Delhi, the New Pink City!!

Thursday, 2nd July 2009. Delhi High Court, Court One, Item One on the cause list. 10.30 am. Justice Ajit Prakash Shah started to speak, reading from the 105-page order, as Justice S. Muralidhar looked on. Justice Shah began by quoting from one of Nehru's speeches, made at the Constituent Assembly in 1946, laying stress on the word 'inclusiveness'. A few minutes later, he pronounced the words that were as calm as they were momentous. "We declare that Section 377 of the IPC, insofar as it criminalises consensual acts of adults in private, is violative of Articles 21, 14 and 15 of the Constitution." To cut a 149-year-long story short, soon queer activists were out under the overcast sky of monsoon-happy Delhi, weeping tears of joy. Section 377 of the IPC, put there by the lovely Macaulay in 1860, had been finally read down. I cannot remember the last time I saw news presenters and correspondents smile so much, no matter which channel I switched to. Be it NDTV or TIMES NOW or CNN IBN or NEWSX, it was same story everywhere. Beaming news casters, cheery correspondents! Most English news channels stayed with the story uninterruptedly till half past noon. By the evening, hapless religious leaders were wheeled into TV studios across the nation to be grilled live on prime time. Among the most amusing TV moments of last evening were Pranoy Roy's rhetorical questions to an unfortunate representative of the Christian community. "Why are you sitting on the fence?" he was asked where the poor cleric tried to play non-committal. This was followed by "Are you living in the 21st century?" I had to laugh at Roy's theatricality inspite of myself. But it was all in a good cause, of course. By the end of the evening, one couldn't help feeling more than a little sorry for the representatives of various religions that had been hauled up for my entertainment. It was so cruel, so bad, so delicious! Pro-gay guests were all but hugged by the newscasters! I'm not complaining. Not yet.

But a troubling trend is beginning to appear in the way TV discussion shows on homosexuality are put together. There seems to be underway the construction of a binary. Gay/Religious. One excluding the other. This may not help the Indian queer movement in the long run. Religion is important to countless Indians, and many of this countless section are queer. Homosexuality and atheism are not synonymous. TV channels seem to be implying that they are. I'd like to see this trend of simplifying homosexuality and religion into each other's enemy spend itself out soon. Very soon.

But in the meantime, let 'mithais' be distributed, let jubilant gay men wear cardboard signs saying, "Just had my first legal sex", let the bigots be grilled on prime time tv. This battle was won hard and won well. We will think about the challenges to be thrown at the verdict by bigots another day.