Time to destigmatise homosexuality

Though the Supreme Court decriminalised homosexuality four years ago, the prejudice against same-sex love is still too deep-seated in the collective psyche. Majority of Indians still look down upon homosexuality and lesbianism. One execrable example of this prejudice manifesting itself as ‘Conversion Therapy,’ which aims to ‘cure’ sexual orientations and gender identities that fall outside heterosexual conventions. It took a Madras High Court’s recent directive for the National Medical Commission to finally and firmly direct all state medical councils to take disciplinary action against medical professionals who practise conversion therapy.

It’s really ironic that homosexuality is frowned upon by Indians who’re unaware of their rich and varied mythological and literary past when homosexuality and lesbianism was an accepted social and sexual behaviour. In fact, world’s two ancient parallel civilisations, Hellenic and Indian, didn’t disapprove of homosexuality and the ancient India was quite open about it.

In the Valmiki Ramayana, Lord Rama’s devotee and companion Hanuman is said to have seen Rakshasa women kissing and embracing other women. At another place, the Ramayana tells the tale of a king named Dilip, who had two wives. He died without leaving an heir. The story says that Lord Shiva appeared in the dreams of the widowed queens and told them that if they made love to each other, they would have a child. The queens did as ordained by Lord Shiva and one of them got pregnant. They gave birth to a child, who went on to become the famous king Bhagirath, best known for "having brought River Ganga from heaven to the earth".

Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai edited Same-Sex Love in India elucidates the liberal sexual ethics and ethos of ancient India when Islamic and Victorian morality didn’t contaminate it. Even the deities were described and delineated indulging in the same-sex intimacy. Today’s Hindu India might be flabbergasted to learn that during the great churning of milky ocean, according to Matsya Purana, Lord Vishnu took the form of a beautiful woman, Mohini, to trick the demons so that the gods could drink all the amrit (the immortal juice found from churning of ocean). Meanwhile, Lord Shiva saw Vishnu as Mohini and instantly fell for him. Their union led to the birth of a child -- Lord Ayyappa.

Thousands of years of slavery and the restrictive Semitic civilisational influence transformed the collective mentality of Indians and changed their psycho-sexual behavioural ethos. We began to condemn our own cultural heritage and history. Here, I’m not approving or disapproving of homosexuality. The point is to discourage and debunk the myth that it’s a mental illness and those with homosexual leanings and inclinations must consult a shrink to disabuse themselves of this ‘malady.’

Nature doesn’t make humans in a binary of male-female or X and Y only. It (nature) offers permutations and probabilities to choose from. An individual’s sexual orientation is his or her personal preference. Who are we to interfere and intervene?

The Fallacy of Majority works against homosexuality. We’ve been accustomed to seeing heterosexual unions in the society. This makes us believe that this is the majoritarian sexual behaviour. Anything that falls outside this belief is an anomaly. This is an erroneous belief. Homosexuality has existed right from the advent of human civilisation. It’s not nature’s aberration. It’s common in animal kingdom as well. Baboons, Giraffe, Dolphins, Anglerfish, Mallard ducks, Cats, among others have homosexual proclivities.

In fact, new medical findings suggest that homosexuality is common among highly intellectual people. Read Firaq’s 1936 article In defence of homosexual love. He defiantly describes the depiction of homosexuality in poetry across time and cultures in the works of Sappho and Socrates, Saadi and Hafiz, Shakespeare and Whitman. Firaq himself was an avowed homosexual and was never embarrassed or apologetic about his sexual preference. So is Yuval Noah Harari, one of the finest living brains in the world. Oscar Wilde, one of the wittiest and greatest writers, was a gay. We need to change our prejudiced thinking against homosexuality and lesbianism and accept those people ungrudgingly who’ve same-sex inclinations.

(The writer is an advanced research scholar of Semitic languages, civilisations and cultures)