The Comment Factory

In Delhi, it’s not uncommon to see men holding hands as they chew paan and walk down the street, or to catch a glimpse of a rickshaw passenger with his arm around a male friend in the back seat. It’s a public sign of friendship here (although not considered acceptable when displayed between women).
Moreover, gaze around any trendy club or bar in the capital, and you’ll notice that the middle class boys are a little freer in their fashion. Elaborately coiffed hair and extra tight clothes are not considered the camp choice. In Bollywood, the macho protagonist hunks are shiny men with slick dance moves and open shirts that gyrate and swing. Men’s gestures and dress have absolutely no sexual connotations – unsurprising, since conceiving of anything else would be anathema. A list of gay Indian celebrities wouldn’t roll quickly off the tongue.

Homosexuality is illegal in India, and has been since the rule of the British. In the 1860s, Civil Servants considered it an abhorrence and it was criminalized. Queen Victoria infamously approved legislation against sodomy (refusing to sign away the social freedom of lesbians because she didn’t believe they existed). An echo of this came recently when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was asked if he supported decriminalisation. His reply? “There would not be much appreciation for a law like that in India.” And so the law remains. Conviction can lead to up to 10 years in prison, plus a fine. According to the government, there have been no arrests in 20 years, though Human Rights Watch disagrees. The law has been used to blackmail people, allow abuse by police, and, worst of all for an Indian, leads to ostracism and a shameful ex-communcation from the family.

And it is not because of a lethargy over changing legislation that it remains so. In 2005 a suggestion by the Indian Law Commission to lift the ban on homosexuality was rejected by the New Delhi government. In 1996, Deepa Mehta’s film Fire was released. In it, two women are pushed together by the abuse and neglect of their husbands, by the end leaving their families for each other: not before, symbolically, one of them is burned in a fire. It was immediately banned by certain religious groups and on the first day of screening, cinemas were attacked by Muslim fundamentalists.

Ignoring the issue only causes India’s estimated 70-100 million gay, bisexual and transgendered people to move underground. Many liberal Indians blame the rapid spread of AIDs on the government’s decision to force the uninformed homosexual populace into the shadows. Some, however, are beginning to emerge, blinking, into the light. Today’s Times of India carries a story that suggests hope, if only because it was printed at all. In Howrah, near Kolkata, two women in their early twenties (prime marriage age) met at a wedding and fell in love. Now, they are accepted as a couple, and one of the girls’ parents is ready to adopt a child for them to make their unit complete. Not, it might be added, before they ran away together, leaving a note. “We know our relatives and society will not accept this alliance,” it read. “We have decided to leave our families and live elsewhere as a married couple.” When they returned to their village, they must have fallen backwards in shock when one of the girls’ parents killed the proverbial fattened calf.

Gay clubs exist semi-openly in the cities, and there are signs that in liberal circles they’re beginning to be tolerated. This year saw the first gay pride marches in Delhi, Mumbai and Pondicherry. But India is a dowry-based social economy that partially condones female infanticide in order for families to afford a part in it.

With a coming general election, no party has muttered a single word about the law. A whole section of the population are ignored by the Congress government and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) because, apparently, they do not exist. Decriminalizing homosexuality in India will not happen tomorrow. Tolerance is far off. Celebration is practically inconsiderable.

But it seems, for at least some Indians, there would be an appreciation for a law “like that”. And a parent’s voice speaks loudest in India. And if one parent can speak then perhaps, one day, one government will too.