched by love walks in darkness

—Pausanias, in Plato’s Symposium

He was thinking of the irony of friendship—so strong it is, and so fragile…. Abram and Sarai were sorrowful, yet their seed became as sand of the sea … But a few verses of poetry is all that survives of David and Jonathan…. man is so made that he cannot remember long without a symbol; he wished there was a society, a kind of friendship office, where the marriage of true friends could be registered.

—E.M. Forster