by Nahia Onchalo–Meynard
With the late XXth century opening of the West to more progressive ideas and the complexity of the legislation in Asia between western influences, local culture and opposition to current tendencies, the topic remains blurry and unspoken. Through the Asia Pacific Research Circle, Erika Nannette, Alyssia Bouniol, Lise Rivet, Maalavika Hareesh and I are currently working on a research paper targeting those issues, and we were delighted to benefit from the insights of India and gender studies expert Professor Otavio Amaral. This interview will tackle the situation and perception of the LGBTQ+ community in India, with its complexity and cultural richness.
Nahia ONCHALO–MEYNARD :
- According to you, does India have a strong LGBTQ+ cultural and historical background?
Otavio AMARAL :
- There’s an issue in India that’s really controversial especially if you take the nationalist policies and BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party, conservative Indian Party and current Prime Minister Modi’s Party), because they are trying to use the LGBTQ identity as something that is really rooted in India, as something that has been really there for forever. Take the example of the hijras (Ed.: linked to the western gender qualification of transgender women), usually people qualify as having been there for a long time, even before Christ. It is nature and in the Vedas, you will notice that there is a third gender, a third nature that is neither masculine nor feminine.
But when you see the data and the demographic data that is available, that is mostly colonial. Indeed, before colonialism, we didn’t have such structures for documenting the population of the territory.
There’s something that has been present in India for a really long time, especially the transgender identity. However, we see that it is not that open. Yes, they have been there, but it has started being documented during the colonization. So we cannot affirm with certitude that they were there before. They most probably were, but this welcoming mindset of their constant presence is not totally accurate or certain. They are like the incarnation of sacred natures or the incarnation of some goddesses, such as Bahuchara Mat, the most important goddess when we refer to hijras. Especially, if you try to go deeper in the analysis of some intellectuals of that time, mostly those who wrote about sexuality and who were trying to interpret the Kama Sutra just after the colonization, they were always trying to impose this dichotomy of feminine and masculine. So when you ask me if the LGBTQ+ culture is present in India, I would say that these people have always existed, as non-normative sexual identities.
But we cannot affirm that India has been welcoming. We can state today that the nationalist policies, especially the BJP discourse, has tried to shape a certain kind of welcoming policy or a welcoming idea of India as something that has been opposed to the West, has been opposed to Christianity, and especially to the criminalization of LGBTQ identities, especially when we speak about the English colonies. But we cannot say that these people have been integrated into society in a harmonious way.
Erika NANNETTE :
- Can you say the same about sexualities? You thoroughly developed transgender identity and how it possibly was present for a long time in India, but is it also true for sexualities?
Otavio AMARAL :
- I think sexuality would be different, and especially in India. We still witness a taboo, because sexuality has always been approached through the perspective of reproduction or natality; not, for example, the right for women to have access to abortion. So the question of sexuality is not the same as gender, but it has really been silenced, and it is still really taboo in India. So we cannot say that the non-LGBTQ sexualities have existed.
The thing that we can try to understand is the hijra and the third gender, and it means feminine transgenders, transgender women, as we would say in the West. They have been; we can try to understand their presence throughout Indian history, but we cannot say that sexuality is something that has been really there. Probably, yes, but we cannot say that it has been there.
And sometimes people say: “but in the Kama Sutra, there are some positions that are not addressed to the normal intercourse.” But this is the exception, so we cannot say that it is a main element that is important and that we can take as an example of acceptability or not in India.
So I have an impression that, yes, we have tried to say that marginalization, criminalization of non-normative sexualities have been implemented by colonizers, but it has always been there. The patriarchy has always been in the Indian social structure, especially when you see the Vedas and the sacred. We cannot use the example of the Kama Sutra or some other texts or some other religious movements as the tantra and say that it has an image of a certain kind of acceptability or tolerance. We cannot use those elements to claim that India is the example.
Nahia O.–M. :
- As you said that the BJP tried to oppose India to the West, would you say in that perspective that it is integrating the diversity of Indian sexuality to their ideas, or on the contrary, that they are opposing it?
O. AMARAL :
- They are trying, they have a strategy of co-opting electors for them. So it’s a really controversial thing when you go to India and you see all the letters composing the LGBTQ acronym, you witness different perspectives on the policies. If you take, for example, cisgender men that I interviewed during my fieldwork, many of them support BJP because they are in this kind of mindset that BJP is going to bring development and westernization of the economy and neoliberalism.
So there is this homonationalism really present among upper class and upper caste, cisgender homosexual men especially. But when you talk with lesbian women or non-binary people, especially the hijras or kothis (Ed.: man in same-sex relationship undertaking the “female” role in the traditional disposition of relationships), it is another identity present in India used to address lower caste and lower class cisgender gay men who are effeminate at the same time. So it is really a question of performance of masculinity in their case.
They don’t support BJP for its policies, they know they are not turned towards them. The BJP policies turn towards upper caste, upper class, especially urbanized populations. And these people, they are already discriminated against in their own society, they are at the bottom of the social hierarchy of class and caste.
So they are more willing to support other parties, such as the party of Ambedkar or the Bahujan People Party. Those are the parties for lower caste people. And many of these people, especially transgender women and the hijras are supporting those parties. But at the same time, there are controversies inside their own movement. Indeed, if you take an important figure for LGBTQ rights, Lakshmi Tripathi, she is a transgender woman, she supports BJP, and she is trying to promote hijra identity as something that’s really like, almost ascetic, really sacred, and really the image of the goddesses to give value to India. But it’s really controversial, because in India, we cannot understand the society and its social movements without taking into account class and caste.
But we can say that LGBTQ people, regarding the mobilization, are everywhere. They are on all the spectrum, because they have been used as an object for the implementation of different strategies, especially strategies to keep the power in the hands of the BJP. So BJP, they were really conservative, but they have been shifting their discourses according to the needs of the society. And now, society, especially the global society, says that LGBTQ rights are important.
Moreover, since India wants to be a global player in global politics worldwide, and the worldwide structure is based on democracy and rights for everyone. So they have been using LGBTQ+ people because they want to oppose the Muslim movements that are supposed, according to them, to be based on the Sharia, and on the criminalization and violence against LGBTQ people.
So the way they use the discourses to support LGBTQ people is really subtle on the one hand, and on the other hand, they want to oppose other countries, such as Bangladesh and Pakistan, especially.
Nahia O.–M.:
- Is being LGBTQ associated with a certain cast ? is it valued in a caste and resented in another one?
O. A. :
- I think that the issue of caste is really transversal, it’s present inside the LGBTQ community, but you can juxtapose, for example, caste and class on the, on the sexual and gender markers. But you cannot do the opposite. You cannot try to understand gender and sexuality based on the caste structure.
Because caste is something that’s really inherited, and the sexuality and the gender is something that is performed and fabricated, and there’s a process of discovery of the gender and of creation of the gender.
So I don’t, I would not agree, and I would not say that. We can say that there are some castes for which sexuality and gender subversion or transgression or deviance would be more, more acceptable or more traditional. But it is really the other way when you can try to understand gender and sexuality and do an intersection with caste and class, but you cannot speak about gender and sexuality through the lenses of class and caste structure.
But I would say, according to my fieldwork, that it’s really, really individual, and it’s really particular to each community, each person. Because when you go to upper class and upper caste people whose parents have some university degrees and have been abroad, there would not be this issue of being LGBTQ, or maybe being LGBTQ would be well seen because the child is going towards the West patterns and the Western subversion to patriarchy and to the normal social rules. But for other families, for other upper caste and upper class families they want to reproduce the caste structure that’s based on reproduction and on heterosexuality.
I have seen that there is much more solidarity inside the LGBTQ people from the lower caste and lower class, but they are not accepted by their families. And it might be even worse, because the families are not used to this concept of non heteronormative and heterosexual families. And that’s the opposite of the upper class and upper caste people who are really the global game, so they know how things have changed internationally.
Nahia O.–M.
- Lastly, do you think this wave of anti-queerness is a reaction to Western tendencies (pro-LGBTQ+ legislation and activism, …) so as to differentiate themselves from the West, or a conformism to Western culture (the culture alive during colonialist times) ?
O. A. :
- I would say that anti-queerness is both a way of establishing a difference regarding the West (literally in a post-colonial effect), and also an unconscious continuum of colonial imposition. Nevertheless, it should be interpreted case by case in a historiographic perspective of particular cultural and political contexts.
India’s LGBTQ+ landscape therefore can only be defined as diverse, wide, complex and part of a bigger picture. Skimming through it or focusing solely on the LGBTQ+ community would be a hurdle to fully grasp all the multiple standpoints, values, beliefs, traditions and cultures that the Indian queer community is overflowing with.
Le Dragon Déchaîné 