Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be)longing in Contemporary India (30 page)

On the other hand,
Mid-day
’s ‘I Want My Sex’ (1993)13 and
Sunday Mail
Magazine
’s cover story ‘Homosexuality: A Thorny Issue’ (1991)14 are uninformed, replete with negative stereotypes about homosexuality and gay men; and downright silly! The
Mid-day
piece talks about two different gay men—Shreyas and Rafiq. While the writer paints Shreyas as gay because of ‘his childhood fetish for wearing his sister’s clothes’, Rafiq has been abused as a child ‘at the hands of his homosexual uncle, which
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has led to his ultimate disorientation’. The
Sunday Mail Magazine
article is no better—it laments that since India’s ‘close-knit family structure’ is so ‘different from the West, such inclinations in one’s progeny [are] very traumatic for the parents’ and suggests among others, psychoanalysis and behaviour modification theory as two possible treatments for the

‘habit’. It goes on to warn that ‘the “gay” is more vulnerable’ to AIDS

because ‘most of them do not stick to a single partner’.

KARIM: THESE CHANGES TAKE A LOT OF TIME. FIVE YEARS BACK, MAGA-

ZINES WERE WRITING STORIES ON ‘WOW! HOMOSEXUALS

EXIST IN INDIA’. NOW THEIR ARTICLES TALK ABOUT MORE IN-

DEPTH ISSUES AND MORE INSIGHTS ABOUT THE HOMOSEXUAL

COMMUNITY. FOR A LARGE SEGMENT OF THE MEDIA TODAY,

IT IS TAKEN FOR GRANTED THAT THERE IS NOTHING WRONG

WITH BEING GAY. THE VERNACULAR MEDIA HAS ALSO

CHANGED. FIVE YEARS BACK IT WAS DIFFICULT TO FIND A MEN-

TION OF HOMOSEXUALITY IN THE VERNACULAR MEDIA

EXCEPT IN SENSATIONAL CONTEXTS. NOW MORE VERNACULAR

NEWSPAPERS ARE COVERING ISSUES OF HOMOSEXUALITY IN A

FAIRLY STRAIGHTFORWARD WAY.

From the end of the 1990s, we begin to see an articulation of a wider range of issues concerning gay life in India. There are many opinion pieces that argue for the acceptance of homosexuality as a part of Indian society.15

1998’s
Sex Lies, Agony, Matrimony
reflects the changing norm of counsellors advising their gay clients to ‘stay single and assert their identity’

instead of being forced into an unwilling heterosexual marriage. It also estimates the number of gay people in India to be 13 million and claims that 10.4 million of these are married.16 The writer of
Bi Bi Love
declares that ‘eschewing labels like “straight”, “gay” and “bi”’ might ‘be a move towards simply being a sexual being’.17
Men on Call
takes its readers into the world of Bombay’s call-boys or male hustlers, ‘anywhere between 15 to 25 years’ old, who service both male and female clients and use the Internet and local classifieds to conduct their trade.18
I Want to Break
Free
interviews parents of gay children and articulates their reactions, fears and concerns about their children’s homosexuality. (‘Love means acceptance. The bottom line is that I want my child to be happy. Unfortunately, the social reality makes this difficult’).19 Other interesting Media Matters
177

articles relate to depression in the gay community,20 extortion of gay people via the Internet by blackmailing con artists21 and the police,22

efforts by gay support groups to explain that ‘love’s not only straight’

at Bombay colleges on Valentine’s Day 2003,23 coverage of the Indian Roman Catholic church’s position on the possibility of homosexuality among its priests;24 and the debate over issuing condoms to male pris-oners within jails as an HIV and STD prevention measure.25

Unlike earlier stories, with their ‘names have been changed’ disclaimers and shadowy illustrations, many ‘coming out’ stories after 2000 have featured gay men and women confidently being quoted with their full names and accompanied by their real pictures.26 The excellently researched
Gay Spirit
27 (2004) captures the confident tone of the emergent pan-Indian gay movement ‘revolutionizing minds’ across the country.

During our conversations, most of my respondents told me that the increased media coverage had enabled them to feel more confident about their homosexuality—they considered it a validation of their existence, a visibilizing of what was hitherto invisible.

GUL: ONCE I WAS ASKED IF I WAS GAY BY A FRIEND LOUDLY IN A

RESTAURANT. I DENIED IT. TODAY IF SOMEONE SAID THAT,

I WOULDN’T DENY IT.

Of course, not all the coverage was affirmative or balanced. Sensational news stories and scandals involving homosexuality tended to be reported (and often misreported) by the press with relish.
Gay couple stabs
each other
describes the tragic suicide pact carried out to its conclusion by two men in 1992, ‘following the non-recognition of their marriage by society’.28 In a similar vein,
Lesbians’ death wish
reports that 24 women,

‘mostly from marginalized communities, especially Dalits [lower caste Hindus],
Adivasis
[tribals] and Muslims’ committed suicide in the south Indian state of Kerala between the years of 1998–2004.29 In 2005, a property feud among members of one of India’s oldest business families received quite a bit of salacious coverage as it involved a sex change operation of one of the warring siblings.30

In 2001, the offices of the Lucknow-based HIV prevention NGOs—Naz Foundation International and
Bharosa
—were raided by the police and nine outreach workers from the two organizations were arrested. It is
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shocking to note that every major Indian newspaper misreported this incident based on a PR feed provided by the Lucknow police. So the
Asian
Age
story was titled
Two NGO-run gay clubs busted in Lucknow
31 while
Indian
Express
’ headline ran as
Police busts gay clubs in Lucknow
.32 The
Asian Age
story falsely reports that the police ‘seized pornographic literature and blue film cassettes’ from the offices of the NGOs while the
Express
story claims that the workers were ‘charged with abetment of sodomy and criminal conspiracy’ and quotes the Lucknow police chief saying that the gay clubs had a ‘membership of at least 500’. On a positive note, these allegations by the police coupled with the media’s callous coverage of the incident led to the galvanizing of several voices of dissent from the country’s LBGT activist community and thankfully, some of these found their way into mainstream media reportage.33 (Some of my respondents declared that they were drawn to activism after reading about this particular incident).

Five years later, a similar situation arose, once again in Lucknow and once again, the police-guided media coverage was sensational with headlines like
Gay club running on net unearthed—four arrested
and
Cops bust gay racket
. This time, the activists were ready to galvanize against the police brutality, with rallies in Delhi and Bombay which were covered by television networks like Sahara Samay, Aaj Tak, Headlines Today, CNN-IBN and Doordarshan, as well as several newspapers.34

The police and state response to the NGO outcry was simply to assert that ‘Homosexuality [was] a crime as heinous as murder’.35 Here, I want to note some comments by the senior police and government officials handling the case, as carried by the news media, that highlight the thought processes, beliefs and actions of the authorities and sharply bring into light the need for repealing the Section 377 at the soonest.

Alok Sinha, principal home secretary—‘The law of the land is against homosexuality, so the action taken by our police was absolutely valid…

The men were arrested under the provisions of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) that prohibits homosexuality; and as long as the law prevails, police were well within their right to book people indulging in gay acts’.

Media Matters
179

Ashutosh Pandey, senior superintendent of police—‘The group had established online Internet links with gay groups outside the country too and strictly speaking, these groups too could be liable under the abetment laws in India…. If laws were made against homosexuality in India, it must have been done keeping in view the Indian social ethos and moral values…. The law prohibits homosexuality even with consent; and if a 10-year imprisonment is laid out for the offence, it ought to be treated as a crime nearly as heinous as murder’.36

Another sensational story was the murder of USAID employee Pushkin Chandra in Delhi in August 2004, along with his close friend Vishal (sometimes reported as being named Kuldeep). The initial coverage only tended to highlight the police discovery of the naked bodies of the victims in Chandra’s home, the recovery of ‘at least 100 nude photographs’

of Delhi-based men that were ‘said to have taken part in several orgies with him’ and the conjecture that Chandra was part of a ‘homosexual syndicate which went out of its way to rope in fresh members’ and ‘force’

these new recruits into photographed sex.37 As Vikram Doctor wrote in a
Times of India
op-ed—‘One wonders why the killers of Pushkin are still bothering to hide the Delhi Police working through their tame media contacts has given them their defence. They simply need to claim that they were lured into the gay sex networks that we are told trap young men like this and forced into doing what they did’.38 He adds that the murders should be seen against the backdrop of an increase in criminal extortion and blackmail and it is this that the police should ‘focus on, rather than taking the easy way out by blaming the victim and letting the villain off the hook’. The quality of the coverage improved in the days that followed, no doubt, due to the active efforts of LBGT activists across the country.39 The Pushkin case has been the most publicized, but there are several less high-profile
gay murder
stories that the media has had a field day reporting. (For example,
Horror story of unnatural sex and murder
).40

Gay Activism

The launch of Ashok Row Kavi’s
Bombay Dost
in May 1990 was widely reported in the English language press.
Sunday Mid-day
provided an
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account of the launch party of the magazine where ‘the editorial board of
Bombay Dost
went public with their identities’.

At the bash was a prominent architect with his live-in lover, a senior chartered accountant. A lesbian couple. And assorted gays, of both sexes.

And all spoke to the media with little traces of hesitation….41

Bombay
magazine declared that the advent of
Bombay Dost
‘usher[ed]

in the gay revolution’ in the country and presented a humorous account of the magazine editors’ decision to mail out copies of the inaugural issue to select ‘industrialists, businessmen, advertising and print media men’, all ‘ostensible closet queens’, who, ‘because of their public stature may be reluctant to “be a part of the movement” but might at least, at some point in the future, send
Bombay Dost
a few cheques!’42 The article goes on to describe a very clear future trajectory for the magazine and its cause—and the press clippings collected over the years at the Quentin Buckle library bear witness to the achievements of each of the goals outlined by the magazine’s founders in 1990. A parallel development was the establishment of the public charity—The Humsafar Trust in 1991, (again spearheaded by Row Kavi) with the mandate of working in the field of HIV/AIDS awareness or prevention (see section on HIV/AIDS

below). The various activities of both organizations over the years are well documented, such as
Bombay Dost
’s incorporation (1993),43 the establishment of the Trust’s permanent centre on 31 October 1995

(in collaboration with the Bombay Municipal Corporation, which allotted it five rooms at its Municipal Health Building in North-West Bombay),44

the creation of the country’s first voicemail service for Bombay’s gay community45 followed shortly by a sexuality helpline manned by trained counsellors;46 and the flashy inauguration of the spanking new drop-in centre at the trust’s premises.47

Coverage of gay conferences and seminars increased significantly over the years, as the events themselves became more high profile and public in their nature. However, some things remained the same. Thus if ‘secrecy was the hallmark of ’48 the first gay activists’ meet organized by Humsafar and the Naz Foundation in Bombay in 1995, (an event attended by ‘over 60 delegates from various Indian cities as well as from London, New York and Colombo’)49 the venue of a two-day workshop Media Matters
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on ‘Strategies to advance lesbian, gay and bisexual rights’ conducted in Bombay in 199750 was hush-hush too, as was the location of the first Asian regional conference of the Brussels-based world wide International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) held in Bombay in 2002. (‘The participants fear it will be disrupted…’).51

The ILGA conference drew an unprecedented amount of media

coverage—photographs and interviews with international delegates like ILGA Secretary-General Anna Leah Sarabia De Leon and her partner Maria Victoria Dizon,52 Sri Lankan activist Rosana Flamer-Caldera53 and Sandip Roy, the editor of the US-based diasporic gay magazine
Trikone
54

were circulated widely. There were also several quotes in newspapers from UNIFEM’s (The United Nation Development Fund for Women)

Shelly Kaw,55 Naz Foundation’s Shaleen Rakesh,56 Sangini’s Betu Singh,57

Aanchal’s Geeta Kumana58 and Nepal-based activist Sunil Pant.59 The sponsors of the conference—UNAIDS (The Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS), UNIFEM, UNDP (United Nations Development Program), IAVI (International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) and the MacArthur Foun-dation60—were afforded a significant amount of publicity as well; and while the ubiquitous Humsafar naturally hosted the event (assisted by city-based lesbian support group Aanchal), the broad-based nature of the publicity garnered was significant.

Three other national gay conferences also drew media attention. The first was a National Law School of India public seminar on gay rights in 1997, held within the premises of the prestigious Bangalore institute, with the permission of the school authorities.61 The second was a three day conference in Bombay in 2000, entitled ‘Looking into the Next Millennium,’ attended by activists from the country’s LBGT communities, which discussed ‘the new emerging identities of people having same-sex relations and problems arising from re-allocation of genders, the human rights issues around sexuality, the sexual health issues which confront gay women and men and the looming epidemic of HIV/AIDS in India’.62