Stigmatised
THE SOCIAL AS WELLAS LEGAL TRAUMA OF BEING GAY IN INDIA, A REPORT ON A NEWLY RE-CRIMINALISED COMMUNITY
The social as well as legal trauma of being gay in India. A report on a newly re-criminalised community.
The police came to the Global Day of Rage protest against the Supreme Court upholding Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code ( IPC), 1860, at Maheshwari Udyan, Mumbai, with lathis and vans, expecting slogans, shouting, anger, even violence. What they got instead was rainbows, flags, flamboyant hairstyles, face paint, Venetian masks, posters that read ‘ Pyar Ke Dushman Hai Hai’, a train dance through the garden, laughter, and gay-straight camaraderie. “What did they expect? It’s a gay protest!” laughed one bystander as bisexual hairstylist Sapna Bhavnani kicked off a dance to the accompaniment of drums. “Love”, “Peace”, the protesters shouted. It is the gay way.
On July 2, 2009, when the Delhi High Court struck down Section 377, which criminalises consensual gay sex alongside governing “non-consensual penile non-vaginal sex and that involving minors”, in response to a PIL by NGO Naz Foundation, gay rights activists called it historic. The petitioners had argued that Section 377 was in dissonance with the right to privacy, dignity, life and liberty, the right to sexual expression, sexual preferences, right of association/assembly and right to move freely. “If there is one tenet that can be said to be the underlying theme of the Constitution, it is that of ‘inclusiveness’,” the verdict read.
While the State chose not to appeal, the Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights, the All India Muslim Personal Law Board and the Apostolic Churches Alliance opposed the judgment. A bench of Justices G.S. Singhvi and S.J. Mukhopadaya set aside the high court’s verdict on December 11, calling gay sex “unnatural” and saying its prevalence occurred in a “minuscule minority”. While official surveys of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community in India do not exist, trustees of gay rights organisations say even a fraction of official US figures (8 million adults, according to the American Civil Liberties Union) is
substantial in Indian terms.
In the intervening years between the high court and Supreme Court verdicts, the closeted have had a taste of freedom. And there is no going back. The joie de vivre on view at the Mumbai protest is an indicator of the social acceptability the community has garnered and how much the law lags behind. The protest venue, Maheshwari Udyan, was the secret meeting spot of gay lovers back in the 1980s, one of the LGBT ‘safe zones’: Paradise Cinema, Mahim; Azad Maidan, Kaanda Batata Market, Turbhe; Chowpatty beach; Santacruz and Dadar railway stations; Liberty Garden, Malad and the Gateway of India.
Nitin Karani is 43 and has been in a relationship with Thomas Joseph, 30, since 2009. Karani, a banker, has been a trustee with Humsafar Trust, while Joseph is a business analyst. Karani is one of the pioneers of the gay comingout wave of the 1980s. He recalls those years as years of guilt and shame. In 1990, an issue of Debonair announced the launch of Bombay Dost by Ashok Row Kavi. The magazine for gay people, he said, changed his life. “Until then, you didn’t know that other people were like you,” he says. Karani came out to his parents at the age of 25. For those a generation ahead, being gay has meant being sensible about it. Karani’s partner, Joseph, a Catholic from Kerala, knew that he would not be accepted by his family, and set out to achieve emotional and financial independence. “When my priest suggested I watch straight porn to ‘reorient’ myself, I knew I had to make a choice. I eventually left my faith.” Today the pronouncements of Pope Francis come as a breath of fresh air to the LGBT community.
Acceptance has come in extraordinary ways for young Indians breaking out of stereotyped traditional structures. Debika, 39, a dog whisperer, was married for 10 years; the person who helped her escape it was her then-husband, now her best friend. Her partner Shruti, 33, a counsellor from a Tier-2 town in Maharashtra who was thrown out of her home for being lesbian, now runs her own practice in Mumbai. While Debika’s parents have not yet come to terms with her, Shruti says the 2009 high court verdict helped her folks come to terms with her reality. Fellow Mumbaikars Jayesh Desai, 42, and Radhey Khatri, 43, met at a gay event in 2006. Desai was publicly outed just a few days ago on the front pages of a daily while attending a protest. For the resident of Ulhasnagar suburb, it’s come as a relief. “I really don’t care” he says. “I’ve had enough of hiding.” In Kolkata, “youngsters are a lot more aware that the stigma is slowly going away,” says Tirthankar Guha Thakurta, a gay rights activist and doctor.
Much of the urban emphasis is now towards everyday practicalities: Being able to open a joint bank account, get insurance, acquire a home loan, sign as next of kin in a medical emergency, pay rent without a landlord threatening to throw them out. Inheritance is a very contentious issue. “There have been many instances when people have been disinherited, denied property or even contact with the rest of their family. This is why we first ask them to gain some economic independence before coming out,” says Poushali Basak of Sappho for Equality, a Kolkata-based support group.
While urban gay India found its momentum thanks to the push of NGOs, gay groups and the Internet, it is for a poorer India, where exploitation levels are high, that the repeal of Section 377 assumes heightened importance.
Twenty-five-year-old Sonal Sharma works as a research assistant at the Ambedkar University in Delhi. His mother works as a domestic help and his father is employed as a money collector in a local bazaar. Revealing his sexual orientation to his mother took a bit of explaining. “I didn’t tell my mother I was gay, she wouldn’t understand,” he says. “So I told her I was attracted to men and that I wouldn’t get married. I don’t plan to tell my father.” Sharma says that the law makes it difficult for gay men to report rape. “If I got raped, I can’t tell the police because I will be considered a criminal,” he says.
With Congress President Sonia Gandhi and Vice-President Rahul Gandhi openly rooting for gay rights after the Supreme Court judgment, the Government threw its might behind the call for taking a more liberal view, with Law Minister Kapil Sibal asserting the State would do all it can even if it means changing the law. BJP chief Rajnath Singh, however, voiced support for the judgment upholding Section 377. “We believe that homosexuality is an unnatural act. We cannot support it,” he said. There are many in BJP who do not agree with Singh. “Such regressive views do not cut ice with the youth,” says a senior party leader. BJP’s prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi has maintained an uneasy silence on the issue.
Criminalising LGBTs now, after so much has been achieved, will roll back the gains the movement registered, activists fear. “There’s been a lot of awareness and support from the police which has reduced exploitation and blackmail but that is now being threatened by the recent Supreme Court judgment,” says Bindumadhav Khire, 46, president of Samapathik Trust in Pune, which works to create greater awareness about the LGBT community. Khire, a former software engineer, has written seven books on homosexuality. “Most men my age live dual lives because they’ve been married by force,” he says. One of Khire’s greatest areas of concern is rural India where gays and lesbians are forced into heterosexual marriages. “If the law moves in the right direction, society will also accept people with different sexual orientations,” he says. Professors
Anjali Monteiro and K.P. Jaysankar, dean and chairperson of the School of Media and Cultural Studies at Tata Institute of Social Sciences respectively, believe the excuses mounted for the defence of Section 377 are meaningless. Both paedophilia and child abuse happen across genders and largely involve heterosexual sex. Further, other laws and sections in the IPC exist to address molestation and rape, making Section 377 redundant. “Who decides what’s unnatural anyway?” says Jaysankar.
A substantial onus for acceptance, says Aditya Advani, a 50-year-old landscape architect who lives with his partner Michael Tarr and their twins born of surrogacy in New Delhi’s Defence Colony, lies with gay people themselves. “The justices behind the verdict didn’t know any gay people. That’s something that can only be changed by more of us coming out,” says Advani. “At the end of the day, gay couples lead very ordinary, boring lives like anyone else. We fall in love, settle down, become parents, hold jobs, integrate with society and do normal, boring things. There is nothing extraordinary about us. All we want to do is lead these boring, ordinary lives,” he says.