Gay India: The Elephant in the Room

Several years ago I was walking though Dharmsala, the Tibetan hill station that is home to the Dalai Lama and about a hundred thousand skuzzy spiritual seeking tourists, when I ran into a stately older woman who asked me to sit down for a cup of tea. She had been living in India for several years and wanted to talk to someone about a shocking discovery she had just made.

"When I walk down the street I see a lot of men holding hands. In the west homosexuality is so taboo, but it is refreshing to see it out in the open here," she said in obvious awe.

Obviously this woman had never read the hundreds of news stories of gay people being exiled form their communities, doused with kerosene, or beaten within an inch of their lives when discovered. She hadn't even seen Deepa Mehta's Fire (1996) which was causing a stir at the time.

After setting her right about hand holding as a sign of friendship, I went about my day only remembered that exchange this morning when I read a blurb in the Deccan Chronicle about STDs on the rise in central jail. According to a four-year study it turns out that 30% of inmates have some sort of STD and that many are infected with HIV. The article states they had multiple sex partners, and may have shared needles. The article ignored the elephant in the room.

To quote the eminent anthropologist Bruce Jackson "The only condition [prisons] cures is heterosexuality."

The newspaper wouldn't even mention that the STDs were being spread through gay sex. In fact, most media outlets in India completely ignore the gay culture in major metros across this country. It is as if the media has the exact opposite problem as the woman I met in Dharmsala: where she sees homosexuality everywhere, the media pretends it doesn't exist.

Which, of course, is rather rich since they are confronted by it every day in Bollywood. The country's best-known director Karan Johar is widely rumored to have ongoing relationships with lead actors Sharukh Khan and John Abraham. Johar has made some small attempts to put some positive references to homosexuality in his movies and featured a short kiss between two men on the streets of New York in his film Kul Ho Na Ho (2004).

Otherwise the media sticks to demonizing homosexuality. Newspapers are happy to print stories of gay people being punished by the local community. And the majority of films that have gay characters--like Girlfriend (2004)--cast them as villains and see that they die painful deaths.

India has a problem addressing all forms of sexuality. Extramarital affairs are commonplace, and though no one wants to say that sex happens before marriage, droves of teenage girls come home pregnant every day because they never received sex education. Homosexuality is demonized in the media and everyday discourse, and millions of people are forced into arranged heterosexual marriages while they clearly lust after something else.

Come to think of it, the woman in Dharmsala may have been onto something. While holding hands is a way to express friendship here, it is the one avenue for gays to come out into the open without feeling attacked by the world around them.

(Photo: publicity still from the film "Girlfriend" that caused a ruckus around India and demonized--and hypersexualized--lesbians)