Among a large section of the educated middle class, especially people below 30, there is an acceptance of queer people, at least for the sake of sounding progressive and politically correct.
On 15 April 2014, the Supreme Court of India delivered the historic NALSA judgement (so called because the Petitioner was the National Legal Services Authority) upholding the constitutionally mandated human rights of members of the transgender community and giving the nation a roadmap for the various laws that ought to be passed to secure those rights for them.
On 5 September 2018, the Apex Court decriminalized all forms of sex indulged in privacy between two consenting adults, thereby invalidating the draconian Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, an 1860 law that prescribed rigorous punishments for all “carnal intercourse against the order of nature.” What exactly constituted “the order of nature” was never specified but policemen habitually interpreted it to harass gays and others thought to be involved in anything other than heterosexual penetrative sex.
These were two blows struck by our judiciary for the rights of members of the LGBT+ or Queer Community, which includes all people of non-binary gender and/or sexual orientation. It must be noted here that the executive has been consistently either evasive or inimical to the rights of queers, fearing to alienate possible voters belonging to the heterosexual majority. They refused to permit adoption and surrogate parenthood rights to transgender and same sex couples on the grounds – not merely dubious but outright erroneous –that such permission would go against “Indian culture.” It is these same grounds that are being cited to express opposition to marriage rights being granted to same-sex couples and we have the pathetic spectacle of even “respected” members of the legal profession arguing that marriage is, by its very definition, heterosexual, aimed at procreation. As if procreation was the need of the hour for the human species in this already overpopulated planet!
So where has India come in its acceptance of the queer community and its rights? India claims to have a tradition of accepting transpeople. There is some evidence to support this claim in our scriptures and myths, as well as traditions of worship in various parts of the country. Hijras are allowed to exist and revered on certain occasions in certain contexts. So are several other people of non-binary gender orientation such as Shivshaktis, kothis, etc.
However, when we come to the hard realm of economic and civil rights, when we talk of practical things like education and employment opportunities and civil rights, such as the simple right to take a house on rent without having to hide one’s gender identity or sexual expression, the much touted “acceptance and tolerance” don’t really seem to exist. A disturbingly large proportion, if not majority of transpeople in India, still live by begging or sex-work. They still find it difficult to stay in the education system beyond Class 9, due to the bullying and mental torture inflicted on them by fellow students, with the tacit or open support of teachers and authorities.
In a state like Kerala that boasts endlessly about its high literacy and low birth rates, its pluralism and embrace of modernity and its unmatched social and civic consciousness, more than 60% of transgender children are forced to drop out of school before Class 9. They are tortured physically and mentally and disinherited and disowned by their families. Less than a decade ago, in a prominent government-run women’s college in the capital city of this educated state, a transboy, studying in the college because of his female sex-assigned-at-birth, who wore his hair short and dressed male, was ordered by the Principal to dress and behave more like a girl and “not create confusion and problems” for people. His mother was summoned to the college and reprimanded for not reining in her “wayward” daughter. Kerala is, in many ways, a particularly serious victim of what the sociologist Dipankar Gupta has beautifully described as “mistaken modernity”, but other Indian states are not very much better.
As for people of non-binary sexual orientation, most of them live in the closet by hiding their orientation in order to avoid harassment and do simple things like getting an education, securing and keeping a job, inheriting money or property, being able to take a house on rent, etc, If at all they have a sex life involving partners of their gender, it is a secret parallel life. This is the case even with gay men.
The plight of lesbian women is terrible because marriage is more or less compulsory for women in this country and marriage for a lesbian woman –if we are to be unflinchingly honest –means a lifetime of accepting regular rape. This is the same story with transmen who do not have the means, support and courage to undergo gender affirmation (formerly called ‘sex change’ or ‘sexual reassignment’) procedures.
When we come to intersex people (those born with the genitalia of both sexes), thousands of them continue to fall prey to infanticide. When one parent (usually the mother) refuses to “cooperate” with this cold blooded murder by another name, the child nevertheless grows up facing harassment and cursing in addition to neglect by the other parent and society as a whole.
What I have presented above is a more or less accurate picture of the state of “acceptance” of the queer community in India! So where is the silver lining in this dark cloud?
First, we have the blows struck for our rights by the judiciary, starting with the two Supreme verdicts I mentioned at the beginning, followed by several noteworthy and praiseworthy High Court judgements, like many delivered by the Madras High Court in the past two years.
Second, among a large section of the educated middle class, especially people below 30, there is an acceptance of queer people, at least for the sake of sounding progressive and politically correct. This seems superficial at one level, but it has created a climate conducive for such verdicts and reduced the harassment of queers by the police system. More significantly, it has brought out into the open the mere fact of talking about the existence and human rights of queer people and articulation is almost always the first step towards emancipation.
Third, in keeping with global trends, the Indian academia has accepted queer studies as a legitimate field of serious enquiry, although teaching about the rights of queer people at undergraduate level is still confined to a few universities. Courses and modules on this area are usually “elective” and not compulsory. This is unfair, because those who are old enough to read about heterosexual love and romance are old enough to read about the love and sex life of the queer minority. Nevertheless, it is a beginning.
I, the author of this article, am an open bisexual. My coming out in my boarding school in my Plus One (1992-93) was accepted because the management of the school was extraordinarily liberal and ahead of its times. After leaving school, I was more discreet, selective and gradual about revealing my sexual identity. In 2015, aged 39, I happened to get involved in the Kerala Queer Pride organized by a CBO called Queerala and the runner-up events leading to it. It was then that I realized that an educated and privileged queer like me, holding down a government Assistant Professorship and commanding the attention and respect of hundreds of students, had a duty to speak, because if I spoke, I would help strengthen the conditions for dozens of others to do so. On the whole I have not only been accepted but actually enjoyed increased respect from many among my students and a few among my peers.
There have been instances of phobia though. In one college where I worked, a coworker told me to my face, “I can even understand people wanting sex with animals, but I cannot accept people who want sex with others of their own gender!” In one BA classroom, as I was going out, a mischievous boy called out “Bye!” to me in a faux feminine drawl. A WhatsApp DP of mine, wherein I was dressed in a nightie, was shared by a girl student with the head of my department with the allegation that I had sent it to her. Fortunately, I was able to establish that the girl who made that allegation was not there on my Contacts list. Upon interrogation by the head she confessed that she had downloaded it. (This was possible in 2016. Subsequently the privacy features were strengthened).
However, on the whole, I feel cautious optimism about the future of my community and the acceptance we shall receive, although it is not unmixed with depression and anger over existing realities, especially when I think about transmen and lesbians.
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