RR Phantom
Location : Wasted Space
Job/hobbies : Cayman Islands Actuary
 |  Subject: India: Where gays hide their pride  Fri Mar 19, 2010 5:47 pm | |
| Bollywood is not known for holding back. But something is missing from its assortment of muscle-bound idols and glamorous leading ladies: openly gay stars. India's glitzy entertainment hub, like the rest of the country, still likes to maintain traditional sexual identities, at least in public. But behind closed doors, the sexual behaviour of many Indian men and women is much more complicated.
Ashok Row Kavi, an expert on India's sexual minorities, estimates ''40 to 50 million'' Indian men have sex with other men, although most of them are married and relatively few would call themselves gay. ''Here the world of men having sex with men is not monolithic, it is very diverse,'' he says.
Kavi, one of the first Indians to come out as gay, in 1984, believes those who identify with India's gay community are between just 5 and 10 per cent of the country's homosexuals. It tends to be English-speaking, wealthy and is concentrated in major cities, especially Mumbai. ''Working-class men who have sex with other men don't really identify as being gay,'' says Kavi. ''They are mostly married, they have another identity.''
Sujan, a 21-year-old sex worker at Mumbai's busy Andheri railway station, reflects this complexity. He has been selling sex on the streets of Mumbai for four years and identifies as a homosexual. But every three months or so Sujan switches to a traditional sexual identity when he travels home to visit his conservative Rajasthan village: ''It's different when I am in my village. I have told my parents I will get married.''
Ajay, another Andheri sex worker dressed in a tight pink shirt with ''playboy'' emblazoned across his shoulder blades, says he joined a recent gay pride march in Mumbai. But he does not identify strongly with the tag.
''Gay and homo are words wealthy and educated people use,'' he says. ''The people around here call us gur [raw sugar] or mitha [sweet].''
Young homosexual men in Mumbai often move between multiple city identities including sex worker, massage boy, student and even Bollywood film extra. But they may have a wife and family back in their village.
Kavi, an adviser with UNAIDS, has identified at least 13 distinct groups of men who have sex with men in India, apart from the gay community. This includes India's traditional Hijra, or transgender community; itinerant transport workers such as truck drivers; and aspiring male actors who flock to Bollywood each year in the hope of stardom. Male film extras have been identified as vulnerable to HIV infection because many sell sex in order to survive between acting jobs. They may also have to exchange sex for work.
''There is a gay culture very prevalent in Bollywood, but it's very internal and very protected,'' says Vivek Raj Anand, chief executive officer of the Humsafar Trust, one of India's leading gay support groups. ''In India we have this great contract of silence. It's like 'you know and I know' and it's only when we start talking about it that it becomes a problem.''
India has been talking more about homosexuality since an historic judgment by the Delhi High Court eight months ago that effectively decriminalised homosexuality.
The decision overturned a 150-year-old section of India's penal code, drafted during British colonial rule, which outlawed ''carnal intercourse against the order of nature'' and imposed a 10-year jail term on offenders.
Activists say police harassment of gay people has declined significantly. ''The biggest improvement has been in my mental health,'' says Pallav Patankar, a member of Mumbai's gay community. The fact that you don't have this overarching threat of police pressure definitely empowers you. I know of five or six queer businesses being rolled out in Mumbai because people aren't scared any more.''
But the court's intervention has coincided with a sharp rise in attacks on gay people, including a spate of murders.
''The violence [against gay men] in the past few months is something I have not seen for 15 years,'' says Vivek Raj Anand, of the Humsafar Trust. ''These are terrible hate crimes. And for the first time in my life I have got threatening calls.''
Dr Anjali Gopalan, a social activist whose Naz Foundation made the petition that led to the court decision to decriminalise homosexuality, says it has done little to assist Indian lesbians.
''At some level there is an acceptance of male homosexuality but not women's,'' she said.
Kavi, who founded India's first and only gay magazine called Bombay Dost, says gay identity politics in India is being shaped by rapid social and economic change.
''New urban lifestyles are developing very quickly in India but at the same time many people are still connected to their villages,'' he said. ''Traditional pressures mean a lot of people are getting married so their gay identity is sublimated.''
Kavi estimates about 80 per cent of homosexual men in India have wives and many continue to fulfil time-honoured roles in their extended families. Men from traditional families, especially in poor rural areas, are pressured to marry because it delivers their family a lucrative dowry payment. ''The concept of a gay lifestyle, from a Western point of view, is just not yet there. We don't know yet how gay identity politics is going to evolve in India. But it's not going to be the same as it is in the West.''
At the same, India's huge community of men who have sex with men has been hit by an HIV crisis, and the fragmentation of India's homosexual community of men poses a major challenge for India as it attempts to contain the spread of the virus.
A decade ago there were fears India was on the brink of an HIV epidemic to rival Africa's. So far that has been averted, but India still has the highest number of estimated HIV cases in Asia and the third highest globally. The government estimates about 2.5 million Indians have HIV.
The official estimate of the HIV infection rate among homosexual men in India is 7.4 per cent, compared with 0.36 per cent of the general population. However, some independent experts believe the rate among Indian homosexuals is probably higher than 10 per cent. A recent study by staff at the Sion Hospital in Mumbai found 17 per cent of homosexual men and 68 per cent of transgender people surveyed were HIV positive.
Nalin Mehta, a spokesman for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said many homosexual men in India were ''marginalised, invisible and difficult to access''. In the past few months the fund has boosted its contribution to HIV prevention programs in India in response to these challenges.
''Stigma and discrimination against these groups drives them underground and away from the public health system,'' Mehta said.
''This makes these communities more vulnerable to HIV and the aim is to strengthen community-based systems which can drive HIV prevention messages and provide quality services.'' Australia has committed $210 million since 2004 to the fund's work world wide, making it the 15th largest donor.
The Indian government accepts that 2.35 million Indian homosexual men are at risk of HIV infection. Because the rate of HIV infection is so high among India's homosexual men, and the majority are married, fears remain that this community will eventually be a bridge for the infection to spread more rapidly in the general population.
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