Read Online Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be)longing in Contemporary India by Parmesh Shahani - Free Book Online
Authors: Parmesh Shahani
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rearrangement included eliminating or marginalizing all traces of positive same-sex references and cor-respondingly, showcasing texts or instances that glorified heterosexual masculinity120 (Baccheta, 1999). Finally, in 1861, the British legal system was imposed on to India as the Indian Penal Code and Section 377 of this code was an offshoot of the British 1860 anti-sodomy law.
However, one must not blame colonialism for everything (although it is a rather convenient sitting duck). As Narrain (2004) pertinently points out, the continued perpetration of the stigma against homosexuality in India ‘owes as much to nationalism as it did to colonialism’.121 I shall 50 Gay
Bombay
discuss Section 377 and the Indian social stigma against homosexuality in later chapters.
Now, there is an ongoing debate within academia about whether one can use Western constructs like gay and lesbianwhen one studies the sexuality of people from non-Western locations. As Leap and Lewis (2002) write, the usage of these terms outside the North Atlantic domains might be considered problematic—
Lesbian and gay are not context free categories, but express subjective understandings of gender, sexuality and social location closely linked to the historical emergence of North Atlantic capitalism and to the politics of cultural pluralism during the late modernity period.122
Within the Indian context, there in a vociferous constituency that protests the use of terms like gay for India’s male homosexual population instead preferring the more functional men who have sex with men (MSM)123—
In South Asia the socio-cultural frameworks are supremely gendered and often sexual relationships are framed by gender roles, power relationships, poverty, class, caste, tradition and custom, hierarchies of one sort of another. Here for many men or males we have gender identities, not sexual identities. The phrase ‘males who have sex with males’, or ‘men who have sex with men’ is not about identities and desires, it is about recognizing that there are many frameworks within which men or males have sex with men or males, many different self-identities, many different contexts of behavior….
Hijras , transvestites, transgendered, gay-identified men, kothis or dangas, panthis or giriyas , double-deckers or do-parathas or dubli [referring to versatile sexual practices—that is, enjoying being penetrated as well as penetrating one’s partner], men or males who have sex with other men or males, in all its variety of terminologies, behavioral choices, desires and constructions. Are we truly saying that we should reduce this diversity into the singular construction of a gay identity, a term that does not readily translate into the multiplicity of languages and dialects that reflect the diversity of South Asia itself ? (Khan, 2000)124
Ruth Vanita (2002) is skeptical of this approach and wonders if organizations like the Naz Foundation, with their preference for kothi and MSM
terminology over global terms like gay and homosexual are not merely Introduction 51
branding themselves trendily anti-colonial in the grants bazaar.125 She critically notes that ‘it is usually those who have already obtained most of their basic civil rights and liberties in first world environments who object to the use of these terms in third world contexts’. The words gay and lesbian have gained significant currency over the past decade in the media—they are known, in HIV related work, ‘the political visibility of a term like gay is likely to be much greater than a term like men who have sex with men ’; and importantly, ‘anti-gay groups have no compunctions in using familiar terms’. Thus, ‘while intellectuals squabble about politically or historically correct language, Evangelical missionaries from the US are actively campaigning against gay and homosexual people in India’.126 In any case, as Dennis Altman (1996) rightfully points out, terms like MSM too are hardly
However, one must not blame colonialism for everything (although it is a rather convenient sitting duck). As Narrain (2004) pertinently points out, the continued perpetration of the stigma against homosexuality in India ‘owes as much to nationalism as it did to colonialism’.121 I shall 50 Gay
Bombay
discuss Section 377 and the Indian social stigma against homosexuality in later chapters.
Now, there is an ongoing debate within academia about whether one can use Western constructs like gay and lesbianwhen one studies the sexuality of people from non-Western locations. As Leap and Lewis (2002) write, the usage of these terms outside the North Atlantic domains might be considered problematic—
Lesbian and gay are not context free categories, but express subjective understandings of gender, sexuality and social location closely linked to the historical emergence of North Atlantic capitalism and to the politics of cultural pluralism during the late modernity period.122
Within the Indian context, there in a vociferous constituency that protests the use of terms like gay for India’s male homosexual population instead preferring the more functional men who have sex with men (MSM)123—
In South Asia the socio-cultural frameworks are supremely gendered and often sexual relationships are framed by gender roles, power relationships, poverty, class, caste, tradition and custom, hierarchies of one sort of another. Here for many men or males we have gender identities, not sexual identities. The phrase ‘males who have sex with males’, or ‘men who have sex with men’ is not about identities and desires, it is about recognizing that there are many frameworks within which men or males have sex with men or males, many different self-identities, many different contexts of behavior….
Hijras , transvestites, transgendered, gay-identified men, kothis or dangas, panthis or giriyas , double-deckers or do-parathas or dubli [referring to versatile sexual practices—that is, enjoying being penetrated as well as penetrating one’s partner], men or males who have sex with other men or males, in all its variety of terminologies, behavioral choices, desires and constructions. Are we truly saying that we should reduce this diversity into the singular construction of a gay identity, a term that does not readily translate into the multiplicity of languages and dialects that reflect the diversity of South Asia itself ? (Khan, 2000)124
Ruth Vanita (2002) is skeptical of this approach and wonders if organizations like the Naz Foundation, with their preference for kothi and MSM
terminology over global terms like gay and homosexual are not merely Introduction 51
branding themselves trendily anti-colonial in the grants bazaar.125 She critically notes that ‘it is usually those who have already obtained most of their basic civil rights and liberties in first world environments who object to the use of these terms in third world contexts’. The words gay and lesbian have gained significant currency over the past decade in the media—they are known, in HIV related work, ‘the political visibility of a term like gay is likely to be much greater than a term like men who have sex with men ’; and importantly, ‘anti-gay groups have no compunctions in using familiar terms’. Thus, ‘while intellectuals squabble about politically or historically correct language, Evangelical missionaries from the US are actively campaigning against gay and homosexual people in India’.126 In any case, as Dennis Altman (1996) rightfully points out, terms like MSM too are hardly
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