“There are different types of people in the world, some in greater numbers than others. Who do we discover? Who do we invent? What we discover is deemed natural. What we invent is deemed unnatural, artificial, manmade or cultural.
Significantly, different people discover and invent different things because people have different notions about what constitutes nature. In the Hindu world, culture remains an artificial imposition on nature, enabling humans to discover their humanity by offering a chance to make room for, or reject, diversity.
A world where you believe there are many lives to live is very different from one where you are convinced this is the one and only life. In the karmic worldview, you are queer because of karma, and it may be a boon or curse. In the one-life worldview, you are queer because you choose to be so, to express your individuality, or to defy authority or [because] God/Devil wills it so.”
-D. Pattanaik, Shikhandi and Other Tales They Don’t Tell You
It is rather self-consciously that I pen this upcoming post. I have been shuffling ideas and concepts in my mind, over and over, debating about how to get this 'right'.
Let me begin with a bit of a disclaimer: I don’t pretend to speak for others, or to be objective, for that matter, I am simply, and humbly, trying to further my grasp of the whole situation. Please take it as a personal narrative pieced out of a process of discovery.
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Some people have asked me:
“Why India?”
“Why this cause?”
And they are valid questions because in all honesty last week’s Annual Celebration at HST (Humsafar Trust) was my very first LGBT event. Ever. It’s not that I wouldn’t like Pride Week, or that I don’t support my friends… the opportunity had never really come up or rather I had never made the effort, mostly because sexual orientation is rather irrelevant to me. I mean, apart from being a foundational block of someone’s identity, I think we are attracted to people on all sorts of levels, gender being just one of the many factors.
So, apart from the fact that this is where the posting I found was located, there were many other reasons why India and this cause were a good fit:
This country is possibly one of the most stratified societies in the world. Between the Hindis, the Muslims, the Christians, the Sikhs, the Buddhists, the Zoroastrians, and all the shades of sects and denominations in between, the particularities of each person’s faith is still a dominant part of how they see the world. It influences what they eat (veg vs. non-veg), who they are expected to marry, what they do for a living, etc.
But segregation and social differentiation take place on so many other levels, as well. And although the caste system was formally abolished some 60 years ago, it is still quite present at the political level and continues to dominate an individual’s path to upward mobility and lifestyle choices.
Traditionally, homosexuality in India is swept under the rug, and remains acceptable as long as its community holds to the “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule.
The overwhelming pressure to conform (meaning to marry into a hetero-normative relationship and seek love/passionate relations in extra-conjugal spheres) is, in my understanding, anchored in the notion that family is what binds this society together. The idea that your social and economic support group is primarily composed of your extended relatives makes most of a young adult’s life choices almost entirely up for review by people who are perhaps distant in identity, values, beliefs and worldviews, but closely tied by kinship.
Being gay, in most circumstances, thus implies that you will not bear children. And this begs the questions of who will take care of you in your old age? Of who will light your funeral pyre? And of how these intricate circles of service, filial duties and traditions are preserved in a rapidly changing society confronted with globalism and the tenets of modernity.
To be brutally honest, and to check in with some of my biases on the topic: I come from a society that abandons it’s elderly to foster care, and has very little openly-discussed qualms about removing them from their traditional roles as the vanguards of tradition and wisdom. I recognize, of course, that both these models have drawbacks (I doubt any of my relationships with a potential mother-in-law will ever be so contentious as if she and I were living under the same roof for the rest of my adult life, while competing to be the second-in-command of the household). Still, it remains essential for me to keep an open mind.
Beyond religion and class, there are politics, and the economics, the sheer overwhelming statistics of some demographics, and the every day struggles. It’s my outsider opinion that growing up in India isn’t simple, for there are a wealth of social conventions to navigate, to embrace or reject, to justify or ignore; and most of the time an account must be made to the people closest to you. Yet I have met individuals from a younger generation who have ‘come out’ to their families fairly early, and are in the process of being understood, if not entirely accepted.