Twenty six year old Sumit Dutta’s caller tune is Queen’s most memorable hit, “I want to break free”. The choice of song is telling for Sumit is a gay rights activist working with the Naz Foundation (India) Trust, a Delhi based NGO working on preventing and combating HIV/AIDS. Sumit refused to live a shadowy life of deceit and concealment and came out and told his family, friends and colleagues that he was gay.
Does Sumit’s honesty and courageous stance indicate the dawn of a more progressive, liberal India?
When Manvendra Singh Gohil, scion of the former royal family of Rajpipla, near Vadodara, came out to his parents, he anticipated trouble. “I knew that they would never accept me for who I truly am, but I also knew that I could no longer live a lie,” he told IANS. 40 years of age, Manvendra had had enough of leading a double life. So he announced his homosexuality to a Gujrati daily. He hoped that his action would nudge open the closet that has entrapped thousands of silently suffering homosexuals in India.Though Manvendra’s disclosure had the entire media rushing in to cover what was touted as India’s first blue-blooded gay Indian coming out of the closet, his parents were horrified by their son’s public confessions. Enraged at his bringing dishonour to the family name, they disowned and disinherited him. “Manvendra is not in control of his mother and involved in activities unacceptable to society”, said one notice, issued by his mother. “Hence, he ceases to have rights as a son over the family property and the power of attorney issued to him also stands cancelled. Henceforth, no one must refer to my name as mother of Manvendra. If any individual or organization dares to do so, it will invite contempt proceedings against him.”Manvendra’s father told IANS, “The power of attorney given to Manvendrasingh about family properties in Gujarat and Maharashtra stands rejected. No one must deal with him about these properties.” Manvendra reacted stoically to his parents’ harsh rejection by saying he wasn’t really surprised by their reaction. “They were afraid to even use the word gay”, he told IANS. He has now found an extended family in his community and says “Ashok Row Kavi is like my godmother”.Sumit was luckier. He came out to his sisters and some other family members and they accepted him for who he is. He hasn’t as yet been able to tell his father though. He says “I am waiting for the right time to approach my father, but I think he also knows about my sexuality”.Rahul Singh, gay rights activist with The Naz Foundation (India) Trust wisely decided to wait until he was self sufficient before coming out to his parents. Rahul says he was extremely close to his parents and knew he had to tell his parents “because I love them the most and never wanted to hide this aspect of my personality”. Their reaction was typical. His sister insisted he visit a psychiatrist. His mother tried to delude herself and him by saying it was merely a “passing phase”. “After marriage things will be just fine”, she consoled him! Rahul’s father’s reaction was the most extreme. He believed Delhi’s evil influences had corrupted his son.Both Sumit and Rahul agree that in India, most parents do their utmost to “normalize” what they perceive as deviant behavior. “Parents refuse to accept the alternate sexuality of their children,” says Rahul. “I know of people who have been disowned by their family when they came out and even forcibly married off, thinking their orientation will change after marriage,” says Sumit. Rushing to a psychiatrist is a common route adopted by parents desperate to counsel their children into “normalcy”.Manvendra had to wait till he was nearly 40 before he could gather the courage to strip open his sexual identity before his family. But Rahul and Sumit disdained leading a double life. “Even the thought of it suffocates me”, says Rahul. He admits that being open about one’s sexual preferences can have its repercussions, especially on the professional front. His boss used to address his gay and transsexual friends as his “it” friends. But since he was a sincere and committed worker, there really wasn’t much he could do, other than pass snide comments. Sumit too was honest about his sexual orientation, not just with his immediate family but with friends and colleagues as well. “All my colleagues are well aware of my sexuality. So I do not need to pretend,” says Sumit. He adds in a determined tone, “I always like to be myself and believe in living my life on my own terms”.A graduate of Duke University, Rachel Medlock, who is a freelance graphic designer, and a karate instructor wrote in Beliefnet.com: “In coming out, you reclaim and rebuild the dignity lost through years of a lack of courage, a lack of integrity...years of self-deception. The coming out process is a profound, cleansing spiritual journey”.Coming out is indeed as much a voyage of self-discovery as it is of facing severe social opprobrium. For Rahul, “coming out is a process that involves self-acceptance and self-confidence at the highest level. Accepting oneself is the first step of coming out and it is an extremely difficult step to take, because not only does it involve you, but your whole family, your friends circle and relatives. There is so much at stake”.One has to be very strong to bear the consequences. Rahul confided that “a person undergoes sheer mental agony after he decides to come out.” He has so much to loose. But for someone like Rahul, there was no other way, for he admitted “If I were not out today, I would probably have landed up in a mental asylum”. Both Rahul and Sumit feel that the decision to come out should not be an impulsive reaction. While Rahul waited until he had completed his education and was financially secure, Sumit too agrees that coming out is not for the faint hearted and one needs solid emotional and financial reserves before taking the plunge. “One needs emotional and financial stability to withstand the onslaught and the discrimination that comes your way, especially from family and friends”.Like with Manvendra, support from within the community is a vital lifeline for gays, especially when they are contemplating revealing their identity. And this is where Internet chat rooms hinder more than they help. It allows gays to retain their anonymity even as they fix up dates. Some members of GayBombay, an online community for gays, even asked the moderator to take the word “gay” off their ids, for greater anonymity when surfing cyber cafes. While their request was denied, it highlighted the tendency for many gays to defer coming out of the closet. Rather than approaching a brick and mortar organization like the Humsafar Trust (which deals with issues concerning men-who-have-sex-with-men) , gays often find it easier to post their moral dilemmas and emotional quandaries online. Facelessness is the big plus of cyber gay cafes but it is no substitute for face-to-face counseling, in which gays are urged to practice safe sex and are helped to come to terms with their sexuality, sans the guilt. Rahul friends are all gay. “I am not in touch with my school or college friends. Since the day I came out to myself I have had only gay friends. No straight friends for me.” Sumit on the other hand has plenty of non-gay friends as well. He says his group is a “fun loving bunch of girls and boys”.Manvendra now works with the Humsafar Trust, Mumbai and with Lakshya, which is documenting and counseling MSM (men who have sex with men) on prevention of HIV/AIDS and sensitizes society on the gay community. He feels the homosexual movement has made definite progress in Gujarat, for whereas even five years back gays weren’t willing to come out, now more and more of them were talking about it openly.Some years back Nishit Saran, a young gay Indian student studying films at Harvard decided to test if he had been infected with HIV after having an unsafe encounter with an HIV+ man. But before the results could come out, he went on a trip across America, with his family who had come visiting from India to attend his graduation ceremony. Under the threat of terminal illness, the student struggled to come out to his family. The achingly honest dynamics that unfolded were captured on tape and developed into a full length documentary by Nishit. The movie, “Summer in my veins” became a breakthrough film in India, presenting homosexuality in a very straightforward way, and suggesting that far from being shameful, it was something that even a conventional middle class Indian family could come to accept and embrace.Since then India is slowly opening its doors to mainstream movies with homosexual content. While “Fire” provoked outrage and instigated fundamentalist parties to go on a rampage, “My brother Nikhil” was received favourably by the public even though it didn’t rake in much profit. Now US-based first time director Soman Chainani is launching “Love Marriage”, a love story like any other, except that the two people in love are men; and Manan Katohora has managed to rope in the effervescent and intelligent Perizaad Zorabian to act in “When Kiran met Karen”, a story about a straight married lady in Manhattan who gets influenced by a lesbian Chinese couple.When Allison Burnett wrote “Christopher” he had no idea that overnight be would be catapulted into a gay icon. As he says in “Coming Out” on mediabistro.com, “not too long ago I was a 40-something straight screenwriter. Then I awoke one morning to discover that I’d become a hot, young, gay novelist” for his first novel had just hit the stands and from his publisher, to his publicist and his readers, everyone thought the novel’s narrator, a “witty, erudite, alcoholic, predatory, middle-aged gay man named BK Troop”, was the author’s alter ego. Burnett’s agent warned him not to set the record straight because the publisher had seemed thrilled to discover a promising gay novelist and was looking forward to a BK Troop sequel. The author says, “it wasn’t that my agent wanted me to lie, exactly. It was simply a matter of don’t ask, don’t tell.”
