Ruling upholding gay sex ban sparked rise in homophobia in India, says activist

On Sunday, Omar Mateen walked into a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, and shot down 49 people before being killed himself. As the world reacts with shock and grief, India needs to look within, recognise the violent homophobia that exists at home. It is inscribed in state-specific laws, it is practised by law-enforcing institutions, it is held up by community and religious groups. Not to mention the casual prejudice that seeps into our everyday actions and conversations.

In an interview, L Ramakrishnan, who is country director of Solidarity and Action Against the HIV Infection in India or SAATHII, discussed these matters and more.

Did the Supreme Court judgment of 2013, retaining Section 377 on the statute books, have an impact on homophobia in India?
The Supreme Court judgment of 2013 reversed the Delhi High Court ruling of 2009, which read down Section 377. After the Supreme Court verdict, several things happened, both at the family and the social level.

We had parents worried that their children would be considered criminals once again in the eyes of the law. Community groups in several towns noted increased incidents of parents taking their children to psychiatrists, hoping to cure them of homosexuality (which is not a disease in the first place). These were not incidents of hate speech or hate crime, but they were directly related to prejudice and the fear of their children being tagged as criminals.

There was also an increase in the expression of homophobia. Several activists working on the ground observed it. The Supreme Court judgment raised the visibility of the law. People who were not aware of Section 377 suddenly knew that same sex intercourse was a crime. Of course, this is a misunderstanding of the law itself, which criminalises any intercourse that does not involve penile penetration of the vagina.

Among the ground level police force, there was a heightened awareness of Section 377, so it led to a spike in harassment and expressions of prejudice. Just weeks before the Supreme Court ruling, in November 2013, the Karnataka police rounded up 14 men in Hassan and charged them under Section 377, ignoring the high court ruling which was in force then. I call that an act of violence.

What form does hate speech or hate crime usually take? Where do LGBTQ people encounter homophobia?

Homophobia and transphobia comprise a continuum of violence, ranging from slurs and ridicule to physical and sexual abuse, and murder. “Corrective rape” is an acutely violent manifestation of homophobia, in which lesbian women are raped, sometimes even by family members, in a twisted attempt to change their orientation towards the heterosexual norm.

There does not have to be an organised campaign for homophobia. It can rear its head anywhere. You see hate speech on social media, you encounter it on school playgrounds or during conversation at the workplace. Social media groups to raise awareness about LGBT rights are especially targeted. Homophobic slurs are also used to target heterosexual people who step out of narrow gender norms in appearance or behavior. For instance, a woman who is assertive at the workplace will be called a “dyke” or “lesbian” as a put-down, man who dresses in a way perceived as flamboyant, may be called a “pansy”.

Have homophobic groups sprouted after the Supreme Court judgment?
These sentiments were always there, but they were crystallised into groups after 2013. Soon after the judgment, a group called Christians Against Homosexuality was formed in Chennai. On January 5, 2014, they went on a march on Marina Beach, declaring that homosexuality was immoral. They were led by an officer, C Umashankar, from the Indian Administrative Service. As a reaction, another group, Christians Against Homophobia, was also formed that January. In Madurai, a Muslim political party called the Indian National League also put up posters against homosexuality.

Has hate speech against LGBTQ people mostly been religion based? Does it cut across religions?
Yes, there are Hindu, Muslim and Christian rightwing groups against homosexuality. Homophobia is one issue where all religious differences are buried, as was seen after the Delhi High Court verdict of 2009.

But homophobia is not always religion based. It also derives from a narrow, restricted vision of culture, the idea that homosexuality is against Indian tradition. Of course, if you examine culture, you don’t find one monolithic worldview, you encounter many instances of same sex love in history, literature and mythology. And you also find instances of blatant homophobia, in the Manu Smriti, for instance, and in interpretations narratives such as Sodom and Gomorrah – interpretations that are now contested by Biblical scholars as referring to male rape, not consensual homosexuality.

Are there movements within religions to correct this homophobia?
Yes, the National Council for Churches of India has the ESHA (Eceumenical Solidarity for HIV and AIDS) programme. The council organises events for faith leaders and theological faculty and students across the country to advocate for more inclusive churches and theological education. Sri Sri Ravishankar of the Art of Living Foundation has also spoken about tolerance and acceptance of gay people.

There are LGBTQ individuals of all faiths – Islam, Christian, Hindu, Jain, Buddhist, Parsi, as well as atheist and agnostic people, who resist homophobia and transphobia in their communities of faith or affiliation.

Are any states worse than others when it comes to homophobia and transphobia?
There are certain state-specific laws that institutionalise transphobia, such as Section 36A of the Karnataka Police Act, and the Hyderabad Eunuchs Act. These borrow from the colonial Criminal Tribes Act, a draconian law employed by the British to notify all members of certain tribes, castes and social groups (including hijras) as criminal at birth.

Tamil Nadu’s Goondas Act (1982) was amended in 2014 to factor in Section 377. The law now gives the police the liberty to arrest people merely for having the “potential” to commit offences under “Section 377”. Such measures are not just threats to personal liberty: they constitute institutional violence by the state.

Is there any record of the number of incidents of hate speech or hate crime against LGBTQ individuals?
Statistics are notoriously hard to come by, except in contexts involving beneficiaries of HIV/AIDS prevention programmes, who represent just a fraction of the diverse LGBTQ communities. We’re talking about sections of society that are considered criminal and deviant: naturally, people are reluctant to draw attention to themselves by reporting incidents.

However, there are well-documented murders of transgender women. In January 2015, a transwoman named Pravallika was brutally murdered in Hyderabad. Pravallika held a graduate degree but was forced into beggary and sex work to make ends meet. The police thought she had been murdered by a client, so they used one of her friends, also a transwoman, as bait. The friend was manhandled, stripped and tortured for hours.

One also has to consider suicides, triggered by homophobia, transphobia and violence, as institutional murders. A tragic case in point is that of Pandian (2006), a transperson who set herself ablaze outside a Chennai police station unable to bear the gruesome sexual assault perpetrated on her by the police while in custody.

Section 377 created an environment of hostility towards people who are not considered heterosexual or gender normative. They are looked upon as criminals. The Supreme Court’s NALSA ruling of 2014 has guaranteed certain rights for trans-people and certain states, including Tamil Nadu, have welfare schemes for them. But whether a few government schemes for higher education and employment translate into an atmosphere of inclusivity and acceptance is doubtful.

Unless trans-inclusive welfare schemes and entitlement also include strict anti-discrimination laws, they would be ineffective. Such laws, of course, can only have a restraining effect. You can’t legislate away hatred. In the end, you have to change the hearts and minds of people.