Dignity and Waste Management: Shifting perspective to accommodate the dignity of the human person

The perspective from which you view your problem substantially changes the solution to the problem. Every point of view, understands the problem differently, and presents a different solution to the problem. Take the case of garbage for example. Like most children from the Gulfie middle-class, my first encounter with what is now called waste-management began with the little symbols on the cover of Wrigley’s Chewing Gum. ‘Keep the countryside clean’ it read, with a stick figure throwing a paper wrapper into a large dust-bin. The appearance of cleanliness, or aesthetics was the perspective from which the issue of garbage or waste was then understood. Keep the countryside looking pretty, and we would be just fine, we were assured.

Clearly however the aesthetic approach to garbage did not resolve the issue. Such a perspective led to the issue of garbage being seen as one of waste-collection. The solution via this perspective on the problem was to put in place a centralized collection system. Once you ensure that everyone puts their waste into the bin, make sure it is collected from the various points in the city. Dumping our waste in dust-bins however, presented us with the formidable dilemma of land-fills. Landfills, as communities across Goa will assure you, create huge heaps of stinking refuse, that often combust spontaneously to fill the air with acrid cancerous smoke. In addition, the effluent generated leaches into the ground water, poisoning it and compromising sustainable access to potable water for generations. And because waste in landfills does not degrade, the amount of land required for landfills is limitless. One of the responses to the problem of landfills was to reduce the waste going into the dump. Realizing that one person’s waste is another’s resource, moves were made to segregate the bio-degradable food wastes, from the synthetic wastes like plastics, glass and metal. Such a resolution of the issue however presents its own issues. The sorting or segregation of waste is not necessarily done by the producer of this waste, since it is often argued that it can be achieved at the land-fill site itself, using chemical procedures to degrade the biological wastes.

What all of these resolutions have in common however, is the ubiquitous garbage collection truck, marked by the stink that comes with collecting mixed and rotten waste from households and commercial establishments.

The perceptive will have realized by now that an otherwise central figure is entirely absent from the descriptions of the garbage issue. That figure would be the figure of the human person. This absence is not surprising however, given that the problem has been framed in terms of ‘waste-management’, the human has been almost eliminated from the scene. They have no role in the equation except as producers of the waste. As such, they must only be educated to follow the appropriate procedure of either dumping waste in a bin (and not all over the countryside), or segregating the waste in appropriate bins. These actions end their role in the process. This is not a particularly comfortable location for the human being though, since this process in fact dehumanizes them, making them only cogs in a larger mechanical process.

Introducing the human element into the process of dealing with waste would radically alter the manner in which we view the problem of waste. It would also ensure a more effective way of dealing with the waste we generate. As suggested earlier, introducing the human element is not merely indicating the role that human beings have to play in the process. Introducing the human element would involve placing the dignity of the human being at the centre of our perspective and our resolution of an issue.

In the case of dealing with the waste we produce, a recognition of the dignity of the human person would involve a recognition that our actions of not segregating wastes, or providing rotting wastes to the sanitation worker is an affront to their dignity. In most of our municipalities, being forced behind the garbage truck is a nightmare. If forced behind it, we pull out our kerchiefs or hold our breath. Imagine now the condition of the person spending a good amount of his life within the truck, often time without gloves, or boots, or a mask to prevent him gagging on the smells? Invoking the dignity of the human person involves recognizing their right to a dignified working environment. This move takes us beyond the arguments for and against segregating waste at source. It is now no longer a matter of convenience or organizational success, it is a matter of our bounden obligation to another human being.

Invoking dignity ensures however that we move beyond uni-directional ‘giving’ of dignity, toward placing ourselves in a dialogical relationship with the object of our giving. Thus not only do we segregate waste at source, we also accept a situation where the sanitation worker instructs us in the ideal participation in the system. Such an experiment was conducted in some wards of Bangalore city some years ago, where municipality workers went from door to door of the ward, explained the workings of the system, and after a trial run, would refuse to clear garbage that wasn’t segregated. To the credit of Clinton Vaz and those involved in the waste segregation initiative, a similar principle was adopted in the Panjim Municipality. However, such initiatives also require the backing of the law. Where a citizen refuses to cooperate with the sanitation worker, not only must their waste not be cleared, but a suitable penalty imposed on them, one that can be levied through the municipality worker in that ward.

Invariably though we shirk from enforcing such systems. They stand to upset the existing social (and moral) order which is built on a failure to recognize the dignity of the individual. Placing the power to fine in a supervisor or a higher power, allows for interventions to protect the sensitivities of well-placed folk. Perhaps this is another reason why, despite loud cries for its implementation, the decentralization of governmental power to the panchayats and in particular the gram sabhas, has not been realized in our State and in others. The empowerment of the sanitation worker and the empowerment of the gram sabhas operate on similar principles of decentralization. The recognition of the principle of decentralization of power, must necessarily be accompanied by the social recognition of the principle of the dignity of the individual. The failure to do so would, in the words of a friend turn, our gram sabhas into garam sabhas!

To return to the issue of waste and our relationship to it; intervening from a position that recognizes the dignity of the individual promises to radically renew our waste management initiatives. It would highlight our moral burden to not push a member of our community (sanitation workers, rag pickers) into an undignified work environment, allow for a greater articulation of equality within our society, and allow for dialogical resolution of many more issues than merely the issue of waste.

In the end, perspectives and the words we use to understand an issue make all the difference!

(Published in the Gomantak Times 9 Sept 2009)

Closing the Doors to Democracy, Opening them to Tyranny: Responding to the Thomas-Faleiro Arguments – Part 2

In the initial part of this phased response, I had suggested that the Thomas-Faleiro argument represented both an opening up and a closure. The argument operates to prise open domains, currently under the traditional leadership of the Catholic communities, to the State. In this concluding portion of the response, I would like to suggest that the opening up is especially dangerous for the simultaneous closures that such a move would result in.

Allowing us to see this closure as a movement akin to suffocation, we should not forget that the suggestion for a State law regulating Church properties first emerged in the distinctly hostile (towards religious minorities) State of Madhya Pradesh, and Kerala where the Church has a major clout through its moral power in political history.

The initial attempts in these states now seem to have led to a nation-wide attempt to regulate the management of Church assets. This move is dangerous for a number of reasons. First, it repeats the primary mistake of the Indian polity, which is to see people as comprising essentially of monolithic religious groups, Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, Christians. Nothing could be further from the truth, since these communities are fractured by class, caste, language and many other factors. In the case of the Catholics, for sure there is no such thing as a uniform Indian Catholic. In Goa, despite our best beliefs, the Church is in reality fractured along lines of caste, class and language. While the erasure of these differences is necessary if a State is to create a monolithic ‘community’ over which it will legislate a uniform law, this action not only lays the ground for the communalism that this country suffers from, but also for the suppression of marginal and subaltern voices within these ‘communities’. The creation of the monolithic identity, leads to a closing of spaces for internal dissent and reform within these ‘communities’, empowering conservative tendencies within them. Take a look at the Muslims in the country, where progressively over time, the space for internal dissent and reform has been quashed given that conservative clerical groups are recognized as leaders of the community. Within the Catholic faith, it would in fact be the Clerical hierarchy that would see eye-to-eye with the Indian State (and its minions) on the matter of consolidating the community (even as it would oppose any control over its functioning). The former are congenitally blinded to this complex social reality, since they are committed to the spiritual fiction of being one united (and Catholic) Church. And yet this is not social reality, which is marked by numerous dissensions and divisions.

There is without doubt a need for greater transparency and accountability in the management of Church properties. I also agree that this management must be in conformance with Constitutional principles. The issue on which I differ however is that of the means of implementing this agenda. It is precisely because of its colonial heritage that Goa has a social and cultural infrastructure that allows for the radical realization of democracy through decentralization. The Portuguese structured colonial power in Goa through the recognition of the powers of villages to regulate village economies. The Church followed a similar pattern, leading to each village contributing its properties to erect and maintain the village church, establishing a trust, the Fabrica, to control these properties. Like the Communidades however, these Fabricas too were by and large controlled by the gãocars, village elites, often from the dominant families and castes of the village. When one speaks of Church property today therefore, one refers to not just property of the Bishop (as representative head of the Diocese) but properties of a plethora of individual churches who hold these properties as autonomous owners.

Religion is not merely a disciplining of the soul, but a disciplining of material practices as well. The Bishop exerts therefore a disciplining control over these Fabricas and their material transactions. To manage these affairs, the Catholic diocese in Goa has already got in place a management system that allows for decentralized control. This management system is regulated by a written (and published) Code. This Code refers to the provisions of Canon Law and shares in spirit and procedures the form of State Law. We should remember that Canon Law and State Law both have common roots in Roman law and are siblings in many aspects. The bases on which they depart, are the sources of power that ensure their continuity. The power for one is the power of the State, the other that of the Tradition and moral weight of the Catholic Church. A significant feature of the current code that governs the Fabricas is to liberate these bodies from the control that dominant castes in the villages had in the days of the Portuguese. The properties of village churches is now returned to the spirit of early times, and held by the community of the faithful together, represented by the local Parish Council. Nothing could be closer to the spirit of the Constitutional values of equality, accountability and transparency.

As should be obvious by now, a realization of the Thomas-Faleiro formula would ensure a closure at all of the levels above, laying the foundation for greater communalism, encourage conservative leadership, and smooth over the nuances of local history and in this process close the plural legal spaces that exist at the Catholic grass-roots, allowing for vesting of absolute power in the State. Absolute power as we know, corrupts absolutely.

Rather than this route therefore, what we require now is, in the presence of the Code, located within a venerable body of Canon law; the engineering of a grass-roots constitutionalism that will allow members of the parish to demand and realise greater accountability. Grass-roots constitutionalism being the fomenting and realization of Constitutional values within grassroots institutions. In short, while we need a reform of the management of Church properties, we should be clear that it is one that strengthens the laity, not the hierarchy and the State at the expense of laity. To pose again the question asked at the presentation of the Thomas-Faleiro argument, whose property are we saving, and from whom?

There are many of us in Goa who have pledged our strength to the movement for greater decentralization and democratization of power in the State. This battle with the State is necessarily part of one within Society as well. It cannot be therefore, that we argue for greater decentralization on the one hand (an opening up), and argue for centralization (a closure) on the other. Such an argument is logically fallacious, socially disastrous and opens the doors to tyranny of the State.

Thomas and Faleiro would do better to engineer their movement toward a strengthening of, rather than the closure of proto-democratic decentralized spaces that they are attempting. Their actions are in fact the result of out-dated legal understandings of society, designed further the imperial interests of the Indian State (and its beneficiary class) at the risk of doing great damage to the health of the Constitutional experiment that is our Republic. No, the Thomas-Faleiro proposals as they stand are not in the best interest of the average lay Catholic and should be opposed by any sensible mind, Catholic or otherwise.

(Published in the Herald, Opinionated, 4 Sept 2009)

Splitting open the Goose that lays the Golden Eggs: Responding to the Thomas-Faleiro Arguments - I

Some weeks ago, Eduardo Faleiro roped in the former Justice K. T. Thomas to create the context for a demand for State law to supervise management of Church properties. This two part response to what I call the Thomas-Faleiro argument seeks to complicate the uni-dimensional vision of Justice Thomas, suggest the real reasons for their arguments and argue, invoking the idea of legal pluralism, that what we need is not more institutions and law, but an effective spread of grass-roots constitutionalism.

As with any mechanism, there are at least two ways to engage with the law. One is the method of the mechanic. She will be able to repair a machine, but may possibly be hard-pressed to introduce innovations, or contribute to a further evolution of the mechanism. The engineer on the other hand, is able to resolve this latter lack, intervening in the operation of the mechanism to introduce innovations and also predict the kind of impacts that such innovations would possibly have. In the case of the law, this distinction between the mechanic and the engineer is represented through the distinction between the lawyer and the sociologically-sensitive jurist. The argument of the former Justice K. T. Thomas on the need for a law regulating the assets of Christian Churches in India, represents that of the mechanic. It is the view of a mechanic of the law because it looks merely at the dry letter of the law, ill-illumined by an understanding of juristic notions of ‘Law’ as well as socio-legal realities. It is with this recognition that I would like to delve into a response to the Honourable Justice’s thoughts as well as those of the leader of the enterprise, Eduardo Faleiro. (And let us dispense with the fiction that this initiative was led by the AICU)

The thoughts of Justice K. T. Thomas as expressed in the text of his lecture represent both an opening and a closure. The opening that he presents is that for the Indian State. What Thomas and Faleiro seek to do is to extend the power, and the control of the Indian state over properties of the Church. This opening, I will argue, is potentially tyrannical, since it would lead to a closing of democratic spaces of dissent and control, as well as lead to an impoverishment of our notion of what Law, legality and legal spaces mean. In this sense, the closing that the Faleiro-Thomas maneuver represents is the closing of the multiple legal spaces that exist outside of the legal structures of the State, a closing of the democratic option.

Thanks to being educated largely by Statist theories, most of us are under the firm impression that law can be the product only of the State, and that the spaces of law are only those of the judiciary and the legislature. The fact is however, that our social condition is marked not by a legal monism, but by a legal pluralism. Law and legality abound in various social locations, and State law is just one among these legalities. The modern State has however, since its very inception, attempted to snuff out the life of these legal spaces and the legalities that they produce. Justice Thomas is not unaware of this when in discussing the case of the Church, he cites the Canon law that regulates the operation of the Church. There may be problems with this law, in that it tends to be hierarchical and outside of the realm of the common person, but this is not Justice Thomas’ main concern. This is not his concern since State law shares both these features. His intentions as already expressed above, are to get the operation of this law, and the Church, firmly placed under the law and sovereignty of the State.

To justify this extension of the powers of the State, Thomas suggests that no person or institution can be, or should be outside of the jurisdiction of the Constitution of the State. This is a valid point; constitutional values are the values that provide the bed-rock for governing public morality. Social values may choose to conflict with these constitutional values, but in the course of contestation, they must bow to constitutional values. And yet, Thomas, typically for a lawyer, fails to grasp a crucial distinction; that it is Constitutional values that must proliferate through the Republic of India, not necessarily the legal structures of the State. Such a (State) institution heavy approach, in fact subverts the Constitutional project, rather than enhances it.

Entrenched in his belief in State law Thomas suggests that judicial review is the best and only appropriate form of regulation of the use of Church property. This is, to be sure, a rather naïve suggestion, since it is common knowledge, both to social scientists who study the operation of the Indian judicial system, and the lay person, that the Indian judicial system is the in fact the forum of last resort for any party seeking to genuinely resolve a dispute. The Indian judicial system is in fact a forum utilized primarily by the ‘men with long pockets’; to maintain the status quo, to harass one’s opponent, and delay the eventual resolution of the dispute. In addition, we should recognize that disputes within the Church’s bodies, can already be taken up in a Court of law.

In support of his argument, Thomas refers to the Waqf Act where Muslim charitable properties are monitored by a Government appointed committee. A comparative anecdote in this regards would help us understand the situation a little more clearly. Some time last year, the Goan Muslim community was approached with the suggestion that they too adopt the Waqf (Islamic trust) model for properties held by their religious institutions. The suggestion was stiffly contested, and not only because the managers of these properties wanted to appropriate funds for themselves. On the contrary, there was once more the similar fear expressed of what would giving control to the Government mean for both the community and the institutions? This fear was, in my opinion, well placed. If the Government appoints persons to monitor the operation of Church or Waqf properties, what sort of people would it appoint? Experience suggests that they would appoint those members of the community who are willing to play ball with the political elites that control the Government. What these institutions do therefore, is to extend the power of political elites (like Faleiro and Thomas) over a ‘community’ and their properties. In the case of Goa, the implications of such a capture of power are more than obvious. Real-estate development has already become the primary economic resource for political elites in Goa. Where Church properties are being misappropriated today, the misappropriation in most cases is more diffused. Centralising control, as suggested by Thomas-Faleiro would allow for larger players to benefit, and cut out the small players who currently benefit, if at all. Are Thomas-Faleiro proposing a case of jumping ‘from the frying pan into the fire’?

More crucially though, to return to the idea with which I began this response, and to conclude this portion of the response, the suggestion to place Church properties under Governmental control represents not merely an opening up, but a prising open.. The Thomas-Faleiro argument is no well-intentioned selfless argument for the good of all concerned. It is the attempt of ‘secular’ elites firmly entwined with the State, attempting to break the control and power of the traditional elite within the Catholic Church and bring the Catholic community firmly under the imperial umbrella of the Indian State. Internal sovereignty has no other meaning other than this, the destruction of pluralism, in favour of the total control by the State. Further, it is not insignificant fact that both Faleiro and Thomas belong to this imperial national elite. In the following portion of this response, I will argue in what manner this prising-open for the State in fact represents an anti-democratic, totalitarian tendency, leading to the closure of pluralism in State and society.

(Published in the Herald, Opinionated, 3 Sep 2009)

Follow Part II of the essay on http://dervishnotes.blogspot.com/2009/09/closing-doors-to-democracy-opening-them.html

Life and the Road: Celebrating the life-affirming principles of India’s streets

Speak with the expatriate white folk living in India, an NRI, or similar people, and you will invariably hear an unending litany of complaints about the state of our roads and the manner in which people drive. The situation is described as uncivilized; chaotic, annoying, life-threatening and deadly. And indeed, from time to time it may be. India does have a rather high level of deaths from road accidents. Figures suggest that almost one Goan dies every day on Goan roads, no insignificant figure. I would however, like to present an alternate view of our roads and notions of transport by contrasting two perspectives. The first is one that sees roads and transportation from what I would call a life-affirming perspective, the other the death perspective.

The thoughts expressed in this column occurred to me as I drove through Panjim city, an unwilling occupant of a Tata Safari. Hulking above all of the other traffic in the city, the driver sitting next to me was impatient to unleash the power of the vehicle on the road. Unfortunately, the rest of the universe seemed to conspire against him. People crossed the road, cycles meandered from one lane to another, other vehicles wove in and out of lanes. Life in all its manifestations was spilling out onto the streets interrupting the realization of his dream of smooth and speedy traffic. Slowly negotiating through the crowds was not an option, a speedy movement away was the goal.

What we have here is exactly the conflict between the life affirming perspective and that of death. One perspective seeks the roads as the space to make connections; commercial, social, even amorous. It stresses connectivity, and asserts that time is not of essence. On the contrary, a surfeit of time works to cement these connections. In this happy street scenario, the driver too is invited to participate; smiling, squabbling even, encouraging an obstruction out of his way. Moving, but always engaging as he does so.

The dominant logic regarding roads however sees roads as potential highways. In doing so, it unfortunately asserts a logic of disconnection. Roll up your glasses, block out the external environment, (don’t forget to turn on the AC!) and move speedily from one point to another. The road is the space to indicate your power, and the vehicle and its speed the manner to indicate it. To be sure, if the driver of the Safari bought the death perspective, it was not the driver to blame, but the situation that he found himself while sitting behind that driver’s wheel. The machine is constructed to push life aside and head resolutely towards its destination. We are encouraged through so many mechanisms – advertisements being one major force – to understand all roads as highways. Vehicles and transport are to be understood primarily in this manner. It is little wonder then, that we have so many deaths on our roads. The roads have been constructed to kill, not just physically, but socially, culturally and economically as well.

We should remember the international origins of the modern highway lie in the history of the German autobahn. Wide and smooth, they were built to facilitate automobile travel and to exclude older forms of travel. Though embraced by the Nazi administration, the dream of the autobahn seduced all of the industrial world, since it promised the realization of the industrial dream. In this dream everything (including humans) were seen as machines, worthy of existence only if they could produce to feed the economy. Habitations were seen as production centres where humans worked as machines, or tended machines that produced. Roads connected one production centre to another, and the landscape, no matter how challenging, was to be domesticated to aid this larger project of production (and consumption). The fervour with which the industrial world embraced the idea of the highway suggests to us that the fascist dictatorships of Europe were only the more pernicious forms of industrial society. There is something terribly wrong with the industrial model itself that demands the death of social relations, and shoves aside the slow and the weak. This internal logic is made manifest for us to read through the design of highways and the manner we are urged to consider all roads, highways.

For those familiar with the grand highways of Europe and the US, you will know that there is no life around these highways. Indeed the life that dares enter these zones winds up dead, as roadkill. The commerce on the highway is in the form of the anonymous hospitality of corporate chains, serving uniform, unhealthy food. There is a pattern here we must not miss.

In India on the other hand, as so many of these Europeans tell us, we don’t have highways. We don’t have highways since life in all its glory explodes onto these zones and domesticates these potentially cold, anonymous, dignity-denying spaces. The accidents that we see on Indian roads are the result of the inevitable conflict between these two perspectives. It is a conflict between those that affirm life, and those that have decided to run over it. The accidents are also the logical result of the death perspective, that is built on a negation of human values and of human unpredictability. When human error does manifest itself on these highways, or even roads polluted by the autobahn logic, the number of deaths are catastrophic. These deaths are the most evident cost of the industrial common sense that insists on a machine existence.

From within the death affirming principle of industrialism, surely our roads are a huge mess and a death trap. However, if we embrace the life-affirming perspective it is possible that we would begin to see roads, vehicles and travel from an entirely different point of view! Civilization at the end of the day needs to be geared toward the recognition of life, not its negation.

(Published in the Gomantak Times, 2nd Sept 2009)

Learning from the Ganesh fiasco: Temples, Churches, their demolition and reconstruction

The issue of the demolition of older structures, be they temples or churches and the erection of new buildings is a topic that causes much consternation in heritage sensitive circles. The attempt at demolition, renovation is invariably opposed by heritage circles leading to a standoff between the demolitionists and the conservationists. As with all standoffs, neither side will blink first, there is no communication, leaving all of us that much poorer for the situation. Given that the Ganesh fiasco from last week was framed along the lines of the right to the freedom of expression (of artistic sensibilities) I wonder if it would not be instructive to study the heritage debate from this angle.

If the argument of the Hindu Janajagruthi Samiti (HJS) is that the appropriate form of Ganesh has been fixed in the past and we would do better to turn back to the past for inspiration, then the argument of the Kerkar supporters was that artistic creativity is constantly evolving and must be allowed to flower. The issue of creation of new temples and churches over older structures can similarly be looked at from this angle. These new temples and churches stem from the innate desire of people to create. This creation does not necessarily stem from an older idiom, but it nevertheless represents their aspirations, their emotions and their vision of themselves.

None of these arguments should be construed to imply a personal validation of these projects of demolition and reconstruction however. On the contrary I would find myself on the side of the heritage activists on the issue of preservation. And yet, there is another point of view that I believe needs to be understood and respected.

The issue was perhaps captured best when the priest of some slated-for-demolition temple told this prominent heritage activist “So! You’re the one they call Deshmukh? You guys are very xana! You live in Panjim, in bungalows, and drive cars and you want our God to live in a hut!!” The problem with most approaches to heritage is the strange relationship it has with the past. While appreciative of the past, a good number of heritage activists are not willing to use it to mount a critique of the present. Thus the preservation of heritage is the preservation of a few artifacts as representative of the past, while ‘development’ is allowed to rumble on undisturbed. The problem with the temples is that for the managements of these temples, as captured by our priest above, the deity is not apart from modern and contemporary life, S/He lives in it. As such, as the most esteemed member of the community, it cannot do that the rest of us live in concrete homes, tiled with granite and marble, lit with electric light, and the deity be made to live in a tiled mud house, red cement flooring and oil-fed lamps. The management of these temples does not recognise a distinction between the modern and the archaic, that the heritage activists do, for them the temple and ‘real life’ are a continuous part of one whole and the temple has to be articulated within the idiom of the contemporary. The new temples that are coming up therefore, are an expression of contemporary creativity, and our engagement with it needs to be along lines similar to what we proposed in the Ganesh fiasco.

It is for this reason, that these kinds of heritage activists would do well to perhaps rethink their relationship to the past, using their fascination for the past to mount a stout critique of present practices of development. To the credit of some of our activists in Goa, going by their participation in the movements of our times, this is already being done. However there is perhaps one more engagement that is possibly necessary before we can persuade communities across Goa to not pull down their temples and churches. This would be an active engagement with the larger public in Goa, communicating the basis on which we see structures of the past as beautiful and worth preserving.

Another one of the possible reasons why these structures are coming down, is that communities in charge of their management are unable to read the buildings for the statement that they were (and are) making. Or perhaps the statement that needs to be made is changing. There is clearly, a break with tradition in a manner that the new development does not speak to the older. One possible way to remedy the first situation is to flood the public domain with information regarding the manner in which one can read Goan structures. Dr.Paulo Varela Gomes, the soon-to-depart Delegate of the Fundacão Oriente has done a wonderful job of proposing a manner in which we can read the specificities of the Goan Church. He argues that the Goan Church is not merely a reproduction of foreign elements thrown together, but a confident articulation of a local sensibility, not found anywhere else in the world. Subsequent to his explanation of the buildings, it is impossible not to look at the Churches and chapels across Goa with new eyes. Indeed, the very placement of stones start to tell you elaborate and complex stories! With such knowledge, the destruction, or even an alteration of a Church becomes an extremely difficult proposition.

How does one supply this knowledge to people across the Goan territory, such that they the language of the stones is made comprehensible to all, and not just an erudite few? This perhaps is the challenge for heritage activists, and the lesson from the Ganesh fiasco, that there is a need for active dialogue and conversation, not merely at the time of the confrontation, but as a part of daily life itself. The responses at the time of confrontation are invariably not amenable to dialogue. The time is too late for that. Indeed, what we often resort to are legalistic responses. These responses may use official force to prevent a punch-up but nevertheless leave gaping wounds in our psyche, making us prime ourselves for another confrontation. The challenge before us then is, to we create viable options and systems for dialogue that are not one-off events, but perpetual engagements. Such engagements would allow for creativity to continue to march forward, but always in a healthy engagement with the past.

(Published in the Gomantak Times August 26 2009)

Postpartum depression: Complications after the birthing of the Hindutva project

This festival season my old friends from the Hindu Janajagruthi Samiti (HJS) have again stirred up the hornets nest. They started this particular round of agitation by protesting against the presence of an entirely innocent artwork at the Goa State Museum. The only irritant the artwork provided was it was produced by M.F. Husain. In response to this protest, Subodh Kerkar, one of the more famous Goan artists, brought out an image in the Marathi newspaper Lokmat, depicting the Shivaji’s reputed mentor Swami Ramdas in a suit. Normally portrayed as wearing only a caxtti*, the aberration was explained as done so as ‘not to offend the sensibilities of anyone’. In response, the HJS launched themselves at Kerkar, pointing to his illustrations of Ganesh in a variety of postures, including one as a sumo wrestler in a caxtti, as derogatory. They have now orchestrated a campaign that has threatened the life and limb of both Kerkar, and Raju Nayak editor of Lokmat.

The response has been predictable. There are demands for the State to take a stand, and punish them. Others have asked them who they are to define Hinduism for all. Some have pointed to Hindu tradition and the right to depict the gods in this manner. There is also a response asking them to be ‘real Hindus’, in a case of secular Hindus fighting the non-secular. There is every possible manner of response. And yet, I suspect that these responses are missing a point.

Visit the HJS’s website and you will see that they have a problem not just with Kerkar and Husain, but also with the manner in which the Ganeshotsav’s are being conducted. They very surprisingly encourage quiet, orderly celebrations that are eco-friendly and focus on the spiritual. They oppose huge figures of the deity and the melas that have currently become the norm for Ganeshotsavs. If one were not familiar with the normal violence of their method, one would assume that they were another eco-friendly group urging a responsible celebration of the festival.

It is these features of the HJS that complicate the scenario, forcing us to see the problem from other angles. I would like to reflect in this column, on the rather curious connections and circumstances of this entire fiasco that paint an image that refuses to be explained by the simple Hindu right wing versus secularists formula.

It was at the time of the Sri Ram Sene’s attacks on women in Mangalore, and the BJP’s official condemnation of the Sene that a friend suggested to me that what was going on showed an interesting tendency within the Hindutva family. There were now groups like the Sri Ram Sene that were even more Hindu than the BJP, threatening the position of the BJP to represent Hindu-ness across the country. This was a challenge that the BJP had to deal with, and hence the condemnations by the BJP. The BJP Chief Minister of Karnataka made a very telling statement when he indicated that “Sri Rama Sene has nothing to do with the Sangh Parivar. I am telling you honestly.” This was a surprising statement since Sangh outfits very often engage in similar acts of violence and intimidation. One way to explain this response therefore, is to return to suggestions that Hindutva, the RSS, BJP are in fact upper-caste organizations that have mobilized lower-caste groups as foot soldiers. These upper-caste groups hold the arrogant assumption that they as natural leaders can hold these soldiers in check. History has proved such assumptions terribly wrong and the upper-caste leaders of Hindutva are slowly and surely beginning to learn this to their dismay. They have unleashed a Frankenstein that they are not going to be able control, on the contrary, the monster will consume them as well, moving the country closer and closer toward conflagration.

I would argue that something similar is afoot in Goa. Let us not assume that the HJS is the first demonstration of Hindutva in Goa. In Goa, communalism has had a very nuanced presentation and should be seen in the context of the project of integrating Goa into the Indian Union. Given that a Hindu-ness was necessary for Goan integration, (since at the end of the day India was assumed to be Hindu) and Hindu-ness is defined on brahmanical terms, the project proceeded on those lines. The votaries of this project have been both Catholic and Hindu upper-castes, and the assumption of the project was clear, that leadership of the community would remain, either directly, or behind velvet curtains, in upper-caste hands.

Incidentally, the movement against brahmanical domination, in Goa, as in Maharashtra, has also used the language of Hindutva. These two caste tendencies have fed-off each other for a while, thus combining to give us the rowdy Ganeshotsavs, Dahi-handis and Narakasur Nites. The traditional upper-caste response has been to let the ‘children’ play, since they perform the useful role of asserting a Hindutva agenda and rolling back the polluting colonial impact. And yet, the internal tensions of this movement have not been resolved and I would argue that what we see happening right now is a confrontation between these two groups. There is no doubt that the HJS is poised to assert itself as the singular voice for Hinduism in Goa. The contradictions that the HJS has displayed between wanting Swami Ramdas to be depicted in a caxtti* and Ganesh not in a caxtti are in fact not contradictions. They are assertions of independence. The recommendations of the HJS for the appropriate celebration of Ganeshotsav are the posturing of a group that is seeking a larger legitimacy in society.

To understand this we have to also recognise that there are certain overlaps between the secular groups and the upper-caste votaries of Hindutva. Both support a certain soft Hindutva (i.e. Indian nationalism) that intertwines with the project of strengthening the power of the nation-state. Just as soft Hindutva allows upper-caste Hindus leadership of the national enterprise, the largely English-thinking secular group seeks control of the national project. Both groups use the lower castes and classes but don’t credit them with much intelligence or other capacity. They are seen as incapable of being responsible citizens, merely a lumpen that have to be held on a short leash. When comparing the HJS to the Taliban or the Wahabi elements in Islam, and accusing them of puritanical interpretations, they are using a similar grammar, one that suggests that these lower-order boors are incapable of nuanced, philosophical appreciation. Philosophy and nuance ofcourse are seen as the exclusive domain of the upper-classes, Muslim, Hindu, Catholic or otherwise.

This ‘lumpen’ is now asserting itself, indicating that it can be both, the foot-soldiers of the Hindutva Reich, as well as the cultural aristocracy that can hold the foot-soldiers in control. The response is to both, the secularists of the Indian nation-state, and the upper-caste leaders of the Hindutva project. To all of us this should be bad news, because this means that things are simply spinning out of control.

In a season that traditionally welcomes Ganesh, the destroyer of all obstacles, I also herald the imminent arrival of Frankenstein. God save us all.


[Subsequent to the publication of this column, I have to confess that I am as yet a little unsure of the analysis above. The HJS is not primarily a ‘lower’ caste group, and has in fact a large member of ‘upper’ castes (women who I encountered at their earlier exhibition on Kashmir) as well. Indeed, its leader has a Brahmin surname.The effort of this column, and its intended impact, is not to freeze analysis on the issue, but to suggest that there are other multiple factors in this equation that need to be probed as well. What has bothered me was the manner in which all discussion, and response, on this issue is being limited to a rather narrow and legalistic understanding of 'the Right to Freedom of Expression. While I do not wish to suggest that this right and debate around it is unimportant, I am convinced that looking at the manner in this way is going to allow us to believe that curbing the HJS, or banning them, will resolve the problem. It will not. On the contrary the problem will continue to fester. What we require to do is to address the emotive issues also involved in the case, which in any case, law does not seem capable of doing.]

* Caxtti : Konkani word for langoti, or loin cloth.

(Published in the Gomantak Times, 19 August 2009)

The Dilemma after the Decision: Strays thoughts after Gay Liberation

The decision of the Delhi High Court on Section 377 of the IPC (377) has generated huge amounts of euphoria throughout the country, and rightly so, given that sexual relations between consenting adults have been decriminalized. However, it is the contours of this very euphoria that suggests to us that all is not well with the Indian LGBT movement, and that it needs to be probed and critiqued if we are to be able to genuinely contribute to larger and more sustainable freedoms within the Indian Republic.

Associated with the LGBT movement, if somewhat peripherally, I have always experienced some amount of discomfort with the movement. This discomfort only grew after my viewing of the film Between the Lines, India’s Third Gender at the Tricontinental Human Rights Film Festival in Bangalore a couple of years ago. There was something in the film that was deeply disconcerting, one that I was until recently not quite able to place my finger on. The best I could get was that a certain upper-class agenda was being articulated, while adopting subaltern image of the transgendered (hijra) Indian as symbol of the movement, in what I called the Shikhandi maneuver[1]. It was in this context therefore, that the proverbial penny dropped on reviewing the reception of the Delhi High Court’s decision on 2 July 2009.

What I suggest in this essay is that the route of the PIL to achieving ‘gay liberation’ in India and the responses to the decision of the High Court reveal the priorities of a upper-class, and upper-caste English speaking group within the country. The path of this group, not surprisingly seems to twine with that of the rightist Nationalist forces that have in recent years increasingly laid siege to the project of the Indian Republic endangering in particular the security of minority groups within it.

The PIL route

As anyone reading the decision of the High Court[2] will realise, the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) while initially filed by the Naz Foundation, subsequently saw a number of gay rights activists interpleading themselves as respondents, giving the case the significance that it has achieved today. The case has achieved significance not merely because it has decriminalized same sex activity in the country, but because a significant number of LGBT groups joined issue with the Naz Foundation; groups whose social position, was able to leverage the kind of attention that the decision eventually got. To this extent therefore, these groups consciously took up the case as the single legal route through which to tackle the issue of gay liberation.

The instrument of PIL is however, as many of us will know, not without a critical and problematic history in India. The PIL first found favour in the Indian judiciary in a particular context. The crusading zeal shown by the Justices Krishna Iyer, Bhagwati and others in the Supreme Court, a trend subsequently followed by High Courts across the country, emerged from the judiciary after the lifting of the Emergency, a particularly dark period in the history of the nascent Republic. There was a need for the judiciary, which had failed the Republic at that crucial time, to lift itself up in the eyes of the Indian citizenry and reaffirm once more that it was up to the task of administering law for the country. A bulk of the progress of constitutional law as regards fundamental rights of citizens occurred in the course of the 80’s as a result of the liberal swing of the Indian Supreme Court (and subsequently the State High Courts) and the PIL was established as the favoured route for frustrated activists fighting insensitive governments and their executive machineries.

As with any swing however, the Supreme Court and the rest of the Indian judiciary soon swung toward the other extreme, as the Courts with the prestige and power they had now re-generated, took over the business of the legislature and the executive. Classic examples are the cases of T. N. Godavarman, a case where the Supreme Court has set itself up; to determine the definition of forests, and become the overseeing authority for their protection. Very often this has meant the loss of rights of the marginalized groups. Other famous cases where the Supreme Court has over-stepped its limits have been the cases of introduction of lead-free petrol in Delhi, regardless of the impact on the livelihood of the labouring classes, who had to undergo definite hardships as the switch was made to lead-free fuel. It was not as if the fuel was the only choice before a concerned authority, since there were other fuel-options that could be considered, and had been suggested. And yet the Supreme Court went ahead. More famously the result of the PIL filed by the Narmada Bachao Abhiyan was a clear indication of the swing of the Supreme Court to the Right and its lack of concern, if not contempt for the rights of marginalized social groups. This contempt has only been displayed repeatedly in more recent times (the works of Usha Ramanathan in the EPW[3] provide a succinct focus on these charges). The impunity with which the rights of the subaltern have been trampled by the Supreme Court has however happened only with the active collaboration of the ‘civil society’ that has continued to place petitions before the Higher judiciary.

More crucially however, the implications of the PIL route has meant an emptying of democratic politics from space of civil society and placing it at the hands of the Judiciary as overseers of justice. Rather than take the long and bitter path via social contestation for the rights that were in question, activists have very often chosen to skip this crucial negotiation and get a quick fix via a decision of the Court. As necessary as some of these decisions may have been, indeed, like the case of 377, what it has done is to contribute to the emptying of politics from the civil space, and make the word politics itself a dirty word.

This shift has hugely benefited the Indian middle class constituents of ‘civil society’ (largely composed of English speaking higher rung feudal elements, upper castes, and dominant castes) who have had a traditional dislike for the base-level workings and negotiations of democracy. Indeed a scan of the decisions of the PIL-related judgments will show a marked preference for the sensibilities of this class, as well as the privileging of their point of view over others within the democracy. The rise of the PIL and the acclaim it has won, should also be seen in tandem with the wide-spread disdain among these same middle-classes for the politicians of the country. While the antecedents of many of these elected representatives are not praise-worthy, nor their actions while in office, it should be borne in mind that these politicians are elected by the ‘great unwashed’ of India, and very often returned to office. A criticism and dismissal of these politicians therefore, is also a dismissal of the vast majority of the Indian population and their modes of democratic reasoning. In sum, the PIL route has been the route for India’s privileged middle classes, a way out of democratic negotiation within society as they push their way into the 20^th and now 21^st century, desperately seeking to cease being a ‘third-world’ ‘developing’ country.

It is not as if any of the above analysis is news to the prominent members of the LGBT movement in India who have supported the case in the Delhi High Court, and have constructed it into a symbol of Queer Liberation in India. What is shocking however is the statement of Arvind Narain, a prominent gay-rights activist, in an interview with NDTV[4] that that “[T]he Parliament is not the best place to protect ‘unpopular’ minorities”. It would not be preposterous to assert that this statement was possible only because of the systematic dismissal of the elected representatives of India and their politics, which as already argued, do appear to have some relevance to the vast majority of the Indian population who continue to repose their faith in this system. Granted that the task of lobbying with members of Parliament may seem an uphill task, the tough question that nevertheless needs to be asked is whether this LGBT leadership, did in fact attempt such a Parliamentary discussion of the whole issue of persecuted sexual minorities. A refusal to engage with the Parliament in a systematic manner, as appears to have been the case of the LGBT leadership, similarly works as a dismissal of the elected representatives of this huge country. The Courts should ideally, within the system of the ‘separation of powers’ be seen as the appeal of last resort. Given that the PIL route is potentially dangerous in that it empties the civil space of politics, and is geared toward a middle class conception of order, it is surprising that this leadership, that has consistently made claims for solidarity amongst minority groups, should have so unproblematically taken the route of PIL. This choice therefore, reveals something of the makeup of the LGBT leadership that has constructed the 377 case as a watershed moment in Indian history.

This is not to suggest that the LGBT movement in India has not been involved in social mobilization. On the contrary the past few decades have definitely seen the creation and consolidation of a queer community in India, that unites homosexual men and lesbian women, ‘upper-class’ English speaking gays, and ‘lower-class’ vernacular queers, and this is a commendable achievement. However the question needs to be asked is, if rather than pursue the PIL route, other methods, more suited to retaining politics within the civil space could not have been adopted. As I go on to inquire, would a leadership concerned with the subaltern not have focused on issues other than 377 that has been posited as the most crucial problem for sexual minorities in India?

It would be incorrect to attribute the huge media interest in the case, which is what has primarily created the judgment as ‘landmark’, solely to the existence and filing of the case. On the contrary, the ‘landmark’-ness of the decision is also the result of the Pride marches that first commenced in Calcutta and subsequently progressed to other cities in India. Marches that have grown in strength from year to year. Clearly there is also an inclination at the national level, as evidenced by the statements of both Chidambaram and Moily, to reconsider the issue of decriminalising same-sex engagements. This interest it should be noted, is not necessarily born from the proceedings of the case. Similarly, in the aftermath of the decision, and until the writing of this essay, the BJP has been suspiciously silent, indicating if anything a discomfort with openly contesting the issue. In the circumstances therefore, where all possible legislative options were not extensively and exhaustively tried, the adoption of the PIL route displays not only a lack of confidence in the legislative channels, but also a failure to contribute to the development of the democratic processes of Indian civil society. The decision of the Delhi High Court therefore, may be a victory for the immediate goal of India’s LGBT leadership, but it definitely sets back the much needed process to enforce judicial accountability, as well as halt the breakdown of the separation of powers

A Queer Nationalism?

This abandoning of the commitment to the larger health of the Indian democracy has not been the only problematic position into which the LGBT leadership seems to have slipped into. There also seems to be an unproblematic acceptance of the vernacular nationalisms that have marked the recent years of the Indian Republic. For example, the Pride March in Bangalore this year was titled the Bengaluru Pride.

The shift across the country for vernacular names for the cities, Bombay to Mumbai, Calcutta to Kolkatta, Madras to Chennai, Bangalore to Bengaluru, should not be seen merely as a recovery of a native subaltern identity from the suppression of an alien colonialism. On the contrary, these shifts have been the result of the growing right-wing Indian nationalism that has displayed a capacity to accommodate sub-nationalisms so long as they fit within a larger rubric of Hindu nationalism. Additionally, these legislative alterations of city-names refuse an existing pluralism in the names of cities. As such, as per law it is henceforth only Mumbai and not Bombay, only Kolkatta and not Calcutta and solely Bengaluru and not Bangalore. These acts of legislation have changed not just the name of cities, but in fact delegitimized and erased ways of various minority groups in the country of claiming the city and belonging to it, and are problematic therefore beyond their assertion of the power (and violence) of law .

These positivist acts of assertion have often been pointed out as assertions of the Hindutva forces. However, I would like to suggest that these assertions while actively pushed and supported by the Hindutva lobby, also find favour through daily acts of quiet submission to these blatantly discriminatory laws by the larger populace. This populace either consciously or unconsciously sees the nationalist logic in these changes as unproblematic and goes along with it. This movement thus is more appropriately seen not merely as Hindutva, but right-wing Hindu/ Indian nationalism that most of us in fact consciously or unconsciously support. We should bear in mind also, that Hindutva is merely the more radical version of the ‘Indian culture’ that was actively manufactured by the secular Nehruvian state; a culture that located India largely within a brahmanical framework. To meekly go along with this fascistic nationalism therefore, as did the organizers of the Bangalore Pride, is indicative of either an inability to see the problems with this form of fascism, or an unwillingness to stand up and challenge this fascism even as one stands up to assert the rights of the LGBT community. Clearly I am progressing to suggest that the dangers of an unreflexive LGBT leadership could, and as I will go on to argue already has, support a fascist Indian nationalism that can accommodate Queer people. A question that needs to be explored, but one for which there will be no space here, is to inquire if the ideological location of this LGBT leadership within the paradigm of Nehurvian secularism, and their social location in what Partha Chatterjee has called the ‘nationalist class’ is not in fact responsible for the blind eye that has been so strikingly displayed in this case.

It was quite frankly, the celebratory status messages on Facebook that drew my attention to the worrying nationalist under-tones to the reception of the Delhi High Court case. Two themes came out loud and clear from these messages. The first that it was about time that we rejected a colonial imposition on us, namely Section 377 of the IPC introduced through the offices of Lord Macaulay; and secondly with the High Court verdict, India had now finally entered the 21^st century. Both themes on the face of it are clearly nationalist in nature.

The idea of a rejection of a colonial imposition is not an idea that is limited solely to the assumedly politically less-correct denizens of Facebook. Speaking to NDTV, Arvind Narain, inexplicably felt “proud to be an Indian”. Quite distressingly Human Rights Watch too, pitched on the same field. Its report on Section 377 was titled, This Alien Legacy: The Origins of “Sodomy” Laws in British Colonialism. The title of the report seems to suggest, as indeed do many discussions on Facebook, that Section 377 should go primarily because it “is a colonial construction of morality and in no way…an articulation of an Indian one.…the Penal Code was framed in 1860 by a Victorian Colonialist called Macaulay and there was nothing remotely Indian about his concern to nail the buggers”. There is also a suggestion that were it not for the colonial-vintage Indian Penal Code, we would not have had a 377. This is a tall claim in face of the religious and moral prohibitions that exist in most religions present in the subcontinent, and around which sub-continentals had to skillfully maneuver around.

There are a number of problems with this articulation. First of all it suggests a certain authentic ‘Indian-ness’; a sensibility and self-hood which is untouched by the colonizers. It is this form of reasoning that has allowed for the acceptance of the change of city names in India, despite the fact that colonialism has marked all inhabitants of the country, some more evidently (anglicized and westernized Christians being one group) than others (the assumedly naturally-Indian Hindu). Thus what such statements and positions (and movements) eventually result in, is the consolidation of a certain legitimate national subject, wholly authentic, and bearing none of the stains of colonial impact.

This is not a new phenomenon however. Indian nationalism, supported by the same ‘civil society’ has thrived on the distinction between the public and the private. The public was (is) amenable to colonial touch, indeed it is a touch that is even celebrated, since other colonial impacts which are problematic in their own right, like the Indian railways, the Indian police system, the Indian judiciary are all cherished. To the nationalist mind, it was the private, the realm of sexuality which has (is) to be untouched, and indeed purged of colonial touch. Thus, “one last British relic was overturned in India. Cricket and marmalade can stay”. That LGBT activism too seems to unwittingly continue this strain is disturbing, and frankly quite scary.

The celebration of the public features of colonial rule operate to support the image of a ‘civilized’ India, which has been another strain in the various arguments often proffered in support of doing away with 377. It is therefore not surprising therefore that a second strain in Facebook status messages, strongly marked pride (pun intended) in India coming of age or entering the 21^st century. What is remarkable however, is that most of these messages, seem to be similar in tone to the ‘India Shining’ slogan of the former BJP-led national government.

The India Shining image was geared to cater to exactly the kind of crowd that would normally take recourse to the PIL, the kind that turns its nose up at the dirty nature of Indian politics. Indeed, the whole trope of India Shining, was in the recently concluded General Elections to the Lok Sabha, most vociferously rearticulated by the BJP’s support group Friends of the BJP. The group stressed the role of the BJP as a clean party, able to represent ‘people like us’ namely those of the middle class, who in their imagery (and imagination) were radically different from the rural, vernacular citizens of India[5]. Indeed many of the core group members of the Friends were in fact ‘foreign-return’ Indians. It should be logical that is primarily those Indians who have gone abroad, hope to go abroad, or those who rely on the world’s (read as ‘the white west’) image of India, who should be so significantly invested in a progressive, civilized image of India. Once more this category falls by and large into a very definite group within Indian society. The upper-class, largely dominant/upper caste and English speaking (or aspiring) groups within the country, the very groups that constitute ‘civil society’.

In this context, it should not be surprising that there was, at the time of the writing of this essay, no official response from the BJP, and this absence is significant. The BJP often branded as Hindutva party, should be seen as the rightist nationalist party, since it also holds persons who while not rabidly pro-Hindutva, are definitely rabidly rightist nationalists. Particularly concerned with the image that India projects abroad, this group would be loathe to block the challenge to 377 and risk India’s comparison to “regressive blackholes like Syria and Iran” rather than “socio-democratically progressive states like Sweden and Norway”.

Liberating the Subaltern?

A good amount of the rhetoric around the gay movement in India has been about a solidarity in the liberation of the subaltern. To more sensitive audiences, the strongest argument has always been the fact that 377 is used by policemen to intimidate and harass subaltern men, or sex-workers soliciting MSM clients. To be sure, this was one of the significant arguments with which the Naz Foundation approached the Delhi High Court. The question we need to ask in the context of the decision is whether the reading down of the Section will result in an end to this harassment and liberation for this group. This conclusion seems shaky. The impact of the decision will be to allow queer people to have sex freely in private spaces. It will prevent them from being caught and harassed if caught ‘in the act’ while within private spaces. However, they will still not be allowed to solicit for sex. Indeed, if effeminate men have been picked on by police to be harassed, this will continue, since soliciting for sex continues to be a crime. It seems logical that if the liberation of the subaltern was a primary task, a challenge to the criminalization of soliciting for sex would have been the primary target. Such a target would have in fact mobilized a larger community and have had larger implications for gender liberation. For those persons living in suffocating social environments, hurried sex in public spaces will still be norm, and sex in public spaces is still not condoned. Same-sex couples showing affection in public, will still be treated to verbal and physical assault that hetero-sexual couples are often shown. The reading down of 377 will not therefore result in an immediate or automatic liberation for the supposed beneficiaries of the decision.

What the decision, if allowed to go through, will allow however, is for the LGBT movement to take a critical turn. Recognizing the right to intercourse between two consenting partners of the same sex, will allow the movement to progress toward demanding the right to marriage for same-sex couples. This path has already been demonstrated by their white brothers (and sisters) in the west. This path has effectively suffocated the larger question of marriage supporting patriarchal notions of family and property ownership. Civil union rights, automatically carry with it the rights to property in the estate of the partner. This aspect was rather artlessly highlighted by Wendell Rodricks, a reputed fashion designer who has on numerous occasions has bravely stood up to be counted as gay. He perhaps inadvertently revealed the significance of civil union when writing in the Indian Express, “If one of us passed away, all that we earned together would go to family and not the partner of 25 years. Cruel. Unjust. Depressing”[6]. The significance is clearly larger for propertied queers which imperils the liberative potential of the gay movement should it unreflexively move forward.

It is possible that a pro-subaltern leadership of the LGBT movement seeking solidarity with other embattled minorities in the country would have prioritized struggling against police practices that harass under the provisions for nuisance within the same Penal Code, that under the guise of preventing solicitation for sex prevent sex workers from engaging in their livelihood. It would have been aware of the difficulties of religious and social minorities that chaff under the restrictions imposed by the rightist regimes within the country.

Conclusion

An analysis of the decision to exercise the PIL route, some of the strategies in the course of mobilizing against 377, and the subsequent responses, reveals to us the following features. The focus on 377 as the locus of the movement betrays the priorities of the largely urban, English-speaking middle class leaders of the movement. The danger that this presents is that it seems to continue the problematic patterns of Indian nationalism, that even as it mobilizes the subaltern, rides of the backs of these subalterns, and even as it proclaims inclusivity, is capable of making its peace with the severely exclusionary politics of Indian nationalism.

In conclusion, I feel obliged in to indicate that the purpose of this essay is not to damn the very obviously positive move that the decision of the Delhi High Court represents, nor to suggest that there is a deliberate ignoring of the issues that this essay seeks to raise. To the contrary, the essay believes that it is crucial that we be aware of these implications if we are to not becoming unwitting participants in the consolidation of the rightist nationalism that marks the contemporary period of the Indian Republic.

(Published in the web addition of Tehelka, available at http://www.tehelka.com/story_main42.asp?filename=Ws220809The_Dilemma.asp)

---

[1] Shikhandi was a warrior in the battle of Mahabharatha, who despite possessing the genitilia of a male, was considered to be a woman. In order to vanquish the invincible Bhisma and bring the battle to an end, Krishna suggested that Arjuna stand behind Shikhandi and attack Bhisma. Given that Bhisma did not attack women, he would not fire in the direction of Shikhandi and Arjuna would remain unscathed. A more nuanced rendering of the myth is presented at http://devdutt.com/on-krishnas-chariot-stands-shikhandi The essay also displays some of the contradictions on Indian nationalism and the LGBT movement that I seek to draw attention to in this essay.

[2] http://lobis.nic.in/dhc/APS/judgement/02-07-2009/APS02072009CW74552001.pdf

[3] ‘Demolition Drive’ EPW VOL 40 No. 27 July 02 - July 08, 2005; http://epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/815.pdf

‘Illegality and the Urban Poor’ EPW VOL 41 No. 29 July 22 - July 28, 2006 http://epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/796.pdf

[4] http://www.ndtv.com/news/videos/video_player.php?id=1132014

[5] I have discussed the casteist implications of the Friends in a short column available at http://dervishnotes.blogspot.com/2009/05/taking-caste-seriously-iii-caste.html

[6] http://www.indianexpress.com/news/i-never-thought-of-myself-as-a-criminal.-the-court-mercifully-agrees/484476/