Being Gay in India: Not So Gay, After All
Farhan Siddiqui
By Yoginder Sikand
According to rough estimates, some five per cent of every population
group is considered to be exclusively homosexual in orientation.
Further, there appears to be a continuum, rather than a sudden break,
between exclusive homosexuality, on the one hand, and exclusive
heterosexuality, on the other, with varying degrees of bisexuality in
between. A very conservative estimate, therefore, would put the Indian
homosexual and bi-sexual population at some ten per cent of the total
population, which works out to a staggering one hundred million,
considerably more than the population of several countries. The
exclusively homosexual Indian population would be roughly half that
figure.
Despite this vast Indian homosexual population, little is known about
this most marginalised and invisible minority. Being branded as
criminals by an archaic Victorian law, the Section 377 of the Indian
Penal Code, spurned by mainstream society as deviants, and condemned
by religion as perverts doomed to eternal damnation, most Indian gays
lead a life of constant fear and solitude. Only one who is himself gay
and has experienced the horrors of growing up as a member of a
scorned, condemned, criminalised and completely invisibilised sexual
minority in India while struggling to retain his sanity can actually
articulate the plight of what it really means to be gay in this
country. The barrage of heterosexist images that gays are inflicted
with, at school, the work-place, the home , the mass media and
religion and so on, results in a profound self-hatred which, being
internalised and constantly reinforced, is almost beyond repair for
most. Some are driven to suicide, some to terrible depression and
mental trauma and most others succumb to family pressure to get
married.
The plight of a young gay teenager in India is particularly acute. All
he is taught at school, home and the playground about normative
relations between the sexes reinforces his sense of self-hatred and a
low self-esteem. He has no role models of his own to emulate. TV and
advertisements constantly bombard him with the suggestion of his own
devianceand criminality. Among his peers he has no one to confide his
deepest thoughts and feelings in, for fear of ridicule and worse.
Consequently, he is, in many cases, friendless. He lives in mortal
fear of his parents coming to know about him, and so has constantly to
maintain a facade, a dual, almost schizophrenic, life. Often he goes
to such lengths to hide his own true self by forcing himself to date a
girl, to provehis masculinity to those whom he fears. The same,
unenviable fate pursues him when he goes on to college. The life of
his colleagues revolves around girls and dating, and if he is not to
be left out, he often has to swim with the tide. Inevitably, of
course, his forced adventures with a woman land up in disaster, both
for him as well as for her. He then is forced to plough his own lonely
furrow till, soon, his parents and family start their little plots to
find him a bride. He cannot refuse, so overwhelming is the weight of
centuries of tradition, so overpowering is the control of the family,
so dreadful is the fear of society. Most men succumb, some in the fond
hope that marriage to a woman would curethem of what they see as their
malady. But that, of course, almost never happens. So you have the
endless story of married men cruising in public conveniences, in the
dark corners of bus-stops, movie theatres and parks, in a frantic
search for furtive, five-minute gay sex, or at most a one-night
encounter, sometimes in exchange for money. Because there are so many
such men in every city and town, sex is easily available. And theres
the gay party circuit as well. The Internet has, of course, made
things immensely less bothersome in practical terms, with the several
gay chat sites that can easily be accessed. The risks to peoples own
health from the scourge of such promiscuity are immense, of course,
and so, too, to their spouses and children. Their wives, carefully
trained in the age-old tradition of unquestioning obedience to their
husbands, must never know about their nocturnal visits. These are
explained away as business meetings, stag parties and the like. And
even if they were to know, there is little they could do. A divorced
wife of an Indian gay man has little hope for a second marriage. And
so the circle continues, with almost every married gay man a mental
wreck, if alive to the enormity of his cheating his wife and himself,
or, if less sensitive, a schizophrenic, struggling to compartmentalise
his social commitments to his family and the demands of a desire that
refuses to die. Either way, he is a living corpse, or, to put it more
plainly, a profoundly unhappy person.
Things are, however, beginning to change in India today. Gay groups
have mushroomed in the last decade, some in previously un-thinkable
places like Lucknow and Bijapur, with several of them bringing out
their own newsletters and magazines. Indian newspapers, mostly English
dailies, are devoting more space to gay issues than ten years ago, and
in certain circles it is quite acceptable to be openly gay.
Interestingly, that degree of openness, however little it may actually
be, is apparent on either end of the socio-economic spectrum: at the
very top and down at the bottom of the ladder. Middle class India
remains, by and large, immune from such influences. Hypocrisy remains
supreme.
Indian gay organisations, of which there are now well over a dozen,
serve several valuable purposes, but they are limited both in scope as
well as in general orientation. All of them are city-based, though
increasingly little groups are sprouting in smaller towns as well.
Most of them attract an English-speaking clientele, which tends to
intimidate others who are more comfortable in the vernaculars. Flush
with funds from abroad, some groups are little more than cottage
industries set up to rake in easy money, a bane that NGOs who are
dependent on foreign donors and lack strong local roots share in
common. But more basic, however, is the fundamental approach of these
organisations, limited as they largely are to fighting for the
recognition of gay rights and the acceptance of homosexuality as a
legitimate personal choice and way of life. This, of course, is vital
and central to the broader goals of the gay liberation movement.
However, the agenda of the movement seems to be dictated almost
entirely by the discourse of a narrowly selected western gay culture
which puts a high premium on the physical, on multiple partners, on
the glorification of the body. It has little room for the spirit, for
the inner depths of the heart, and questions like love and commitment
have almost no scope for articulation, being seen as old-fashioned,
out-moded or even as an imitation of oppressive heterosexist monogamy.
Yet, it is precisely here that the Indian gay movement has its own
unique role to play. With the HIV scare and India threatening to
emerge soon as the country with the largest number of HIV carriers in
the world, the cult of the physical, the glorification of sheer lust,
must necessarily be questioned. In its place the values of love and
commitment, the world of the heart and the spirit, no matter how
syrupy they may sound to some ears, must be resurrected. The question
of gay marriages, for one, which is conspicuous by its almost total
absence in the articulations of most Indian gay groups, must be firmly
put on their agenda. For in that alone healthy monogamous relations
cemented by bonds of love and commitment--lies hope not just for a
genuinely creative Indian gay contribution to gay thinking and
politics, but more crucially, for the task at hand of helping
individual gays, struggling with social prejudice and the burden of
self-hatred, to lead more happy and fulfilling lives.
With the emergence of a vibrant gay movement in India in the last
decade, gays are acquiring increasing visibility today. It has indeed
become quite acceptable to be gay, at least in some circles. This,
however, has not been reflected in either mainstream social opinion at
large or in the law. The gay movement has been consistently struggling
on both fronts, seeking to argue for the acceptance of homosexuality
as a valid option or way of life, as well as demanding legal
recognition of this by the state. In the case of the former, it has
made impressive strides, with the Indian media now devoting
considerable attention to happenings in the gay community. But as for
the latter, the laws that criminalise homosexuality remain firmly in
place.
Homosexual acts, even between two consenting adults, are a severely
punishable offence according to Indian law. Section 377 describes such
acts as being against the rule of nature. This law, put on the statute
books in the late nineteenth century by British officialdom, thus
effectively brands all practising homosexuals as criminals. If one
puts the figure of exclusively homosexual Indians at five per cent of
the total Indian population, a figure generally accepted as the
average for any society, this consigns some 50 million gay men and
women into the unenviable status as offenders of the law for no fault
of their own.
The premises on which the Victorian concept of normality was based
have, of course, been effectively demolished with the development of
the human and social sciences. Thus, nature is today seen as revelling
in diversity rather than in drab conformity or dull monotony.
Post-modernism has shown us that there can be no one single Truth, and
when applied to our understanding of human naturethis forcefully
suggests that there are a multiplicity of equally valid ways of
expressing our sexual selves. The feminist movement has quite
effectively debunked the notion of normal sexual behaviour as being
synonymous with procreative sex, showing how this has been tied up
with structures of oppressive patriarchy. The very development of
birth control technologies has resulted in completely divorcing the
issue of sex from reproduction, thus questioning the criminalising of
homosexuality simply because it is non-procreative. Moreover, the
findings of psychology and the genetic sciences have proved beyond
doubt that homosexuality is not a disease nor even an aberration but
is simply just another way for nature to revel in its diversity. Being
gay, therefore, is like being left-handed. Just because there are more
right-handed people in the world than left-handed people, it does not
make left-handed people any less normal.
The writings of the French sociologist Michel Foucault, himself
decidedly gay, have been of profound importance in forcing a
questioning of notions of normality. He has argued that definitions of
normality and deviance are rooted in questions of power. A group or a
class defines its way of doing things as normal, and because it is
able to exercise power over others, it is able to define the ways in
which other people do things as abnormal. When this is applied to the
question of sexual behaviour the implications are of far-reaching
importance. Put simply, Foucault would suggest that because
heterosexuals are in a majority and because they control all
institutions in society, from the economy to religion, morality and
the law, they are able to impose their notion of normalsexual
behaviour as normative for the whole of society. However, when this
power is challenged, as is the case today with the efforts of the
feminist and gay movements, these notions of normality are questioned
and have to give way. One is now forced to recognise that the notion
of heterosexuality as normative is no less an imperialist assumption
than, for instance, the colonial white mans burden and civilising
mission is. The multiplicity of normalities must be recognised.
While these findings of modern research as well as the efforts of
numerous gay organisations and individuals have succeeded in scrapping
anti-gay laws in many western countries, the Indian law which
criminalises homosexuality is still very much in place. This is,
indeed, ironical, because the law that we have today which deals with
homosexuality is itself a quaint Victorian legacy bequeathed to us by
the British, while pre-British India seems, according to the findings
of historians, to have accepted homosexuality without much ado.
Chronicles of the courts of the Nawabs and even tales of the
pre-Muslim period tell of a rich gay life, where homosexuals, like
other sexual minorities, seem to have enjoyed considerable freedom.
The struggle for the repeal of Section 377, then, must carry forward.
Almost all Indian gay organisations have this on their agendas. Yet,
this is a partial agenda at best. De-criminalising homosexuality is
certainly one of the first steps towards bringing about greater social
acceptance. But the demands for legal change must go beyond this, to
raise the issue of legal recognition of gay unions if gay men and
women are to have social and legal sanction to live together and if
they are to lead healthy and happy lives. This is of the most vital
importance. The enormous promiscuity that one encounters within the
male gay community is only visible to an insider. Because gay
relations are not recognised by society or the state, they tend to
have little stability. One can literally count on ones finger-tips the
number of successful gay couples in India. If promiscuity is to be
countered, and it must with the AIDS epidemic now threatening India,
and if gay men and women are to lead sane and satisfying lives, gay
marriages must have to be recognised, and legal mechanisms worked out
to regulate them. But given the political class that we have, that
sounds like asking for the moon.
Sender: Dr. Yoginder Sikand,
4304 Oakwood Apts IV,
8th Main, 1st Cross,
Koramangala-III
Bangalore-560034