RIGHTS-INDIA: Double Murder Probe Puts Gays in Bad Light

By Ranjit Devraj Reprint | | Print |

Ranjit Devraj

NEW DELHI, Aug 23 2004 (IPS) - Homosexuality is illegal in India but public reaction to the sensational murder this month of a gay project officer with an international aid agency has exposed the limited social acceptability in India for alternative sexual preferences.

Police in the capital are still trying to figure out why 38-year-old Pushkin Chandra, an officer with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the well-to-do son of a career bureaucrat was stabbed to death in his posh residence along with Kuldip, his young male companion, on Aug 14.

And also who was behind the double murder?

All that the police could ascertain was that robbery was not the motive for the murders considering that expensive items were still lying around the house undisturbed.

Meanwhile, newspaper reports of the murders and television talk-shows have shown that this conservative country is a long way away from accepting sexual orientations that are not considered ‘normal’.

In the past, Hindu fundamentalist groups have taken it upon themselves to burn down cinema halls that dared to defy warnings against the screening films that touched on homosexuality and lesbianism.

Father Dominic Emmanuel, spokesman for the Delhi Catholic Archdiocese, told IPS, that homosexuality ”creates revulsion in people” and that he personally considered it to be ”basically against human nature.”

Ashok Row Kavi, the country’s best-known campaigner for gay rights said that gays and lesbians seem to have become more visible in Indian society but he doubted very much if these Indians are actually accepted by society.

Much of the reportage and media coverage of Pushkin’s gruesome murder bordered on sensationalism and were focussed on his sexual preferences. Publications carried beat- up reports that pornographic material was found in his bedroom, including an X-rated video that was still playing while the police walked in to the murder scene.

”Newspapers are suddenly full of stories about homosexual life – and not in a celebratory way,” said gay rights activist Pramada Menon at a meeting convened in the capital last week to discuss the adverse media reporting.

The meeting focused on the special vulnerability of gays in India to crimes like extortion and blackmail simply because they lack legal recourse since they could find themselves booked under a141-year-old law that declares oral, anal and other non- procreative sex as being ”against the order of nature.”

That law, Article 377 of the Indian Penal Code, is currently the subject of public interest litigation being pursued in the Delhi High Court by the NAZ Foundation, a well-known voluntary organisation that works for the welfare of HIV/AIDS victims.

Naz Foundation’s chief Anjali Gopalan said the law, as it stands, hampered the work of organisation in working with HIV/ AIDS victims. ”It is constantly being held over our heads,” she said.

Gopalan said consenting adult gay males were prevented from coming forward to disclose their problems because they feared the law.

Anand Grover, project director of the HIV/AIDS unit of the Lawyers’ Collective, a co-petitioner in the public interest litigation with Naz Foundation said the action is aimed at legalising consensual sex between adults.

The response of the previous Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to the litigation was that it was clearly against homosexuality. The BJP was suddenly defeated in the April/May elections by a coalition led by the Congress Party.

During hearings, counsel for the BJP government argued that ”Indian society by and large disapproves of homosexuality and the disapproval is strong enough to justify it being treated as a criminal offence even when adults indulge in it in private.”

In fact the counsel argued that the law was rarely used against homosexuals but was found handy in punishing sexual abuse of children and in supporting other laws against rape.

According to Ravi Shankar Prasad, a former cabinet minister and spokesman for the BJP, doing away with Article 377 could have the effect of increased sexual abuse of street children – a sensitive subject in India at the moment.

Last month, the weekly ‘Tehelka’ in a special investigation story, revealed that paedophiles from several European countries were swarming the beaches of Goa – the sea and sand resort on India’s west coast – following the crackdown on child-sex tourism in Thailand and Sri Lanka.

More recently, newspapers have reported the withdrawal of patronage by the actress Felicity Kendal for a street shelter run by the British voluntary agency Grant’s Homes for children in Mumbai that was allegedly used by paedophiles.

Meanwhile police have swooped down on dozens of male prostitutes and transsexuals in the capital while probing the grisly murder of the two young men – much to the chagrin of gay rights activists.

”Most developed nations do not treat us as criminals. It’s not sympathy we are looking for, but understanding. People need to accept things as they are,” said an activist who did not want to be named.