In the ancient Hindu tradition patients with metastasized prostate cancer were treated by the same method used by many of today’s urologists, namely chemical castration. Nowadays this is done with expensive pills or depot injections, while in the past a cheap, vegetarian diet was used. This was very low in cholesterol, by far the most important raw material used by our bodies for the production of testosterone. Once castrated the patient found it easier to observe complete sexual abstinence, freeing more energy for spiritual ends. Think of the time we would save if we were castrated. In fact research has confirmed that a low-fat diet causes the testosterone level in the blood to drop by approximately 10 per cent, though certainly not to what urologists call ‘castration level’.
India has an estimated million-plus eunuchs. Many have been castrated before puberty, but in many cases they are children born with ambiguous external sexual characteristics, or men whose testicles have not descended. For convenience, transsexuals and transvestites are also lumped together with them. They live partly from alms that they receive for dancing at parties. In 2006 the Indian authorities deliberately employed a group of eunuchs to sing outside the houses of tax-evaders, with the object of embarrassing the offenders so acutely with their singing that they would finally pay up. According to the Indian press the campaign was very successful in the city of Patna in the eastern state of Bihar, where singing eunuchs collected over 7,000 euros.
As long ago as 1887 the British Governor-General promulgated a law forbidding castration, but the eunuchs are still there, not only in India, but also in Pakistan and Bangladesh. Most probably they are of Muslim origin, as indicated, for example, by the fact that they bury rather than cremate their dead. Most eunuchs live communally as hijra (meaning ‘the third gender’), sharing their lot with transsexuals and transvestites. They play a part in certain rituals, or work as artists or healers, besides acting as singers or dancers at festivals marking births and marriages. The words of their songs are usually humorous and with a sexual tinge.
From time immemorial eunuchs have made a pilgrimage to the temple of Bechraji, about 100 km west of Ahmedabad, which houses the goddess Bahuchara-Mata. This goddess is associated with sexual abstinence and genital mutilation. According to legend a king once prayed to the goddess for a son. The son arrived, but when he became a man proved to be impotent. Bahuchara appeared to the man in a dream and asked him to serve her by cutting off his genitalia and donning women’s clothes. The man did as the goddess asked and since then hijras have been supposed to hear a call from the gods in their sleep to divest themselves of their external sex organs. Even today there are always eunuchs to be found at a certain spot in the back garden of the temple in Bechraji, but they are not allowed inside. It is still said that when a baby boy is born with underdeveloped genitals he is taken to the temple by his family. The eunuchs receive the child and perform a simple ritual operation, followed by six weeks’ seclusion, after which the child can become an apprentice hijra.