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The long road to acceptance

I remember those days so vividly… the late 1990s. There would be emergency meetings with the MSM team and outreach workers coming back to office almost every other day. A sense of urgency prevailed, as did underlying fear...

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Gunjan Sharma

I  remember those days so vividly… the late 1990s. There would be emergency meetings with the MSM team and outreach workers coming back to office almost every other day. A sense of urgency prevailed, as did underlying fear...

Anju di sat listening to each of them — her kajal-lined eyes watching intently — a sign telling the rest of us that this is not good news for someone, somewhere.

Meetings with lawyers, MSM (Men who have sex with men) groups, other NGOs and LGBTQ members were being called often, sometimes planned, sometimes impromptu. We would get the office ready, fix time, serve endless cups of chai. That’s when it all started: Naz Foundation India Trust vs IPC Section 377, the landmark case where the Delhi High Court decriminalised homosexuality, only to be overturned by the Supreme Court in 2013, marking the beginning of yet another battle.

The MSM team would get harassed incessantly. Its task of meeting other men in parks was constantly interrupted by the police, by other “sociable” people. Sometimes the outreach was stopped. Sometimes a worker was heckled by local goons. Sometimes there was the threat of ‘akele aake mil’ (meet me alone). It would sometimes translate into acts of bullying, even violence and could, at any time, change into sexual overtures and pushing for favours.

Outreach mostly happened post 5 pm. The team would come to the office after lunch, do its paperwork and documentation, sit around, compare notes and discuss. Ever so often, the charcha would be about relationships and related love dramas, as in any couple. And also the big one: the pressure to get married, be a real man. I remember discussing these conundrums with all my friends and colleagues, some of whom are big names in the field of LGBTQ rights today. Salute to you my friends, your daily conflicts have finally paid off.

I recall being asked: “Are you from that Naz Foundation?” — the marker being a large woman, who walked fast, drove a Gypsy and brought along her two large dogs. That was Anju di aka Anjali Gopalan who often went for late night outreaches, to see what was going on and to arbitrate. NGO workers would be out, too, sharing information and giving out condoms to men having surreptitious sex, often in public places. These men were putting themselves at the huge and growing risk of HIV. So, why were the workers being bullied out of the area? Because Section 377 was binding. If you were doing this work, you were, in a way, acknowledging that men do have sex with men and that according to the law was an offence, even if they were doing so willingly, until September 6 this year.

For the men — the sons, the husbands and the brothers — coming from small colonies like Madangir, Badarpur and Govind Puri, the struggles are quite different and yet so similar to that of those coming from Greater Kailash, Safdarjung and Friends Colony. It was a fight for dignity, for social acceptance each day, each morning.

“Come to my house” was a common request to me. “Let my society see I know women too. Let them know that I have ‘decent’ friends.”

Most of my colleagues from those days are now married men with grown up children. These are men who have avoided the question about their sexuality all their lives, and perhaps will do for the rest of it. These are men who have had comments passed on at them — in buses, in queues, at PTMs. “Why is your father ‘like that’?” I was asked: “What should I do? I don’t want to embarrass my child… S/He asks me when other kids ask...”

When my sister and I were growing up, I remember telling our mother to come to parent-teacher meetings in a saree. This was our desperate attempt to grasp the same “decency” and to see our mother dressed up like a mother conventionally should. Not that her sarees ever achieved that! In similar vein, I would suggest to my MSM friends: “Pant-shirt, bade joote… ‘mard’ ban ke jaana.”

I came back from a holiday on Thursday. The news had already arrived by then. I messaged a former colleague, now a friend. The struggles this young gay man goes through are still the same as my colleagues of 1999. Just the other day, he said to me, “My mother was asking me, ‘Tum, ladkiyon jaise kyun chalte ho?’” A polemic writer, a young, firebrand gay rights’ activist, he writes bekhauf on the issue. And still, his mom asks… 

Usually, I am told I am rather funny, both in my writing, and generally too. But today I can’t find that funny bone. I am seeped in nostalgia, that lump in my throat keeps coming back. I wish I could tell you the names of all my friends and colleagues and the innumerable struggles they have lived with. I want to write their names in ALL CAPS (as much as the editor might want to bring the punctuation to standard). And it is not going to end, not yet. And again, it is not my story to tell, till they say so.

Patriarchy is a b****, I say. It is cruel and incapacitates everyone, irrespective of gender and sexuality. This is such a big moment and yet there is a lot to come. Laws change, but people take longer, and mindsets… years. Rights of succession, adoption, forming a family, inheritance… let’s begin that conversation and fast. Let’s not wait for another 157 years. Let’s not wait to remodel another Buggery Act of 1553… and say it out and loud: ‘2 - 4 - 6 - 8, Is India only straight’? The answer is a resounding ‘No’.

I want to talk about women and Section 377, too. I want to talk about lesbian groups and women and what this law means to them. It actually means little, because it assumes that women don’t have or can’t have sex without a man… Consent, women and sex is an altogether different ballgame, best kept for another time. And yet, so many women are a part of the campaign, the movement. It is not a matter of sex and consenting adults only, it’s a matter of identity.

But today, and for many days, all that can wait. Now is the time to celebrate and eat that multi-coloured cake; to wear that multi-coloured pagdi; to don that multi-coloured duppatta. Now is the time to raise the rainbow flag. Salute to all men and women who have led us to this day. Salaam to all those who have lived through the times of shame and indignity. Today is your day, cause célèbre!

I recall this slogan, coined during one of the many marches by a then young man:

Kaun Sa Kanoon Sabse Baddtarr

Teen Satattar, Teen Satattar!

— The writer is an expert in sexual and reproductive health and rights and has worked with the Naz Foundation and others working in the arena


5 FIGHTERS

Navtej Johar

A Bharatnatyam dancer, Johar filed a petition against Article 377 in 2016. The Sangeet Natak Akademi award winner has said that when he first came out to his mother, she was concerned that he may not get a life partner. The fears were put to rest when he found a partner in journalist Sunil Mehra.

Sunil Mehra

Johar’s partner of 25 years, Sunil Mehra was a former editor of the Indian edition Maxim magazine. According to reports, Mehra has said that he has been targeted for being gay, but never really brought himself to reporting it to the police for the fear of being targeted under Article 377. 

Ritu Dalmia

The celebrity chef and restaurateur came out while she was at the dinner table with her mother, at the age of 23. Born into a Marwari family, she thought that rather than complaining about the system, she should do something about it, and filed the petition along with four others.

Aman Nath

The shy and reticent owner of Neemrana chain of hotels decided to challenge Article 377 when one of the judges who struck down a related petition said he had never met a person who was sexually different. He was in a committed relationship with his late business partner, Francis Wacziarg, for 23 years.

Ayesha Kapur

A businesswoman, who is in the food and beverage industry, Kapoor says she came forward when she felt the community has had enough. According to reports, she had to forgo her corporate career in Delhi in 2008  for fear of her sexual identity being discovered. She came out to her mother in 2009.

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