Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be)longing in Contemporary India (53 page)

4. Pawan Varma, (1998), op. cit., p. 115.

5. Ibid, p. 116.

6. Ibid, p. 117.

7. Peter Jackson, ‘Pre-Gay, Post-queer: Thai Perspectives on Proliferating Gender/Sex Diversity in Asia’, in Gerard Sullivan and Peter A. Jackson (Eds),
Gay and Lesbian Asia:
Culture, Identity, Community
(New York: Harrington Park Press, 2000), p. 4.

8. Sunil Khilnani, ‘Many Wrinkles in History’,
Outlook Magazine
, 20 August 2001, as quoted in Pawan Varma,
Being Indian
(New Delhi: Penguin/Viking, 2004), p. 160. Article accessible online—http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20010820&fnam e=Sunil+Kilnani+%28F%29&sid=1

9. Ibid.

10. Pawan Varma (2004), op. cit., pp. 149–150.

11. Arjun Appadurai,
Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), p. 10.

12. Pawan Varma (2004), op. cit., p. 158.

13. Arjun Appadurai (1996), op. cit., p. 4.

14. Paola Bacchetta, ‘When the [Hindu] Nation Exiles its Queers’,
Social Text
(Durham: Duke University Press, 1999), No. 61, p. 144.

15. Greg Booth, ‘Pandits in the Movies: ‘Contesting the Identity of Hindustani Classical Music and Musicians in the Hindi Popular Cinema’,
Asian Music
(University of Texas Press, Winter/Spring 2005), Vol. 36(1), pp. 72–73.

Conclusion
309

16.
Adaab
is an Urdu greeting. Shaayiri is a form of Urdu poetry.
Achkan
and
Gharara
are traditional Muslim male and female costumes respectively. See Fareed Kazmi,
The Politics of India’s Conventional Cinema: Imaging a Universe, Subverting a Multiverse
(Sage Publications: New Delhi 1999), p. 155, for an incisive reading of
Hum Aapke
Hain Kaun
as a medium of Hindutva propaganda.

17. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri,
Empire
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 198.

18. From an article published in the
Organizer
—the mouthpiece of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Brotherhood of volunteers)—the mammoth right wing organization that the BJP is the political wing of. The article, by V.P. Bhatia is titled

‘Raise Tempers, Lacerate and Raise the Whirlwind: The Philosophy Behind Deepa Mehta’s Kinky Film
Fire
’ and appears in the
Organizer
issue dated 27 December 1998.

Cited in Paola Bacchetta, op. cit., p. 153.

19. Unsigned, ‘Shabana’s Swear, Rabri’s Roar, Teresa’s Terror: The Three which Sustain Secularism’, from
Organizer
, 10 January 1999. Cited in Paola Bacchetta, op. cit., p. 157.

20. V.P. Bhatia, op. cit., p. 153.

21. ‘Same Sex Marriage Stumps PM’,
Indiatimes.com

http://people.indiatimes.com/articleshow/996155.cms

22. Arjun Appadurai, (1996), op. cit., p. 47.

23. Ibid.

24. Peter Jackson, op. cit., p. 5.

25. Shivanada Khan, ‘
Kothis
, Gays and (other) MSM’, October 2000, Naz Foundation International.

26. Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai (Eds),
Same-Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature
and History
(New York: Palgrave, 2001), p. 199.

27. A popular pretzel-shaped gooey syrupy Indian sweet.

28. Meaning a platter of assorted items (usually food).

29. Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians & Gays, or PFLAG, is an American support group with more than 200,000 members. See their website—http://www.pflag.org 30. Thomas Blom Hansen,
Wages of Violence: Naming and Identity in Postcolonial Bombay
, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), p. 2.

31. Jeremy Seabrook,
Love in a Different Climate: Men Who have Sex with Men in India
(New York/London: Verso, 1999), p. 47.

32. In
Life Online: Researching Real Experience in Virtual Space
(Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press, 1998, p. 85), Annette Markham puts forth these three terms as frameworks for how users of computer mediated communication frame their experiences online.

For Markham, these ‘definitions fall along a continuum, from tool, to place, to way of being’.

33. Chris Berry and Fran Martin, ‘Queer ‘n’ Asian On and Off the Net: The Role of Cyberspace in Queer Taiwan and Korea’, in David Gauntlett (Ed.),
Web.Studies: Rewiring Media
Studies for the Digital Age
(London: Arnold Publishers, 2000), p. 80.

34. Giuseppe Mantovani,
New Communication Environments from Everyday to Virtual
(London: Taylor & Francis, 1996), pp. 123–127; as cited in Berry and Martin op. cit
.
, p. 78.

35. John Edward Campbell,
Getting It on Online: Cyberspace, Gay Male Sexuality, and Embodied
Identity
(New York: Harrington Park Press, 2004), p. 12.

36. Arjun Appadurai (1996), op. cit
.
, pp. 55–56.

310
Gay

Bombay

37. A ‘community of sentiment’ is a group that ‘begins to imagine and feel things together. Arjun Appadurai (1996) op. cit
.
, p. 8. Appadurai first used the term in his essay ‘Topographies of the Self: Praise and Emotion in Hindu India’, in C.A. Lutz and L. Abu-Lughod (Eds),
Language and the Politics of Emotion
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

38. John Edward Campbell (2004), op. cit
.
, p. 109.

39. Shane Phelan (1994), Getting Specific:
Postmodern Lesbian Politics Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press,
p. 87 paraphrased in Nikki Sullivan (2003),
A Critical Introduction to
Queer Theory
, New York: New York University Press, p. 146.

40. Sara Ahmed and Anne-Marie Fortier (2003), ‘Re-imagining Communities’,
International
Journal of Cultural Studies
, Vol. 6(3), p. 257.

41. Ahmed and Fortier, op. cit., p. 257.

42. Ibid.

43. Arjun Appadurai (1996), op. cit
.
, p. 23.

44. John Gray, ‘Modus Vivendi: Liberalism for the Coming Middle Ages’, in
New Perspectives
Quarterly
(Oxford; Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2001), Vol. 18(2). http://www.

digitalnpq.org/archive/2001_spring/modus.html

45. Ibid.

46. Ibid.

47. Gayatri Spivak,
In Other Worlds: Essays in Cultural Politic
(New York: Methuen, 1987), p. 205.

48. David Woolwine, ‘Community in Gay Male Experience and Discourse’,
Journal of
Homosexuality
(New York: Haworth Press, 2000),
Vol. 38 (4), p. 16.

49. Fred Dallmayr, ‘But on a Quiet Day…A Tribute to Arundhati Roy’,
Logos 3.3
Summer 2004. http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_3.3/dallmayr.htm

50. Amartya Sen ‘India: What Prospects?’,
Indian Horizons
(New Delhi: Indian Council for Cultural Research, 1998), Vol. 45(3/4), p. 21.

51. This incident occurred in the first fortnight of June 2005. Rediffussion, an ad agency working for the client
DNA
(a Bombay city newspaper) had put up billboards all over the city with the text ‘Same sex’ and ‘Safe sex’ written below each other and a checking box right next to each option. As Alok wrote on the Gay Bombay mailing list, this was offensive because

(
a
) people [might] believe that Same Sex and Safe Sex are two mutually exclusive activities. Therefore, same sex can never be safe. So apart from being ‘Bad’ same sex is a death wish;

(
b
) it takes us back to old 80s western rhetoric that all Gay Men have HIV/AIDS or that HIV/AIDS only happens to Gay people;

(
c
) it is indirectly stating that Homosexuality equals AIDS and of course all heterosexual sex is safe, so straight people should just chuck the use of condoms’.

Sustained pressure by some Gay Bombay members, including a visit to the ad agency in question, led to the agency and the client, withdrawing the campaign and apologizing to the group privately. Source—postings to the Gay Bombay List by Alok ‘Same Sex or Safe Sex—What’s in your DNA?’ (Dated 15 June 2005) and Vikram ‘On DNA’s Offensive Ads—Good News’ (Dated 16 June 2005).

52. J. Malarvizhi, ‘Move to give Transgendered Ration Cards Welcome’,
The Hindu
27 July 2006. http://www.hindu.com/2006/07/27/stories/2006072720080300.htm Conclusion
311

53. Arvind Narrain, ‘There are No Short Cuts to Queer Utopia: Sodomy, Law and Social Change’,
Lines Magazine
, Vol. 2(4), February 2004. http://www.lines-magazine.org/

Art_Feb04/Arvind.htm

54. Source—Posting to the Lbgt-India Yahoo! Group ‘Re: saying thanks: Rainbow awards’

by Lramkrishnan2004, dated 30 December 2005.

Also see—’On the Wings of a Rainbow—Film Fest, Music Video, Awards and a March to Mark Gay Pride Week’,
The Telegraph
(Calcutta, India), 21 June 2005. http://www.

telegraphindia.com/1050621/asp/calcutta/story_4893049.asp

55. Nayan Shah, ‘Sexuality, Identity and the Uses of History’, in Ratti Rakesh (Ed.),
A Lotus
of Another Color: An Unfolding of the South Asian Gay and Lesbian Experience
(Boston: Alyson Publications, 1993), p. 119.

56. See—Tarrannum Manjul and Sanjay Singh, ‘All Gays Have United Against Us, Laughs UP Cop’,
Indian Express
, 15 January 2006.

An excerpt from the above article—

‘Lucknow’s Senior Superintendent of Police Ashutosh Pandey says [the gay men arrested] were caught “red-handed” from the park, in sharp contrast to the finding of a fact-finding team from the National Campaign for Sexuality Rights which found the police picked them up from their homes and were not having sex in public. The team activists discovered that Nihal Naqvi was arrested from his home at 11.30 p.m.

on 3 January and the police forced him to call the others at a restaurant in Mahanagar area. There, all the four were arrested’.

Also see message posted to the Lbgt-India Yahoo! Group ‘Lucknow Fact Finding Report—pls circulate widely’ by Sangama on 12 January 2006.

An excerpt from the above report—

‘It is important to note that the FIR [First Information Report or the initial police complaint] was lodged on the previous night, 12.40 a.m., a full 10 hours before the entrapment at the restaurant. Further, at the time of the alleged arrest (at 8.30 p.m.

on 3 January) at the picnic spot, one of the men was actually watching a movie with his family. Additionally, there is nothing to corroborate the police story other than the complainant, himself a police officer. Also, as per the FIR there was no member of the public who could testify as a witness to the alleged incident. It is also highly unlikely that there is any medical evidence or evidence based on the examination of clothes which were worn during the alleged act, though the possibility of doctoring and producing false evidence can never be ruled out.

The police have violated the law with impunity to concoct their story. The team was told that all four men were beaten and asked to sign on blank sheets of paper.

It was also clear that the only reason the first person arrested, Nihal, called his friends because he was beaten and forced to make the calls’.

57. See for example—Marya Shakil, ‘Why Parents, Children go to Court?’
IBNLive.com,
6 July 2006. http://www.ibnlive.com/news/why-parents-children-go-to-court/14793-3.html 58. Ban on Gays Under Review—‘Delhi HC to Decide on Validity of Law Against Homosexuality’,
The Telegraph
(Calcutta, India) 4 February 2006. http://www.telegraphindia.

com/1060204/asp/frontpage/story_5804545.asp

In the article Rashtra Prakash, general secretary of the VHP has this to say about homosexuality—

‘We see it as an attack on Indian culture and value system. These people are influenced by free societies in the West but they forget that they live in India’.

312
Gay

Bombay

59. Bhishma-
ashtami
is a day of funeral offerings in many Hindu temples and Brahmin households to Bhishma, the legendary warrior hero of the epic Mahabharata, who died childless on the battlefield. In 2004, Gay Bombay decided to appropriate this ritual by dedicating ‘one GB meeting a year to remember gay friends who are no longer with us. A kind of an “all souls day”’. The agenda was to—

(
a
) Remember some our friends who have moved on and of our personal views about our death

(
b
) Buy food that our friends would have liked…[and]

(
c
) Share that food with a street child

(Source—posting by zoxlnc on the Gay Bombay Yahoo! Group ‘Bhishma-ashtami and Dead Gay Men’ dated 28 January 2004).

60. Anthony Giddens, (Revised edition)
Runaway World: How Globalization is Reshaping Our
Lives
(New York: Routledge, 2002 [2000]), p. 40.

61. Source—Message post to the
Khush
-List Yahoo! Group by Vgd67 ‘5th Gay Bombay Parents and Relatives Meet’ dated 3 August 2006.

62.
Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge
(‘The Brave-Hearted Will Take the Bride’), released in 1995, is considered one of Bollywood’s biggest films and the defining Bollywood film of the 1990s—with its astute blend of ritzy foreign locations and ‘Indian’ family values.

For more about the film and its impact, read the book
Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge
by Anupama Chopra (London: British Film Institute, 2003).

63. Peter Jackson, op. cit., p. 21.

64. Vanita Ruth (Ed.),
Queering India: Same-sex Love and Eroticism in Indian Culture and Society
(London; New York: Routledge, 2002), p. 5.

65. Arvind Narrain,
Queer: Despised Sexuality, Law and Legal Change
(Bangalore: Books For Change, 2004), p. 26.

66. The suggestion of drawing inspiration from and enlisting the support of the
Dalit
and women’s movements was discussed with me by Bhudev during our conversations. It has been raised more recently on the Lbgt-India Yahoo! Group. See correspondence between Vijai Sai and queernls on 14 April 2005.

67. Ashok Row Kavi posted this message to the Lbgt-India Yahoo! Group on 17 November 2004.