February 26, 2014

To,
President Yoweri Museveni, Members of Parliament of Uganda,
and the People of the Republic of Uganda

Through Ms Elizabeth Napeyok, High Commissioner,
Ugandan High Commission in New Delhi, India
B-3/26,Vasant Vihar
New Delhi 110057
India
Fax: 91-11-26144405
Email: newdelhi@mofa.go.ug

We register here our strong condemnation of President Museveni’s signing of the Anti-Homosexuality Bill, 2009 into law. The Uganda Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2014 violates the basic human rights of the kuchus of Uganda, impeding their right to live and love without harm to others, in enjoyment of the rights of freedom and equality guaranteed by the Ugandan Constitution. In the face of this severe blow to the struggle for universal human rights, we reassert our solidarity with the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, disabled and HIV-affected people of Uganda, and of all 36 of Africa’s 55 countries where same-sex relations are illegal.

We write as citizens of India, also a former British colony grappling with the multiple legacies of colonialism, of which the inheritance of homophobic laws is only one. We too have been told that homosexuality is a ‘Western import’ that is alien to our culture. This claim flies in the face of a wealth of evidence of same-sex love and desire in our histories and cultures. It is a matter of fact that same-sex love in our cultures, and in parts of Africa including Uganda, was accepted, and in some contexts, celebrated until the advent of the colonial experience. It is a claim that, moreover, is contradicted by the fact that Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860, represents the most aggressive institutionalisation of the criminalisation of homosexuality in the history of the Indian subcontinent. It is this legislative initiative of an unrepresentative colonial state that was then replicated in only slightly modified forms in other colonies of the British state, including Uganda. It is homophobia, rather than homosexuality that is a colonial legacy. Today, we are engaged, along with our counterparts in other ex-British colonies, in an ongoing struggle against this legacy of colonialism, a struggle in which we have relied primarily on the activist labours of our people and on the moral and legal commitments of laws and Constitutions that we have given unto ourselves.

As a post-colonial state that is proud of its hard-won independence, we understand, share and support Uganda’s commitment to realising and maintaining democratic decision making processes, in line with your Constitution and in the exercise of your sovereignty, unimpeded by the external world.

In this context, we are concerned by numerous analyses and critical commentaries that have shown the Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2014 is itself an externally sponsored initiative, drafted with considerable encouragement and advice from US-based evangelicals whose moral, theological and political agendas do not prioritise, or rather undermine the welfare of the entirety of Uganda’s people. In this context it is important to emphasise that the Act disregards and devalues the lives of Uganda’s own people. We urge you to listen to those brave Ugandan voices in every walk of life who have stood up for basic human rights and fundamental freedoms of all people in Uganda without regard to considerations of tribe, region, religion, sex, nationality, disability, or sexuality.

We reach out in solidarity against attempts at imperialist control over our political, moral, ethical and cultural lives. The irony of history is that the Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2014, which is an instance of such attempts at control, is being hailed as evidence of the expression of sovereignty. To recognise the rights of all Ugandans to lives of dignity, equality and freedom of expression and assembly, by immediately repealing the Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2014 would be the true assertion of sovereignty.

Signed:

*All cities are in India, unless specified

The past few years in particular have seen increasing polarisation between states when it comes to sexual orientation and gender identity. On the one hand, you have state policing of sexual orientation and gender identity with any perceived deviance punished. On the other, there are countries where the state seems focused on trying to bring everyone within ‘the norm’, with guarantees of the right to marry and have children as an indication of ‘job (more or less) done’ and the sign of superior civilisation (in contrast to all those countries over there) but little being done to challenge and change structural inequality.

Within a space of a month in December 2013/ January 2014, both India and Nigeria saw fundamental retrenchment of rights. I have spent a lot of time thinking and talking about this over the past 6 weeks. Here are some thoughts.

India

The Supreme Court of India in December ruled that section 377 of the Indian Penal Code which criminalises sexual acts ‘against the order of nature‘ was, in fact, not a breach of rights as guaranteed under the Constitution. This was in response to an appeal brought by religious organisations who argued that homosexual sex is against the cultural and religious values of the country. In reality, the Penal Code is an expression of British Victorian morality, as decided by Thomas Macauley in 1861, not a reflection of the long history and acceptance of same sex love in India and the rest of the South Asian subcontinent. Case law has this provision applying to any form of non penis-in-vagina sex (including oral sex) thereby criminalising quite a large part of the population (according to the results of recent nationwide surveys about the sexual habits of Indians) but it has been used in recent times to, in effect, criminalise being gay.

I was in India when the Supreme Court verdict was announced and found so many echoes with the previous year and the outrage around issues of violence against women and girls following the gang rape that occurred in Delhi. Both events sparked intense mainstream and public debate, to an extent that seemed (more or less) unheralded in India. Just like I had never been engaged by what seemed every single person I came across in talking about violence against women and girls in 2012, I had never had discussions with these people (by which I mean people who are not activist friends) about sexuality in 2013. I was really pleasantly surprised and happy to see how things had shifted in terms of attitudes. These were people who would have been devastated to find out there was a gay in the family (they surely know that probability means there is definitely at least one?) but were against criminalising homosexuality. That is incredible progress and a good indication of what the movement has achieved in the past ten years.

There were Bollywood stars, cricketers, authors, politicians and other public figures standing up in support of LGBTI rights. Vikram Seth appeared on the front cover of India Today, saying:

There’s nothing heroic in doing what I have done. There are [gay] people who live lives of quiet desperation in India’s towns and villages. They are bullied by their families and relatives. They need people to voice their dismay and disappointments… Can you imagine the difference it would make if four or five widely admired people from different walks of life were to stand up and say: ‘This is no big deal or I am bisexual’? People who have come out in the freedom of the last four years since the Delhi High Court judgement can’t be simply pushed back into darkness of the closet. But I am talking not of them in this respect, but of those people, full of self doubt or with bullying families who desperately need people to point to and say: ‘They are like me too’.

He was very outspoken and visible in the media in the aftermath of the judgement about his bisexuality – but that did not seem to affect people’s willingness to read and buy his books.

The ruling Congress Party pledged to take appropriate legislative action to recognise and protect rights which, given there is a general election in 2014, is pretty astounding. Let’s see what actually happens but a political party taking action in an election year on this issue is a significant step and any legislation that passes as a result would have legislative rather than judicial authority and so be less likely to be the focus of significant backlash. Of course some members of the BJP and some religious figures supported the Supreme Court decision, with Rajnath Singh, the President of the BJP (the main opposition party) saying ‘we believe that homosexuality is an unnatural act and cannot be supported. This was counterbalanced by over a dozen protests that took place all over India and around the world in a global day of rage. The protest in Bangalore, which I attended, attracted over 900 people with many onlookers engaging in discussion and debate with those present. Over a thousand people from all over the state attended the protest that was planned a fortnight later.

In some ways, the ruling may end up having quite a significant silver lining. It has shocked many into making a stand, galvanised and re-politicised the movement and meant that LGBTI rights continue to be discussed openly – in homes, schools, newspapers and TV screens. Indeed, this shift (and yes, it’s far from complete) may provide a more enduring basis for protection and promotion of rights than any law, especially one that is court mandated and therefore open to the classic anti-democratic challenge.

It felt like a time of real dynamism, energy and re-politicisation. It was also a time to remember that too much energy and resources can go into legal change with little left over for the much more difficult to achieve radical and transformatory societal change. Now, of course we need laws to change to provide a baseline of protection but actually the work that is needed is with police forces across the country, in schools, at all levels of society and in all areas of the country. India has had legislation against domestic violence for years now but to what extent have things actually changed?

Nigeria

I returned to Nigeria last week to find that in my absence, anti-gay legislation had been assented to by the President. Here is the version the Senate passed – I assume this is the same as the final law (which has not yet been gazetted). It does the following:

• prohibits marriage contracts or civil unions entered into by people of the same gender s 1(1)
• renders invalid any marriage contracts or civil union entered between people of same gender and therefore the people are not recognised as entitled to the benefits of a ‘valid’ marriage s 1(2)
• renders void any marriage contract or civil union between people of the same gender issued by a foreign country s 1(3)
• prohibits marriages or civil unions between people of the same gender from being solemnised in any place of worship s 2(1) [but all marriages and civil unions are prohibited under s 1(1) so what’s the point of this?]
• invalidates marriage certificates issued to people of the same sex in Nigeria s 2(2) [Was this happening before the legislation passed? When? Where? Which marriage certificates issued in Nigeria exactly will be invalidated?]
• prohibits registration of gay clubs, societies and organisations, their sustenance, processions and meetings and criminalises registration, operation or participation with a jail term of up to 10 years s 4(1) and s 5(2)
• prohibits and criminalises public show of same sex amorous relationship directly or indirectly with a jail term of up to 10 years s 4(2) and s 5(2) [What exactly does this cover? Can I hold someone’s hand? Hug them? Kiss them on the cheek? There have been various graphics circulated online showing politicians hugging asking whether they now to be prosecuted too.]
• criminalises people of the same gender who enter a civil union or marriage contract, with a jail term of up to 14 years s 5(1)
• criminalises anyone who witnesses or aids a same gender marriage or civil union or the registration of a gay club, society, organisation, procession or meetings with liability of 10 years in prison s 5(3)

The rights that this law violates under the Nigerian constitution, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights and international human rights law, let me count the ways.

(right to equality, right to dignity, right to non-discrimination, right to privacy, freedom of assembly and association, freedom of expression, right to marry, right to freedom of thought…)

Since presidential assent, there has been a number of people who have been arrested, publicly lashed and/ or currently waiting sentencing where the death penalty is applicable. Legislation, arrests and the punishments meted out have been intensely popular with police having to protect defendants from crowds throwing stones.

This has been met by either conspicious silence by many in the human rights movement or those who claim to work to defend and protect human rights speaking out in favour of the law. Only a handful of Nigerians have spoken out publicly in opposition so far. It is early(ish) days though and one can but hope that this will change.

Some thoughts

This all seems overwhelmingly depressing but I am also reminded at how suddenly things can change even though it all seems so overwhelming now and any prospect of change completely remote and unreachable. I remember reading the text of the Delhi High Court judgment that ruled section 377 to be unconstitutional (in the queue for Wimbledon of all places) completely overjoyed because I never thought that (legal change) could happen. I think about conversations about the recent judgment and yes, there is a lot of homophobia, but I would never have though that people would be supporting the movement for rights to this extent even just 5 years ago.

Also, in contradiction to popular representation, it is not all bad news coming from Africa and Asia. The story that is always overlooked is that of activists organising and people speaking out – against these odds.

Just in the past few days, the internet has been abuzz with the news that Kenyan journalist, author of One Day I Will Write About This Place and How to Write about Africa and winner of the Caine Prize for African Writing, Binyavanga Wainaina published a piece entitled ‘I am homosexual, mum‘. He followed this with a series of short videos on the fear of imagination to explain why. You can watch the first one below then click the link to YouTube and watch the others.

Both Vikram Seth and Binyavanga Wainaina are well known figures and as a result, it is not surprising that they have garnered so much attention for the action that they have taken. They are continuing a conversation that is sorely needed – one where homosexuals/bisexuals are seen as real people and ‘one of us’ rather than the insidious influence of the white man surreptitiously converting people into ‘abnormal’ and ‘wicked ways.’ It is not surprising that this has garnered so much attention.

However, around the same time, LGBTI activists in South Africa organised a protest of the Nigeria vs South Africa football match in solidarity with and to protest the legislation in Nigeria. There are queer rights activists, such as the Coalition of African Lesbians, the Karnataka Sexual Minorities Forum or the Nigerian Initiative for Equal Rights, all over Africa and Asia mobilising for rights. Then there those who live across all levels and sectors of society but whose ‘I don’t see what the problem is, why are they criminalising these people?’ is completely hidden from national dialogue. One of my activist friends says he finds in his travels around India that villages and rural areas can be more accepting of the multiplicities of the forms of existence and relationships than the cities. At the protest in Bangalore, I got talking to two men who had jumped off a passing bus on the way home from their labouring jobs to find out what was going on and wanted to know what all the noise was about. They stayed for a whole hour after I told them to show their support. This effectively rebuts the classist and casteist assumptions that it is only the elite who care about human rights, including the rights of sexual minorities, and all who are from working class or marginalised caste backgrounds are automatically homophobic. Unfortunately, the voices and existence of queer people and their allies, especially those from marginalised classes, castes, religious groups or rural areas, are far from visible in public discourse on these issues – in their own countries and internationally – further reinforcing that complete lie that homosexuality is a ‘Western disease’ that is infecting ‘our people’ and is completely contrary to ‘our traditional values’. Those who say this do not seem to mind having truth get in the way of their assertions.

The reality is that there have always been those who feel same sex love and desire – in every corner of the world and throughout time. We need to break free from imposed Victorian colonial mentalities (truly the real Western disease?). We need to instead start reclaiming, revisioning and reowning our rich histories, traditions and present realities of people living in ways alternative to the perceived norm and fighting for their right in order to do so.

This essay was first published on the author’s blog  and has been republished with consent.

Katyal, Akhil. 2013. Ismat Chughtai’s Lihaf: A Short Note. Orinam.net
Retrieved on month/dd/yyyy from https://new2.orinam.net/ismat-chughtais-lihaf-a-short-note

In the November of 1946, summoned for the second hearing by the courts of the colonial Indian State on the charges of obscenity for her Urdu short-story Lihaf (‘The Quilt’), the writer Ismat Chughtai reaches Lahore. It had been about four years since Lihaf had been published in the Urdu journal Adab-e-Lateef. It told the story of Begum Jan who is married into a rich Muslim household where she begins to find pleasure in her housemaid Rabbu’s service – in her massages, in her recipes, in her touch. Narrated in the voice of an un-omniscient young girl, the story ends with a moment of radical speculation – what the young girl hears at night from the Begum’s bed, what she makes of Rabbu’s palpable presence there, what she sees under the Begum’s quilt. None of this is directly revealed in the story but instead, breathed into its air, nourishing a text with exciting inferences.

Yet Lihaf, now charged in court, was already a subject of some scandal and concern in Chughtai’s literary circles. She found herself explaining her motivations for writing the story to one older writer M. Aslam in Lahore. This motivation was propelled by a peculiar sort of confusion. In fact the confusion is key to this matter, to her writing the very story:

‘अस्ल में असलम साहब, मुझे कभी किसी ने नहीं बताया कि ‘लिहाफ़’ वाले मौज़ू पर लिखना गुनाह है। न मैनें किसी किताब में पढ़ा कि इस…मर्ज़…या लत के बारे में लिखना नहीं चाहिए। शायद मेरा दिमाग अब्दुररहमान चुगताई का ब्रश नहीं, एक सस्ता-सा कैमरा है; जो कुछ देखता है, खट से बटन दब जाता है और मेरा कलम मेरे हाथ में बेबस होता है’ (‘Actually Aslam Sahab, I was never told by anyone that I should not write on this particular subject of ‘Lihaf’. Neither did I read in any book that one should not write about this…illness [marz]…or…addiction [lat]. Maybe my mind is not the brush of Abdurrahman Chughtai, it is instead a cheap sort of camera, whatever it sees, it clicks, and my pen becomes helpless in my hand.’

The ellipses (‘इस…मर्ज़…या लत’) are Chughtai’s own, foregrounding the element of confusion – foregrounding the centrality of the confusion to what she is saying about the subject of her story. The citation is from her memoir Kaghazi hai Pairhan (1998). What is notable is that in the middle of 1940s, Chughtai is not able to choose a single frame for same-sex desire, for understanding the erotic relationships between women. What she does is more interesting for us. It launches a way of understanding same-sex desire in colonial India as always existing between different idioms, of ways of speaking it that are unable to reconcile its formal dimensions, its medical ideas and social attitudes, its university curricula and everyday habits. Chughtai’s inability to reconcile is also a form of her indifference to any need to do so.

Instead, Chughtai’s strategy, in her own words, is photographic. It clicks the picture, keeping all its meanings frontally available, always in a confusing proximity. She uses more than one frame, in the same – slightly halting – breath, to talk of ‘this particular subject of ‘Lihaf”. One is marz or illness. It is nearly soluble with ideas of ‘homosexuality’ partially formalized as a diseased condition. Within 20th century European and colonial discourses of institutional medicine and psychiatry, homosexuality is understood as such a ‘condition’ to be cured, to be dealt with. In fact, a little later in her defense with M. Aslam, Chughtai specifically refers to contemporary ‘नफ़सियात और डॉकटरों के कोर्स’ (‘psychology and medical curricula’). The history of same-sex desire as ‘marz’ is easily sighted in this real uncertainty of Hindi and Urdu writers of this time about whether to call this specific ‘subject’ a medical condition or an excessive habit. This confusion – that is essential and formative – is veritably persistent into more recent times.

Same sex desire as ‘marz’ had a substantial colonial context. Girindrasekhar Bose (1887-1953), the first president of the Indian Psychoanalytic Society (IPA) founded in 1922, who corresponded with Freud for over twenty years, led a group of intellectuals, doctors, college professors, psychologists and enthusiasts, both Indian and British, in 1920s-50s Calcutta among whom discussions of ‘homosexuality’, ‘masturbation’, ‘repression’, ‘oedipus complex’ or ‘female hysteria’ were commonplace. In 1927, the bulletin of the 10th annual conference of the International Psychoanalytic Association at Innsbruck in Austria, reported the activities of it sub-branch, the 6 year old IPA that used to run its meetings in 14 Parsibagan Lane in Calcutta, the house of its president. It said that on ‘February 5, 1926. The President [Girindrasekhar Bose] read a paper on the ‘Genesis of Homosexuality’’ at a meeting of the association in his house. It goes on to add that ‘many distinguished visitors and medical men attended the meeting and took part in the discussion’. This, it says, was apart from the ‘the usual Saturday evening discussions on various psycho-analytic topics’ that were held at his residence. Calcutta University, meanwhile, had already opened the country’s first Department of Psychology in 1915.

As Chughtai’s conversation with M. Aslam continues, he charges her with a lack of proper religious education that, he supposes, leads her to write of such subjects. Chughtai gives him a short trajectory of her successive encounters with knowledge about this ‘subject of Lihaf’. It is here that she cites that strong formal medical tradition accessible to her at the university libraries in late colonial India:

‘जब बचपन में मैंने ज्यादा किताबें पढीं तो मेरे दिल को धक्का सा लगा। वो बातें गंदी लगीं। फिर मैनें बी.ऐ. के बाद पढ़ा तो पता चला कि वो बातें गंदी नहीं, बड़ी समझ-बूझ कि बातें हैं जो हर ज़ी-होश इनसान को मालूम होनी चाहिए। वैसे लोग चाहें तो नफ़सियात और डॉकटरों के कोर्स में जो किताबें हैं उन्हें भी गंदा कह दें’ (‘When I read more and more books in my young age then I was shocked. Those things seemed dirty. But when I read about it after my B.A. then I came to know that these things are not obscene, they are in fact quite insightful and should be known by every reflective person. As it is, if people want they could call even those books on psychology and those in the doctors’ medical curricula obscene’)

During these B.A. days at the missionary institution Isabella Thoburn College in Lucknow, Ismat Chughtai had at her disposal a library full of literary and scientific texts from Europe and India. ‘आई.टी. कॉलेज में कई हज़ारों किताबें थीं’ (‘I.T. College had thousands of books’). It is here that her head began to swirl with the clash of different and contradictory systems of knowledge, including her confusion over how to reconcile the Darwinian theory of evolution with the Islamic-Christian theory of the divine genesis – ‘दिमाग कलाबाज़ियाँ खाने लगा’ (‘My head began to do acrobatics’). Later working as a school-teacher in Bareilly, Chughtai continues her ravenous and eclectic reading. She tells one friend about reading a lot of Freud, where she would have inevitably picked up on references to the word-concept of ‘homosexuality’. True to her doubleness of understanding, her reading of Freud was never blindly trusting but always critical and looking for loopholes and incompatibilities, even subjecting Freud’s name to a cheeky and hilarious pun. Talking of her experience of reading Freud, she states

‘…मुकम्मल ईमान न ला सकी । कुछ फ्रौड भी है फ्रायड में। एक कज है मेरे ज़ेहन में । कितना भी अज़ीम ईंटेलेक्चुअल हो, मैं आँख मूँदकर ईमान लाने कि कायल नहीं। न जाने क्या आदते-बद है कि सबसे पहले उनके कौल में लूपहोल तलाश करती हूँ। मुवाफ़िकत से पहली सारी मुखालिफ़त कि देख-रेख कर लेनी चाहिए…पहला लफ्ज़ मेरी जुबां से शायद ‘क्यूं’ हि निकला होगा, हालाँकि इस क्यों ने मुझे बड़ी मार खिलाई है’ (‘I could not bring complete faith to it. There is some fraud in Freud. My mind always has a nagging doubt. No matter how great an intellectual it is, I am never fond of giving blind trust. I don’t know what sort of habit it is that first I always search for loopholes in their work. Before compatibility we should always take stock of all the incompatibilities…may be the first word my mouth ever uttered was ‘why’, although this ‘why’ has landed me in a lot of trouble’)

Chughtai’s nagging doubts do not let same-sex desire be conceptualized simply, uncomplicatedly as marz. Her other frame, lat, is that of excessive habit, a sort of addiction that is not yet medicalized, that works precisely in the not yet of such medicalization. It is more squarely part of a long-standing Urdu word-concept of shauk or one’s personal inclinations. It is understood as being within an excessive but always familiar bandwidth of habits. Lat as that thing which one is given to, which is always of various kinds – for food, for games, for music, for prostitutes, for girls, for boys, for getting into arguments – and comes in less and more ordinary versions. Lat plies on sociable cultural habits or one’s own hobbies till they tease out of the bounds of what is deemed as mere duty. It moves beyond the mundane range of self-possession, either by remarkable talent or by exceptional surrender or both. It is set off when one becomes – for that moment – zealously attached to one’s own interests, either accomplishing them or giving in to them.

In the tenth chapter of her memoir ‘The Golden Spittoon,’ Ismat Chughtai talks of the twins, Munne Miyan and Pyare Miyan, who were enrolled with her brother Shameem at the Aligarh University. Contemporary social reformist and nationalist Hindi writers such as Pandey Bechan Sharma ‘Ugra’ would have seen these boys, I imagine, as symptomatic of the moral and physical waning thought to be brought about by fashion, cosmetics and luxury, quite useless to the project of building ideal men for fighting for and running the nation, for the training as the future ‘शासन के सूत्रधार,’ ‘the architects of governance’ for an independent Indian polity (Ugra 1928). Chughtai uses a Marathi word to describe their demeanor, fatkal, which implies someone ‘without control or composure’, close to the Hindi munhfat, ‘someone who speaks rather freely’. Within such a backdrop of degeneracy, finery and excess, Munne Miyan’s and Pyare Miyan’s lack of relish for women is a positively banal fact, if not actively constitutive of their persona. The world of lat here is a place-holder for same-sex desire:

‘[नवाब के] दो जुड़वाँ साहबज़ादे अलीगढ़ भेजे गए थे…उन लड़कों की सोहबत में नाच-गाने के जलसों में [शमीम] बड़ी पाबन्दी से शरीक होते…पढ़ने-लिखने का कोई प्रोग्राम न था. ये लड़के एक शानदार कोठी में अपने अमले के साथ बस हुल्लड़ मचाया करते थे। नवाब साहब ने जबरदस्त अतिया यूनीवर्सिटी को दिया था। मगर ये साहबज़ादे…जार्जेट के ज़रदोज़ी काम के कुरते, रेशमी, चुस्त पाजामे और कामदार जूते पहने क्लास में कभी ठुमकते आ जाते। उनके साथ साज़िंदे भी क्वाटर्स में रहते थे। रोज़ नाच-गाने का प्रोग्राम जमता। यूनीवर्सिटी के निकम्मे और चापलूसी में माहिर उनकी दरबारी पर तैनात रहते…जुड़वाँ साहबज़ादे कुछ फटकल [‘fatkal’] क़िस्म के थे। औरतों से कत्तई दिलचस्पी नहीं थी। खूब सजते और मेक-अप करते थे’ (‘[Nawab’s] twin heirs were sent to Aligarh…In the company of those boys [Shameem] used to regularly take part in the song and dance gatherings…there was no plan to study. These boys lived in a magnificent mansion with their staff and caused a lot of uproar all the time. Nawab Sahab had given a huge grant to the university. These spoiled ones…used to sometimes sway into the class wearing georgette kurtas with golden handiwork, silky hugging payjamas and stylish shoes. Their crew used to stay with them in their quarters. There they kept up daily routine of singing and dancing. All the fools and the sycophants of the university used to hang around their mansion…the twins were of the fatkal sort. They had no interest in women. They used to dress up a lot and apply a lot of make-up’)

The idea of excess in lat provided a crucible for various expressions of same-sex desire in colonial India, most notable of which is Ugra’s series of Hindi short-stories Chaklet (1924-7) in which the boys’ indulgence in same-sex affairs are plotted in an unmistakable continuum with their other playful addictions, such as for pan, sweets, cinema, music and dancing. This is close to the world of Begum Jan’s husband in Lihaf. Consider Chughtai’s prose when she describes him: ‘the Nawab who was of ‘ripe years’… very virtuous. No one had ever seen a nautch girl or prostitute in his house…He, however,’ – note the appearance of the idiom of habit for same-sex desire – ‘had a strange hobby. Some people are crazy enough to cultivate interests like breeding pigeons and watching cockfights. Nawab Saheb had contempt for such disgusting sports. He kept an open house for students—young, fair and slender-waisted boys whose expenses were borne by him.’ Nawab sahab had married Begum Jaan but, given as he is to other hobbies, had ‘tucked her away in the house with his other possessions’.

Finally, Chughtai does not reconcile the two frames of hobby and illness, lat and marz. She persists with both. She confuses both. What I find most interesting is precisely this place between these many idioms, in those ellipses of Chughtai’s, in her indecision. Her confusion is symptomatic of the rich doubleness of understanding same-sex desire in colonial India. Moreover, if there is a growing consensus on seeing the colony as a ‘laboratory of modernity’, not simply a site of exploitation, such as in Ann Laura Stoler’s redoubtable work on race and Foucault’s History of Sexuality, then we need to know what goes into such a lab experiment (1995). In Chugtai’s Lihaf and her own retrospective comments on it, one can see this late colonial experiment around same-sex desire in motion. She builds into her writing social registers that set this desire within the idea of habit, a language of excess, not different in kind from opposite-sex desire but in degree, and in a continuum with other kinds of excesses like music, prostitutes, cards or alcohol. And yet her idioms always have a distinct measure of solubility with other forms of knowledge, not least of colonial medicine, experimenting lat with marz, ‘homosexuality’ with ‘excess’. Every time we read Lihaf we rehearse this experiment.

This essay first appeared on the Writers Asylum blog in August 2013, and has been republished on Orinam with the author’s consent. It may not be reproduced in full or part on any online forum, magazine or journal without the author’s consent. Click here to read Orinam’s copyright policy, and here for inquiries.