Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be)longing in Contemporary India (8 page)

52
Gay

Bombay

It is my intention that my work in this book be considered as something that falls under the rubric of both gay and lesbian studies as well as Queer Studies. It looks at multiplicities at every level and plays with certainty and fixity, Indianness, globalization, belonging and imagination, as well as a reflexive writing style and could certainly be considered to
queer
established ways of seeing things. But even though my discussions often question identity politics, they are ultimately firmly rooted in them, as are the people whose lives this book professes to describe; thus gay and lesbian studies. In my interviews and during my research in Gay Bombay for three years, I did come across a few individuals that used the term
queer
to identify themselves,129 but the only time I heard it being used in common parlance was at a sexualities conference I attended in Bangalore in June 2004.130 Most of my subjects accepted the homo-hetero binary (even if they played with this transgressively sometimes) and for them, identity and community (discovery, affirmation and negotiation) were extremely important. Moreover, they were not so much concerned with the
gay
versus
queer
binary as with questions of
gay
versus India’s traditional sexuality constructs, or
gay
versus
straight
worlds.

My strategy within this book is to adopt a poly-vocal naming tactic—

where naming is important but at the same time becomes irrelevant and intentionally confusing, reflecting the ground realities witnessed by me.

Here, I am inspired by the persona in Suniti Namjoshi’s novel
Conversations
with Cow
, who ‘gets frightened of her own changing self as well as those of others’ selves’ and ‘is unable to name any of these selves until she adopts the strategy deployed by Hindu texts and practice…to call the gods and goddesses by thousands of different and often apparently mutually contradictory names’ (Vanita, 2002).131

This strategy serves to enable rather than paralyze. It also recognizes that all names, terms, signs and concepts…are constantly in flux and are only approximations necessitated by and necessary to human communication. (Vanita, 2002)

Thus, when I speak about my interview subjects or myself, I use
gay
as it is what most of us chose to be identified as. I make exceptions for those subjects who have chosen non-gay identifiers. I refer to other sexual minorities as need be—so when I talk about
Fire
, which was clearly projected as a lesbian film, I call it a lesbian film, likewise, when Introduction
53

I discuss
hijras
and
kothis
, I address them by these specific terms. But when I talk of the larger context, I use
queer
as an inclusive, all encompas-sing umbrella term, following Narrain’s (2004) lead, because first, as he notes, it is simply easier to use than the current alternative—LBGTKH132

and ‘has the potential of stopping this endless process of adding alphabets to the acronym’;133 and second, because I too believe that despite their differences, all the sexual minorities essentially ‘question the heteronormative ideal that the only way in which two human beings can relate romantically, sexually and emotionally is within a heterosexual context’.134 But I want to emphasize that my usage of
queer
is purely as a framework, not as an identity (and sometimes, in the spirit of poly-vocality, I also
queer
queer by replacing it with LBGT or homosexual).

Globalization Studies

Anthony Giddens points out that even as recent as the 1980s, the term

‘globalization was hardly used, either in academic literature or in everyday language. It has come from nowhere to almost everywhere’ (2002)135

to capture the public imagination and might arguably be considered as

‘the defining feature of human society at the start of the 21st century”136

(Benyon and Dunkerley, 2000). Consequently, globalization or global studies has emerged as a new interdisciplinary field of study in several universities all over the world (and taken on an increased urgency in the volatile post 9/11 world scenario). The term globalization itself remains a contested concept, used on varying occasions ‘to describe a process, a condition, a system, a force and an age (Steger, 2003).137 Moreover, scholars have not only disagreed on how to define this term, but also on its scale, causation, chronology, impact, trajectories and policy outcomes’.138

Different theorists have established different endpoints for their speculation on when globalization began. Steger (2003) divides globalization into five periods—pre-historic (10000 BC–3500 BC), pre-modern (3500 BC–1500 AD), early modern (1500–1750), modern (1750–1970) and contemporary (1970–today).139 For Robertston (1992), the categories are—phase one (1400–1750 or germinal), phase two (1750–1875 or internationalism), phase three (1875–1925 or take off), phase four (1925–1969

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Gay

Bombay

or struggle for dominance) and phase five (1969–today);140 while Held
et al
. (1999) present the chronology as pre-modern (before 1500), early modern (1500–1850), modern (1850–1945) and contemporary (post

1945).141 Friedman (2000) takes a more recent view; to him, globalization as we know it, spans only two eras (mid-1800s–late 1920s and 1989–

today, separated by a
time out
period between the start of World War I and the end of the Cold War).142 Although I recognize the importance of the earlier waves of globalization (expansion of religions, ancient and modern empires built through conquest, extensive international trade, the spread of science, and so on) I shall focus primary on this later period of post-1989 contemporary globalization for the purpose of this book.

The contemporary era of globalization has many different dimen-

sions—economic (increased financial flows around the world, spread of free market capitalism, internationalization of trade, growth of multi-national and transnational corporations, trading blocs, worldwide regulatory bodies like the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, international accords like the erstwhile GATT and current WTO),143 political (collapse of communism, the increase in global terrorism and its countermeasures, advance and retreat of civil rights in different countries, international cooperation, political interventions by international organizations like the UN), cultural (global circulation of media and entertainment, fashions and lifestyles, tastes and habits, the predominance of English as the global language), technological (the personal computer revolution, emergence and spread of the Internet, miniaturization of technology), ideological (neoliberalism, protectionism, anti-globalization) and so on. All of these are inexorably intertwined.

Economic and technological globalization is now considered ir-

reversible (and also faces the most flak from anti-globalization writers like Naomi Klein144 and Arundhati Roy;145 thousands of protesters in places like Seattle [anti-WTO, 1999] the Narmada valley [anti-dam, ongoing]; and at every iteration of the World Social Forum).

The end of the Cold War brought forward two significant and contrasting theses on political globalization—Francis Fukuyama (1992) proclaimed grandiosely that this was surely ‘the end of history’, while Samuel Huntington debunked this thesis (1996), proposing equally Introduction
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grandiosely that it was merely the beginning to an even bigger battle—

the ‘clash of civilizations’.146 Neither of these rings completely true today and instead we find—

both clashes of civilizations as well as the homogenization of civilizations, both environmental disasters and amazing environmental rescues, both the triumph of liberal free market capitalism and a backlash against it, both the durability of nation states and the rise of enormously powerful non-state actors. (Friedman, 2000)147

For this book, I am more interested in the area of cultural globalization, which might be defined as ‘a social process in which the constraints of geography on social and cultural arrangements recede and in which people become increasingly aware that they are receding’

(Waters, 1995).148 Arjun Appadurai (1996) presents two perspectives from which we can view cultural globalization—homogenization and heterogenization.

From a homogenizing perspective, globalization might be seen as a force that erases difference. It is commonly perceived (using a centre-periphery scheme of understanding) as Westernization or Americanization. Other names for this force include ‘coco-colonization’ (Hannerz, 1990) and ‘McWorld’ (Barber, 1995)—where the global might of (mainly American) consumer goods and pop culture overpowers local habits and soon everyone is eating at McDonalds, sipping Coke, listening to Britney Spears and playing basketball while wearing Nike.

The heterogenizing view is more complex than the mere reverse of privileging local over global. Here globalization is understood to set up a ‘dialectic between the local and global, out of which are…born increased cultural options’ (Benyon and Dunkerley, 2002).149 It challenges the assumption that globalization is primarily a Western phenomenon.

It talks about multiple rather than one-way flows. It says that flows occur from the peripheries to centre as well as within the peripheries themselves. It also states that global products and processes are reimagined, re-appropriated and reconstructed in their interaction with the local. It is characterized by paradoxes—such as ‘the rise of multiculturism and the celebration of ethnicity rather than its extinction’

(Bhagwati, 2004).150 Rosaldo and Xavier (2002) call this ‘customization’,151

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Gay

Bombay

while Robertson (1995) deems it ‘glocalization’ (after a Japanese marketing term)—‘the creation and incorporation of locality, processes which themselves largely shape, in turn, the compression of the world as a whole’.152

From this viewpoint, McDonaldization does not equate to Americanization or uniformity—thus the vegetarian McAloo Tikki Burger™ (spicy potato patty burger) I eat in my Bombay McDonalds is uniquely local, while the
sambhar
(lentil soup) and rice that I get with my Kentucky Fried Chicken in Bangalore will not even accompany the dish if I have it in Delhi (and if I am in a Paris McDonalds, I can order espresso and a
brioche
(a light textured French roll or bun) from the standard menu, which might be served to me inside a ski chalet themed restaurant interior).153

Some other examples of cultural heterogenization—The rise of China and India’s soft power in America154 parallel to the flow of capital and cultural commodities from America to these countries. The growth of
Hinglish
in post liberalized India, popularized by the fast talking MTV

or Channel V video jockeys and captured so well by the umpteen number of tag lines for brands like Pepsi (
Yeh Dil Maange More
, ‘This heart wants more’) and Domino’s (
Hungry, kya?
‘Are you hungry?’);155 and the simultaneous introduction of Hindi words (like
chai
[tea],
masala
[spices],
yaar
[friend],
chuddies
[underpants] and Bollywood)156 into the global English speaking lexicon. Washing machines being used to churn
lassi
or buttermilk by restaurant owners in Punjab.157 Bollywood films providing Nigerian viewers with a
parallel modernity
, closer to their own culture and a counter point to Hollywood cinema.158
Dallas
conjuring up different meanings when seen in Israel or Japan….159

Essentially, the heterogenizing vision of globalization re-imagines society as a
flow
—‘of people, information, goods and…signs or cultural symbols’ (Lash and Urry, 1994).160 Some theorists have tried to create an opposition between ‘the space of flows versus the space of places’, (Castells, 1997)161 but like Gille and O Riain, (2002) I do not find this notion very appealing as it makes ‘places disappear entirely’ and also ignores the ‘agency of actors and their sense-making activities as forces in shaping the flows themselves’.162 Instead, I prefer Sassen’s pragmatic middle ground approach that sees ‘globalization as a repatterning of fluidities and mobilities on the one hand and stoppages and fixities on Introduction
57

the other’ (2000).163 As I wrote earlier, I feel that Appadurai’s construct of intersecting
scapes
resonates most with the nature of my study; and in this book, I have tried to read Gay Bombay as a ‘site for the examination of how locality emerges in a globalizing world…how history and genealogy inflect one another and of how global facts take local form’

(Appadurai, 1996).164

The initial approaches to studying global homosexual cultures were of two types. Either the cultures being studied were exoticized by the anthropologists studying them—as something radically different, or, going in the exact opposite direction, Western style gayness was considered to be something universal (Berry, Martin and Yue, 2003).165

The global queering debates in the academia (which started off between Dennis Altman and his peers in the
Australian Humanities Review
in 1996 and have been resonating ever since) spurred the creation of work that was not so essentialist in its approach. Altman set the terms of the debate by provocatively writing—

There is a clear connection between the expansion of consumer society and the growth of overt lesbian or gay world; the expansion of the free market has also opened up possibilities for a rapid spread of the idea that (homo) sexuality is the basis for a social, political and commercial identity…change in America influences the world in dramatic way…

American books, films, magazines and fashions continue to define contemporary gay and lesbian meanings for most of the world….166

Although he went on to concede that these non-Western gay movements might ‘develop identities and lifestyles different to those from which they originally drew their inspiration’, Altman’s view came under immediate attack by his peers, for ignoring the
hybridity
of global-local interactions.