Many guises, one mask

The challenge with writing about anything set against the backdrop of India is of having to deal with the country’s many facets, cultures, perspectives, and paradoxes. For instance, the right to freedom comes with at least five caveats and exceptions.

Likewise, the rights to equality and liberty are casually brushed aside when it comes to sexual-identity minorities in this country.
Against a petition in the Delhi High Court pleading to decriminalise homosexuality, the government argued that “while the right to privacy and family life is undisputed, interference by public authority is in the interest of the public.” Thus, if the majority of Indians are not “comfortable” with legalising homosexual marriages, then the rights of the homosexual minority can and should be overlooked in the interests of this nebulous entity called “public.”

On July 2, 2009, the Delhi High Court issued a ruling decriminalising homosexuality, a ruling that elevates us homosexuals to an equal playing field with our heterosexual counterparts.

The real and arguably more difficult battle lies ahead. It is much easier to overturn a law than to change the dominant philosophy of a culture steeped in a tradition of obligations and duties.

The ignorance and phobia that shroud the issue of sexuality are not exclusive to heterosexuals; a significant number of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans (LGBT) persons suffer from debilitating levels of self-loathing, guilt, fear, ignorance, and even homophobia. A quick solution is to suppress these instincts and move on blithely. The more intelligent ones try to rationalise their guilt or homophobia by claiming that it is terribly “selfish” to want to live openly. They argue that men have moral duties towards their families and society that must be fulfilled. To chase wanton desires of the flesh (which is what being gay essentially means to most people) is a selfish abandonment of one’s duties.

There is an escape hatch, however. Many homosexual men view marriage as the proverbial stone with which to kill two birds. As a result, we have a dysfunctional society in which an alarmingly high number of homosexual men are married to women, have brought token children into this world and are practicing furtive sexual activities with other homosexuals. The rest of the unmarried lot either flock to the monasteries or simply avoid the issue of marriage. 

India offers little in terms of healthy ideas about sexuality and psychological maturity to its citizens, gay or straight. Hence, there is little recourse for gay men to shrug off guilt, paranoia and feelings of moral depravity. There still pervades an environment of shame and fear in coming out of the gay closet. This leads to constant self-monitoring of personal behaviours, gestures, and mannerisms, to the point that it ceases to be conscious and becomes the habits of a distorted personality. In only a few cases do we see a gay man that has neither chosen to marry a woman or die in the closet but has chosen to live openly.

This small group of openly gay men is vocal and notable and they are fuelling the gay rights movement across the country today. The changes that they have demanded for and won are commendable. But directing India on a course of liberal enlightenment will require a prolonged but steady revision of its fundamental ideas about individual worth, liberty, rights, duties, and sexuality.

The time to begin has finally come!