by Ira Trivedi
All in all, it would be a good thing if the corset that binds Indian society were to loosen. Sexually liberal societies do not tolerate rape, violence against women, child molestation and sexual harassment. Surprisingly, even conditions like neurotic sexual behaviour and nymphomania have been detected as being more prevalent in conservative societies than sexually permissive ones. At the same time, the spread of HIV/AIDS, the breakdown of the family unit and other societal problems can be features of societies that are more permissive. Striking the right balance is not always easy, and cannot be mandated by the state or by any other authority; it has to evolve over time. The next decade-and-a-half will therefore be critical for Indian society to develop along the right lines as we shall see in subsequent chapters.
KINKY IS QUEER
IN COLD BLOOD
On the night of 14 August 2004, Pushkin Chandra and his boyfriend Kuldeep picked up two men from Connaught Place. The first stop for the motley group was a farewell party for Danish expat Uffe Gartner on his penultimate night in Delhi. Of the quartet, only Pushkin knew Uffe, a colleague of his at the United Nations. The other three young men were ‘vernac’ or vernacular (in popular gay terminology—men who come from lower-class backgrounds and do not speak English); Kuldeep, unemployed at the moment, was the son of a peon, and the other two were street cruisers with no identifiable source of income who only met Pushkin and Kuldeep when they wanted to have sex. These three men were completely out of place in the posh, expat crowd that Uffe had invited to his party. Pushkin, an empathetic young man of thirty-eight, named after his father’s favourite Russian poet, Alexander Pushkin, observing their discomfort, suggested that they leave and go back to his place.
The next morning Pushkin and Kuldeep were found murdered. They were naked, their hands and feet tied with rope, their throats slit. There was blood everywhere. Several of Pushkin’s belongings, including his DVD player, mobile phone, handy-cam, camera and cash had been stolen. The motive of the cold-blooded murder, it seemed, was only petty theft.
That night Sid too was at Uffe Gartner’s farewell party. He had been a regular attendee of the Saturday night parties and orgies that Uffe frequently held at his house, and was sad that this friend of his would be leaving India forever. For twenty-four-year-old Sid, who had only recently moved to Delhi from Punjab, Uffe’s parties had been a gateway to the good gay life in Delhi. Through Uffe’s parties, he had met many of his new friends—the fashionable, chic, gay men of the city whom he idolized.
Pushkin’s murder had irrevocable consequences on Sid’s life. On the morning of 16 August, as Sid nursed a terrible hangover from two back-to-back nights of partying, his father, the retired principal of a secondary school, entered his room. He held the morning’s paper open in front of him.
‘Tell me, son, that party that you went to on Saturday night, you said that it was thrown by a Danish friend of yours.’
‘Haan, Papa,’ grumbled Sid.
‘You mentioned his name was something like Uf?’
‘Haanji, Papa,’ Sid muttered under his breath, wondering about his father’s sudden interest in his social life.
‘Do you know a man called Pushkin?’ his father asked curiously. Now Sid took notice. How could his father know his friend Pushkin?
His father looked expectantly at him.
‘Um, yes… Why?’
‘Pushkin Chandra was murdered yesterday after he left one Mr Uffe Gartner’s gay orgy party,’ his father read aloud from the newspaper that he held in front of him like a shield.
Sid’s head spun, he could feel all the blood draining from his face. It was a double whammy. Pushkin, his friend, was dead, murdered, and now his authoritarian father knew he was gay.
‘The newspaper says that this Uffe Gartner had gay parties every Saturday. You too go out for late nights on Saturday. Why in the world are you going to these gay parties?’ asked his father with a look of genuine confusion on his face, his chalk-white moustache twitching from side to side, the way it did when he was especially perturbed.
Sid didn’t know what to say. He had been meaning to discuss his homosexuality with his parents for over six years, ever since he had discovered he was queer, but he had been unable to muster the courage to do so. Today of all days, what with a terrible hangover, and news of the ghastly murder, no, he could not have this conversation today. The only thing that came to Sid’s mind was to run away, as far away as he physically could, from his parents and his house.
As Sid sat on the lawns of Nehru Park, a park that he frequented to pick up men, he wept for his friend Pushkin, bemoaning the death of the exuberant, handsome young man. He remembered the looks that he had exchanged across Uffe’s living room with the tall, fair, young man, and the one dance they had shared on a hot Saturday night. As Sid grieved, he heard the joyful moans of men having intercourse in the bushes. He promised himself that from this day on he would always, come what may, remain true to himself.
♦
‘I smell homophobia,’ whispers Sid in my ear as we sit in a classroom in New Delhi. Sid, who is now a lawyer and human rights activist with the Naz Foundation, an NGO active in fighting for the rights of the gay community, conducts sessions on sexuality for groups across the country. Keeping the promise he had made to himself in the aftermath of Pushkin’s death, Sid quit his job at a homophobic corporate law firm in 2008 to join the Naz Foundation in a fight for his rights. Today, he is talking about LGBT rights to a group of sixty district court judges. It is a varied group, some judges appear to be young, some are old, there are a substantial number of women, both old and young.
I have accompanied Sid here as his AV person, and I flip his slides as he speaks passionately about LGBT rights in India. As Sid goes through the slides, I see the stone-faced judges becoming increasingly uncomfortable. Most people refuse to look at the fairly innocuous images on the slides—of two men holding hands, of two men hugging—things that even straight Indian males do plenty of. Sid has moved on to the subject of HIV/AIDS and begins talking about anal sex. At this point, a choleric-looking judge with a fuzzy, dark beard jumps up from his seat.
‘You! Shut up! You cannot use terms like that in front of us. We are judges!’
‘Sir, are you talking to me?’ Sid asks calmly.
‘Yes! Of course! How can you talk about this? Don’t you know who we are!’ says another judge.
‘Uh… That is why I am talking to you about sexual rights,’ Sid says. ‘It’s important for you to understand. Surely you talk about sex in cases that come to you. Rape, for example. It is part of the dialogue.’
‘But rape is something natural! The things you are saying are unnatural and disgusting.’
Now Sid is pissed off. ’ Oh, honey…’ he mutters, and he continues now in a louder tone, matching the volume of the judge. ‘For your information, homosexuality has been decriminalized as per the ruling of the Delhi High Court, and rape is not natural. You, of all people, should know this.’
‘You don’t know anything, you good-for-nothing-gay,’ screams the judge.
I notice several of the women judges hiding their faces behind their dupattas.
‘You, sir, can leave this lecture immediately. If any of you feel like this gentleman here, then you are welcome to leave too!’ Sid screams back.
At this point, the choleric judge, who was the first to take offence at Sid’s presentation, storms out of the room, and a group of his friends quickly shuffle after him.
Sid is clearly shaken by all this. His face has turned grey, and tiny beads of perspiration erupt all over his forehead despite it being cool inside the room. Several of the other participants look unembarrassed by the outburst, they just continue to look at us blankly, as if nothing at all has happened.
♦
Prince Iravan refused to die a virgin. His father, the warrior prince Arjuna, one of the five mighty Pandavas, had been told that if he wished to win the biggest war in the history of humanity, the war of Kurukshetra, he w
ould have to sacrifice his beloved son to the goddess Kali. Iravan would die for honour, as it was his duty and his dharma as a royal prince, but to die a virgin, to have never felt the touch of a woman on his skin—he wasn’t prepared to do that. The unhappy prince asked to be married to a virgin bride, but no woman was willing to marry a man doomed to die after just one night. What were the Pandavas to do? As always, when in a quandary, they sought the counsel of the wily cowherd Krishna, their most astute advisor and well-wisher. Krishna used his divine powers to transform himself into a beautiful young woman named Mohini and pleasured Prince Iravan on his last night on earth. Matters took their course, Prince Iravan was beheaded and Krishna, who had taken his virginity, mourned him like a devastated widow.55
Hindu mythology is peppered with numerous such stories. Shiva, one of Hinduism’s three main deities, is represented as half male and half female in one of his popular avatars—Ardhanarishvara. In the epic Mahabharata, the Princess Shikhandi marries another woman. Later, Shikhandi is changed into a man but her marriage to a woman as a woman remains valid, illustrating that a marriage conducted by customary Hindu rites remains valid regardless of gender. In the aristocratic courts of ancient India, eunuchs, or the third race, held an unusual sway over kings and were important and effective advisors in government. The Kamasutra too speaks freely and openly about homosexuality.
In Hinduism, non-vaginal sex is not looked upon as evil or criminal, but merely as a minor taboo, which, like other taboos, may be broken by those with divine powers or by ordinary people under special circumstances. Unlike the homophobia that prevailed in Europe and North America through much of their past, where sodomites were punished by persecution, torture and execution, Indian history offers us no such experiences. Author Devdutt Pattanaik studies homosexuality in ancient India through three different sources: temple walls, sacred narratives, and ancient law books.56 In the course of his research, Pattanaik finds several erotic images, ranging from dignified same-sex couples exchanging romantic glances to wild orgies involving warriors, sages and courtesans on the walls of Hindu temples. Indian epics and chronicles are replete with references to same-sex intercourse. Most common are stories of gender conversion, of women turning into men and men turning into women. The beautiful temptress Mohini, an incarnation of Vishnu, is so attractive that she has Shiva shedding semen, eventually leading to the creation of mighty gods like Hanuman and Ayyappa.
Hindu law books like The Laws of Manu (once again) oppose freewheeling homosexual sex but in a mild way (unlike Christianity which punishes sodomy by death) with penalties like cold-water baths. In the bible, the Book of Leviticus states: ‘If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them shall be put to death for their abominable deed; they have forfeited their lives’. It establishes the death penalty as the proper punishment for sodomy.57
In her two-decade-long research, scholar Ruth Vanita has found that same sex love ‘including invisibilized partnerships, visible romances, and rituals such as the exchanging of vows, has flourished in India without any history of punishment’.58 All ancient sources suggest that there was a distinct place for homosexuality in ancient India. Mughal courts had an accepted queer culture which merged with Hindu culture. Transgenders (hijras) held important positions in the Mughal court, and dominated both the bureaucracy and court hierarchy in Mughal regimes.
Homophobia entered India unofficially through the ecclesiastical route from England and officially through the IPC (Indian Penal Code). Under colonial rule, the minor strain of homophobia in Indian tradition became the dominant ideology. The law prohibiting homosexual sex was set in stone in Section 377 of the IPC in 1860 by Lord Macaulay, notorious for his prudish views on sex. According to Section 377 ‘whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman, or animal shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment of either description for term which may extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to a fine’.
Several nineteenth-century Indian social reformers and nationalists left out erotic aspects (particularly of homosexuality) in their translations and publications of literature to pander to British ideals of the time. Homophobia became deeply intertwined with modern nationalism, and many prominent nationalists were against it, forgetting the many references to homosexuality in both Hindu and Muslim traditions. So as the wheels of history turned, despite the liberalism offered to us by our ancient scriptures, homophobic culture become deeply embedded in the Indian mind, becoming most evident in the middle classes who shaped public opinion. Even though the United Kingdom, the principal architect of our modern homophobia, legalized homosexuality between consenting adults in 1967, we continue to cling to homophobic Victorian mores.
Today, as part of the sexual revolution, homosexuality is finally coming into its own in this country. Rainbow-coloured festivals and parades are being organized and thousands of young people in their twenties and early thirties are coming out of the closet. Lesbian groups are budding across the country in second-tier cities like Baroda, Puducherry and Vishakhapatnam. The gay social scene is spreading across the country with professional party-organizers, a flagrant nightclub culture, house parties and social clubs with names like Desi Dykes and Boyzone springing up everywhere.
As author Manil Suri wrote in a poignant piece:
Ever since the Delhi High Court’s 2009 ruling struck down a law instituted under British rule to criminalize homosexual activity, media coverage has been sweeping away decades of invisibility. Not only do participants openly announce their sexuality on the streets, many are comfortable enough to be documented on videos for the web. A recent YouTube posting shows a queer flash mob regale a crowd of onlookers outside Dadar, one of central Mumbai’s busiest train stations. Time Out Mumbai published an entire issue on the queer community in the city this past January—a month that also saw a book launch for Out!, a fiction anthology from ‘The New Queer India.59
India’s Queer Revolution can be attributed to changes in the political, technology, financial and media landscapes.60 Public discourse on homosexual issues has led to the emergence of gay rights groups across the country that work openly on issues of sexuality, sexual rights and sexual health. The growing movement for awareness and prevention of HIV/AIDS has played an important role in the homosexual discourse and vice versa and organized political activism has led the fight to decriminalize homosexuality.
Technology has given Queer India a place to connect: the internet has been a game-changer, as has the cell phone. Decreased internet and cell phone costs as well as increased coverage mean that more gay people have access to worldwide queer resources as well as numerous websites to locate casual partners. The anonymity offered by the internet and cell phones allows people to create unique identities and lead dual lives. The Indian male can now be a queen on the internet and a king in his homophobic household.
INDIA’S REIGNING QUEEN
‘It’s a crazy world out there, and you can get anything. Name it, and you have it. There are su-su ranis [golden shower queens or those who like to urinate on you or vice versa], chutney ranis [ass lickers], dhakka starts [guys who like receptive anal sex] and muscle marys [gym boys for hire]. The nautanki-ranis command big prices [they dress up as brides and you are supposed to rape them]. There are policeman for hire [ghodis] and special married men [pao-bhatas and double-deckers] who want you in bed with their wives by their side!’ explains Ashok Row Kavi, the first man to talk openly about homosexuality and gay rights in the country, and founder of Humsafar, a male sexual health NGO and editor of India’s first gay magazine, Bombay Dost.
He continues, ‘The smaller the town, the bigger the circuit they seem to have. I remember going to Jaipur where the reigning queen got a salute from every cop at each traffic signal we whizzed past. It’s wilder in the cow belt. Once I was in Vrindavan, the abode of Lord Krishna, and I spent the entire time fucking men, and it was all done in the spirit of free love. In Moradabad, a whol
e dharamshala was used for an orgy and some holy soul tipped off the police who came and joined in, and then arrested the poor guys!’
Ashok believes that that the cheap and wide access to internet and cell phones is really the impetus behind the queer revolution in India. He offers further details: ‘The Internet has changed everything...yes, everything. So has the mobile. You go on PlanetRomeo, and there are around 90,000 men cruising at any one time in India on the net. Of these, 9,000 are from Bombay alone—every single day. Everybody has a bogus name, and suddenly I’ve discovered that older men are at a premium,’ says the sixty-five-year-old with a naughty grin.
‘I’ve seen young college guys in Cafe Coffee Day cruising on the net, hooking up, rushing out to meet their “contacts”, getting into the car and returning within forty-five minutes,’ says Ashok.
It is impossible to separate the issues of HIV/AIDS and homosexuality. HIV/AIDS has provided a platform on which to fight for sexual rights, and a way for activists to garner the support of governments and international organizations. Ashok has been a pioneer of the movement for the prevention and control of HIV/AIDS and was part of a technical group reviewing numbers and budgets for the Indian government’s AIDS control arm. I ask him about the current situation.