Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be)longing in Contemporary India (52 page)

This Indian diaspora at large, are now imagined as part of
Pravasya
Bharat
—non-resident Indians, or NRIs, that the central and state governments are so eager to pursue.68 While a chunk of these NRIs might be considered
Hindutva
-oriented (and perhaps homophobic, although I do see that making this connection is rather facile), there are also others who are not and they have begun to flex their muscles of late. For example, the successful campaign to prevent Narendra Modi (the chief minister of the western Indian state of Gujarat and the man believed to be responsible for not doing enough to stop the communal rioting in the state in 2002) from being granted a US visa in 2005. A strategy of outing Indian politicians and business leaders with regressive views will certainly need the co-operation of the Indian diaspora. India’s penal Conclusion
303

code that permits the victimization of its sexual minorities is definitely shameful and the progressive world that India is so desperate to be a part of given its recent economic success, often mandates human right compliance as a prerequisite of membership. I believe that sustained lobbying by the diaspora will surely contribute to the progress being made on the ground in the home country—although I am aware this will again be hugely problematic as the idea of India and what constitute Indianness is perhaps played out with greater intensity within the diaspora. Still, it is something that needs to be done.

I strongly feel that closeted gay men should not be shunned. I disagree with my respondent Bhudev’s contention that real activism is only on the ground and not in cyberspace; I think that real activism happens everywhere—offline as well as online, including social spaces like Gay Bombay. I find Nachiket’s comments in this context to be crucial—activism is not just about awareness, but also about change and while activists on the ground bring about awareness, change can be brought about by everyone, including closeted queer people in positions of power. So it is important to co-opt the closeted and make them feel they are part of the community. Here I emphasize—that there is a difference between co-opting someone and endorsing someone—in

coalition politics, you often work together with those whose policies or ideologies you disagree with, in the interest of the larger common minimum program agreed upon by everyone. What is important is

doing whatever is necessary so as to keep the
modus vivendi
going.

I disagree with my respondent Rahim (in the context of passport princesses who remain closeted at home but go abroad to live their gay lives) that a gay man from Bombay dancing on the streets of Boston would not make a difference to the movement in India. Images circulate globally today and what is happening on the streets of Boston is shown on television screens in Bombay. Thus, when a news channel like NDTV

covers Boston pride (as it did in 2004) and interviews the queer Indian men and women dancing on the streets, it
does
have an impact on opinions in India.

Non-queer identified groups and individuals when co-opted into

the struggle can be powerful allies. We have seen the impact of a few high profile heterosexually identified individuals like Amartya Sen and
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Soli Sorabjee when their voices are added to Vikram Seth’s letter. Groups like Voices Against 377—the Delhi based coalition of Women’s Rights, Children’s Rights, Human Rights and Queer Rights groups are another significant step in this regard. As Bhan and Narrain write, groups like

‘Voices present[s] a forum that cannot be dismissed easily…’69 as they frame queer issues in the public eye as not just queer issues, but also human right, women or children’s issues.

(
j
)
HIV needs to be battled much more strongly

The threat of HIV cannot be emphasized enough.70 The potential catas-trophe is far too large and the efforts being done to combat it are far too little. Fear and loathing within the queer sub-groups, including Gay Bombay, must give way to a pragmatic approach of developing HIV education, prevention and management programmes. The battle against HIV is multi-pronged, with attention needing to be paid to education and awareness, provision for adequate medication and treatment to patients and treating patients with dignity. Queer people are discriminated against on a regular basis on all these counts. Consider this story from the Lbgt-India Yahoo! list—

One transgender named Kokila, age 32, was suffering from abdominal pain and was admitted in Female Surgical Emergency Ward at G.H.

Pondicherry [in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu]. She was advised to have an operation. It was also found that she was HIV positive. The nurses attending on Kokila asked her to lift her saree to show her ‘sex organ’—if male or female. Then, she was allowed to sleep on the floor.

She asked a blanket for her use and was scolded as—‘Transgender like you, can do without any comfort’. And the doctor threw the case sheet in her face and also threw her out of the room cursing her and warning her never to step again into G.H.71

Queer people need to take up arms for themselves, as Ashok Row Kavi has rightly said. Nobody else is going to do it. There really is not that much time to waste.

Thus, in the above case, the transgender community in Tamil Nadu immediately took out a protest rally, met the state’s chief minister and had action taken against the offending nurse.72

Conclusion
305

PARTING THOUGHTS

Throughout this book I have harped on the glocal, or the working of the process of globalization within a context that is peculiarly Indian. While wrapping up, I find that it is two of these
peculiarly Indian
traits that provide me with inspiration as I dream of the future of Gay Bombay and the larger Indian queer community. The first of these traits is fortitude—‘the intrinsic Indian propensity for not losing hope’ and ‘the resilience that comes from being continuously exposed to adversity’ (Varma, 2004).73

Nothing fazes a Bombayite. Whether the city is almost drowned in tor-rential rains and floods, or bombed on multiple occasions with terrorist attacks, its citizens pick themselves and each other up and move on ahead, purposefully. Indeed, as Varma reiterates—

For the vast majority of Indians, life is a daily challenge. Even for a middle class family, very little can be taken for granted—schooling, water, electricity, medical care, higher education, housing—everything is a struggle.

And yet, the miracle is that everyone seems to be getting by and in fact, planning for more…. The deprivations in India and the social callousness which ignores them is condemnable. But the Indian is the ultimate stoic.

Indeed, the real Indian rope trick is the persistence of hope in the most hopeless of circumstances. (Varma, 2004)74

The second of these traits is adaptability. As Khilnani (2001) writes—

What is ‘distinctively Indian’ is ‘a capacity…an ability to improvise, a kind of cunningness at historical survival, a knack for being able to respond to any question that may be asked. In the musical forms of India, as in its literary traditions, it is not fixity—the dogma of the singular text—that is valued, but rather the skill of improvisation and variation’.75

It is so difficult to just
physically
be gay in a place like Bombay. For someone coming for a party in a South Bombay pub from faraway Thane, the bone crushing train ride, the sweat bath and the time it takes to reach the party venue are all issues to be factored in—plus of course, an alibi for one’s absence to the family waiting at home. Participants at Gay Bombay events overcome these logistical encumbrances with a ferocious vivacity that I find energizing. Changes are not just limited to those that
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dance at parties or fight for the abolition of 377. Conversations are being had by many other gay guys, with their friends, family members and colleagues at work. Situations are managed, whether at work or at home and spaces are being eked out for relationships, sex and love.

I am excited and scared as I look towards the future. The fears are not unfounded; however, neither is the excitement. If Indianness is something that grows out of imagination, then this imagination can also be
reimagined
to include gayness—and I see daily instances of this reimagination occurring all around me. Take my own life for example and my relationship with my ex-boyfriend Z and his parents that I wrote about at the beginning of this book. Z did not have to come out to his parents—they brought up the issue with him sensitively and then followed it up with a reassuring dinner with me, where they comforted the two of us that they were supportive of our relationship and just wanted us to be happy. Or take the cases of gay marriages, commitment ceremonies and anniversary celebrations that keep on taking place in India, despite the laws being what they are. The daily newspapers are full of inspiring stories. In a tribal village in Orissa, two girls get married to each other in a traditional ceremony, in the presence of their family.76

Another village in Assam votes for lesbian rights.77 There are innumerable stories of hope and validation.
Time Out
magazine’s gay columnist AllyGator writes about attending the 25th anniversary celebration of one such gay couple, where—

Parsi queens rubbed shoulders with Parsi aunties. Gay couples with straight families. Strident gay activists with determinedly closeted gay men. People had come from all over the country and even from abroad.78

I feel inspired by the small acts of institutional change that are taking place with regularity. For example, applicants for a new passport can now fill in one of three options on their application form—
M
,
F
and
E

(for eunuch). (In an attempt to recognize the
hijras
as a separate category, the government seems to have erroneously followed the popular convention of categorizing
hijras
as eunuchs in this regard). Likewise, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs has made it possible to change one’s sex in one’s passports on the production of a sworn affidavit and a medical certificate from the hospital where the person has Conclusion
307

undergone treatment—implying that gender reconstructive surgery is not illegal in India. It is also possible to change one’s sex on the electoral roll and on one’s PAN card (Permanent Account Number card, used as an identification card and for taxation purposes).79 NACO or the National Aids Control Organization80—a division of the Government of India’s Health and Family Welfare ministry works with the Humsafar Trust and other organizations working with MSM regularly on intervention projects; NACO’s officials continuously show their support to the organization—

for example, Dr Prasada Rao, the head of NACO inaugurated Humsafar’s Voluntary testing centre in June 1999. Similarly, the city’s hospitals like Sion, Cooper and Jaslok all co-operate with Humsafar with regard to HIV

counselling and referral. More significantly, as noted earlier, NACO has filed an affidavit in court supporting the demand to scrap Section 377, on the grounds that the presence of the section is an impediment to HIV prevention work in the country81 and at the National AIDS Council convened by the Prime Minister in the annex of the Indian parliament on 16 February 2006; Ashok Row Kavi reported receiving encouraging signs from the ministers present.82

I am inspired by the market-led forces of globalization, even as I recognize their inherent flaws and weaknesses. As Khilnani writes—‘if choice is an axiom of the market, it is hard to see how it can be excluded from the realm of culture and identity’.83 The changing demographics of India will play a key role in how these choices will be exercised; soon, power will shift from the
pre-independence
and
Midnight’s Children
age cohorts, to the emergent cohorts of
liberalization’s children
and the
millennium children
who, ‘God willing, could be a generation
…
markedly different because they are shaped by an India of plenty, well integrated with and respected by the world’84 (Bijapurkar, 2005). Bijapurkar, a marketing expert, has observed [1995] an attitudinal transformation to ‘freedom of choice’

and survival of the fittest’ as a new way of living, a liberalization of the mind that create[s] a new type of Indian culture—which, importantly does not subsume these changes or allow itself to be subsumed by them, but rather accommodates them creatively.85 I am hopeful that this sense of integration and adroitness at managing plurality will translate into a respect for sexual minorities as well.

Indeed, I truly believe that society can and
does
change. As Giddens writes—‘Society only has form and that form only has effects on people,
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in so far as structure is produced and reproduced in what people do’.86

Thus, individual acts of resistance all add up to influence changes to the larger social structure. I like Bollywood style happy endings…endings that fill one with hope and the possibility of something magical…. And so, if there is one feeling I want to conclude this book with, it is with a belief that yes, tomorrow, we—Gay Bombay and the Indian queer movement at large—
will
be able to create a better society; a world where, even though it sounds terribly mushy, ‘the only important thing is love and where everyone is welcome and included within that love’ (Wilhelm, 2004).87

NOTES

1. Devdutt Pattanaik,
The Man Who was a Woman and Other Queer Tales from Hindu Lore
(New York: Harrington Park Press, 2002), p. 113.

2. Thomas Babington Macaulay’s, ‘Minute of 2 February 1835 on Indian Education’, as cited in Pawan Varma,
The Great Indian Middle Class
(New Delhi: Penguin/Viking, 1998), p. 2. The entire text of the minute and other writings of Macaulay may be found in
Macaulay, Prose and Poetry
, selected by G.M. Young (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1957).

3. Devesh Kapur, ‘The Causes and Consequences of India’s IT Boom’, in
India Review
(Taylor and Francis, April 2002), Vol. 1(2), p. 7.