My father and I stood at Yeshwanthpur Railway Station, only 5 minutes from home, usually an inconvenience for us, but this time it worked out. I was fully ready to meet an 85-year-old man, to carry his bags, and bring the car to him. Instead, a man with Nike walking shoes, a very slight hunch, and a backpack greeted us cheerfully in Sindhi. He was delighted to see us, he hugged us and told us about his journey. My father began talking to him about his life, and somehow, he maundered the conversation to talk about housing prices and exercise routines, the only topics he is comfortable with. The man carefully listened to every word my father said and responded, sometimes eagerly and sometimes a little hesitantly.
Once we got home, my mother and granny took over with loud, happy greetings and an over-the-top lunch. Several stories about school, college, weddings and babies that buried deep in memories were dug out over the next hour.
He explored our house quietly and seemed fascinated by my fridge magnets, as he gently turned over a loud, colourful magnet that held all of Kerala depicted on it and closely examined one with a rainbow that screamed New York.
After lunch, we asked him if he wanted to rest and he refused, instead asking if he could go for a walk. My mother, anxious about sending him alone, pushed me to accompany him.
As we walked, he apologized that I had to be dragged along with him and then was quiet. He seemed like he wanted to talk but did not want to intrude and ask me personal questions. I asked him about the partition and his family and life, it was much the same as what my grandmother had told me over the years. I wanted to know more about him but didn’t know how to ask. I was looking for stories about him that could be interesting, maybe how he stayed so fit at this age? Maybe about his home or a unique angle on the partition story that I had heard so many times.
But I didn’t look for this one, this story essentially came to me as I talked to Mr. Rao (name changed) about the time of his life when he moved from Pakistan to India along with a large chunk of the Sindhi population ahead of the partition. This was part of an autoethnographic piece that I had planned to write. I was not looking for information or interviews at this time, I just found out that my grandmother’s senior from school was in Bangalore and was coming for lunch and that he was around 20 years old when the migration happened.
We walked for around 10 minutes and I suggested that we sit down for a few minutes. He started talking about building a life in India, setting up a shop, and having a normal life again. He talked about how the Sindhi community was important to him and how he went to different friends’ houses every week for a meal with their families and so that he could continue to use our language and not forget it. I asked him how come he did not settle down.
He seemed hesitant and I did not want to push it further so I said it was fine if he did not want to talk about it. He waited for a bit and then told me that it was incredibly difficult for a man like him to survive in those times and that finding a partner was out of the question.
I smiled encouragingly and he asked me if I knew what he meant. I responded in Sindhi “Haan he sab samjha me indo aiye, gaalainda naiyun para khabar aa” Which roughly translates to “Yes, I understand these kinds of things, we may not talk about it but I know.” I asked if he had any stories that he wanted to share with me. This is the first one he told me:
“My family had everything, a large Kotha-style house, and three children to carry on the family name. I have always felt like my mother knew about me, maybe even before I knew, I went to an all-boys school and always had a few too many close friends. I never courted anyone or asked them to marry me and I think I did not realize what exactly I felt, I knew I was different but not much else.
I never told anyone because what would I say? I didn’t know myself. I still don’t exactly know, all I know is that I did not want to marry a woman and have children, my older brothers have had children and grandchildren, and all that, so I did not feel pressured to carry on the family name and our legacy.”
He said that he lived with his parents till they passed away and he felt that his mother knew, but that his father believed he stayed alone only to take care of them in their old age.
He was not really comfortable saying the word gay or homosexual, maybe it was a lack of words and vocabulary in Sindhi, maybe it was something he has not spoken about too much. Coded language is so common to hear when navigating this topic, I think this comes from years of hiding one’s true identity and from the fact that people don’t think of their identity and sexuality as something that they should be proud of.
He said “ma hooan aiyan” in Sindhi which simply means “I am like that”; Today we make attempts to own ourselves, our identities, we have pronouns that we prefer to be called and we ponder questions about what category we fit into, all these are great things and should be the basic rights that we have as people, but for people like Mr. Rao he is simply, “like that.”
Something that stood out to me when Mr.Rao spoke was that many people knew but rarely did anyone ask or talk about it. He seemed grateful that people left him alone, and were not harshly judging him even though the laws were already in place to persecute people of the LGBTQ+ community.
His story so far reminded me that every conversation I have had with family and friends about the LGBTQ+ community was uncomfortable. It is something to sweep under the carpet and awkwardly avoid, or it was something that should be monitored because it is their job to make sure that their children are on the “straight and narrow.”
What stuck out to me in this somewhat unpleasant yet day-to-day occurrence was when an aunt took a sharp breath and said “all these western ideas are just becoming too much nowadays.” This received nods and sighs of agreement and in my head, I had to ask myself if this was a western idea.
Days later, over samosa and chai with friends, conversations slipped into the Kamasutra as they so often do, and a friend who is an avid reader said that cave paintings depicted several kinds of relationships between different genders. Regardless of what my aunt says about LGBT+ relationships, a quick search told me that my friend was right. Same-sex love did exist in Ancient India and it has always been a part of India’s history. An example of this is how images of same-sex people embracing each other and performing sensual acts are depicted in several temples and caves almost as a proof of what was accepted and what was not. Many religious sources like the Manusmriti, the Shikhandi, and the Kamasutra also mention same-sex love as do scholars of Jain, Buddhist, and Islamic religious texts.
In a quest to answer my aunt’s question, I also came upon the art and carvings from several temples including the Khajurao Temple in Madhya Pradesh and The Konark Temple in Maharashtra show erotic imagery between people of all genders, this dates back to the years of the Chandela Dynasty all the way to the 13th century. Buddhist monastic caves at Ajanta and Ellora in Maharashtra have paintings that show that LGBT+ relationships were not looked down upon
In mythological texts like the Mahabharata, there is a character called Shikhandi who is considered androgynous in some versions and as Male but Transgender in other versions. Since Hindus consider mythology as the official past and history of the world it makes sense that Homosexuality was a common part of ancient India.
There are also descriptions of Varuna and Mitra, who are known as the famous “same-sex couple” in the Rig Veda, which is one of the books of the Veda’s, an integral part of ancient Indian scripture.
The mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik who specializes in talking about Hindu sacred texts, folklore, and legends has often talked about the acceptance of homosexuality and LGBT relationships in Hinduism in the past.
In an article on his website, titled, “Did Homosexuality exist in ancient India?” he wrote “The term homosexuality and the laws prohibiting ‘unnatural’ sex were imposed across the world through imperial might. Though they exerted a powerful influence on subsequent attitudes, they were neither universal nor timeless.”
If all this is not enough, we have real life examples of how the idea of same-sex love is not inherently Western through people like Mr. Rao.
I realized we had been quiet for more than a couple minutes, so I smiled awkwardly, he asked if we could walk again and when I said sure, he eagerly replied with “Let’s go!” making me smile for real.
Conversation came more easily as we walked and the next story, he told me was about when he moved to India and the response of the people there when they met him and he thinks that they perhaps guessed his preferences. He said that the people in his hometown had a sentimental attachment to him and already saw him as part of their community and therefore felt obliged to accept him. It helped that like most Sindhis at the time his father was a money lender and businessman and was therefore held in high regard. It was not the same in India, his father was nothing but a refugee here like everyone else who moved to India, he had to change the way he looked and be mindful of how he talked and the clothes he wore because he was fearful of what would happen to him if he was found out.
As he spoke, I thought about how everything is so interconnected, here is a man who I wanted to talk to about the partition and the impacts of restarting life after being pushed out of everything he knew because of his religion. While talking about this we stumbled upon something seemingly unrelated and yet such a big part of his new life in India. Questions about the intersectionality of nationality, culture, identity, and sexuality started coming up in my head, when I started bringing them up all he said is, “All this is what makes people, right?”
The simple answer, made me wonder if I should begin to unravel the web of questions in my head. All this is what makes up people. Not western people. Not a certain kind of person, but all people.
For much of the past two centuries, it was illegal to be gay in a vast swathe of the world – thanks to colonial Britain. Till today, colonial-era laws that ban homosexuality continue to exist in former British territories including parts of Africa and Oceania.
But it is in Asia where they have had a significantly widespread impact. This is the region where, before India read down Section 377 and decriminalized homosexual sex in 2018, at least one billion people lived with anti-LGBTQ legislation that stemmed back to British Laws.
Surely things have improved, right? Has today’s generation also been trained and brought up to think that homosexuality is an inherently western idea?
Maybe. Because I live in a household like many others where when I raise questions, I am told to get off the phone and that “we don’t live in America, okay?”
How true is this? Is “America” or the West the pinnacle of acceptance and the place to be if you are a part of the LGBTQ community? The West may be more open and accepting of varied identities but maybe that comes from living a life of privilege in terms of living in a society that is more individualistic and where the self comes first, all while people in several Asian countries struggled to juggle family expectations, career dreams, identity, self-esteem and nosey relatives. It is normal to move away from home early in the west, to set up your own life and visit family sometimes. In many parts of Asia, this is not an option. Family is intertwined in everything we do; in fact, it is an integral part of our lives. Therefore, identifying as something that is away from the “norm” or even exploring our sexuality and identity.
Looking for narratives and personal stories from today I spoke to an 18-year-old college student that has not come out as gay because they fear family repercussions and feel like they will be shamed for their identity. Talking to them was easier, they were closer to my age and easier to read but the sadness and the doubt in their voice were the same. The desire to remain anonymous and blend into the crowd for safety is the same. However, they were more accepting of themselves, they recognized their pronouns and their identity both based on gender and sexuality.
A longer and more eye-opening conversation occurred when I met a 20 year old transgender student who recently discovered his identity, I asked if education played a big role in his level of comfort with who he is, he said that while his school and education probably made him subconsciously keep his identity hidden, his exposure to the internet and social media where people are who they are without hesitation is what made him okay with who he is and the friends he made in school are the ones that supported him through this change. He also brought up what a difference the location makes, being from a small town in Kerala, there is not much he could do in terms of finding more open-minded people and spaces of queer freedom. Here in Bangalore however there are spaces both physical and online where he can be who he truly is. That is something a lot of us may not realize, that this fight for rights is not about the big things, it’s not about having every single person feel the same way it is just about finding spaces to exist as you are.
Small things like filling up a form or applying for a college ID card become difficult decisions about acceptance and about judging if people will be tolerant or not. There is a dilemma every time a form has to be filled if they should check “Male” because it is what they identify as, or “Female” because that is what they were assigned at birth and what every document says from the Aadhar card to the passport and if they check any other option a lot of questions could be raised. Or if they should check the “Other” option because that raises far fewer questions and could be safer.
The advantage of being online is that there is control over the level of anonymity and what we share with others, while this sometimes can work against us, when finding people, we have things in common with but still being cautious, it works in our favour. The online life he led was one of being who he was despite a silly username as a pseudonym, it helped him find real friends too, they met at pride parades and equality events and helped create a sense of comfort and belonging and maybe that is the best change we can see over the years in being LGBT in our country.
There is also the commonality of intersectionality, being from a smaller place makes a difference in how comfortable we are around the topic of LGBT relationships. Our political views, our social circles and everything we do has an impact on how we feel about ourselves and about others.
So, despite all the differences in levels of comfort, acceptance and in people through the years. The community remains connected by a common thread, a shared experience among people of the community is a need to find. To find themselves, to find a community, to find a place they can be themselves.
This thread is there through the ages, since things like identity existed and will continue to exist as long as humans interact with one another and have complex thoughts and feelings.
In many ways, being LGBT+ in India has changed so much from the spaces and events like pride we have today to the increased number of people who choose to be out and proud. But in some ways, it is the same, the negatives are the fear and the isolation people feel but the positives are the special sense of community and the journey to self-acceptance.