In a country where the Black population represents almost 60% of the racial make-up of the total population,  Marielle Franco as the first black, lesbian Council Member of the city of Rio de Janeiro created history. As a Council member she raised issues which were important to poor black communities such as police violence against black communities. The fact that issues which were literally life and death issues for black people and queer people were raised at the level of the city by her is a testament to the importance of having people from marginalized communities in positions of power. In fact, the last tweet she put out was about the  needless death of a young black man to police violence. It was obvious that Franco’s outspoken opposition to police brutality made her a target of assassination herself.

Cortana’s film is a remarkable tribute in that it is not in a voice overwhelmed with sadness. Sadness runs like a strand through the film but the ‘broken hearts’ are transformed into the voice of resistance. She is remembered by the community in events such as the Carnival, women’s day celebrations on March 8 and the day of her assassination on March 14, 2018.

The film captures the assassination of Marielle Franco as a part of the larger war in Brazilian to obliterate Afro-Brazilian histories.  In fact one of the floats in the Carnival shows Marielle Franco as an important part of a history which since the sixteenth century has sought to erase Afro-Brazilian voices. As one of those interviewed tellingly notes, ‘though the voice of Marielle Franco reverberates in the Carnival it is silenced in the public domain.’

Viewing this documentary as an Indian queer person, I was struck by the invitation to remember Marielle not as an invocation of the past but as a commitment to the future. The persona of Marielle Franco is intertwined with the struggles for which Marielle Franco was killed. Thus the remembering of Marielle Franco is really about taking her ideals forward.

Viewing this film makes me think about Indian queer histories and the need to remember otherwise forgotten queer lives in the Indian context. Four figures come to mind. Pioneering queer rights activist Siddharth Gautam who died at the young age of 27. Transgender feminist activist Famila who tragically took her life at the young age of 24 and Swapna and Sucheta who died together by suicide in a small village in West Bengal. Like Marielle Franco  is fiercely remembered, we too need to remember all those who died too early in the Indian context. Remembering these figures is as much about honouring their memory as about taking their ideals forward.

Siddharth Gautam, as part of the group ABVA, was a key figure in the writing of the first human rights report on LGB rights, namely, ‘Less than Gay’. Siddharth Gautam in his life embodied an intersectional politics and worked on issues such as HIV/AIDS, corporate crime, Sex worker rights as well as gay rights. The Report, ‘Less than Gay’, was the model for all subsequent reports on queer rights and in its invocation of James Baldwin, ‘the victim who is able to articulate the condition of his or her victimhood ceases to be a victim. He or she has become a threat’ remains as relevant today.

I remember Famila in public meetings quietly introducing herself saying, “My name is Famila, I am a bisexual, hijra sex worker”. In those few lines, Famila disrupted a series of assumptions, that there are fixed categories of sexuality which do not overlap, that sex has to be associated only with love and intimacy and cannot be a way of livelihood and that you are the sex that you are born into. Famila was queer in the sense of someone who constantly questioned the fixed  assumptions of both gender and sexuality. Famila is a constant reminder to always broaden and deepen our engagement with the politics of sexuality.

Due to family pressure which refused to let them live together, Swapna and Sucheta died by suicide in Nandigram (West Bengal) on Feb 21, 2011.What insistently reminds us of the multiple stories underlying these deaths is a haunting picture by a police photographer who documented the deaths. In this photo we see Swapna and Sucheta lying on a stack of hay, in an image of peaceful repose calling to mind a deep intimacy. What gave an added poignancy to the joint death was the suicide note, which expressed their last wish of being cremated together. It is almost as if their wish was to find another more tolerant more accepting world, since this world was so harshly intolerant of their deep desire to be together. Remembering Swapna and Sucheta is to pay homage to a deep love which brooks no counter and to honour them is to build a world where such queer suicides become a historical anachronism rather than a sad contemporary reality.

Like our Brazilian comrades remember and celebrate Marielle Franco, we in India have to do the work of remembering and celebrating innumerable queer lives as a way of taking forward our struggle. Leonard Cortana’s film is an insistent reminder of what Milan Kundera once said, ‘the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.

Notes and Acknowledgements

• ‘Marielle’s Legacy Will Not Die’ will be screened at South Asia’s biggest LGBTQIA+ film festival ‘KASHISH 2020 Virtual’ (July 22-30th, 2020) in the Short Documentary Competition Category. More details coming up.
• Visit the website of Marielle Franco Institute for more information on her family’s actions to spread her legacy.
• All images courtesy Leonard Cortana

Asmita came out to herself at age 12, while a student in her hometown in Bardhaman. Growing up, she internalized prevailing notions that homosexuality was unnatural. “But later when I started gaining more and more knowledge, I started understanding and getting my identity clear”, she says.

A national-level badminton player and photography enthusiast, Asmita has been actively involved in campus activism around gender-based discrimination.

When asked about her decision to represent AISA, she said “AISA gave me a platform to uphold my identity in front of the students of JU”, noting that Left parties had, by and large, responded positively to LGBTIQ+ issues. Incidentally, the first reported out LGBTIQ+ candidate, JNU’s Gourab Ghosh, also contested as a Left party candidate in 2013.

As a key election issue, Asmita is championing the cause of LGBTIQ+ acceptance in society, both on- and off-campus. She wants to counter myths that same-sex desire and transgender identities are unnatural, and to mobilize public opinion against Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. She strongly feels that basic sex, gender and sexuality education, including LGBTIQ+ issues, should be given to school-going students. She asks that admission in educational institutions be accessible to all, based on their aptitude, with no discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation.

Asmita said that JU is relatively LGBTIQ+ friendly as Indian university campuses go, and she has not personally faced any problem on campus due to her identity. She noted that transgender people face much more difficulty. She also questioned the prevailing practice of marking all transgender people as “third gender” on admission forms, a category that not all identify with.

Other issues in Asmita’s election manifesto include proper functioning of the Gender Sensitisation Committee against Sexual Harassment (GSCASH) on campus, and 24×7 availability of sanitary napkin vending machines in all women’s restrooms.

Her accomplishments notwithstanding, Asmita has a long way to go. She is not yet certain about the profession she would take up in the future. Her parents still do not accept her. “I still need to struggle with my family and in neighborhood to [get them to] cope with my identity”, she signs off.

* Readers: please let Orinam know if there have previously been any other out queer women students contesting campus elections in India.

A comprehensive list of Orinam blogposts on educational institutions and LGBTIQA+ issues is at https://new2.orinam.net/resources-for/educational-institutions/from-the-blog/.

If that is all there is to it, then surely one wouldn’t grudge the mother and the son the quest for a partner of a similar disposition or background. The tendency to seek people similar to oneself for intimate relationships is a natural tendency in most people. For instance, South Asian migrants in other parts of the world often seek comfort in each other’s presence. To deny people this comfort is to mandate a world where everyone is not just equal, everyone is also homogeneous and completely alienated from community life. Such a society cannot tolerate diversity, pluralism, and any deviation from a set norm. In its most extreme form, French republicanism tries to create such a society, and we should certainly guard Indian republican thought from such homogenizing tendencies.

Those of us who wish to assert communal identity must, therefore, think very carefully about the sources of “similarity” and “difference” we are recognizing and celebrating through our actions, and also about how these actions may be interpreted by others around us. To give an example, if a “gay” support group bars gender-queer or transgender persons from participating in its meetings, then is that merely a way to ensure that cisgender persons feel comfortable among people like themselves? And does it carry the same normative valence as barring straight-cis people from support group meetings?

The underlying discourses used to distinguish between “us” and “them” should be the central concern. Distinguishing between straight and queer, in this case, turns on the common challenges undergone by most, if not all, queer people due to the heteronormativity of dominant social institutions in their daily environment. Building solidarity around this definition of community might eventually lead to resistance against heteronormative institutions through political action. On the other hand, denying participation to gender-queer and transgender persons merely reinforces the discourse of gender-normativity regardless of the intentions of cisgender men, even if they consider their preferences to be “innocent” of any discriminatory intent.

Community, then, is never strictly apolitical and non-hierarchical, nor does it ever remain caged within the intimate or private sphere. Private actions have public consequences, not least due to the fact that economic power is unequally distributed in society. Community formations are constantly either reinforcing hegemony or adding to the resistance against hegemonic forces. We only have to choose which side we are on.

Back to the advertisement now, what is the discourse of caste that this advertisement invokes? Surely this has something to do with the larger discourse of caste, in which Brahmins hold themselves to be intrinsically sacred and are encouraged to maintain the sanctity of their body by shunning intimate contact with people of other castes? The invocation of this discourse may or may not be intentional, but doesn’t it nevertheless have the same effect? After all, not only does it communicate to the potential marginalised caste reader that they ought not to aspire for a match with someone who is in a superior social position, it also locates that superiority in the circumstances of birth itself.

Caste-based discourses are not set in stone and do change over time. If we were to inhabit a utopian world where being a Brahmin gave a person no advantage over being a Dalit, and no greater source of authority, there would be no cause for complaint. In that utopian world, caste might be reduced to a mere preference for a certain kind of community with its specific religious and cultural practices. Whether such an ideal world is possible, I do not know. But I am certain that is not the world we live in, despite the fantasies of upper-caste gay men in India.

In the world we live in, caste cannot be separated from the hierarchical ordering of society.

Unless we recognize that, we will be party to the perpetuation of caste-based hierarchies in India.

Now that I have actively participated in online and offline discussions in Orinam/MP for nearly six months and worked together with the core team to organize at least a couple of events, I feel I can share my story. This is a brief narrative of the 35 year journey that has led me into LGBTQ activism here in Chennai.

As a child, I felt that the pressure on girls and boys  to participate in different activities, sit separately, and dress differently was an intolerable apartheid, but I could not bring myself to protest against it. I was actually so scared of ragging that I even avoided going to college, but never openly spoke out against bullying. Even while playing with toys as a child, while to most children around me, the only family our toys could have was a Mom and Dad with one or more children, I saw no reason why a family couldn’t be set up differently: two Dads, two Moms, or maybe even Two Moms and a Dad in one family. However, I was afraid to insist that others accept my definition of family even as part of a play activity.

As a teenager, I never liked playing the so-called boys’ games, and was not always allowed to join the girls’ games, so I spent a lot of time with what were then my best friends: shortwave radio and books. Internet access was not affordable for us at that time. I hated television because I found the mainstream programming based on patriarchal norms and heteronormativity intolerable – of course I did not know these words then, but the concepts were all too familiar. While my family members and friends had their own favorite TV shows, I spent most of my time listening to documentaries, including those on gender and sexuality, from Radio Netherlands, BBC, Voice of America, and Radio Canada International. I remember there was a presenter in Radio Netherlands called Maggie – I don’t remember her last name – who did a series of documentaries on commercial sex work, same-sex marriages, etc. She was my favorite media personality (I never had/have a favorite cinema actor) because she, through her radio presentations, affirmed for me that my ideas of life were acceptable. Unfortunately, I was unable to relate or talk to others at school or my neighborhood because their lives revolved around TV, mainstream sports, and political news, and they did not understand the world I inhabited.

As far back as I can remember, I have had the same ideas: that gender should not be imposed on anyone, that people must be free to relate to each other irrespective of gender, and that it is wrong to morally police others. Had someone had asked my opinion on the rights to equality and against discrimination for LGBTQ people, I would have answered similarly even ten or twenty years back, but until recently, I never had the courage to publicly speak out. I felt elated when I read the Delhi High Court judgment in 2009, even though it had no direct personal impact on my life –  I have not explored sexual relationships or even had a crush on a man to date. Back in 2009, I  knew no one I could speak with about queer issues, yet I celebrated the significance of that momentous judgement.

Reflecting on my childhood and early youth, I do not think my being silent on these issues was related to fear of parental disapproval. I have made my own choices through my life, and did not take any advice when it came to deciding what subjects to study in high school. I spent a few years in an Ashram (religious institution) against the advice of my parents and most of my relatives. So, what made me remain closeted about my support for LGBTQ issues? Maybe the general reticence to discuss gender and sexuality topics, and my fear of being bullied, prevented me from publicly stating my stand on these issues.

My status as a silent supporter changed last year.  I attended some Pride events including queer film screenings and and talks organized by Orinam in June 2013. When I met the group, I felt as if I was transported to a different society altogether. For the first time, I found validation in  meeting a group of people who shared similar ideas on the right to choose one’s gender and the right to be with the person you love without being harassed by society. I was like a child, lost in a forest at birth, brought up by some crazy creatures (such craziness is not normally seen in the natural animal kingdom), who had somehow learned to read and had read books about advanced civilizations, heard a few documentaries on radio, but never had a first hand experience of what it means to live in such a civilized city. Now, suddenly I find a group of people living in such a city and willing to offer me a home there. That is what Orinam is to me. It is natural I continue to hang around with my new-found friends through Pride and other events, and through both good and bad times (377 verdict).

Life remains a journey. Until now I was wandering around with  no clue where I was: all I heard was crazy voices whose messages I could not decipher. Now, I feel I am on an automobile with cruise control traveling on a freeway with people who are not only skilful drivers but keep you entertained during the journey.

Finding a supportive community and growing into LGBTQ activism means several things to me.  I now have the courage to state that I am Gender Fluid without fear of being harassed or ridiculed, and with the confidence that I have friends who accept me for who I am and will support my right to live a life that is true to who I am. On occasion, I feel I can experiment with a different style of dress, I can talk or act in an Orinam program to express our views on gender rights, and I publicly share Facebook updates supporting LGBTQ rights. This is possible because I realized that no one can take away our right to choose to live our lives authentically, even if we are considered  a (“minuscule”) minority at this time. We have real (not “so-called”) rights that cannot be taken away by anyone, not even the highest judicial or legislative authority in the country.For those of you who know me or are already active in the community, I just want to say I am extremely happy to be associated with you all and look forward to our victory. One day, I hope, we should be able to achieve equality for all and we won’t have a need to work on LGBTQ rights anymore. I am not that optimistic to think all social problems will go away, but I hope sometime within our lifespan we should be able to create a world where discrimination based on gender and sexuality are extremely rare.

For those on the fence, wondering if you should get actively involved in promoting LGBTQ rights, I am not going to advise you to come out as an activist and join the battle. I am not campaigning to recruit more foot-soldiers for the cause,  but just sharing my perspective and letting you know how happy I am that I can now openly state my stand on the rights of gender and sexual minorities.  I would never criticize someone for not joining the struggle for LGBTQ rights. I understand all of us have different priorities, and actually admire how some of my Orinam friends are able to manage time for community activities in addition to their professional and personal commitments.

If you feel encouraged to share your story of working with Orinam or if you feel like coming and attending the next event just to see if you want to get involved in offline activities, you are welcome to do so.  From my experience I can say that one can find support here, and no one here is going to force anyone to come out or to engage in activism. That is the reason I feel at home with Orinam.

Love,

Vikram (Vic)

Image 1 is from the Prajnya – Orinam event ‘Violence of the Norm‘ held in Dec 2013.
Image 2 is from the Chennai Freethinkers – Orinam event ‘Reason, Prejudice and the case for LGBT rights‘ held in March 2014. Image courtesy Soorya Sriram.

Thirunangai (transwoman) Sudha has been conferred an honorary doctorate, a lifetime achievement award, by the International Tamil University, USA, making her the first in the history of India’s trans* community to receive such an honour. She has been given this recognition for her consistent work towards development of the thirunangai community since 1993, and for expressing her views relating to the community’s rights and issues in all possible media. Sharing her feelings on this honour, Dr. Sudha said “I take this as the recognition given for the entire thirunangai community. My sincere thanks to Sahodaran, a CBO based in Chennai, and TAI-VHS, Chennai, for providing me the opportunities to work for my community.”

திருநங்கை சுதா அவர்களுக்கு அமெரிக்க உலக தமிழ் பல்கலைகழகம் முனைவர் பட்டம் வழங்கி சிறப்பு செய்து உள்ளது. இந்திய வரலாற்றிலேயே ஒரு திருநங்கை கௌரவ முனைவர் பட்டம் பெறுவது இதுவே முதல் முறை ஆகும். குறிப்பாக 1993-லிருந்து இன்று வரை திருநங்கைகளின் மேம்பாட்டிற்காக விடா முயற்சியுடன் தொடர்ந்து பணி செய்ததற்காகவும் திருநங்கைளின் உரிமைகள் மற்றும் பிரச்சனைகள் குறித்து தன்னுடைய கருத்துகளை பல ஊடகங்களில் தொடர்ந்து முன்வைத்ததற்காகவும் இந்த பட்டம் வழங்க பட்டுள்ளது. இது குறித்து Dr. சுதா அவர்கள் கூறுகையில், “இது எங்கள் ஒட்டுமொத்த திருநங்கை சமூகத்திற்கு கிடைத்த அங்கீகாரமாகவே நினைக்கிறன். எங்கள் சமூக மக்கள் மத்தியில் தொடர்ந்து பணி செய்ய வாய்ப்பு அளித்த சகோதரன் சமூக அமைப்பிற்கும் TAI_VHSக்கும் நன்றி தெரிவித்து கொள்கிறேன்.”

Watch Sudha in the primetime Sun News segment Vivaadha Neram on June 11, 2013. Even though Vivaadha Neram has featured thirunangais and gay men in previous episodes, this was the first time such a major Tamil-language channel (viewership in lakhs) had positive coverage of such a diverse spectrum of LGTB concerns, and featured transmen, gay and bi men and a transwoman together on a single show. Sudha played a key role in getting this TV panel discussion organised as part of ChennaiPride month 2013, and in ensuring visibility of transmen, gay and bisexual men in this programme.

மாற்றுப் பாலினத்தவருக்கான சட்ட,சமூக உரிமைகள் என்ன?

http://youtu.be/mAN8GDTzqb4

On August 11, 1992, AIDS Bhedbhav Virodhi Andolan (ABVA) staged the first known protest against police harassment of LGBT people in India, The protest was against police raids that targeted men cruising for men in Central Park, Connaught Place in New Delhi. The protest was held at the police headquarters in the ITO area of Delhi.

ABVA was, in 1991, the first organization to challenge Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. For more information, read  its historic publication ‘Less Than Gay: A Citizen’s Report’ [link here]

View the interview with Shumona Khanna – then a law student – in which she discusses the early-1990s activism of which Siddharth Gautam, founder of ABVA, and the Lawyers’ Collective were an integral part.

In 1996, Vimal Balasubrahmanyan wrote an article in Economic and Political Weekly summarizing much of this history. Read this article here.

Thanks to Mario d’Penha for sharing the newspaper clipping with LGBT-India, and for consent to republish it on Orinam.

watch?v=JgmOXM_KppM

In case the link doesn’t automatically open on this page, please click above.

So if you were to ask me why do I do this work, I would say that it is to create spaces where issues of sexuality and gender can be discussed, nourished, disagreed on but definitely spoken about in loud voices rather than hushed whispers. The silence is incredible and I watched it grow as I grew up. As a child, I wanted to know why boys had handy tools that they could whip out when they wanted to pee and could do it standing up, whereas we girls had to look for a secluded place, and had to sit down and ensure that no one was looking and only then could we pee. I was curious about how their mechanism worked since it seemed to be a wonderful invention. But this was not a discussion that could be had at all, and all matters below the belt and above the thigh remained in darkness and shrouded in silence.

As I grew up and recovered from the shock that I did not have cancer and the bleeding was only my body letting me know that it was functional, I realized that most girls are not told what periods/chums/ whatever name you wish to give it, are all about. Everyone is allowed to guess what it could possibly be and then elaborate efforts are made by all around to try and hide the fact that this biological event happens. Shop-keepers wrap a pack of sanitary napkins in paper and then place it in a black plastic bag. Most other products are dumped into a white plastic bag and handed over to the customer, but this is something that needs to be kept hidden from human view. I thought that the 80s was the time when menstruation was a taboo subject, but to my horror, I discover young girls today who still have no clue. I am not talking about those who have progressive parents, but the many others who don’t. Tampons are not discussed in the Indian context, since many people believe that inserting a tampon may result in the hymen getting punctured (which is not true at all) and we do not want non-virgins wandering around. The arranged marriage market would be very seriously affected! Very clearly, no understanding that the hymen can be ruptured by cycling, strenuous exercises – any mundane physical activity and does not need any sexual activity to be performed.

Menstruation also brings about the recognition that one is now fertile and therefore the process of control and protection sets into automatic motion. Without any explanations given, girls find themselves being sequestered in girls-only spaces, warned about men, and told that they should not be out late at night, and nowhere in the sermons delivered is there any true explanation of the act leading to pregnancy. Dire stories of pregnancy are recounted and girls are led to believe that looking at a man, touching a boy would all result in pregnancy. I believed that if I necked my boyfriend I would get pregnant and that my mother would instantly get to know. The closest I got to getting any information on this subject was the entry of Johnson and Johnson, the pharmaceutical company, into our school and the screening of a film that explained to us how we were now ‘women’. The film was so academic and so pedantic that none of us truly understood what was going on, and then, to our shame, we were all handed a small packet with two sanitary napkins in it. All of us walked out of the hall in silence. Too embarrassed to even catch each other’s eye.

Growing up is never easy – especially since one has to deal with the hormones that are racing around the body and the fact that crushes for someone or the other develop every day. My college life was full of stories of heterosexual gaiety and finding anyone expressing their desire in a way that was not the ‘usual’ was almost an impossibility. We gossiped and proscribed gayness to those we thought behaved ‘femininely’ whatever that indicated to us at that point. I do not recall any stories of women who were lesbian, or, may be, at that point in time I did wear blinkers and was unable to conceive of any relationship other than one that involved the penis in some way or the other. Sexuality was not discussed in Delhi University, except may be as part of the English or Hindi Literature courses and that too, in a manner that was completely academic and lacking any real passion. This was the early 80’s. The situation is completely different now.

Years of talking and working on issues of sexuality and gender have opened up spaces within colleges in Delhi. I am amazed to see the number of colleges that have discussions, film shows, plays on these issues, and across disciplines. Ingenious ways have been thought of to introduce the subject within fora in women’s colleges. Sexuality and the law was a hot topic for some time – precisely because the subject was vague enough for the introduction of the issue of same sex desire – and no one could accuse us of subverting the young people, we were just in the field of education!

I have been working in the social justice field for more than twenty years now. For a long time after I began working, there was very limited or no understanding of issues of sexuality. What we did have was the heady excitement of gender analysis, something that allowed us to bring women within the ambit of the work that we did. We did have many discussions and programs that touched upon the woman’s body, but that was always in the context of violence or reproductive health. There was no celebration of the woman’s body. This was also the time of blackening of film posters that showed women wearing bikinis, it was the time that protests were organized against beauty contests. And, as a fellow activist once remarked at a protest against one such beauty contest, she heard an invitee for the show saying, ‘Look at the women who are protesting, they all look so down and out and ugly! No wonder they are protesting.’ At that point she hated it, but now she laughs and says what a rag tag bunch they were, protesting against glamour and dressed in true ‘NGO-type’ type clothes. By which I understand that means handloom clothes, which look just a bit shabby, a shoulder bag and a general unkempt look. Protests looked like that then; now, I think the nature of the discussion around beauty contests has changed – we have gone beyond the commodification of women to also accommodate the agency of the woman who actually participates in events of this nature. There does seem to be some kind of understanding that one rule cannot apply for all.

By the late 80’s, early 90’s, the lesbian word had entered the lexicon of some of us working in Delhi. We heard of ‘real life lesbians’ networking, and we tried to guess who within the women’s movement were in same-sex relationships. For those of us for whom this was not a personal issue, as yet, but a political one, we were amazed at the homophobia that we found lurking within the women’s movement. This was the ground that I grew up on and learnt a lot from and yet, I was warned about sharing a room with a woman at a conference because she was lesbian! Amazing, isn’t it? One understands violence in very direct ways, but this form of violence always goes unnoticed and one tends to dismiss it as ignorance.

Around 1993, I recall many heated discussions with activists on the immaturity of discussing lesbian issues in the context of India since poverty / sustainable livelihood / water were far more important issues; and why should a country be held ransom to a fringe group of women talking about lesbian rights? This discussion came up in the light of the process leading to the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, and the fact that someone at a preparatory meeting had challenged the UN declaration that made 1994, the Year of the Family. Interestingly enough, at the National Conference on Women’s Movement in India, held at Tirupati in 1994, ‘the declaration of the conference itself clearly acknowledged and supported the right of all women to make choices about our bodies, our sexuality and our relationships. It recognized that women in patriarchal societies are further marginalized if they identify as lesbian or bisexual women’¹

I was negotiating all these battles while working at an organization that provided sustainable livelihoods to crafts people. There wasn’t much scope for interactions with mainstream women’s organizations working on what seemed as more ‘hard core’ issues. Yet, one learnt a lot from looking around and seeing what was not being talked about, what was not getting included and what were the areas that everyone tended to ignore. The endless and acrimonious discussions had forced me to start linking the work that I did on sustainable livelihood, gender and the world of sexuality and more importantly the right of all human beings to live their lives with dignity. Heterosexuality also was not as hyped up as it was made to be. Many of my friends and I were running into trouble because we chose to live unorthodox lives where we made decisions regarding our bodies, our lives and our relationships. That wasn’t acceptable. I was a participant at a workshop on HIV/AIDS where one of the exercises required that the group be sub-divided on the basis of married older men/women and unmarried men/women. The subtext was that unmarried meant those who had had no sexual activity in their lives. The assumption was also that all the participants were heterosexual. I remember the facilitator looking a bit shocked when I exposed these assumptions and some of us moved away from the group that we had been forced into.

1998 was an important year in many ways for what I wanted to do. It was the year the film Fire was released in India. I will not discuss the film, since that is something that has been done to death. What was important was the fact that the film depicted desire between two middle-class women living in the same family in Delhi and that was not palatable for the Right Wing in India. What aggravated matters was also the name of one of the women – Sita, also the name of the consort of Lord Ram, the hero of the Hindu religious text Ramayana. The theatres were attacked and many statements were issued in the press: ‘Two women having a physical relationship is an unnatural thing’ – Pramod Navalkar, the then Minister for Culture of the State of Maharashtra, and, ‘Why are such films made here? They can be made in the US or other western countries. A theme like lesbianism does not fit in the Indian atmosphere’ by the then Union Minister for Home, L.K.Advani ². The right wing anger enabled the placing of sexual desire within the public domain and more importantly it opened up spaces for discussion on lesbianism, same sex desire and sexuality. CALERI – The Campaign for Lesbian Rights – came up following broad-based protests against the Right Wing Shiv Sena’s attacks on the film. The individuals and groups that had been actively involved in the protests, decided to develop a year-long activist effort to forefront lesbian issues in public spaces. I was active in this campaign and learnt a lot through this. It was the time that organizations working on women’s rights were forced to take a stand and it was interesting to see the excuses that some of them came up with, so as to not have to take a stand. It’s also the time that I found myself having to explain that I was involved with the campaign not just because of what my personal identity was, but because I believed it to be about human rights violations. While I worked with craftspeople, nobody ever asked me whether I was a craftsperson, but suddenly when working on lesbian issues I had become partisan and one of them and therefore militant and so on…

That was twelve years ago. The firmament for action has altered radically now. There is a proliferation of organizations working on issues of sexuality and sexual rights, a large number of programs are organized with college students, academics are publishing, Bollywood has gay and lesbian characters – a lot of them completely hateful, columns in newspapers… a multitude of new ways to deal with issues of sexuality. Most importantly, a case is being fought in the Delhi High Court for exempting consensual adult same-sex sexual activity from the purview of Section 377 (Unnatural Offences) of the Indian Penal Code which reads: Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman, or animal, shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine. [Ed: Section 377  was read down by Delhi High Court in 2009 and then reinstated by the Supreme Court in 2013]. Interestingly, on February 26, 1999 CALERI had submitted a memorandum to the Committee on Empowerment of Women: Appraisal of Laws relating to Women (Criminal Laws) and the subject was Repeal of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code ³. The intervening years have seen the media become supportive and there are many more queer images in public spaces. In 2008, India saw Pride Parades in four major cities and I was fortunate to be part of two of those. The sense of exhilaration and joy was palpable in the two cities that I was present. The very streets, which can be threatening to people who do not conform to gender identity or desire as defined by society were now being occupied by them legally and the police was safeguarding their interests!

It has been a long journey and a fun one. The last ten years has seen me active in an organization working on issues of sexuality and sexual rights and I have facilitated innumerable trainings on these issues across countries, cultures, ages, ethnicities, religion, disability, sexual orientation and race. I have learnt immensely and equally have unlearnt immensely from the work that I have been doing. It’s been challenging too, doing this work. While I can see the palpable differences in the world that I now occupy, I also see the same processes happening yet again for a newer set of people who have to learn afresh. In 1983, I found myself having to explain to people that masturbation was not a sin and was not wrong and in 2009 I find that I still need to say it. I think I will have to repeat until my dying day that homosexuality is not abnormal and that lesbians are not women who have faced violence at the hands of men. The important change is that I won’t be one of a fringe group saying this. There will be many more who will be loudly proclaiming this and many other issues relating to sexuality.

As I said earlier, there are innumerable challenges in the work that is being done in this field of sexuality and sexual rights. One of the discussions that I have had with a friend is about the tenuousness of the binary construct of man and woman. If there was no construct, it would mean that there would be no man or woman and then there would be no identities that we could use to define our desires because then we would just be people who desired other people! What would that do the world of identity politics? If the binary construct did not exist then there would be no differentiation based on gender and then we would once again be set free from labels of any sort.

Similarly, our worldview precludes all those who do not have able bodies. A disability activist once named us those of the ‘temporarily abled bodies’. That has really made me reflect on what are the ways in which we address sexuality and disability, and, do we really do so in any meaningful manner? Do we understand the desire for a sexual partner from someone who has a motor nerve disorder, or someone who has spina bifida and is on a wheel chair or someone who is mentally challenged and unable to explain to us what she feels except that she repeatedly says she wants to get married? Do we realize that we may become that disabled body? The world of disability studies or Crip Theory has a lot that we have to learn from.

Technology has advanced rapidly and we now have to deal with the fact that people form intimate relationships on the Internet and that chat spaces have proliferated and there are chat rooms for practically every kind of desire and dream. Young adults are able to access information that may or may not be appropriate to their age. Sexual relationships have taken on a new meaning in this landscape and we are not really equipped to deal with the public nature of the Internet. We are also not completely sure about the camera on the mobile phone. There was a safety in public spaces, but now there is no guarantee that someone is not photographing your body while you sit down in a mall.

We are unable to understand the ways in which we allow ourselves to create sexual hierarchies within our worldview and place people and activities within it⁴. Often times we pitch the homosexuals against the heterosexuals and the abled against the disabled. Sexual acts, which result in reproduction, are valued higher than those which do not. Violence and victim narratives are listened to more often than stories of pleasure⁵ and identity.

Are we able to understand that people have sex or do not have sex for various reasons? That desire and lust are good enough, that people may exchange money for sex, that people may be in multiple relationships, that identities are transient and sexuality fluid?

I continue to do the work that I do because although some bits of the world have changed, there is a lot more of the rainbow that I want to grasp and share with people. I want to be able to live in a world where I do not sit in judgment of others; where I can recognize consent and consensual relationships even though they may clash with my world view and I can learn that not everything can be best described as black and white, but also as grey, light grey, dark grey and many other permutations. And I do what I do since I believe that change has happened in my lifetime in the world of sexuality and that I still have to learn and challenge myself and others if I want to move anywhere closer to the ideal that we can create.

References:

1 Fernandez B, Radhakrishnan M, Deb P. 2007 Report on a Lesbian Meeting, National Conference on Women’s Movement in India, Tirupati, 1994, in Nivedita Menon (Ed) Sexualities, New Delhi: Women Unlimited

2 Cited in Lesbian Emergence: Campaign for Lesbian Rights. 1999. A Citizen’s Report, New Delhi

3 Memorandum in Lesbian Emergence: Campaign for Lesbian Rights. 1999. A Citizen’s Report, New Delhi

4 Rubin G. 1984. Thinking Sex: Notes For a Radical Theory of the Politics of Sexuality in Carole S. Vance (Ed) Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul

5 Vance, C. 1984. Pleasure and Danger: Toward a Politics of Sexuality in Carole S. Vance (Ed) Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul

This article was originally published by TARSHI – Talking About Reproductive and Sexual Health Issues in Issue 1 (2009) of their quarterly magazine In Plainspeak. We thank TARSHI and the author for permission to republish on Orinam.