Two thousand years after it was first introduced, the Kama Sutra is not only relevant, it has manifested itself in every form of art, entertainment, and education.
During the middle ages, courtiers of the Muslim sultans that dominated India treated the “treatise on love” as nothing more than a sex manual, something to provide fantasies to their masters.
By the time the 1980s came around, the only thing that had changed was its circulation. The art books showcasing only the positions (and not the message) of the Kama Sutra reached Western culture. The Internet gave it even more popularity, but only as semi-pornographic material.
Various catalogs of the sexual positions were published, consisting of positions that weren’t even included in the Kama Sutra. Not only had the message been stricken from these books, they presented a paint-by-numbers method of how to reinvigorate a couple’s sex life. The positions were deemed pornographic, immoral and fodder for people of low standards.
Throughout the 1990s, a slow reemergence of the first publication began, and a society that longs for sexual equality, as well as sexual liberation, began to embrace the meaning and intent of the Kama Sutra’s positions.
The evolution of Kama Sutra’s reputation is most evident in today’s entertainment. The ancient Indian text has permeated into movies and television shows on both sides of the globe, such as Sex and The City (US, 2000) and Kama Sutra: Tale of Love (1996, India/UK).
The Kama Sutra has inspired a wild range of artwork. From delicate paintings to crude diagrams of the sexual positions to educate, to cartoon
style interpretations to amuse, to erotic photographs to titillate, it would seem for every one of the original positions, and there are hundreds of ways in which they’ve been depicted.
The publishing industry continues to give birth to new translations and interpretations of the Kama Sutra. There are also many novels and self-help books for couples that cater to beginners, experts and those with idle curiosity. Many of these manifestations of the Kama Sutra adhere to the book’s message of emotional and sensual connected-ness, but there are, of course, books that reduce the ancient tome as nothing more than kinky positions that can spice up any sexual encounter.
In an effort to educate the masses, seminars, workshops, magazine articles, websites, and even blogs have committed to de-mystifying the Kama Sutra. Unfortunately, in an attempt to make the material more accessible if not relatable, many of these formats focus on the thrill of trying the positions with little mention of intimacy. And when intimacy is encouraged, it’s often done in the form of suggesting candles, perfumes, and oils.
Perhaps by delving into the emotional work that the Kama Sutra entails, authors and moderators fear they may lose a large part of their audience. After all, in today’s society, becoming emotionally naked sounds more like therapy than the beginning of an exploration into one’s sexuality.
Ironically, modern culture has had only moderate success in getting the meaning of the positions to the masses, and yet it often gets confused with Tantra, which has a much stronger spiritual component than the Kama Sutra.
