Where are the homosexuals? You don't have to look too far...

By. R Raj Rao

The Delhi High Court has done well to reprimand the Central government for dithering on its stand on Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. This antiquated law prohibits what it calls ''unnatural'' sex, and comes in the way of legalizing homosexuality in India. The learned judges are believed to have said: ''Such relations have existed in society since time immemorial, so why should such persons not be given a chance to raise a family and live together?''
It's about time the government woke up from its slumber and caught up with its reading. Far from being a western import, homosexuality was known and practised in ancient and medieval India unselfconsciously. The Kamasutra takes note of it. In their book Same Sex Love in India, Saleem Kidwai and Ruth Vanita inform us that Lord Vishnu and Lord Shiva had a love affair, that led to the birth of Ayyappa.
On the other hand, it is the Victorians who ruled India in the nineteenth century who regarded homosexuality as immoral and banned it. By endorsing the views of the Victorians, the government painfully demonstrates how history, for us, begins with British colonialism. All that existed before it is irretrievably lost. Some call it amnesia. I prefer a simpler word: myopia.
This is proved again and again by the public utterances of our legislators and bureaucrats. Whether it's the Minister of State who said on TV that homosexuality arose from the baser side of our natures; or Kiran Bedi who refused to give condoms to prisoners in Tihar Jail because it amounted to acknowledging the existence of homosexuality; it's all part of the same syndrome. Even Soli Sorabjee, otherwise sensitive to the plight of the marginalised, has failed to make his views on Section 377 known to the government, although the matter was referred to him over six months ago.
And now for some hard facts. Surveys conducted by activists indicate that roughly a sixth of the Indian population is homosexual or lesbian by orientation. Some of these activists who run helplines, say that they receive as many as 50 calls a day from distressed men and women. Because same-sex love is legally and socially unacceptable in India, many gays and lesbians get married to people of the opposite sex, produce children, and keep their sexual preference secret from their spouses.
Needless to say, this leads to deception, suspicion and all-round misery. Often the children are the worst sufferers. Public parks, railway station toilets and jam-packed suburban trains in metro cities like Mumbai buzz with homosexual activity. Hoodlums and cops have a field day bashing up and blackmailing people who, after all, are only being faithful to the demands of their bodies. Young unemployed and under-employed men find male prostitution an easy means of livelihood. Their clients are, but of course, older, wealthier men. Since the official AIDS programme of the Indian government doesn't really take male prostitution into account, they expose themselves to grave risk, and are a telling comment on the nation's state of health.
I would go as far as to suggest that social segregation of the sexes, cramped living conditions etc., only add to our numbers everyday. As one writer put it, ''Even if one is not born a homosexual, it is so easy to become a homosexual in India.''
But clearly, the government is blind to what goes on around us. It chooses to see only what it wants to. Its position is no different from that of the illiterate Indian, who naively asks: but where are the homosexuals? However, we would like to remind our law-makers and enforcers that in a nation of one billion, one-sixth of the population is no small number.
It is high time the government changed its laws, as modern countries all over the world have done, and made life a trifle more hospitable for its sexual minorities. If nothing else, we constitute a huge votebank!

(The writer is a poet and professor of English at the University of Pune)
 

Back to Index!