Bengaluru: Have homosexuals in India finally arrived on the scene? Article 377 was amended to decriminalise homosexuality amid much celebration, but does this mean the end of the battle or the beginning of a new journey? Author Aatish Taseer brought to the table the experience of being married to a "tall, white man", and Vasudhendra, the Kannada writer, who brought the homosexual experience to regional literature with Mohanaswamy, took the panel with author Madhavi Menon and Anjali Gopinathan.
Homosexuality has become linked somewhat to a conservative Indianness, which all panelists agree is doing the culture a disservice. “The culture is deeply embedded in our country,” said Madhavi Menon, author of Desire, "Take the Aravannis in Tamil Nadu, for instance." Robert Dessaix, wonderfully irreverent, said, "In Australia, nobody cares. You could be gay or straight or stand in a green bucket singing folk songs all day. We care if you kill dolphins, not who you date. And that is not in our culture. Christianity and Islam both have clear demarcations of right and wrong. Hinduism does not. Hold on to that."
Menon interjected, rightly, with reference to the Sufis, where male desire is likened to divine love, saying, "It exists in Islamic tradition to. Let's not discount that."
Is being gay in Tennessee the same as being gay in Tasmania or India? Clearly not. Aatish Taseer and Vasudhendra, both of whom understand the intricacies of homosexuality in India, where "morality is at different speeds," as Aatish put it, were clearly in favour of the law. "It helps to have a legal umbrella, it protects us," Aatish remarked, in an aside on Saturday evening. "My boyfriend Ryan lived in a morally fractured universe, there was as much opposition from his staunchly Catholic family as there was from my own in India. With the law that lets us marry, there has been a levelling out of perceptions."
Vasudhendra, who, in his modesty, likes to maintain a "nange maathadalu aagala," (I can’t speak) proved a powerful presence. When he wrote Mohanaswamy, fully aware of his pioneering effort in contemporary Kannada literature, he handed the manuscript out to a few friends. A senior Kannada writer, "who reads only in Kannada," remarked to Vasudhendra later: "Did you catch the gay virus when you were in England?" Homosexuality as a concept is seen as a Western evil, he explained.
Madhavi Menon, faculty at Ashoka University, turned the argument on its in head. "Rights are by their nature, exclusive," she argued. "Why should we be made to tick our sexuality in a box? To me, violence is the bottom line. As long as you're not hurting anyone, do whatever you want! Why should we emulate a hetero-normative culture?"
Why should being gay mean anything other than just being? "Ryan and I don't have gay friends, all of them are straight. Nobody cares. That has nothing to do with it." History is all well "but I don't care if a Shikandi in the Mahabharatha is gay," declared Vasudhendra, to a round of applause. "That is history. My problems are in the present. And rights help me today."
