Crossdresser festival

Have you ever imagined changing your gender by putting on attires to look like a beautiful lady? It is not as easy as you may think. Here is a unique festival where masculine dons the feminine. If you are yet to witness such a festival occasion, then come to Kottankulangara Devi temple to partake in the Kottankulangara Chamayavilakku festival.

As soon as you step into the premises of the temple you will be welcomed by a group of beautiful young ladies. Do not be allured by their looks. Have a close watch and you will be surprised to know that these beautiful ladies are actually men dressed up in women’s attire as part of a special temple ritual during the festival.

The highlight of the festival is that during the festival night, these men turned women holding traditional lamps, walk in procession to the temple to the accompaniment of traditional orchestras.

The famous Chamayavilakku is a unique festival which is held at the Kottankulangara Sree Devi Temple, Chavara near Kollam, Kerala where thousands of men irrespective of their religious faith dressed up as women offered prayers to the Goddess Bhagavathy, the deity of the Temple which is believed as 'Swayam Bhoo'(Self Origin). This famous temple is the only temple in Kerala having no roof the sanctum sanctorum. The uniqueness of this temple is that the boys and girls dress themselves as girls and ladies to hold the traditional temple lamp.

The Kottankulangara Festival is an annual Hindu festival in Kerala, India in which thousands of men dress as women. The festival takes place at the Kottankulangara Devi Temple at Kollam, which is sacred to the goddess Bhagavathy. Every year this festival is celebrated on the 10th and 11th day of the Malayalam Meenam Maasam which falls on the 24th and 25th of the year.

On the festival day thousand of Devotees visit the Temple to seek the blessings of the Goddess Bhagavathy. The men dress up in the female attire of their choice. Some wear Set saari, Pattu saari, half saari or even dance costumes.

In some cultures, transvestism is practiced for religious, traditional or ceremonial reasons. For example, in India some male devotees of the Hindu god Krishna, especially in Mathura and Vrindavan, dress in female attire to pose as his consort, the goddess Radha, as an act of devotion. In Italy, the Neapolitan femminielli wear wedding dresses, called the matrimonio dei femminielli (marriage of the feminine males), a procession takes place through the streets, a tradition that apparently has pagan originsHindu views of homosexuality, and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) issues more generally, are diverse and different Hindu groups have distinct views. Although a few Hindu texts contain injunctions against homosexuality, a number of Hindu texts have portrayed homosexual experience as natural and joyful, the Kamasutra affirms and recognizes same-sex relations, and there are several Hindu temples which have carvings that depict both men and women engaging in homosexual acts.There are also numerous Hindu deities that are shown to be gender-fluid and falling into the LGBT spectrum. Same-sex relations and gender variance have been represented within Hinduism from Vedic times through to the present day, in rituals, law books, religious or so-called mythical narratives, commentaries, paintings, and sculpture. In 2009, the Delhi High Court legalised homosexuality in India, but the Supreme Court of India subsequently overturned the high court's decision. The Supreme Court of India, in a later ruling in 2018, reversed its previous verdict and decriminalised homosexual intercourse and relationships. 

"Hindu society had a clear cut idea of all these people in the past. Now that we have put them under one label ‘LGBT’, there is lot more confusion and other identities have got hidden."[7][8

— Gopi Shankar Madurai in National Queer Conference 201

Sexuality is rarely discussed openly in contemporary Hindu society, especially in modern India where homosexuality was illegal until a brief period beginning in 1860, due to colonial British laws. On September 6, 2018 The Delhi High Court in a historic judgement decriminalised homosexuality in India; where the court noted that the existing laws violated fundamental rights to personal liberty (Article 21 of the Indian Constitution) and equality (Article 14) and prohibition of discrimination (Article 15). However, the Supreme Court of India re-affirmed the penal code provision and overturned the Delhi High Court decision, effectively re-instating the legal ban on homosexuality in which penalties included life imprisonment until September 6, 2018 when Supreme Court of India decriminalised homosexuality. Furthermore, LGBT people are often subjected to torture, executions and fines by non-government affiliated vigilante groups.

Even though Hinduism is never known to exclusively ban homosexuality, certain Hindu nationalist factions are opposed to legalising homosexuality while certain others choose to remain silent. However, in the last twenty years homosexuality has become increasingly visible in the print and audio-visual media, with many out LGBT people, an active LGBT movement, and a large Indian LGBT presence on the Internet. From the 1990s onward, modern gay and lesbian Hindu organizations have surfaced in India's major cities and in 2004, plausible calls were made for the first time to repeal India's laws against homosexuality.

Deepa Mehta's 1996 film Fire, which depicts a romantic relationship between two Hindu women, was informally banned for "religious insensitivity" after Hindu nationalists attacked cinemas where it was being screened on the grounds that it denigrated Indian culture, not on the grounds of homophobia per se, a position shared and confirmed by feminist Madhu Kishwar. In addition, The Bharatiya Janata Party who were in power in India at the time, refused to ban it. Similar protests occurred in 2004 against the lesbian-themed film Girlfriend — even though the portrayal of lesbianism was this time distinctly unsympathetic. Several human-rights groups such as the People's Union for Civil Liberties have asserted that sexual minorities in India face severe discrimination and violence, especially those from rural and lower-caste backgrounds

In her book, Love's Rite, Ruth Vanita examines the phenomena of same-sex weddings, many by Hindu rites, which have been reported by the Indian press over the last thirty years and with increasing frequency. In the same period, same-sex joint suicides have also been reported. Most of these marriages and suicides are by lower-middle-class female couples from small towns and rural areas across the country; these women have no contact with any LGBT movements. Both cross-sex and same-sex couples, when faced with family opposition, tend to resort to either elopement and marriage or to joint suicide in the hope of reunion in the next life. Vanita examines how Hindu doctrines such as rebirth and the genderlessness of the soul are often interpreted to legitimize socially disapproved relationships, including same-sex ones. In a 2004 survey, most — though not all — swamis said they opposed the concept of a Hindu-sanctified gay marriage. But several Hindu priests have performed same-sex marriages, arguing that love is the result of attachments from previous births and that marriage, as a union of spirit, is transcendental to gender.

Later, Vanita condenses the ideas in her book into an article, "Same-sex Weddings, Hindu Traditions and Modern India". Here, she summarizes specific cases in which women specifically committed joint-suicides, were married and separated, or successfully married. She points out three different "forces that have helped female couples". These are: the law courts, the media, and some Hindu authorities (such as the swamis mentioned earlier in this article) from her book. When female couples can stay together under the social pressures and get to the courts, the courts generally hold up their decisions, holding to the fact that the women are consenting adults. While this does not necessarily stop the harassment, it does lend the couple further legitimacy under the laws. In addition, the more successful same-sex marriages of women are those in which the women are financially independent. If they have social support from their families and community—for the most part—then they may be able to live in peace together. The media may also play an important role in same-sex marriages. In drawing attention to their marriages, women who do not necessarily know about LGBT rights groups may be contacted and supported by those groups after media attention. However, the flip side of this is that the anti-LGBT groups also may reach out against their marriage

Some Indian and Hindu intellectuals now publicly support LGBT civil rights. Some liberal Hindu reform movements, especially those in the West, also support social acceptance of gays, lesbians, and other gender minorities. Psychoanalyst Sudhir Kakar writes that Hindus are more accepting of "deviance or eccentricity" that are adherents of Western religions, who typically treat sexual variance as "anti-social or psychopathological, requiring 'correction' or 'cure'". Hindus, he argues, believe instead that each individual must fulfill their personal destiny (svadharma) as they travel the path towards moksha (transcendence

Commenting on the legalisation of homosexuality in India; Anil Bhanot, general secretary of The United Kingdom Hindu Council said: "The point here is that the homosexual nature is part of the natural law of God; it should be accepted for what it is, no more and no less. Hindus are generally conservative but it seems to me that in ancient India, they even celebrated sex as an enjoyable part of procreation, where priests were invited for ceremonies in their home to mark the beginning of the process."