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Society
A Language for Love
by Akshay Khanna
Late 2005, at a small
press conference in Delhi, a significant moment in the history of the
Queer movement in India went almost unnoticed. A Hindi translation of
'Rights for All: Ending Discrimination Against Queer Desire Under
Section 377' - a report published by Voices Against 377, a Delhi-based
coalition of NGOs working on LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender)
issues, and women and child rights - was released. 'Adhikaar hon sab
ke liye - Dhara 377 ke tehet yonikta-adharith bhed-bhav ko khatm karne
ki ore' is by no means the first such report. Indeed, over the
years, the now nation-wide Queer movement in India has produced a
significant amount of material. What makes this report unique is that it
is the first of its kind in Hindi.
'Adhikaar hon' carries testimonies of human rights violations of
people with same-sex desires; and perspectives on Section 377 of the
Indian Penal Code (the colonial anti-sodomy law) from the women's
movement, child rights and human rights NGOs, groups working on HIV/AIDS
and other civil society groups.
The Hindi translation - by virtue of the language itself - performs
three crucial functions.
Firstly, it responds to the most commonly voiced objection to social
movements concerned with sexuality, and with same-sex desire in
particular - that they talk of something 'western', something apparently
alien to 'Indian culture'. This has in the past been the basis for
violent attacks carried out by the Hindu rightwing (for example, when
the Shiv Sena attacked theatres screening the film 'Fire'). It has also
been the basis on which successive governments have refused to accept
that Section 377 violates basic fundamental rights.
The argument is that 'Indian society does not approve of homosexuality',
and therefore, that 'these people' cannot be given basic rights of
equality, life and freedom of expression. And one aspect of this
argument has been that these terms - gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender
etc - have no counterparts in 'Indian' languages.
Now this argument can be, and has been countered on a range of levels.
To begin with, the mere absence of a word for 'gay' does not mean that
there is no same sex desire and love; there has been same sex love long
before the term 'homosexual' was coined in the late-19th century. Then
again, English is an Indian language, one that has been spoken here for
over two centuries, and which interacts with other Indian languages in
complex ways. We do not, for instance, question the need for formal
education simply because the word 'school' is English.
And, importantly, it is untrue that languages such as Hindi do not have
terms for same-sex desire. Historically, in literature over the
centuries, in art and sculpture, in the Hindu 'scriptures' and even in
the sciences, there has been a recognition of not just same-sex desire,
but of a correlation between desire and personhood. Particular literary
and cultural practices have had a range of words to describe same-sex
lovers and relationships - the examples of the 'dogana' and 'zanakhi'
being two such from the Rekhti tradition in Urdu poetry. And at
an everyday, colloquial level, the words 'sakhi' and 'masti
' are commonly used to describe same-sex relationships between women and
boys, respectively. Then of course is the plethora of idioms and
metaphors that are contained in the realm of 'gaali', or abuses. The
gaandu, chhakka, laundebaaz, are all homoerotic references. Or
consider the biggest insult to the masculine - that of 'wearing bangles'
(choodiyaan pehen-na).
While not all of these examples reflect that gender non-conformity and
same sex desire are 'accepted', what they establish is that these
concepts and experiences are not alien to Indian languages. That is to
say, expressions in Indian languages other than English are richly
homoerotic, or related to gender and its transgression.
The cultural argument, therefore, does not stand to scrutiny. And
'Rights for All' is the most concrete manifestation of a long-running
challenge posed by civil society activists to this myth.
Secondly, this report plays a significant role in filling a particular
gap in the discourse around sexuality. Thus far, the minimal material on
sexuality in Hindi has been in terms of 'life skills education',
reproductive health and HIV/AIDS. All of which have been largely framed
either in medical, instrumentalist terms, or worse, in moralistic, fear-
and shame-inducing ways.
'Rights for All' negates this trend, and establishes the relationship
between sexuality and processes of socio-economic and political
marginalization. It calls upon us to recognize our political reality
from a 'Queer' perspective - i.e., that the political economy is
regulated by the principle of 'hetero-normativity' - where the only
recognized economic and social unit is the heterosexual family
(constituted of married, procreative couples of the same caste and
religion and of opposite genders).
The fact that this report is in Hindi opens up the possibility of
understanding and responding to the complex ways in which this principle
works at an everyday, local level.
The third important aspect of the Report is the fact that many terms
used in English to talk about gender and sexuality cannot be directly
translated. The term 'transgender' is a good example. In English, the
term is most often used to refer to a very particular life experience, a
desire to 'change over' from one gender to another - i.e. the experience
of a "woman trapped in a man's body" (and vice versa). This
understanding is already based on the presumption that there are only
two genders - male and female, and inevitably, that these relate to two
'biological' sexes. This has been recognized as the basic premise of
patriarchy - that there are two 'natural' sexes that are radically
different from each other and which are expected to fulfill different
and particular roles in society.
This understanding is thus a point of tension and debate within the
Queer movement, as it does not refer to other experiences and choices of
gender non-conformity - i.e. expressions of gender and sexuality that
are not bound by the dualisms of male-female and
heterosexual-homosexual. But the fact that there is no equivalent word
in Hindi has opened up the possibility of understanding gender
transgression in a broader, more inclusive manner and also the
possibility of understanding gender itself in a more nuanced way. The
translation of 'transgender' in the report, for example, is (roughly)
"people who are not bound within the definitions of 'man' and 'woman'."
This is significant in at least two ways. First, it allows us to talk
about our realities of gender and sexuality without binding ourselves to
understandings that have been articulated in Euro-American contexts.
Second, it opens up the possibilities for contesting restrictive
understandings of sexuality and gender that dominate the politics of
development at a global level.
These are all exciting developments that offer much for a wide range of
civil society activists and movements. How these developments play out
remains to be seen.
March 19,
2006
By arrangement with
Women's Feature Service
Top
| Society
The Week of March 19, 2006
India's Politics on the Boil by Dr. Subhash
Kapila
Reforming Criminal Justice by Rajinder Puri
India Aghast at Minority Imperialism by Dr.
Subhash Kapila
US History - Lesser Known
Facts, Analogies & Surmises Part 6 by Gaurang Bhatt, MD
BJB: Kal Ho Na Ho! by Usha Kakkar
Cartoons Claim Another Victim! by Usha Kakkar
Maulana Abul Kalam Azad : A Revolutionary
Journalist by Syed Muzammiluddin
Bheel Mahabharata: Ganga Weds a Frog Prince by
Satya Chaitanya
Will the War against Terrorism become Successful?
by TA Ramesh
Buddhism and Human Rights in Tibet by Tanmoy
Mookherjee
Poisoned Lives: Hyderabad's Stillborn Future by
MH Ahsan
Justice is all about Healing the Victims by
Manjri Sewak
Lost in Cane... and Twice ... by Naiya Sivaraj
Who Ate my Soulmate? by Neha Girotra
Write, Write and Write ... by Suniti
Chandra Mishra
Overcoming Fear by Sugandha Indulkar
Is Your Child Allergic to Milk? by Garima
Gupta
Baby Servants of Baba Logs by Malvika Kaul
Premenstrual
Syndrome by Dr. Muneeb Faraaz
A Language for Love by Akshay
Khanna
IT at Home by Tripat Kaur
Remake Rage in Bollywood by MH Ahsan
Dev Objects to Guide Remake
by MH Ahsan
My Dad Left Holes by Monisha Sen
Who will Pursue Medical Profession? by Dr.
Shanker Adawal
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