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Urban India's attitude to same-sex relationships undergoes a dramatic change
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A recent report by SMS GupShup, a company that claims to be India’s biggest mobile social network, shows a fundamental change in how Indians view gay relationships barely a year after the decriminalisation of homosexuality on 2 July, 2009.
Through its Voice of India poll, the report found that almost a third of Indians in Bangalore and Mumbai supported same-sex partnerships, a figure that would have been unheard of in this deeply conservative country only a few years ago. In the US acceptance of homosexuality recently crossed the 50 per cent threshold.
I suspect, however, that these figures would be widely different in rural India, where the love that dare not speak its name is as visible as the sun in a heavy monsoon. In areas where honour killings because of heterosexual love are commonplace, any Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LBGT) activity remains underground; even answering an SMS questionnaire would be viewed with suspicion.
When the Delhi High Court decriminalised homosexual intercourse between consenting adults saying that it violated “the fundamental right to life and liberty and the right to equality as guaranteed by the Constitution of India”, there were widespread celebrations among the gay communities of India.
The LBGT sector has consequently seen a growth in health and social services, the threatened backlash by extreme groups has failed to materialise and last year’s Gay Pride festivals took place all over the country and even in the ultra-conservative city of Chennai.
Bollywood actors have also helped with many movie stars showing solidarity with the legalisation of gay relationships and this has undoubtedly proved influential. Moreover, India’s plethora of TV channels “adapt” Western movies by removing all the bedroom scenes, but gay and lesbian relationships in these shows such as the ubiquitous Friends are seen on a regular basis and survive the censor’s red pencil.
My only Indian experience with LBGT people was around 20 years ago when I saw the Taj Mahal for the first time. As the sun came up and the mists slowly dispersed,
my view of the monument was surreally interrupted by tens of cross-dressing eunuchs who tried to chat me up, an experience that unnerved me at the time.
But love is love and telling somebody not to love somebody because of their gender is like telling somebody not to love them because they have different coloured eyes, so while this report is encouraging, perhaps SMS GupShup should extend their database if they really are India’s biggest mobile social network.
India is constantly referred to as the land of contrasts and there is no bigger contrast than this one. Out and gay in Mumbai is one thing, but definitely “in” and repressed in Bihar only underscores how far “the biggest democracy” in the world has to go if its gestalt essence can ever be reconciled.
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