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The film Milk, for which Sean Penn won the much-deserved best actor Oscar for his portrayal of the gay politician Harvey Milk, opened in limited cinema halls in Mumbai.

An sms did the rounds before the film was shown (and before the Oscars), asking people to support it because apparently the film would only be widely shown across India if enough people went to see it in Mumbai. There were some fears that because the film was about a gay politician and gay rights, there would be some protests. The moral police was, it seems, on the prowl.

In the early 1980s, a film called Making Love showed at a well-known theatre, in the Colaba area of south Bombay. These were of course the pre-multiplex days and so the film got the usual 3-6-9 pm timings.

It was about the problems a married couple face when the husband gives in to some latent gay feelings he has. The film contained some love scenes between two men. In the early 1980s, we had no moral police and no saviours of Indian culture.

Many films of the day, although the strong scissors of the Censor Board were very evident, dealt in an adult and sometimes humorous manner about such issues. The film ran its normal course and went away unsung. It was not that memorable, to be honest.

By contrast, Milk is very memorable for Sean Penn’s spectacular performance. Harvey Milk stood for “supervisor” of San Francisco repeatedly in between in the 1970s till he won in 1978 and championed not just gay rights, but also rights for minorities, senior citizens and others who either lived on the fringes of white, middle class conservative society or were consigned there by an orthodoxy which did not understand them. Harvey Milk’s biggest battle was against bigotry.

The 1970s saw in America a huge conservative uprising against gays, led by singer Anita Bryant, who talked of how gays were against nature and therefore against god and were destroying the fabric of American society.

A conservative California legislator John Briggs moved the infamous proposition 6 which barred gays, lesbians and anyone who supported gay rights from teaching in California’s schools. To get the proposition defeated was one of Milk’s greatest triumphs. It was God or god whom Briggs and Bryant claimed that they got their permission to persecute gays from.

This is of course a common refrain of all bigots, from the Taliban to the Christian right wing to even a few of our homegrown Hindutva-inspired fundamentalists. By limiting the rights of others or by actively hurting them, they are doing “God’s work”.

To make their point with more emphasis, they quote or misquote some religious text or the other. They create fears in the minds of their followers or believers that the world as they know it will be destroyed if gay people have the right to work, or people with HIV have the right to work, or women go to pubs or even if women go to work.

Bigotry of this sort usually only exists in this particular atmosphere – religious conservatism, closed societies, a strong belief in double standards and a hatred of anyone who is different. This is a fairly frightening way to live because homogenous societies do not really exist.

In any random group of 10 people, you might find 15 points of view, two sexual orientations, five races, six political affiliations and seven different religions. And all might exist in one village, one community, one geographical area. That is, surely, the human experience. That we are human and we have the right to be different from one another.

According to the great 19the century French writer Victor Hugo, it is difficult to finish bigotry because it is like being haunted by a ghost and how do you kill a ghost? And yet, as Milk the film and the man shows us, you have to keep trying, to keep chipping away. Yes, it is true that not everyone wants to live in an open society where matters like sex or alcohol are freely available or discussed. But the trick would be in living your life the way you want to without impinging or imposing yourself on someone else’s. That way, you are conservative but not bigoted.

According to Rabindranath Tagore, “Bigotry tries to keep truth safe in its hand with a grip that kills it.” Milk and the mayor of San Francisco, who supported him, were both shot dead in 1978 by a conservative politician who had his own problems with his life and beliefs. But by fighting against bigotry and prejudice, they opened the doors for those who are kept outside through no fault of their own except that they were and are different from the “conventional”.