The strongly patriarchal traditions of the extended family, with its arranged marriages, and a set of urban middle class values deriving from the Victorian values - prime among them that of hypocrisy of the British Raj, have resulted in almost total suppression of gay Indian men and women. The gradual acceptance of feminism in some circles has at least allowed some degree of sexual politics to be introduced, including discussion of lesbianism. In general, though, the radical left, argue Sunil Gupta and Ashish Kumar, have adopted the same homophobic perspective common to socialist policy makers in most parts of the Third World today, from Cuba to Vietnam and from Algeria to China, failing to recognise the intrinsic role of sexual politics in progressive democratic society.
New Delhi, 6 pm. The fashionable shops of Connaught Place have just closed, the din of shoppers is dying down, the families and sightseers occupying the central park are being replaced by men of all ages from a broad spectrum of Indian society. In the twilight, framed by neon-lit signs, homosexual men cruise each other in a rare public display of their sexuality. Few words are exchanged. It is a society which acknowledges its homosexuals but not its gays.
India is a large country where people speak different languages, practise different religions and where most of the population is still rural. While few generalisations on other matters are possible, the suppression of gay men and women is total. Traditional family patterns have remained unchanged in rural society and the expression of homosexuality has remained undocumented. In urban life homosexual men and women are beginning to emerge, though only a handful would define themselves as being gay, and they belong to an English-speaking elite.
The notion of defining oneself as being gay is a Western one and presents a problem to the Indian homosexual. There is no gay liberation with its attendant support organisations, meeting places or publications. An urban phenomenon of the liberal 1960s in the industrialised West, it appears to lack a base in countries like India. For a gay movement it lacks a sense of history and personalities, and most importantly an ideology. Under attack from both the traditional Right and the Left, the idea of a movement would appear almost inconceivable in India. For most people the obligatory arranged marriage is inevitable, with gay life being left to be expressed in terms of sexual contact outside the home. It may be fleeting or extended with a regular partner but it is not allowed to threaten the extended family.
The central socio-economic unit is indeed this extended family. With rare exceptions it is patrilineal, with fathers and older male siblings having considerable power over individual's lives. Marriages are arranged and children awaited. Women move in with their in-laws and are expected to be servile and obedient. In a country without a social security system the family provides housing, financial support during periods of unemployment, and an informal contact network that provides jobs. To alienate oneself from this structure without alternative means of support is suicidal.
India has only recently begun to emerge from its feudal state, and caste and class loyalties are still firmly entrenched.
The entrepreneurial skills of some groups and the large bureaucracy bequeathed by the British Raj have created an urban middle class which is more or less modelled on Western lines. In this group the extended family is breaking down and individuals are somewhat freer to pursue their own inclinations. It is from this group that people are emerging who are prepared to identify themselves as gay or lesbian, particularly among the young. Paradoxically, as in the West, it has been the rise of capitalism that has both created an environment allowing greater freedom in sexual lifestyles and which has pushed to the fore a class of bourgeoisie that is fundamentally opposed to homosexuality. Thus, in India's large urban centres such as Delhi and Bombay, while homosexuality is slowly becoming a topic of conversation, the general reaction is still one of hostility and ridicule.
The machinery of repression is already in place. Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code states 'Whoever has carnal intercourse against the code of nature with any man, woman or animal, shall be punished with imprisonment for life'. The threat of legal action - combined with social ostracism - is enough to deter all but the least vulnerable from coming out. The threat is real for gay men who, like their counterparts around the world, for want of better places are forced to meet in public parks, public toilets and similar places. Here they are open to persecution by the police who are primarily interested in extorting whatever they can from their victims. No one has yet lobbied to have this section of the Penal Code repealed, nor has anyone brought a test case as high as the Supreme Court. Lesbians, while under threat from the same law and not engaging in such overt behaviour, remain relatively invisible and protected. However a general sense of fear predominates, and homosexual journalists, intellectuals, political activists and others prefer not to come out and endanger their careers and positions of authority.
Every now and then there are efforts to mobilise. Attempts have been made to organise in Delhi, Bombay, and in Calcutta, but often these organisations are not much more than an extension of the personal contact network. An attempt in Delhi three years ago failed because of confusion about aims and political strategy, and also because the group concerned allowed itself to be fragmented into class-centred cliques. Any group action in India has to overcome powerful class and caste loyalties, and for middle and upper class Indians under pressure from a vast group of underprivileged people it often proves impossible to relinquish power.
Unsurprisingly, as in other countries, homosexuals exist in all strata of Indian society. But there is limited access to information. Homosexuality is not considered an appropriate subject for culture or art. Homosexual characters do not appear in films, plays or literature. Ideas of gay life in the West are brought back by a few individuals, or else filter through randomly by means of the straight English language media. The vast array of gay writing in the West is generally unavailable, so people are not aware of what the gay movement is doing elsewhere. What is known, however, is that there is an apparent 'freedom' to be gay in the West that manifests itself in terms of a wide selection of gay bars, baths and other commercial venues. What is not understood is that capitalism has supplanted family life with fetishised sex which has helped to marginalise gay life - not to integrate it into society; that simply introducing commercial facilities for sexual contacts will not bring about a place for gays in Indian society.
The Indian gay male community that exists at the moment is made up of privileged middle and upper class men who keep in contact through a private net-work. Everyone is married - or at least expected to be. Homosexuals of other classes may be tolerated on the margins of this group for sexual purposes. As members of either the old aristocracy or the new entrepreneurial class, their chances of radically analysing their situation in terms appropriate to the Indian condition are nil. Yet these are the very people who are in a position to catalyse change, since they are a source of information. The considerable power and influence they hold over the network of homosexual contacts throughout the country is limited by a need to assert themselves; this they do by creating pseudo-categories for the surfacing homosexual population, superficial labels that relate solely to the new class values: urban-rural, English speaking, non-English speaking, and so on.
Historically, the Victorian morality of the British Raj, which labelled sexual non-conformity as deviant and sick, has left a homophobic stamp on the new native capitalists. It has long been suggested by theoreticians of colonialism - and not-ably in the 1950s by Frantz Fanon, writing on Algeria - that colonisers and colonised engage in a relationship which results in the latter aspiring to be like the former, taking on their values, and especially on moral issues. This applies certainly to India, and has allowed radicals on the Left, who question all other issues related to society and economics, to maintain an anti-gay position.
In India today radicals cling to heterosexuality as the norm. Though the Left is split on many issues it concurs on the repression of so-called deviant sexual behaviour, failing to recognise that sexual politics are an intrinsic part of the revolutionary process. The emancipation of women and the arrival of feminism has brought at least some debate on the impact of sexual politics in creating an alternative ideology. Lesbianism is at last beginning to become a serious political issue.
It is to be hoped that the liberation of gay men will follow, but as elsewhere, this will not happen until Indian gay men make their homosexuality a political issue; no one else is going to do it for them. Until then, as one bitter and angry gay academic in Delhi has said, let us at least expose the Indian homosexual man as a 'cynical, reactionary creature who is misusing the label 'gay' to give an imagined and imported respectability to his sex life, and not to change his politics or lifestyle'. The real Indian gay man has yet to surface in strength to challenge the prevailing heterosexist culture and the mythology of the family.
Sunil Gupta is a freelance photographer and writer based in London, who left India fifteen years ago.
Ashish Kumar is a freelance journalist living in New Delhi who is aiming to set up a national gay group in India.
Copyright © Achilles Heel Collective
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