Gay life in India
According to rough estimates, some 5% 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 10% 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, 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 deviance and 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 prove his 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 cure them 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 there's 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 heterosexual 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 reveling 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 nature this 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 normal sexual 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.