Mumbai is the most gay friendly city in the world, even when compared to New York and Toronto, says Ashok Row Kavi.
How gay friendly is Mumbai?
Mumbai is the most gay friendly city in the world, even when compared to New York and Toronto. Everybody’s cruising here, on the beaches, at the stations. There’s so much picking up going on. As for attitudes, a lot of people today don’t give a damn about your sexuality. Mumbai’s becoming a very corporate city — nobody cares what you’re doing as long as you’re delivering. But it’s also up to the gay people to make the city gay-friendly. Until they learn to deal with homophobia, and not hide, it can’t happen. Many youngsters don’t give a damn today. Earlier, we used to worry about our parents before coming out. Today youngsters say that’s not our problem, its our parents’!
Where’s GenNext in the gay movement?
The second generation is working mostly in health. They’re being trained in corporate methods and community-based organisation. There are so many youngsters coming up, but they don’t all speak up because every community has to have a hierarchy.
But how can you build leaders among a predominantly invisible group? Most people aren’t willing to disclose identities…
This kind of dishonesty will have to go. We will have to tell married gay men, who have something to lose and therefore still not out, that they can no longer be an important component in the movement.
The biggest mandate of gay groups is to come out. People say that I had nothing to lose [when I outed myself] but that’s not true. You have to put all of that on line and take a decision. Humsafar, for instance, has a very straight policy — we only have single, unmarried, gay men.
Where are the women’s voices in the movement?
I really don’t know. You have to simply look at two books to understand this. In Hoshang Merchant’s Yaarana, all the men gave their names. In Reflections in the Mirror, an anthology of lesbian writing, only one did. The women are very bitter. They say that the men are getting all the money under the garb of fighting for HIV.
The movement for reading down Sec 377 seems to have received an impetus with Vikram Seth’s letter. How does the community plan to sustain the momentum?
The letter has been planned by the community as part of a larger movement. It’s disturbing to think that Seth’s letter is suddenly being seen as a stand-alone thing. If it seems like the movement has suddenly picked up momentum, it’s because some very important things are about to take place.
Like…?
Section 377 is the battering ram for a lot of judicial reform. Once this happens, a whole new set of rules will come into play — women’s rape laws under Section 376; there’ll have to be a separate section on male rape, on molestation and crimes against children and such.
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