Reality is not defined by the State

The author has documented same-sex marriages that have taken place in India even in the absence of legal recognition

1 How did you feel when the Government of India recently filed an affidavit in the Delhi High Court implying that samesex marriage is incompatible with Indian laws and culture?

I expected it. The same argument has been made in every country where the matter has gone to court, including the US. In every country, marriage equality has taken a long time to be established.

2 In Love’s Rite: Same Sex Marriage in India and the West (2005) you wrote, “While state recognition is desirable, the state’s refusal to recognize a union as marriage does not mean that the union is not a marriage.” Please unpack that.

The book is going to be reissued this summer as Love’s Rite: Same-Sex Marriage in India, with a new cover, new preface and a list of all the samesex couples I have been able to record, who either got married or committed joint suicide since 1980. Many governments in history have refused to recognize certain marriages. However, particular communities did recognize these marriages. For example, before 1753, Jewish and Quaker marriages were not recognized in England, and before 1967, several states in the US did not recognize marriages between blacks and whites. Nevertheless, these marriages took place. They were real marriages. Reality is not defined by the state. The state may recognize reality or it may not but reality persists.

So also, same-sex couples all over the world have been getting married by religious and other ceremonies for centuries, and have been living as spouses. In 1987, the first such marriage in India was reported between two policewomen, Leela Namdeo and Urmila Srivastava. This was before same-sex marriage was legal in any country. Since then, many more have taken place.

3 Why do you locate homophobia in modernity rather than religion?

I locate it in colonial rule, not in modernity or nationalism per se. Up to the mid19th century, we find many individuals inclined to same-sex relations but do not find instances of them being persecuted. Most people did marry a person of the other sex but some also continued to have same-sex relations. This occurred among Hindus as well as Muslims. It was after a certain type of modernity appeared with British colonialism, post1857, that the anti-sodomy law was imposed and implemented (in 1861). What had been considered unspeakable in Christian Europe for over a millennium but had never been unspeakable in India, had now become unspeakable.