It is like getting an orgasm once in 12 years. The Kumbh Mela is not just the greatest happening of the millennium, or about sadhus getting hip or devotees who cannot reach their destination partaking of the voyeuristic “virtual snan” (an internet dip in the holy Ganges). It is the ultimate orgy. No question about it, because no questions are asked. Which is why I believe that both sex and religion lend themselves to a certain blind faith that is directly linked with the fear of the unknown.

God has been duly covered up. Terms like “the deep”, “the yonder”, “omnipotent” (the dictionary meaning of which is similar to potent) all have their flesh-and-blood connotations. Religious symbols like the ‘lingam-yoni’, the ‘Ka’aba’, and the Cross are more than mere sublimation. Sex and faith are intrinsically bound to guilt, which indulging in one and avoiding the other brings.

Most religions have sexuality-curbing strictures because they find sex threatening. Since Adam’s organs rose in rebellion, there has been no stopping such events -- from Sodom and Gomorrah to the Ramjanmabhoomi dispute, from the role of Mary Magdalene to the ‘Satanic Verses’ controversy. God is the longest-lasting sex symbol.

Take the Trinity factor of God as Creator, Preserver. Destroyer. It finds its echo in the sexual reality of reproduction, self-esteem (manliness-womanliness) and impotence/frigidity (the nightmares). The amorphous nature of Hinduism and its stress on Karma (a single dropping of alphabet would make it ‘kama’, lust) together with the orgiastic polytheism makes its followers bound to monogamy. Flip the coin and you have the polygamy in Islam ‘making up’ for its monotheism. Christianity has concentrated on the Holy Father and Son, the Virgin Mother being a symbol of sex only for reproduction.

There was a time when all ecstasy was considered holy. As Max Weber recounts, “Sexual intercourse was very frequently a part of magic orgiasticism….”. With time, things changed. ‘Sacred harlotry’ got legalised as marriage. The naturalism of sex was elevated to eroticism. Religions went through a similar metamorphosis. Salvation could be found either through the destruction of the body or its void aspect.

Naturally, the rites became symbolic – whether it is the use of milk and the coconut kernel during the recitation of ‘mantras’, or the baptism of a child, which is quite akin to the initiation of the bride, or the give-and-take of “passion” during Communion. Besides, the priests of all religions have a special relationship with The One, “the enjoyment of oneself in the other”. In Christianity, the nuns are referred to as the brides of the Lord. The ‘devadasi’ tradition entails the sacrificing of a female child to the Goddess Yelamma, indicating a latent lesbianism and therefore perhaps a ‘sexless’ state, which permits men to partake of the bounty without feeling defiled in ‘the vessels of sin’. Both St. Paul and St. Augustine were aware of the “the law of sin which is in my members” being a threat to the holy will. In Indian mythology there is the concept of the ‘bindu’, sexually the semen; mystically, infinity. At some point salvation does become submergence. ‘Moksha’ is indeed release.

One would be tempted to ask whether Prophets and saints are objects of our sublimated sexuality. In most instances it would be an individual affair seeking anonymity in a crowd. The personal intimate relationship gets lost in the “public orgasm”.

The fact that our sexual stereotypes find their precedents in religion is itself an argument. Examples from sculptures cited in ‘The Divine Consort’ will illustrate this. Vishnu sleeps in the coils of a serpent; a tiny figure of Lakshmi in the lap of a huge Narasimha; the Lord is often shown with more than one consort; Shiva lies at the feet of Kali, who is wearing a garland of skulls; in Kalighat paintings the woman leads her husband by a rope round his neck. The inherent meanings are obvious: the serpent/phallus; pubescence; adultery; sexual conquest; the rope again is phallic, in this case the man being overwhelmed by his own sexuality and falling prey to a woman.

Sexual politics and the politics of religion are both in a vice-like grip. “The belief that mysticism and ritual magic, performed by day or night, in or out of clothing, are proof of social transformation is but the latest example of desublimation at the ideological level…In advanced industrial societies the celebration of the public orgasm and the mystical proclamation of change by means of enrapturing trances may serve a purpose not so very different,” according to John David Ober (‘On Sexuality and Politics in the Work of Herbert Marcuse’).

But it is not always so subtle. The nature of fanaticism is like rape: The plundering, the insane urgency for something that has been in existence since life. Or take a religious gathering. People who up until now were talking about a one-to-one union with god suddenly become libidinous exhibitonists.

The carnal outflow of jealousy and brutality gets a holy nod too. One religion trying to assert its right over another has an obsessive element to it. Destruction of a holy place is akin to castration, and the construction over it of another can be seen as a mother/wife/sister being ‘used’ in one’s presence. The ‘Satanic Verses’ controversy would be a similar brutality with the fetish element thrown in. We know the ‘fatwa’ part of it. Rushdie made a fetish of the counter position and, after the murder threat, his “beat me, beat me” attitude reeked of sado-masochism.

Aberrations bring guilt. Guilt brings with it a sense of Right and Wrong. Confessions take up prime time in both sexual interactions and religious expressions. They can come on their own – when a person’s actions are not in consonance with his/her beliefs. Or, they are expected – when one’s actions are not in keeping with other people’s beliefs. Or, they are extracted – when the actions provide vicarious satisfaction to the rest or cause great discomfort due to their universal potential.

‘Coitus interruptus’ occurs mainly due to social conditioning. Those who jump over these barricades have truly achieved social and emotional synthesis. Communal harmony can be best achieved in bed where all inhibitions drop and you become just a desirable person. A bleeding Messiah, Draupadi’s ‘vastraharan’, Islam’s houris in heaven arouse our feelings. Whereas herd activities, like the ras leela, the Haj, the replaying of the nailing on the Cross, and the Kumbh Mela are the ultimate release of repressed instincts.