Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be)longing in Contemporary India (18 page)

Overall, the queer activist movement in India is broad and diverse, pursuing several legal and health agendas. Support groups include organizations like Gay Bombay, Lesbian and Bisexual Women in Action (LABIA), Stree Sangam, Anchal Trust and Humsafar Trust (Bombay), Good As You and Sangama (Bangalore), Solidarity and Action Against The HIV

Infection in India (SAATHI) and Sappho (Calcutta), Organised Lesbian Alliance for Visibility and Action (OLAVA) and Queer Studies Circle (Pune), PRISM and Voices Against 377 (Delhi) and so on. Besides these, there have also been what Bhan and Narrain have described as community

‘cultural interventions’ by ‘media activists collectives’ like the Nigah Media Collective in New Delhi, Sarani (Calcutta) and Larzish (Bombay) that use films and other media to generate discussions in colleges and among young Indians about issues of sexuality. 100 A number of such different gay, lesbian,
hijra, kothi
and other groups came together under the umbrella of the India Network for Sexual Minorities (INFOSEM) in October 2003, in order to collectively advocate for their rights.101 There are also resource centres like the South and Southeast Asia Resource Centre on Sexuality (Delhi) and legal support groups like the Lawyer’s Collective (Bombay).

The current situation in India might be considered to be both similar and different to that of Western societies pre-gay liberation. It is similar in a sense because, the struggle to repeal Section 377 has helped in galvanizing LBGT activism in the country (‘In Foucauldian terms, power elicits its own resistance…’).102 It is different because in India as with other Asian developing countries, ‘official condemnation of homosexuality exists but based on much different concerns than in the West.

From this Perspective…
107

It is part of a broader discourse about Western influence’ (Sanders, 2004).103 The drivers for
political
activism (besides Section 377) in India include economic growth, international LBGT NGOs, international human rights NGOs and the overall discourse around human rights, travel to the West (however, with Internet this has changed—as Sanders writes,

‘the journey to the West no longer requires travel’),104 help from the diaspora, technological changes and
HIV/AIDS. With regard to AIDS, its role in the West is well documented, in India too, we see that first, the disease is creating spaces to discuss issues about sexuality and second, the majority of the Indian LBGT activist group[s] receive funding for HIV/AIDS related work.105

To wrap up this section quickly, what all of the above—the history, the legal challenges and the medical interventions—have done, is enable an ideoscape of gayness to be formulated and to circulate within the Indian society. There is an awareness of certain issues, an acknowledgement that gayness is something that exists in India and an imagination of the different facets of this gayness.

NOTES

1. ‘Information arbitrage is the synthesis of information from disparate perspectives, woven together to produce a picture of the world that you would never had if you had looked at it from only one perspective’. Thomas Friedman,
The Lexus and the Olive
Tree
(Revised Ed.) (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux 2000 [1999]), pp. 19–20.

2. Arjun Appadurai, ‘Grassroots Globalization and the Research Imagination’,
Public
Culture
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2000), Vol. 12(1), pp. 5–6.

3. Ibid.

4. Arjun Appadurai,
Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), p. 5.

5. Ibid, p. 7.

6. Ibid, p. 8.

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. 9.

8. Ashok Row Kavi, ‘Contract of Silence’, in Hoshang Merchant,
Yaarana: Gay Writing
from India
(New Delhi: Penguin India, 1999), p. 18.

9. This was the country’s first gay magazine. It continues to be published very sporadically now; after the emergence of the Internet, its periodicity and circulation have dwindled. But for a few years in the early 1990s, it was the only source of gay information, narratives and networking, available to gay men in India.

108
Gay

Bombay

10. The Humsafar Trust began its operations in 1991, with the mandate of working in the field of HIV/AIDS awareness or prevention. Today, it has grown into a large multifaceted organization with a drop in centre, a sexually transmitted diseases clinic and counselling, advocacy and outreach services.

11. Initially a suburban McDonalds; the current regular venue is a more spacious suburban coffee shop.

12. Approximately US$ 22, at early 2007 exchange rates.

13. The parties are of two types. ‘Bar Nights’ are usually held at smaller bars and clubs. The entrance fee is less (approximately Rs 250–350 or US$ 6–8 at early 2007

exchange rates) and this usually includes coupons for drinks or snacks, but no dinner.

‘GB Parties’ are held at large nightclubs—they usually cost Rs 450 (or US$ 10) and sometimes include a buffet dinner besides coupons for drinks and snacks. In May 2005, the group also decided to expand into hosting occasional Sunday brunches, with food and games, including speed dating.

14. The group website (created in 1999) states, ‘There is nothing “official” about the group. There never was, and there still is not a membership form, registration fee, annual general meetings, minutes of meetings and voting or veto. Everyone is free to participate’. http://gaybombay.org/misc/aboutGay Bombay.html 15. In
The Idea of India
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1997, p. 94) Sunil Khilnani explains that in the 1980s, most of the Indian government’s revenues came from indirect taxes, which it imposed through its ‘protectionist regime of control and regulations simply to sustain itself, not for development reasons’. Despite having a fiscal deficit of around 10 per cent of the national income, the government continued to spend freely through the 1980s by borrowing either domestically from the national banks it controlled or from abroad in the form of low interest loans and aid. However, the international climate changed rapidly in the late 1980s and Rao’s government was faced with the grim reality of a country on the verge of financial bankruptcy.

16. Rajiv Desai,
Indian Business Culture
(New Delhi: Viva Books, 1999), p. 85.

17. Sources:

Government of India,
Ministry of Finance
Economic Survey 2003–2004
, p. 2. Accessible on the Ministry of Finance website: http://finmin.nic.in/the_ministry/dept_eco_affairs/

economic_div/eco_survey/index.htm

World Development Indicators, 2007. Accessible on the
India Country Overview 2007

page of the World Bank website: http://www.worldbank.org.in/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/

COUNTRIES/SOUTHASIAEXT/INDIAEXTN/0,,contentMDK:20195738~menuPK: 295589~pagePK:1497618~piPK:217854~the SitePK:295584,00.html

18. ‘2006–07 GDP growth revised upwards to 9.6%’
Hindu Business Line
, 1 February 2008, http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2008/02/01/stories/20080201517511200.htm 19. Sources
: Ministry of Finance
Economic Survey
op. cit., p. 2;
Ministry of Finance
Monthly
Economic Report
(Government of India, August 2006) Accessible on the Ministry of Finance website— http://finmin.nic.in/stats_data/monthly_economic_report/index.

html

20. AT Kearney
, FDI Confidence Index 2005
(Global Business Policy Council, December 2005), Volume 8. Accessible on the world wide web— http://www.atkearney.com/main.

taf?p=5,3,1,140,1

21. Fareed Zakaria, ‘India Rising’,
Newsweek
(U.S. Edition) 6 March 2006. http://www.

msnbc.msn.com/id/11571348/site/newsweek/

From this Perspective…
109

22. Arun Shourie, ‘Before the Whining Drowns it Out, Listen to the New India’,
Indian
Express Online
, 15 August 2003. http://www.indianexpress.com/full_story.php?content_

id=29666

23. See Dani Rodrik and Arvind Subramanian, ‘From ‘Hindu Growth’ to Productivity Surge: The Mystery of the Indian Growth Transition’ (
CEPR Discussion Papers
4371, 2004) Downloadable—http://www.nber.org/papers/w10376.pdf

24. Sunil Khilnani, ‘Many Wrinkles in History’,
Outlook,
20 August 2001, as quoted in Pawan Varma,
Being Indian
(New Delhi: Penguin/Viking, 2004), p. 160. Accessible online—http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20010820&fname=Sunil+

Kilnani+%28F%29&sid=1

25. Pawan Varma, op. cit., (2004), pp. 88–89.

26. Anonymous magazine editor, interviewed by Leela Fernandes on 17 September 1998, for Leela Fernandes, ‘Nationalizing “the Global”: Media Images, Cultural Politics and the Middle Class in India’,
Media, Culture & Society
(Sage Publications, 2000)
Vol. 22, p. 614.

27. Leela Fernandes op. cit., p. 615.

28. Indian Census 2000 data, cited in Gurcharan Das,
The Elephant Paradigm: India Wrestles
with Change
(New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 2002), p. 171.

29. Jagdish Bhagwati and Arvind Panagariya, ‘Great Expectations’,
The Wall Street Journal
, 24 May 2004.

30. Gurcharan Das (2002), op. cit., p. 253.

31. Paola Bacchetta (‘When the [Hindu] Nation Exiles its Queers’,
Social Text
[Durham: Duke University Press, 1999] No. 61 p. 141) describes Hindu nationalism as a ‘extremist religious micronationalism of elites, in which elites make strategic political uses of elements drawn from one religion to construct a exclusive, homogenized, Other-repressive, “cultural” nationalist ideology and practice to retain and increase elite power…. Hindu nationalists ultimately propose to eliminate all non-Hindus from the citizen-body….’

32. Arvind Rajagopal,
Politics After Television: Religious Nationalism and the Reshaping of the
Indian Public
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 3.

33. See Farhad Wadia, ‘Don’t Rock Our Boat, Navalkarji’,
Indian Express
, 11 April 1998.

http://www.expressindia.com/ie/daily/19980411/10150944.html

34. See Arjuna Ranawana, ‘Bombay’s Cultural Wars’,
Asia Week
, 7 August 1998, for an overview of the Shiv Sena culture policing of the mid-1990s. http://www.asiaweek.

com/asiaweek/98/0807/feat1.html

35. In a speech addressed to Indian American and American business leaders in New York, then Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha said—‘Swadeshi is pro-global but it is pro-Indian without being anti-foreign. And that’s the important message from India…. If every country were to follow this policy and most countries are following it, we can have a better world….’ Speech quoted in Narayan Keshavan, ‘Swadeshi goes Global’

Outlook
, 27 April 1998, cited in William Mazzarella,
Shoveling Smoke: Advertising and
Globalization in Contemporary India
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2003), p. 11.

36. See—

(
a
) ‘BJP Admits India Shining Error’,
BBC Online
, 28 May 2004. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/

hi/south_asia/3756387.stm

(
b
) M.G. Devasahayam, ‘On Whom Does India Shine’,
Hindu Online
, 23 March 2004.

http://www.hindu.com/op/2004/03/23/stories/2004032300110200.htm
110
Gay

Bombay

37. Jeremy Seabrook,
Love in a Different Climate: Men Who Have Sex With Men in India
(New York/London: Verso, 1999), p. 140.

38. See—

(
a
) P. Sainath’s series on rising farmer suicides in India on
Indiatogether.org.
http://www.

indiatogether.org/opinions/psainath/suiseries.htm

(
b
) Arundhati Roy’s critique of big dams and nuclear bombs, ‘The Greater Common Good’, available online on
Narmada.org
http://www.narmada.org/gcg/gcg.html (
c
) Jean Dreze’s overview of some successful pro-poor policies in different Indian states: ‘Don’t Forget India’s Poor’, in
Time Asia
, 6 December 2004. http://www.

time.com/time/asia/covers/501041206/two_indias_vpt_dreze.html

39. I am focussing on the English language press because it is what is predominantly read by the middle class, both the subject and the context of this book.

40. Due to an astute strategy of price cutting, price differentiation and product diver-sification carried out by a team of marketing whizkids under the guidance of owner Sameer Jain, the
Times
group’s revenues rose from rupees 4.79 billion in the year ended July 1994 to rupees 15 billion in July 2003, making it India’s largest media company. Source: Vanita Kohli op. cit., p. 26.

41. ‘The Indian Entertainment and Media Industry: Unraveling the Potential’—FICCI Frames 2006 Report (Bombay: Price Waterhouse and Coopers, 2006), p. 12.

42. For a closer look at Page 3 culture and the 2005 Bollywood film made on the subject, see—

(
a
) Zubair Ahmed, Bollywood Director Eyes ‘Tabloid Culture’,
BBC Online
, 30 July 2004.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/3929687.stm

(
b
) Sukanya Varma, ‘Madhur Bhandarkar Proves Himself Yet Again’,
Rediff.com.

21 January 2005. http://www.rediff.com/movies/2005/jan/21page.htm (
c
) Namrata Joshi and Lata Khubchandani, ‘Page One and a Half ’,
Outlook India,
7 February 2005. http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fname=Film%20(F)& fodname=20050207&sid=1

43. ‘Highlights from NRS 2006’,
Hindu Business Line
, 30 August 2006. http://www.

hinduonnet.com/businessline/blnus/14301801.htm

44. Rajiv Desai, op. cit., p. 66.

45. Television officially began in India in 1959, but it was not until the beginning of colour transmission for the 1982 Asian Games (hosted by New Delhi) that the medium really took off. India’s former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi was deputed in charge of the event by his mother, the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Rajiv oversaw the smooth functioning of the games, including their national colour transmission, a first in the country’s history. Prior to the games, the government had encouraged Indian industry to manufacture colour televisions and their import into the country was permitted at a lower rate of duty than that for other electronic items. Both these factors led to a spurt in colour television ownership. Soaps like
Hum Log
and
Buniyaad
, mythologicals like
Ramayan
and
Mahabharata
and Hindi song compilation shows like
Chhayageet
and
Chitrahaar
were the hallmark of the 1980s along with the sycophantic evening news bulletins and the staple Sunday evening Bollywood film—all screened on Doordarshan.