There was more persecution to follow. In 1897, the colonial Criminal Tribes Act was amended to expressly include “eunuchs”—which is how the British recast India’s hijras—who could now be arrested without warrant and imprisoned for up to two years merely for appearing “dressed or ornamented like a woman in a public street” or of being “reasonably suspected” of “committing offences under Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code,” without need of proof of an actual act.
With those punitive laws, for the first time in the Indian subcontinent’s recorded history same-sex relations as well as nonconformist gender identities were criminalized and became the target of active prosecution and brutal punishment. India was one of the first of the colonized lands to which Great Britain exported its pathological condemnation of male same-sex desire; by the end of the nineteenth century, laws identical or similar to Section 377 were firmly in place across Africa, the Americas, the Caribbean, Asia, and Australasia, often replacing accepting traditions with cruel persecution.
The arguments in “Less than Gay” helped me make sense of what I had gradually come to feel over my years of adulthood in India as I grew more knowledgeable about the country. “Macaulay’s Children,” such as my father and most people of my background, were almost invariably hostile to same-sex desire as well as to any perceived feminine qualities or behaviors in men. Even those of them—my father being a perfect example—who knew intimately the ancient Hindu myths of gender ambiguity and same-sex desire as well as their foundational place in Hindu metaphysics didn’t allow these concepts to impact their thinking or behavior, so overpowering was the hold of the Victorian notions that had been drilled into them.
In contrast, as Siddhartha and his colleagues wrote, “notions of same-sex friendship, romance and love still suffuse the lives of ordinary men and women,” whose thinking was not as heavily shaped by Raj-era cultural influences. Both Siddhartha and I had often sensed that in our encounters with nonelite Indian men, a surprisingly large number of them treated their desires with astonishing naturalness. And we had both seen convincing evidence that our more traditional relatives, such as my aunts from small-town Madhya Pradesh, treated same-sex desire as well as femininity in men with simple acceptance or, at the very least, with a relative tolerance.
But from the tortured personal testimonies in “Less than Gay,” it was clear that India’s older traditions had shrunk dangerously over the 130 years since Section 377 had come into force. “Because of its existence, gay men are subjected to systematic harassment, blackmail and extortion at the hands of enforcement agencies and the public . . . the law exists solely to criminalize and terrorize a section of society,” Siddhartha and his coauthors wrote. The outcome by now was that though the homophobia was not as pervasive and virulent as I had seen in the United States—even the grounds given for condemning homosexuality lacked the bred-in-the-bone vehemence of Christian cultures, a sign that this animus was a relatively recent transplant—it was potent enough to make gay men and women live in great fear.
It was the report’s opening and closing pages that had the most profound impact on me, fundamentally changing my thoughts on a crucial aspect of this matter.
On the third page of “Less than Gay” was this paragraph: “ABVA views homosexuality (and heterosexuality) as a political issue. We will strive to get consensual, adult homosexual acts decriminalized and fight for the right of gay men, lesbians and other ‘sexual minorities,’ like hijras, to enjoy equal benefits of the laws on marriage, inheritance, adoption, and privacy, among others. We feel that a clear and unambiguous stand should be taken by political parties and civil rights organizations on the human rights of gay men and lesbians. How much longer will the British-framed law on sodomy be tolerated by us? When will the Indian State recognize the equal rights of ‘sexual minorities’?”
There it was, unambiguous and powerfully worded, what I had never yet seen stated in print: the demand that same-sex relations be decriminalized in India.
And at the report’s very end was an astonishing charter of emancipatory demands, breathtaking in its boldness—if realized, gay Indians would no longer be criminals but equal and proud citizens.
The first demand, of course, was for the repeal of Section 377. But then there was the demand for the Constitution to be amended to include equality before the law on the basis of “sex” and “sexual orientation.” There was the demand that police policies be reformed to end the abuse of gay people and gender minorities and that a human rights commission be available to monitor rights violations. There were demands for “judgment-free health education related to sexuality, homosexuality, sexually transmitted diseases . . . and AIDS.” For tackling homophobia, they demanded “positive images and role models of gay men and lesbians, and of homosexuality as a viable, healthy alternative lifestyle” from school onward. Ending the charter were demands for full equality in those vital matters of love, relationships, and families: “Amend the Special Marriages Act to allow for marriages between people of the same sex . . . All consequential legal benefits of marriage should extend to gay marriages as well, including the right to adopt children, to execute a partner’s will, to inherit, etc.”
I read that charter with astonishment, followed by mounting excitement. I had never even dared to imagine such freedom in India—of not being criminalized, of not being perpetually fearful, of having a constitutional guarantee that I would be treated equally in every aspect of life, of having the right to marry and have a family—let alone imagine that I should begin to expect and fight for this in my lifetime.
Those were audacious, almost outlandish demands to make in the first years of the 1990s. Homosexual conduct was a criminal offense not only in India but also in an overwhelming majority of the world’s nations, besides half the states in the United States. The United Nations’ human rights bodies were still several years away from making the pioneering rulings establishing that “sodomy” laws violated international human rights norms. No country, so far, provided constitutional guarantees of equality or antidiscrimination for gays or gender minorities. Just one country—Denmark—recognized same-sex civil unions, and only Sweden had laws protecting gays and lesbians in matters pertaining to social services, taxes, and inheritance.
Yet Siddhartha, with his colleagues in the ABVA group, asked for complete equality, even though there was no proof as yet that any modern society, let alone India—still mired in colonial ways of thinking and doing—was capable of providing such justice. Perhaps individuals on the verge of death were blessed with such prescience.
Let alone the practicality of such ambitious changes, Siddhartha and I had often heatedly argued about the possibility of throwing out Section 377. His view was that we needed to build a mass movement in India seeking this goal, akin to the 1960s African American civil rights effort or the ongoing antiapartheid struggle in South Africa. My reaction had always been that something like that was simply not possible in the India of our time. It was too dangerous. There were too few of us who were openly gay and even fewer with a determined sense of activism. And we had almost no allies—just a handful of supportive friends and families and an even smaller number of forward-thinking lawyers, journalists, and activists.
I argued that we would face a terrible backlash. No Indian civil rights groups considered matters of sexuality to be of any relevance to their work—even abroad, Amnesty International had only just begun to fight for people imprisoned because of their sexual orientation. I pointed out that in Margaret Thatcher’s right-wing Great Britain, homophobia had intensified—the police were harassing and entrapping gay men in unprecedented numbers, and the antigay “Section 28” had been passed into law—while in Reaganite America, the Supreme Court had upheld sodomy laws as recently as 1986. I was sometimes even dismissive while arguing with Siddhartha, my irritation at his impractical idealism rising to a head.
In a practical sense, I was correct. For a start, very few of even the relatively open gay men and w
omen in India were activists to any great degree. Given the real risks of discrimination and persecution, it made sense to remain largely guarded, which would have been impossible as an activist. Tellingly, Siddhartha wrote in his letter to me, “None of my gay friends bothered to come for the press conference or to collect a copy until a month later! Somehow I felt shocked by what seemed to be a betrayal . . . [I]t seemed that all our parties and bonhomie and friendships had come to naught . . . [W]hat explains the apathy and indifference?”
And it was clear that the matter of decriminalization of same-sex relations, let alone equal human rights for us, was taboo in almost every realm of India. Thus, on releasing “Less than Gay,” Siddhartha and his ABVA colleagues presented a formal list of demands to the petitions committee of the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament—but not a single member of Parliament even acknowledged the petition, let alone championed it. Of the dozens of prominent people and organizations they had written to (including legislators, bureaucrats, police officials, health experts, feminists, and human rights leaders) while researching the report, only nineteen had written back.
But on reading those brave, fighting words that morning in 1992—“We will strive to get consensual, adult homosexual acts decriminalized and fight for the right of gay men, lesbians and other ‘sexual minorities,’ like hijras, to enjoy equal benefits of the law”—for the first time I didn’t care that the odds were so heavily arrayed against us. Though I realized that I had come to feel this because of the circumstances, because the ache for that freedom had literally been my beloved friend’s last sentiment, it proved to be a personal turning point. I began to feel that it was only right to fight against Section 377, even if the effort lasted decades and even beyond my lifetime, instead of simply fearing it as I had and choosing to live abroad.
And so Siddhartha, in dying, forever changed my views. In a magazine review of “Less than Gay,” I wrote that the report “is potentially a powerful weapon with which gay Indians and activists can fight the government . . . [It] contains every detail necessary to challenge the Indian sodomy law as unconstitutional.”
The power of what Siddhartha had set into motion through “Less than Gay” soon became potently evident. In early 1994, two years after Siddhartha’s death, ABVA filed a public interest case in the Delhi High Court asking that Section 377 be declared unconstitutional and void on the grounds that it violated the constitutional fundamental rights to life, liberty, and nondiscrimination and obstructed AIDS prevention efforts. The immediate cause of ABVA’s action was the refusal by officials at Delhi’s Tihar Jail to supply condoms to prisoners—despite evidence of male homosexual conduct as well as several HIV-positive cases—on the grounds that homosexuality was a criminal offense.
The fight against Section 377 had now moved from words to reality. India’s establishment was being forced to address, as a matter of constitutional principle, something it had long refused to acknowledge even as existing in India.
And Siddhartha, aesthete and satyr, madcap and visionary, revolutionary and intellectual, had been the driving force for all this in the span of his short, wondrous life.
THIRTEEN
MORE RIGHTS—TO CORRECT THE WRONGS
In early 1993, I joined the World Bank in Washington, DC. It was a difficult and unlikely decision for me, given my socialist-democratic views and the Bank’s record of promoting policies that favored the interests of rich countries and rich people over the well-being of the poor.
I reasoned that I was joining the part of the Bank—the health policy division—that was encouraging genuine progress by promoting public health and even defending human rights, as demonstrated by its role in convincing the Indian government to disavow its punitive AIDS control policies. And at my young age of thirty-one and having recently embarked on a fresh career focused on public health and development policy, I needed work experience that was as broad as possible, I told myself.
But the truth was that my decision was almost entirely driven by personal reasons, not professional ones. I had desperately needed to escape from New York City, and lacking US work papers, the Bank was one of very few employment options open to me.
My desperation to leave New York City was because my relationship with Tandavan had disintegrated, five years from the time we had met and fallen in love. We still loved each other deeply—that had made the process of separating drag on painfully. But we both also knew that we were no longer the happy couple we had been. There seemed no chance of resolving our problems, though we had long tried.
They were garden-variety problems. They ranged from our not being able to strike a balance between my neurotic tidiness and Tandavan’s messiness to Tandavan being even more dangerously impractical about finances than I was. Those tensions had existed when we lived in Delhi, too, but had taken on a destructive power in New York City. After a first year of exceptional happiness—overjoyed to be together again and to be living for the first time in an environment where we didn’t fear persecution—the particular stresses of New York City hit home: the cramped living space, the high rents, and, not least, the dismal, dangerous state of the city, no less grim than when I had lived there last in 1986. When I returned to New York City after traveling to Africa and Asia for the United Nations, I invariably found it even more depressing than the impoverished, strife-torn places I had visited. (The violence was so extreme that on a per capita basis the yearly death toll from guns and other violent causes exceeded that of Punjab, the northern Indian state then in the midst of civil war, I calculated.) Our relationship spiraled downward into ugly tension and fights, doing both of us damage.
Tandavan and I never concretely decided that we were breaking up, evading the fact though we both recognized it. I told him I was going to move to DC to work at the Bank; perhaps in time he could move there too. He would stay on in New York for now, he replied, because his US work papers had come through and a large number of people had signed on to learn Bharatanatyam from him.
On the morning that I left to drive down to DC in a rented car, I kissed him on the cheeks and said that we would see each other soon. I started sobbing only when I couldn’t see him any longer in the car’s rearview mirror. I called briefly once I reached DC to say I’d arrived safely. Then neither of us called the other for over a month. The hiatus established everything we were unable to say to each other.
I struggled for months with my sense of loss, despite being in a new city with demanding new work. It took me a year even to go out on a date. A momentous, happy epoch of my life—in which I had gone from being a virginal, lonely young man to experiencing great love and becoming a fulfilled adult—had come to an unhappy end. A love I had thought would last a lifetime had lasted just those few years.
In small ways and big, the Bank’s entitlements and power crippled its ability to promote genuine, broad-based well-being in the countries it worked in. That became clear to me on a firsthand basis from public health projects that I worked on in India, Kenya, and Uganda.
While on “mission” to design or monitor those projects, a majority of my colleagues flew first-class from DC to the capital cities of those countries. A few of us stuck to business class. (“Mission” is the bizarre term used in the international development industry to describe, typically, a quick visit by foreign experts to dispense advice. It remains a mystery whether the term came into use because we were supposedly doing charitable work like missionaries or because we imagined we belonged to the heady world of military espionage.) We stayed at the grandest hotels. We spent without limit on meals and taxis, rather than being constrained by the generous but capped daily allowances of UN staff. On our return leg, we had “rest stops” in attractive European cities. Taxpayers’ money gathered from the world over paid for us to enjoy the lifestyles of the global superrich.
In Africa in particular, our work mainly consisted of meeting top bureaucrats and politicians. Though they were of the rank of health secretaries and health ministers, they
would be visibly deferential to the Bank’s team leader—even though he or she was no more than a midranking staffer. All we glimpsed of reality was when we were whisked off in air-conditioned SUVs to visit some carefully selected hospital or nongovernmental organization. There we were treated with a reverence appropriate for visiting heads of state. We shook hands, asked a few questions, murmured comments that demonstrated our exceptional expertise, and were then chauffeured back to our luxury hotels.
Our reports were written from the best hotels in country capitals or in even more salubrious settings. On one memorable occasion, our whole team of two dozen was jetted off to a famed boutique hotel in Maasai Mara. Each of our house-sized “huts” had outdoor Jacuzzis where we could take bubble baths, sip cocktails, and hear the predators on the savanna far below. All that purportedly was because we required restfulness to meet our deadlines.
Despite several visits to such countries, I knew next to nothing about them, feeling much like a rich First World tourist gazing uncomprehendingly at Third World sights from a cocoon of luxury. I was soon convinced that many of my colleagues—armed with Ivy League and Oxbridge degrees—would not be able to recognize an impoverished person if they saw one. Yet they remained convinced that they knew best what the masses needed—an arrogance that led them to chronically misdiagnose and worsen the problems faced by poor countries and impoverished people.
I was often reminded of a poem satirizing the “development set” I’d read at Tufts:
The Development Set is bright and noble
An Indefinite Sentence Page 18