it went like this

‘confucius, him say, too open a mind gets a lot of rubbish thrown in”

reading the quotes of BPS made me understand the full import of that created cunfucius quotation.

The harking back to our glorius and inclusive tradition, or on our scriptures, to marshall arguments in support of any thing has always worried me.

The arguments that the lawyer fighting for Shah Banu had built, namely trying to find a scriptural justification for a man to pay sustenance for a wife he has divorced, had fallen in the same trap.

Once we use these scriptures as guides for our conduct in contemporary times, we will be trapped. our opponents will use the same scriptures to counter us in hundreds of ways

We have to fight these antediluvian arguments and agencies in the present and the supremacy of a contemporary context has to be firmly established. In the manner that the Delhi high court has done in the caee of article 377

As for Subash, people like him can not understand that there is something called a democratic sensibility.

I don’t have to be a tribal, or a dalit, or a palestenian, or a woman, or a muslim, or an Iranian to speak up against the oppression of any one of them by those in authority.

Forgive him, Nivi for he knows not.

I empathise with your position and it seems so familiar because we have struggled with it so much ourselves – to talk intersectionality but then go out and protest with “gay rights” on our banners!

but I will still disagree with you on the right to raise an issue. It just depends on what we define the “issue” as. I see the queer movement as one that takes on sexuality. Sec 377 is just one part of that movement — so yes, it impacts me most because I am gay [though as an elite, male queer person it impacts me far less than other kinds of queer people as well -- lets not ever forget that].

But if you see the judgment against section 377 it reads article 15 of the constitution. it is a radical, radical reading that says that no person can discriminate against another person. Not that state orgs or companies can’t — but that an individual person can’t. this is something that all movements can use. this judgment, as lawrence argued elsewhere on kafila, could be a constitutional breakthrough.

we would never have gotten a ruling on article 15 if we didnt have an idea that 377 was about so much more than just gay people. we did not go the “equal rights” way that the LGBT movement in the west did, because in india, sexuality is a battle for everybody, not just for gay people. identity politics forgets that, so for me, its liabilities are greater than what it gives us.

we, as gay people, would not have survived without broader support. actually, support is the wrong word, because people joined the movement thinking that 377 was about them, whether they were gay or not. that is something we can never value enough.

when we did sessions on sexuality in college, the first people who understood us were young, single women. they would come to me and tell me that they knew what it felt like to have their sexuality marginalised, controlled and restricted. that connection is invaluable to me and it only comes when you leave identity politics behind.

cheers, and thanks for your response,
gautam

Funny how teachers like to imagine themselves to be patient in class as they throttle down their views like fascists on anything that is contrary to their stand. That said, this blog puts up as many and kinds of comments it can, unlike the classroom.

I don’t agree with BWS contention at all. That’s a stance for exclusivity and inacesssibility, typical of the LGBT community in metros like Delhi and Bombay.

Just like it is typicalfor academics to talk about radical feminism and “break the family” talk in classrooms after they dedicate their works to their parents.

One of my many personal problems with the LGBT community, to which I belong to the “L” category so to speak, is that not only are they ridiculous in some of their arguments for sexuality (such as equating “Indian Culture” with Hindu Culture or treating religion as the antonym to homosexuality), but also the way elites like you and me with our laptops uniformise the community.

When I was a “newbie” – a gay baptism ceremony of sorts, I attended innumerable stupid parties. One of the many things that disturbed me was that my heterosexual friends were treated as the “other” in these rather elite gatherings of wannabe intense misunderstood figures. Isn’t that what we are fighting for even in identity politics? To be able to relate to each others experiences, empathise and speak in “solidarity” for each other, not because I’m a homosexual so only I have the right to talk about my community and the rest can just admire my “marginalisation.”

And people like you and I are not marginalised if we get support from our family and friends and colleagues at the work place. My girlfriend is, who was thrashed by her family members ad some friends.

So the rigid politics of identity you talk about seems to have become an “in” thing in obnoxious campuses like JNU where our identity actually has the reverse effect of glorification and consequently, “othering” our heterosexual friends.

Talk to any Muslim in Gujarat, and they will tell you that Teesta Setalvald, a Hindu woman, means more to them than any Muslim MP in the Parliament who simply nods his head with the party line.

If we had gone by BWS doctrine – the moderators should have had the foremost right to speak up and basically everyone else should have played the supporting role. only your being moderator should matter here as far as subash’s comment is concerned. your being gay, lesbian, etc. has no purchase. so what is the problem here ?

But the tropical sun does strange things to the mind. i kept wondering “is being a moderator comparable to being lesbian, gay, transgender, queer, hindu etc.? It doesnt seem to be a terribly fluid identity. One is either a moderator or one is not. I mean is there something like ‘coming out parade’ for moderators ?” are there moderatoricides happening somewhere ? moderators being discriminated against by the majority who are all commentors? or moderators fighting for the restoration of some obscure 1998 usenet thread where they believe their history began?

Of course I have no idea. I am not a moderator of any blog at the moment. So I dont know how it feels. I hope someone will chip in with how it felt to have been a moderator all along and not having the courage to admit it, to have been marginalized….to have suffered in silence all the indignities hurled by blog posters and commenters who insist that posting and commenting is the natural order of the world.

is nivedita’s response as moderator to subash opening up a rich vein of critical insight into identity politics or am i just addled ?

i will think about it tomorrow.

The identity politics debate is a tricky one – there is clearly a need for it but there are also many traps. Many of us in the LGBT movement deliberately sought to puncture the neat lines between L, G, B, and T and then between that set and “heterosexuals.” It was precisely because we wanted to fight identity politics and its restrictions that we started using queer. There were many reasons for this:

1. If you believe in identity politics, then which one? as a gay, hindu, english speaking, urban man, why should my identity politics only be restricted to one of those identities?

2. if all our identites are interrelated and embodied in the same person, our politics must also be the same. in other words, we all have sexuality, not just same-sex desiring peopel.

3. if this is true, then I disagree with you that it is the right of marginalised people or those directly affected to raise issues. It, in fact, is a tragedy when only those affected speak for a cause. That is when democracy and politics fail [remember the lovely poem -- when they came for the jews...]

4. as LGBT activists, we were tired of being the only people, for example, who raised the question of lesbian suicides. women’s groups then told us that gay groups should raise the issue because it was about lesbians. but arent lesbians women? isnt suicide due to the fear of forced marriage a violence against women question?

yes, identity politics play a part. but we have to think about overcoming them and critiquing them even as we use them. it comforts me to think of myself as a gay man – using that identity did give a lot to my sense of self. but i dont identify as a gay man.. i identify as lots of things and reducing me to my sexuality is worse than not recognising me at all.

so, subhash, yes, we are gay rights activists on kafila. the thing you have to understand is that this has nothing to do with us actually being gay or not.

- gautam

is it so difficult to accept that most intelligent people indeed believe in gay rights and are in support of it. The reason most comments are in support is because most people are in support, no need to read in between.

I hope we soon start seeing non support of gay rights as deviant unnatural behaviour…

Na vo ishq mein raheen garmiyan
Na vo husn mein raheen shokhiyaan
Na vo Ghazanavi mein tarap rahee
Na voh kham hai zulf-e-Ayaz mein.

No more does love have that old passion
Nor beauty its earlier playfulness;
Not in Ghazanavi that longing,
Nor that curl in the tresses of Ayaz

we are biased and proud of it. Our bias is clear from our posts.
- am relieved and happy for you.

most of us on the kafila team are “gay activists”

-now we all know.

S. Gurumurthy, in the Indian Express, said pretty much the same thing: we know it exists; ‘Hinduism’ has never made it illegal; but since it’s not a desirable or model trait, it is given no attention so that society in general is not persuaded to be that.

I’m afraid I see no nuance in any of these arguments; just bigotry and willful blindness.

Assuming what you say is indeed Mr. Singhal’s position, I would say he has half-a-point. The problem that he is addressing is how does a society express its disapproval of “behaviour” which while “legal” is, in a certain moral sense, “immoral.” Whether we like it or not, a large swathe of our population — whether they form a majority or not, I don’t know — does not approve of homosexuality, though they might be willing to “tolerate” it. Given this, one can argue that society has a right to express “disapproval” while at the same “tolerating” the practice. Mr. Singhal, if I understand correctly, suggests retaining Section 377 but not implementing it as a solution to this problem. It is ingenious though I don’t see how you can have a law on the statutes and yet commit to never using it.

Mr. Singhal, however, does have a severe problem expressing himself cogently. He came across as a blithering idiot. I hope Mr. Singhal thanks you – not that you need it – for doing his job.

Keep up the good job…

I think if you try to read an argument in his argument, and I agree that’s not easy :), he’s basically saying let them fuck but don’t make it legal; let there be homosexuality but no ‘homosexuals’, as in, they should be invisible as they are. This is not as contradictory as you may think, and he’s also made it clear that he’s not being “homophobic”.

Apart from Baba Ramdev, who’s telling the Supreme Court that his asanas can ‘cure’ homosexuality, most opponents of the Delhi High Court order as saying exactly what Singhal is saying: let it be but let’s not acknowledge it; let’s not make it legal; let’s have the law articulate social disapproval; let them do it but let them know we don’t approve of it.

This is not just about homosexuality per se but also sexuality in general: so you see him talk about adultery too. Sex must be controlled and regulated like the monetary policy.

This position is best exemplified by this Bollywood number:

I second the comment above on how much patience you have to have had to do this interview without laughing or punching him in the face. :)

Your interview is wonderful. But I think Singhal, though close to VHP, is not even a Hindu. If I remember correctly, he is a Jain.

(They should make the study of logic compulsory for the khaki chaddis. That way they’ll never make it out of their shakha schools and that can only be a good thing).

But then, if this is the kind of opposition that will be presenting itself in the Supreme Court to appeal, they don’t stand a chance, so I guess it’s all good.