Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be)longing in Contemporary India (17 page)

IT

India’s IT revolution of the past decade has been truly spectacular.

From negligible revenues in the late 1980s, the Indian IT and ITES

IT Enabled Services including Business Process Outsourcing and Call Center industry77 has grown at an astonishing rate from the 1990s till the present day, exceeding US$ 36 billion in annual revenue in FY 2005–06. It made up about 5 per cent of the country’s GDP in 2006

and employed 1.2 million workers.78 The industry is expected to reach a size of US$ 100 billion by 2010.79 This is not the space to go into why and how this technology and call centre boom happened;80 I am interested in it because it of the empowerment it generated among the urban gay community involved within this industry.

As Carol Upadhya (2004) has noted, the bulk of Indian-owned software and ITES companies (including those located outside India, in Silicon Valley, which are not really Indian, but still appropriated by Indian media and included within the larger narrative of the Indian IT success story) have been founded by middle class engineers and entrepreneurs.

These individuals (like Infosys’ Narayana Murthy) became heroes for the Indian middle classes when their companies started doing well and symbols of the possibilities available in the Indian of the new millennium.

For those working within this sector, like some of my interviewees, their employment had enabled them to achieve financial independence and articulate desires that would have been unthinkable for their parents’

generation. In some instances, this had led them to gather up the courage to come out to their families. But even when this did not happen, the financial independence coupled with the high self-esteem and positive buzz around their professions had certainly inspired confidence. This confidence fuelled their desire to access the different gay outlets that were simultaneously becoming available and I could see that they were striving to imagine and then to live out a gay lifestyle of their choice.

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AFTER READING
GALATEA 2.2…

Picture a bus heading north. The red double-decker winds its way through
Bombay’s crowded streets. It coughs out smoke and jerks and jolts it way
through the seething mass of humanity, miraculously managing to avoid
direct contact with any one of the individuals that cross its path. On the bus
are two young men with shiny happy faces who are oblivious to the mayhem
that surrounds them. They sit close, their thighs fused together as one, just
like their breath and their fingers gently caressing each other, just like their
smiles, for they know that the journey is short and the night will be long.

Dear Z,

‘It was like so, but it wasn’t’. As I put the phone down after speaking to
you for what I hope will be the last time in our lives, block you on MSN

Messenger and tear up your photograph that has switched bedside tables
via a 30-hour plane ride (but not your Valentine cards and scribbled pencil
drawings of the two of us; I can’t bring myself to tear those), the irony of
Richard Powers’ words does not escape me. All our dreams, our hopes, our
destinies, were, yet plainly weren’t. Langston Hughes once wrote about a
dream deferred drying up like a raisin in the sun. But what about a dream
shattered, Z, without the comfort of a slow burn? I need a metaphor for
the way I feel.

When our love first blossomed, I was so full of it that I felt I would burst.

I remember how I shouted out loud from my
nani
’s building terrace at the
passers-by walking below and wrote lovesick editorials on my web magazine till the readers pleaded with me to stop. How the crowds parted as we
moved to the centre of the dance floor at our first (and only) Gay Bombay
party together and looked on approvingly as our bodies swayed to our own
private rhythm. How you would spend hours curled up against me in bed,
happy to just trace the contours of my neck, my elbows and my heart. The
superstitious before-exam walk on exactly the same route that we took
every day, the redness of the sherbet your mother made for us when we
returned home, the roughness of your braces as you carefully tried not to
hurt me every time our lips met, your smell…
our
smell. The tenderness of
your perfectly formed love-bites that I would wear as a badge to college
for my classmates to raise their eyebrows in amusement. The radiant love,
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our exuberant foolish confidence in eternity. This relationship was supposed
to work, damnit! We had everything on our side—love, togetherness,
the approval of our families…it was the perfect Bollywood love story, a
guaranteed blockbuster! How the hell did it flop so badly?

Now that it’s over, I want to curl up into nothingness and am finding
it difficult to type as my hands are shaking and my heart is empty. I have
come to understand that to be ‘as small as love’ is still a very big thing
and sometimes, your love doesn’t want to fit in response. I don’t want to
buy the premise that ‘a love fostered on caretaking cripples the loved one’.

I want to believe that in some way, however small and however silly, you grew
with me, as I with you. That despite all your bitterness, your tirade against
me, your family, the people who love you the most, you will surely one day
find the ability to uncoil, unburden, understand. Remember the magic we
shared. And not break someone else’s heart. I know that I hurt you. I am sorry
that I was not more patient. How I wish things were different. But they are
not and I am tired and don’t want to play any more, Z. I wish you a good
game, though. Best of luck and see the world…for yourself.

IDEOSCAPE

To understand contemporary Indian gay identity—we need to know its history and background, the forces that it is fighting against to assert itself and the global influences it is co-opting along the way.

The brief history and context of Indian gayness that I have narrated earlier constitutes one part of my ideoscape of gayness. I have narrated this history not just to provide a temporal background, but also because I believe that it is imperative that this history is known and constantly reiterated. First, this ‘destabilizes opponents who argue that homosexuality is purely a Western import’81 (Sanders, 2004). Of course, playing the blame game on homosexuality is nothing new.

As Vanita and Kidwai (2001) point out—‘Arabs argue that Persians introduced the vice and Persians blame Christian monks…many believe that the idea and practice of same sex love were imported into India by “foreigners”—Muslim invaders, European conquerors or American capitalists’.82

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Also, ‘the simple fact that there is history behind sexual variation is validating for contemporary gays and lesbians. They are not alone in history’83 (Sanders, 2004). Indian historians especially, as Narrain writes, including highly esteemed figures like Romila Thapar and DD Kosambi, have either been completely silent on the issue—they have either dismissed it as something irrelevant, or have purposefully heterosexualized queer traditions84 (Narrain, 2004). Reclaiming the right heritage of India’s homosexual past and constantly emphasizing it, will provide hope and sustenance, more so for those who are living very difficult lives in very difficult circumstances.

Coming to Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which was introduced by the British in colonial India in 1861 and still stands in the country’s books. The law, with the heading
Unnatural Offences
states—

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 a term which may extend to ten years and shall also be liable to fine. Explanation—Penetration is sufficient to constitute the carnal intercourse necessary to the offence described in this section.

The statute does not clarify exactly what these unnatural acts are but

‘the courts have interpreted the same to include anal sex, oral sex, intra femural sex [thigh sex] and mutual masturbation. In effect all the possible forms of sexual expressions between males have been criminalized’

(Bondyopadhyay, undated).85 Although a look at the history of the use of this section reveals that there have been very few charges under Section 377 in the courts for acts of consensual adult male sexual acts (it has mostly been used to prosecute cases of child sexual abuse),86 the law has been used in public spaces by the police to abuse and blackmail gay people and harass outreach workers doing HIV/AIDS intervention work. The existence of this section also means that homosexual domestic partnerships and
hijra
kinship are not recognized by the law.

Queers and
hijras
have had no rights to inheritance, adoption, custody, hospital visits, or to the bodies of their deceased partners or kin. It has been perfectly legal for employers to refuse to hire or once hired to fire
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someone simply because he or she is queer. Doctors have been able to refuse to treat queers with impunity. And the list of queer deprivation of basic citizenship rights goes on. (Bacchetta, 1999)87

Narrain and Bhan pertinently refer to Foucault’s concept of the pan-optic (2000) in the context of 377, or ‘the idea that the law is internally manifested within its subjects and not just externally imposed upon them’ and state that ‘the very existence of Section 377 shapes people’s beliefs about queer sexuality as they internalize the prohibition that the law puts forth.’88

There have been various debates in English newspapers about the pros and cons of abolishing Section 377 over the past few years; the topic remains contentious.89 Legally, the section was first challenged in 1994, when the human rights activist group AIDS
Bhedbav Virodhi
Andolan
(ABVA; Campaign Against AIDS Discrimination) filed a public interest petition in the Delhi High Court regarding its constitutional validity. However, the group became defunct soon afterwards and the petition was never heard.

In 2001, the legal process was revived, when the Naz Foundation (an India and UK-based AIDS prevention organization), represented by the Lawyer’s Collective HIV/AIDS action unit, approached the Delhi High Court with a request to abolish Section 377 as it was violative of the Right to Equality (Article 14), Right to Freedom (Article 19) and Right to Life and Liberty (Article 21) guaranteed by the Indian constitution. This action was duly reported by the country’s media.90 The court wanted the Central government’s view on the subject before it issued its response and repeatedly sent requests to the Attorney General of India, asking for a clarification on the subject.91 On 8 September 2003, after dilly-dallying for two years, the Indian Central Government finally informed the Delhi High Court that homosexuality could not be legalized in India as in their view, Indian society was intolerant to it. This decision and the protests by gay activists in its aftermath were widely broadcast in the media92 as was the further dismissal of Naz’s review petition in 2004 that asked the court to reconsider its stance.

This dismissal brought to the foreground the extremely homopho-

bic nature of both the government and the court. The government From this Perspective…
105

passionately defended the section and argued that the petitioners had no
locus standi
, that there was no proof how HIV/AIDS interventions were affected by Section 377 and that it was a useful deterrent in punishing child sexual abuse. Three of the statements were particularly shocking—

Indian society disapproves homosexuality and this is strong enough to justify it being treated as a criminal offence.

Deletion of the said section can well open floodgates of delinquent behaviour and be construed as providing unbridled license for the same.

The right to privacy (in the case of homosexuals) cannot be extended to defeat public morality, which must prevail over the exercise of any private right.93

Arvind Narrain wondered in the
Hindustan Times—

Why does [the government], in support of its contention on the need for Section 377, cite the fact that repressive intolerant regimes such as those ruling Burma, Zimbabwe, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, all have such laws?

Why does it not instead cite countries which have contributed to an emerging human rights jurisprudence such as South Africa, Canada, Brazil and South Korea and argue for a repeal? What accounts for this deep-seated fear which refuses to acknowledge that sexual ‘non conformity’ is both a part of Indian history as well as part of contemporary culture?94

The petitioners then approached the Supreme Court and on 1 April 2005, the court directed the government to file its response.95 The apex court ruled on 3 February 2006 to set aside the petition dismissal and referred the petition back to the High Court for reconsideration.96 The case continues and developments since then have provided activists with some hope. The first has been the government’s own lawyer, additional solicitor-general Gopal Subramaniam agreeing in court that the law needed to be reviewed.97 The second has been the tremendous publicity generated by the letter writing campaign led by Nobel laureate Amartya Sen and author Vikram Seth (some of the other 100 signatories included leading Indian citizens from all walks of life such as Soli Sorabjee, Nitin Desai, Swami Agnivesh, Saleem Kidwai and Shubha Mudgal) as a direct
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appeal to the government and society to end discrimination against Section 377. This campaign is significant because for the first time, the country’s leading gay and straight luminaries from all walks of life, have openly and jointly appealed to the government to reconsider their stand on the inhuman law and it has received a huge amount of press coverage both nationally and internationally.98 The third has been the government’s very own NACO (National AIDS Control Organization) throwing its hat in the ring—and offering official support to the abolishment of the section.99