Section 377: Is homophobia a result of hurt Indian sensibilities?
In less than two years of the Supreme Court’s judgement on Section 377, India’s vote in favour of Russia drafted resolution that sought to challenge extension of benefits to same-sex partners has brought back the focus on homosexuality in India. The resolution has failed to pass in UNGA and managed to create a stir back home. While a section of Indian population is outraged by this anti-gay rights stance of their government, the latter has sought to clarify that it is a matter of principle. Unlike Saudi Arabia voting in favour because of their perception of same sex relationships as immoral, India claims to challenge the arbitrariness of the UN.
Rights
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon’s decision to extend benefits to same sex partners. The UN Secretary-General has been known for his commitment to gay rights and during his India visit in January this year, he appealed to the central government for repealing Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code that criminalises homosexuality. He proclaimed that it was a “matter of human rights and human dignity”. Through the vote India claims to ask, do the member-states have a right to impose the law of the land or does the UN diktat overrule it? However, the fact that only six months back India had abstained from voting on another resolution against LGBT discrimination passed in UNGA forces us to believe that in all probability there is some other principle at work.
During the diplomatic row between India and the US over Devyani Khobragade, that resulted in, among other things, smooth traffic movement on Nyaya Marg, people on social media quipped about deporting the same sex partners of the US diplomats to exact "revenge". Had the UN resolution been passed, UN staff could be similarly "threatened" in future. The issue of extending legal and financial benefits to same sex partners leads to a discourse on family as a sociological and biological unit. People are raising questions around procreative aspects of sex and the idea of a perfect family which presupposes the presence of a man, his wife and their children. Supporters of criminalisation of homosexuality say seeing same sex couples hurts their sensibilities rooted in the Indian family system. Furthermore, it is difficult to explain the phenomenon to their children! How important really is "family" or the idea thereof for Indians?
Family
An institution that exists between the private and the public, family becomes an important marker in the analysis of a society or a nation. Artists and writers have always watched family curiously as it holds many elements that feed their creativity and ideologies. At least a decade back two contemporary mainstream writers reimagined the "family" and courted trouble. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and Khushwant Singh’s The Company of Women presented some fictional modern Indian families. The families in question were heterosexual and yet they ended up hurting Indian sensibilities. The two literary works in question have faced criticism and even lawsuits on the grounds of obscenity and moral corruption. In an age of freely accessible video pornography obscenity charges appear slightly anachronistic.
Family is often seen as the first set-up where an individual imbibes sexual values like absolutism or relativism. The principles of sexual fidelity or choice of sexual partner first take root in the family. The homophobic concern that children growing up with same sex parents will end up becoming homosexuals is an outcome of obsessing over an apocalyptical extinction of human race. Puritanical ideas of sex being an activity aimed at procreation and not pleasure or even health benefits still rule the majority’s consciousness.
A significant body of research and creative writing has established the two-edged nature of family as a unit. On one hand family is a necessity and a desirable state, on the other it is seen as impinging upon the individual will. What needs to be valued in the present context is how the family as an institution enables its members and not how it "looks" in portraits.
The process of imaging and imagining the family has undeniable links with voyeurism. Roy in The God of Small Things becomes the voyeur, exposing her fictional characters while they indulge in socially abhorred practices like incest and sexual intermingling of a higher caste woman with a handyman. Like Perumal Murugan, the now “dead” author, she outraged the moral sensibilities of some people. She even faced a lawsuit for her representation of an unconventional family.
Punishment
And with this we come back to the hurt sensibilities, guilt and punishment with respect to homosexual relations. Laura Mulvey in Visual and Other Pleasures suggests, "Voyeurism has associations with sadism: pleasure lies in ascertaining guilt, asserting control and subjugating the guilty person through punishment or forgiveness." A private choice of consenting adults is brought in the public domain to feed the voyeuristic appetites of people who ascertain control and affix guilt on those that are seen to be hurting sensibilities. If the government really wants us to believe that the vote was indeed a matter of principle of state autonomy, it needs to set a constitutional process in motion to repeal Section 377. Yes, it is indeed a matter of human rights and human dignity.