We oppose “The Trafficking of Persons Bill 2018” because it replicates the existing discriminatory laws, brings into the ambit populations/sections that have different problems, gives immense powers to the police, creates additional unaccountable bureaucracy, criminalizes whole swathes of population, and lacks any credible model of rehabilitation as it does not allocate any resources. The Bill lacks key definitions (e.g. forced labour, exploitation). The Bill reflects illogical gradation of offences, New offences unrelated to trafficking (Section 41(2)); Vaguely worded offences with disproportionate sentencing; Anti-slavery provision re-incorporated though irrelevant; reversal of burden of proof and introduction of absolute liability offences; Introduction of strict liability offences; high levels of punishment and lack of clear sentencing policy; weak punishment for employers; violation of right to property; provisions relating to bail presume guilt rather than innocence). The Bill uses failed approach of institutionalized rehabilitation with inadequate commitment of resources rather than community-based rehabilitation. The United Nations Special Rapporteurs on Contemporary Forms of Slavery and on Trafficking have also expressed their displeasure with the bill.

We condemn “The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2018” as it violates more rights than it claims to protect. It is contrary to the Supreme Court NALSA verdict and violates the right to self-identity and constitutional rights, encodes discrimination, offers no reservations while criminalizing transgender community traditional livelihood of begging. It stands in stark violation of the fundamental rights of transgender persons enshrined in the Constitution as equal citizens, judgement of the Apex Court in NALSA vs. Union of India in 2014. For example, the Bill has created a two-tier system within the transgender community, wherein persons who have not had sex reassignment surgery (SRS) can only identify as transgender and not as male or female, and the identification as transgender depends on scrutiny and certification by a District Screening Committee; those seeking to identify as male or female need to have had SRS. This is completely contrary to the NALSA verdict. We note here that the concept of a District Screening Committee that seeks to validate the ‘authenticity’ of a transgender person’s identity is not only completely against the letter and spirit of NALSA, but also provides immense scope for abuse. The Bill is a retrograde step from previous iterations of transgender persons’ rights such as reservation, employment and education opportunities as iterated in the NALSA judgment, MSJE report, the Tiruchi Siva Bill, and the Parliamentary Standing Committee recommendations. The GOI Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) 2018 Bill also seeks to destroy non-normative family structures and support systems that transgender persons in India have been seeking support from all these years. It also encodes discrimination with lower penalties for sexual and physical violence against transgender people.    

Furthermore, we call out the enormously bigoted, homophobic & trans-phobic The Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill 2018, as passed by the Lok Sabha is another institutional mechanism to control our bodies. It makes surrogacy available to exclusively heteronormative couples, impairing non-heteronormative couples from availing these methods to have babies.

We urge the Members of Parliament (Rajya Sabha) to conscientiously consider our appeal and send these Bills for a review by a Select Committee of the Indian Parliament. We extend our solidarity to the Jantar Mantar Protest, happening on 28th December, 2018 at New Delhi and to all the protest demonstrations that are happening across the country in opposition to these Bills.  We urge every citizen to join the protest at Jantar Mantar, New Delhi in our struggle for equal fundamental rights for all.

We plan to hold public discussions, rallies and talks simultaneously across campuses and cities on the day of the protest.  We call Individuals, student groups, queer collectives to join in demonstrations across campuses/cities against the Bills and other legislations against the marginalised groups such as transgender and queer persons, sex workers, migrant workers, domestic workers, etc,by creating literature regarding the political and legal issues faced by the queer community in India.

*Statement open for endorsement till the 27th December, 2359 hours*

Endorsements can be sent to

• Vaivab Das – dasvaivab1@gmail.com
• Ankush Gupta – ankush.gupta6414@gmail.com
• Aroh Akunth – akunth.15@aud.ac.in

List of Signatories:

1.TISS Queer Collective, Mumbai
2.Spectra, Pondicherry University
3.Jamia Queer Collective
4 Ambedkar University Delhi Queer Collective
5.Women and Gender Development Cell, TISS Guwahati
6. Uttarang, TISS Guwahati
7. The Gender Studies Cell, St. Stephen’s College, Delhi
8. Miranda House Queer Collective, Miranda House, Delhi
9. Queer Collective, Dehradun
10.Resistive Alliance for Queer Solidarity, Allahabad
11.Gender Issues Cell, K.C. College, Mumbai University
12.Abhimaan, Kolhapur
13.Hasratein, JNU
14. Orenda, IIT-Gandhinagar
15.TISS Queer Collective, Hyderabad
16.NLSQA : National Law School Queer Alliance, Bangalore
17. SavitriBai Intersectional Study Circle, NALSAR
18. Xomonnoy (Intersectional Queer Feminist Group, Guwahati, Assam
19.Lambda, IIT Guwahati
20.The Queer and Ally Network, Manipal
21. Queerythm, Kerala
22. Jadavpur University Queer Collective
23. NLU Delhi Queer Collective
24. NLU Delhi Gender Circle
25. Students coordinating from St. Edmunds, Shillong
26. Students coordinating from NIFT, Shillong
27. Students coordinating from IHM, Pusa
28. Students coordinating from Pune University
29. Students coordinating from NLUJAA, Assam
30. Students coordinating from Guwahati University
31. Students coordinating from University of Science and Technology, Meghalaya
32. Queer and Straight allies at IISC (QUASI)
33. Queerabad, Ahmedabad
34. LGBTQIA+ Students, Jindal Global University
35. Dr. Kimberly Walters, California State University, Long Beach
37. Awadh Queer Committee
38. LGBTQ Resource group at IIM Ahmedabad
39. Umeed – an LGBTQIA+ Collective, IIM Kozhikode
40. Ya_All: Queer and Allies Youth Network, Manipur
41. Pinjra Tod, New Delhi
42. Akshaya, the Queer Collective of Netaji Subhas University of Technology (NSUT)
43. Orinam Collective, Chennai
44. Feminist Collective, Ashoka University
45. Women’s Development  Cell, LSR

The Glass Closet – clear, painted, transparent, translucent, opaque even, sometimes offering a mirror of distortions, sometimes one of clarity, refracting, or creating chiarscuros of rainbows or endless shades of grey – is an attempt to bring together some everyday stories of queer experiences on campuses in India.

This blog has emerged as a part of a research project titled, “An exploratory study of discriminations based on non-normative genders and sexualities” which is located in The Advanced Centre for Women’s Studies, TISS, Mumbai. In this project research, while we want to create documentation on discriminations faced by individuals on the basis of non-normative gender or sexuality in different areas, we also want to understand the meanings of discriminations and non-normativities as reflected in our everyday.

One of our aims is to find different ways of talking about the experiences of being in higher education, and not just within the language that the university pushes us all to aspire to. To this end we organised two writing workshops, one in Kolkata and another in Bombay, with 14 students from campuses in Bombay, Bangalore, Kolkata, Bhuveneshwar, Banaras and Guwahati. These discussions and writings from the workshops enabled us to form a loose collective with several students, placed in different University campuses across the country to share their writings and give and receive feedback from each other and the facilitator. This blog is the collective effort of that group.

The title of the blog too came out from this process.

We are aware that our stories are perhaps a small insignificant slice of the wide range of experiences that many are living. Thus we would like to open this blog to invite submissions from other “queer” identified students to write about their stories and experiences of their lives within campuses of higher education. If you would like to submit your stories kindly write in to us at theglassclosetblog@gmail.com.

Do follow the blog on https://theglassclosetsblog.wordpress.com

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/.

At first, Tushar thought that the note slipped under his hostel room door on Oct 11, 2015, was some sort of prank by a fellow student. The next one read: “I am not joking… this is important for both of us as I need the money and your secret won’t get out. If your secret is leaked you will be hated by everyone and your career will be ruined in IISc”.

The notes kept coming. Nine in all, over the course of five days.

And they got nastier. On Oct 16,  when the blackmailer realized that Tushar wasn’t about to yield to his demands, he pinned a homophobic note on the hostel notice board outing him.

Says Tushar: “[t]he notice was first seen by one of my friends and removed by him. He brought it over to my room asking me if I was fine and talked with me for a while. Subsequently, sometime during the night, a similar notice was put up with a terse handwritten note at the end “YOU CAN KEEP REMOVING IT. I WILL PRINT MORE“.

Thus outed to the entire hostel, Tushar, who had only been out to his closest friends until then, chose to respond with the following note on the same notice board:

Tushar, who describes himself as ‘shy and a bit introverted’ said he felt relieved upon writing the note. Classmates and fellow-hostelites came up to him to express their support. In the weeks since the incident, he, with the support of friends, lodged a complaint with the university administration. At the time of publishing this note, he is still awaiting formal action in response.

Episodes such as these suggest that even large, supposedly progressive, campuses with support groups and allies, are not immune to bullying and harassment of LGBT students. It raises questions about the ability and willingness of the campus administration to respond swiftly and effectively to complaints received.

The familiarity of the perpetrator with the campus, hostel and locations where he asked the money to be placed, strongly suggests that he is a student, causing his actions to fall within the purview of ragging. The 1998 amendment of the Karnataka Education Act includes in its definition of ragging “causing, inducing, compelling or forcing a student… to do any act which detracts from human dignity or violates his person or exposes him to ridicule or to forbear from doing any lawful act, by intimidating., wrongfully restraining, wrongfully confining, or injuring him or by using criminal force to him or by holding out to him any threat of such intimidation, wrongful restraint, wrongful confinement, injury or the use of criminal force” [1].

Further, the University Grants Commission regulations on ragging, released in 2009, include extortion within their definition [2]. Such anti-ragging policies need to be made explicitly inclusive of homophobic and transphobic bullying, as well.

Finally, while the current Sexual Harassment in the Workplace Act [3] is limited to redressal for ciswomen, we urgently need measures to address sexual harassment, including blackmail and outing threats, of queer and trans individuals who are not ciswomen.

Some Orinam resources to make educational institutions more LGBTIQ* inclusive are here [4], and a list of campus LGBT initiatives including Queer IISc collective is here [5].

We at Orinam are aware that coming out [6] is not a universal or readily available prophylactic for such expressions of homophobia as blackmail and extortion [7], and recognise that such forced outing can have disastrous consequences for many. We also realise that for some of us who are visibly different in our gender expression, being in the closet is not even an option.

The caveats notwithstanding, we applaud Tushar for his courageous response, and stand in solidarity with him and the queer/trans and ally communities at IISc in their efforts to obtain justice.

Tushar is also planning to speak out to his peers on sexuality issues, and hopes that other queer students will find this to be a source of support. He eventually plans to come out to his parents, a rite of passage that – while considered before – hasn’t happened yet.

A shout-out to the friends who have supported him at this time. In the words of Anubhav, a member of the campus LGBT support group Queer IISc who accompanied Tushar to the university administration, “Our friends supported us irrespective of orientation, because a crime is a crime, and victims are our friends, relatives, people who we care for, not ‘gays’, ‘lesbians’ or ‘transgenders’“.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Tushar and Anubhav for their input, and Advocate Amba Salelkar for pointing out that extortion is covered within the UGC definition if ragging.

References

[1] The Karnataka Education Act, 1983. (with amendments). Online at https://test.orinam.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Karnataka_Ed_Act.pdf

[2] University Grants Commission, 2009. UGC Regulations on Curbing the Menace of Ragging In Higher Educational Institutions. Online at https://test.orinam.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/anti_ragging_UGC_20091.pdf

[3] Ministry of Law and Justice, Government of India. 2013. The Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013, Online at http://www.lawyerscollective.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/Sexual-Harassment-at-Workplace-Act.pdf

[4] Orinam, 2009. Resources for Educational Institutions. Online at https://new2.orinam.net/resources-for/educational-institutions/

[5] Orinam 2009, updated through 2015. Campus Initiatives. https://new2.orinam.net/resources-for/lgbt/campus-initiatives/

[6] Orinam. 2009. Coming Out Stories. Online at https://new2.orinam.net/resources-for/lgbt/coming-out-2/coming-out-stories/

[7] Orinam, 2009. Dealing with Extortion. Online at https://new2.orinam.net/resources-for/lgbt/legal-resources/dealing-with-extortion/

There’s a new hazard to Indian school and college students on the horizon, and it’s particularly toxic for LGBT youth and women of all sexualities. It takes the form of Abhishek Clifford, the CEO of a Mysore-based NGO named Rescue. Or, if you prefer, Paul Clifford Jacob, of Rescue ministry.

As part of the Fresher’s Orientation at SRM University in Chennai, he presented a seminar on ‘Moral Values’  on 19 August 2015 at the University’s main auditorium in Main Campus, Kattankulathur. He gave the lecture to multiple batches of 500 to 1000 students, covering about 5000 students in total. Details below are paraphrased from a report provided by members of Prism, the unofficial LGBT student group at SRM.

He started off with a rant against abortion, and attributed it to consumption of pornography by today’s (heterosexual, cis-male) youth. He claimed that porn leads men to have casual sex,  leading to women getting pregnant and seeking out abortions. He spoke about how porn is also the biggest reason for divorce, as it leaves young men unsatisfied with monogamous vanilla relationships and prone to seeking out dalliances with sex workers and other men’s wives. Besides urging a ban on porn, he said traditional sex was the only safe way to have fun.

He then proceeded to show an image of two guys kissing on the screen and talked about how homosexuality is a mental disorder, and how it affects the younger generation. He said there is no possibility of traditional sex between two men, so gay students in the audience should get their sexual orientation changed at conversion therapy centres. He claimed that people could successfully get their orientations change from gay to straight, and proceeded to give an example of a young man who, prior to conversation therapy, used to like pink colour and other people of the same sex. When he turned seventeen, he changed his preferences to blue and to dating girls. Clifford claimed to personally know doctors who have cured “hundreds of homosexuals” with their therapy.

Further investigation by team Orinam shows:

Abhishek Clifford was in the news in 2014 supplying quotes based on a survey by Rescue that linked online porn to sex offences (The Hindu,  The New Indian Express, Herald). Among his claims are that about 70 per cent of youth in the 18-21 age group watch four hours of sex videos per week, and that 76 per cent of students said that watching rapes leads to the desire to actually rape someone. In July 2014, Goa’s netizens had protested Clifford being allowed to preach his regressive ideas to school and college students. Rescue was one of two organisations (along with Rhoumaia) that led a protest at Cubbon Park in Bangalore on 31 Aug 2014 demanding the government ban porn sites.

In a sermon given on 30 Aug, 2015, at the Ark Victory Church in Sembakkam, Chennai,  he lamented that “We live in a time and culture where pornography, pre-marital sex, LGBT relationships, abortions and many other unnatural practices are the norm of the day.” In that sermon, he proposed reaching out to colleges to initiate discussions on porn, abortion and gay issues, and “sow seeds of God’s truth”.

A Youtube video uploaded by the Eagle Missions ministry featuring Abhishek Clifford has the following blurb “his ministry team reach[es]  50,000 college students a year with the 7 Mountain Mandate, rescuing sex slaves, fighting abortion and porn businesses, while leading to many salvations. They get permission from government officials to speak in public colleges and to raid sex shops. Hear about resurrections and miracles exploding in India.”

The website of Eagle Missions refers to him as Paul Clifford Jacob, one of their missionaries, and to Rescue as a “ministry devoted to shining the light of God’s word in the power of the Spirit in the colleges and though the media in South India”, with plans of reaching 15000 students leveraging “open doors in Muslim, Hindu, Catholic, Government and RSS colleges” [emphasis ours]. Check out their website to read more of Clifford’s insidious agenda.

Incidentally, the Rescue website and FB community site mention nothing of Rescue being a ministry.

Students and school/college administrators: beware of misinformation, hate and fear being sown by Clifford and his ilk.

Take some time to learn about resources for educational institutions, ongoing campus LGBT initiatives,  hosting LGBT-inclusive fresher orientations, and what leading doctors in India have to say about conversion therapy.

For those of the Christian faith, note that there are LGBT-inclusive churches in India that are part of the National Council of Churches of India (NCCI). Resources for LGBT Christians are here.

Watch Clifford’s SRM lecture below, if you can stomach it:

We thank Aaditya Joshi of IIT-Bombay and members of Prism, SRM University’s LGBT student group, for information.

Saathi is a LGBTQ resource group consisting of LGBTQ individuals and allies associated with IIT Bombay. Set up in 2010, Saathi aims to create a safe space for community members and a more inclusive IIT Bombay campus. Saathi has organized several social events in the past, including movie screenings in coordination with Kashish Mumbai International Queer Film Festival.

At the undergraduate orientation on 25th July 2014, Saathi was introduced to the new entrants of the IIT-B campus. The details of the orientation are as follows:

0) Aditya Joshi and Aditya Shankar worked on a pamphlet that introduced LGBTQ and Saathi in four languages: English, Hindi, Marathi and Telugu. Avinash, Navdeep wrote the Telugu writeup while Prudhvi suggested edits. The languages were dependent on availability of writers in these languages. A print copy of the pamphlet was distributed at the orientation. The pamphlet can be found here.

1) We screened a new video. Check it out. It’s very cool . The idea of making it multilingual worked well with the audience applauding each time a new language came up. The quotes at the end were received very well. Sudipto suggested the concept of “first love” that was used in the video. You see Aniket, Peeyush Sharma, Aditya Shankar, Prudhvi, Ruturaj, Madalsa and Aaditya Joshi (me) in the video. Aditya Shankar did a brilliant job at filming and packaging the video.

2) The video was followed by Aditya Shankar introducing Saathi and conducting a quick quiz with the audience. I was amazed to see that ALL questions were answered correctly! (Some of them were definitely level 2 like “Which cryptography expert was gay?”).

3) We also had a rainbow-decorated stall outside the venue where we distributed freebies, displayed the books in Saathi library and collected registrations. 43 signed up to be on the mailing list! Way beyond our expectations!!

Meanwhile, when the video and the quick quiz ended, a part of the “cast” of the movie assembled on stage. The audience greeted us with a roaring applause – it’s the hardest I have heard anyone clapping, seriously!

Seeing the participation of all us volunteers and the response from the audience, I am positive that this awesome orientation is only the beginning of an awesome year for Saathi.

Note from the Editors: Saathi’s efforts and resource materials for orienting incoming undergraduate students on LGBTQ issues are, to our knowledge, the first of their kind in India. We hope the resources they have shared in this post will benefit wider audiences, and spur similar initiatives on other campuses. Check out Orinam’s list of LGBTQ campus groups in India, and our resources for educational institutions. Also, please let us know of other initiatives of this kind.

Says Aditya Shankar from  Saathi, the campus LGBT group, “…the video was made for sensitising IIT-Bombay freshmen on sexual orientation. The languages chosen reflect the undergraduate demographic composition. But the video was specifically made so that it doesn’t become very specific to IIT-B as was the video last year in which I came out of the closet.”

Kudos to SAATHI for this effort! Click below to watch the video: