Why I Support Gay Rights..
By Parvin Sultana
03 February, 2016
Countercurrents.org
Coming from a small town Dhubri in Assam where talks about gender and sexuality, leave alone homosexuality, were taboo subjects, I had my own prejudices. Same sex couples about whom we got to read in newspapers with spiced up details seemed like abominations from a different world. Back in 2006 when I joined Miranda House in Delhi and started living in the college hostel, talks about supposedly same sex couples were still carried on in whispered tones and derogatory jibes were not unusual. They were people whom it was thought better to avoid. What was rampant was more an ignorance about sexual minorities rather than a homophobia.
It was around this time when Gay rights activist Ruth Vanita came to my college and delivered a lecture on how literature has been cleansed of homoerotic poetry and verses. Accompanied by her partner and their adopted child she was also working for the right of same sex couples to adopt children in India. Vanita in details laid about the entire moralizing project which was undertaken to erase traces of works that reflect the fluidity of sexuality and sexual identity. Homosexuality was seen as an imported western vice which has been corrected by a colonial law drawing heavily from catholic morality. It gave me goosebumps when Ruth Vanita asked a simple question – what exactly we fall in love with? If beauty, then how can beauty be overdetermined by gender? I am sure that it made me along with many other young women sitting in that conference room reconsider our very own ideas about love. How can a selfless feeling like love be so restraining, be so constricted and be so stifling, be so limited by caste, religion and even gender?
That day I left my college convinced that nobody has the right to set rules about how to love and whom to love. Heated arguments with friends who asked me whether I would support if members in my own family were homosexuals, I responded in affirmative and my conviction was strengthened further. The absence of the need to judge the so-called deviants was a liberating feeling in itself. The next incident that forced the entire society to acknowledge the presence and rethink about the rights of sexual minorities was the decriminalization of homosexuality by Delhi High Court. The High Court judgment upheld that the law which punishes intercourse against the ‘order of nature’ is a violation of fundamental rights to equality, nondiscrimination, life and personal liberty guaranteed by the Indian Constitution. This allowed members of the LGBTQ community to come out and assert their identity. While godmen claimed to cure homosexuality with yoga, gay right activists retorted asking will yoga cure such tendencies in animals too!
By this time I have moved to JNU which has a politically vibrant student community which regularly engages with all kind of issues. The students in my university have been very vocal about the rights of the marginalized. There was a student group called Anjuman which raised issues related to the rights of sexual minorities. While this group was broken down a few years back, it was revived to give voice to the sexual minorities within the campus. This group constantly tried to mobilize students on issues of equal rights for all including sexual minorities. While there was an ongoing struggle for a life of dignity of members of the LGBTQ community, disturbing news about how such people were being hounded and persecuted continued flowing in. The tragic suicide of a Professor of Aligarh Muslim University who lost his job because of his sexual orientation was rather disturbing. On a personal level I got to meet a large number of people who were members of the LGBTQ community. They were no more an ambiguous group but rather good friends whom I came to love and respect. And who I staunchly believed deserved every right to be with whoever they want.
However in a setback, the Supreme Court responding to the petitions of some individuals and religious groups upheld the colonial law and said that it is the responsibility of the Legislature to amend this law. While many activists are of the view that doing away with Article 377 without introducing a new law against child sexual abuse is dangerous, continuing with it is also a gross violation of the rights of sexual minorities. After the stay by Supreme Court, many human rights activists, lawyers, medical professionals filed curative petitions to revise the previous ruling, saying that section 377 denies privacy and dignity and upholding it will result in miscarriage of justice. Despite such widespread concerns Legislature took no proactive step to correct such a draconian law. In December, 2015 the Lok Sabha did not even allow Shashi Tharoor to even introduce a bill proposing to review section 377.
Amidst sustained struggle on 2nd February, 2016 the Supreme Court admitted the curative petitions challenging its 2013 decision. Chief Justice T.S Thakur said that the petitions pose question with “constitutional dimensions of importance” and referred the petitions to a five –judge Constitution bench for detailed hearing. This has rekindled hope in the LGBTQ community which wants to see an end to a discriminatory law. My experience in my university days taught me to stand up for the rights of other marginalized communities, the need to form progressive alliances. And the sexual minorities continue to be a community pushed into the shadows, forced to live a double life which has affected many other lives as well when homosexual individuals are forced to enter heterosexual relationships. Right to a dignified life and right to love cannot be denied and decided on the basis of ideas of popular morality, culture, tradition and religious principles. An outdated law that does not take into account consent and agency of individuals, and apparently has nothing to do with protection of women, children and public health has long past its utility and is no more than a colonial legacy as well as baggage which a modern democracy should shed off.
Parvin Sultana is an Assistant Professor in P B College of Assam. Her research interest includes Muslims in Assam, development and northeast, gender etc.