|
By Oishik Sircar Is it enough to assert and celebrate queer desire through processes such as Kolkata's Rainbow Pride March?
The queer community in West Bengal was the first in India to organise the Rainbow Pride March in Kolkata, and still continues to do so. The march sees sexually marginalised persons from all walks of life participating in a celebration of diversity and pluralism of ideas, identities and desires. Kolkata congratulates itself for having no visible resistance from the state and people in general to the march that takes place every year on June 26, marking the anniversary of the historic Stonewall Inn riots. But how meaningful is Kolkata’s acceptance of sexual diversity? Is the absence of disruption reflective of no more than a ‘passive tolerance’, especially since the organisers of the Rainbow Pride March generally portray the event as a cultural one, thereby watering down its subversive political potential? Does this ‘passive tolerance’ work both to tolerate the existence of the sexually marginalised and also to mutely allow violence against such people to continue? Though one might assume that Kolkata is an accommodating city as far as articulations of queer desires are concerned, a few recent incidents of grave homophobic violence prove otherwise.
Police/custodial violence against kothis On December 5, 2005, a group of six queer activists/health workers/non-heterosexual individuals were hauled up, physically manhandled and abused, threatened and intimidated, their belongings taken away and their clothes ripped and torn within the premises of the Lake police station in south Kolkata. Three members of an organisation, the Pratyay Gender Trust, were on their daily rounds putting up HIV/AIDS posters when they were teased, physically harassed and then beaten up by two unidentified youths around 8 pm. The group (three kothis) approached the policemen on duty who were perhaps keen to ‘settle’ the matter on the spot and repeatedly suggested that they ‘drop the case’. Later, they approached the Lake police station to lodge an official complaint. By then, three other members of Pratyay arrived at the police station to support their colleagues. Anindya Hajra, who works with the Pratyay Centre for Sexualities and Human Rights, said that the police refused to lodge a complaint. Instead, when they learnt that the complainants worked with issues of marginalised sexuality, the police started using rough slang and abusing the workers. Members of Pratyay were physically pushed inside the police station and, when they attempted to contact friends and colleagues for help, their mobile phones were forcibly snatched away by the police. In fact, constables and junior officers at the police station refused to even consider their version of the story. A convenient version was soon doing the rounds at the police station: that one of the original three had accosted the two ‘innocent’ youths in an attempt to ‘lure’ them. They were threatened with immediate arrest. Anindya was there with the three kothis at the Lake police station. He says, “At the police station 15 to 20 policemen teamed up and started pushing, shoving and jostling us, physically, by force. When we tried to resist this complete unwarranted move, we received the worst physical excesses and high-handedness. Our shirts and dresses were torn -- necks and arms twisted. Mobile phones and bags forcibly taken away -- presumably as a measure to block any efforts at being able to get help. The next three hours were harrowing -- cooped up in the small room of the police station, every attempt at reasoning and rational dialogue failed. A statement was taken from the two men accused who only indicted us in the crime. This experience ended nearly five hours after the events unfolded.” This narrative clearly points to the license that the police derive from Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code that criminalises same-sex sexual intercourse. The standard rights that should apply to any person approaching or apprehended by the police, as enshrined in the Supreme Court judgment of D K Basu v State of West Bengal (1997 1 SCC 416), should have applied to the Pratyay activists as well. Yet they did not, simply by virtue of being ‘identified’ as sexual ‘deviants’. Targeting hijras More recently, on April 24, 2007, Subhajit Dey -- a transgender/hijra person and also a peer educator with the West Bengal State AIDS Prevention and Control Society-supported Targeted Intervention Project for Communities at Risk -- was severely assaulted and sexually harassed by members of the Railway Protection Force at Sealdah station in north Kolkata.
Two plainclothes policemen belonging to the Railway Protection Force accosted Subhajit and an outreach client near the Sealdah flyover, outside Sealdah station, as the two were entering the station premises to catch a train. The policemen insisted s/he meet them at a dark and secluded spot (purportedly for sex). Subhajit declined. The policemen continued to insist and when s/he repeatedly declined the offer they became enraged and ordered that the peer educator (and his friend) go with them to the police station. The policemen began beating Subhajit and his outreach client (who managed to run away) right in front of the police station.
Subhajit was taken inside the police station, where eight or nine police officers (most of them in plain clothes) started harassing him. When Subhajit tried to show an identity card for the HIV/AIDS intervention project s/he worked with, the card was thrown away. Some policemen tore open the buttons on his/her clothing, exposing Subhajit’s underwear and padded bra. The policemen kept repeating: “Why don’t you show us what you have -- why don’t you undress?” The ordeal inside the Sealdah police station continued for over 45 minutes, as Subhajit was subjected to physical, sexual and psychological torture, harassment, threats and abuse. Subhajit was warned by the policemen “never to be seen anywhere near Sealdah again” and was finally let off after s/he pleaded innocence with the policemen. Section 377 and its discontents Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) has been central to the rights claims of sexual minorities in India. Although there are debates on whether repealing Section 377 should be primary on the agenda of the queer movement in India, there is consensus that this law is at the root of the culture of homophobia that justifies violence against sexually marginalised persons by both State and non-State actors. It is pertinent to note that the section does not criminalise homosexuality per se. What the law regulates is any form of bodily intercourse that is not peno-vaginal in nature. This law is an import of Victorian/Judeo-Christian morality and attempts to criminalise all forms of non-procreative sex. What is also of concern is the fact that the question of consent is inconsequential when it comes to sexual acts ‘against the order of nature’. Section 377 criminalises voluntary intercourse as well, so in this case the law has no human ‘victim’ to protect. What Section 377 protects is normative standards of ‘acceptable’/‘respectable’ sexual behaviour that upholds conservative notions of culture, morality and tradition. Further, nowhere in the IPC has ‘nature’ been defined, to understand what would qualify as ‘unnatural’. Though on the face of it the provision appears to be neutral, there has been enough documentation to establish that the section is used primarily to harass and extort money from those who do not fit into conservative sexual roles -- primarily gay men, hijras, kothis and men who have sex with men (MSMs). Further, the section provides the police with the legitimacy to arrest, blackmail, sexually abuse and ‘expose’ any person they ‘suspect’ of having the potential to violate Section 377. In the juridical history of Section 377, it has been documented that between 1860 (when the IPC was codified) and 2000 there have been a total of 46 convictions, of which only one was for consensual male-to-male sex (this was the case of D P Minawala vs Emperor in 1935 [AIR 1935 Sind 78]). All the other convictions occurred in cases of child sexual abuse. Yet, the impact of the section has been devastating, to say the least, on sexual minorities who have been arrested, tortured and harassed simply for having the ‘capability’ of engaging in ‘unnatural sex’. This, in spite of the fact that the section applies to any form of non-procreative sex, irrespective of whether homosexuals or heterosexuals engage in it. This phenomenon is reflective of the position of privilege that heterosexuality enjoys in the eyes of the law. Looking ahead As we marked another anniversary of the Stonewall Inn riots on June 26 2007, and as queer rights groups in Kolkata geared up to celebrate the Rainbow Pride March with gusto and fervour, it is necessary to look at the event not merely as a form of colourful expression of queer desire but also as a powerful articulation of protest against the high-handedness of law-enforcement agencies.
(Oishik Sircar is a human rights lawyer and independent researcher) InfoChange News & Features, July 2007
|
