The suicide last month of a doctor in Delhi after she discovered her husband was gay is tragic on many counts, but it also exposes how ruthlessly and regularly we use the institution of marriage as a catch-all solution for all ills.
Marriage is not a cure. Homosexuality, impotence, epilepsy, a fragile mind, a physical disability, asthma... marriage will not make any of these go away. Although that is what most parents fondly imagine. It is India’s favourite quack advice.
When parents are unable to address a daunting issue, they look to marriage, and the ensuing sexual relationship, as the magic medicine that will solve the problem. It won’t. Marriage also takes the responsibility of the difficult child away from the parents. What they refuse to see is that, in the process, it entraps someone else.
There is nothing wrong in a person with epilepsy or fragile mental health being married. But it must be with the full prior knowledge of the other partner. If he or she understands who they are getting married to, they will peg their expectations differently, and then both parties can try and make it work. But to build marriage around a lie is the worst crime.As for the Delhi case, let’s understand that homosexuality is not a disease. Therefore, it cannot be cured. It is a state of being, a sexual orientation that one is born with.
The Supreme Court in the U.S. is right now dealing with exactly these questions as it debates gay marriage. Opponents there have asked, ‘If gay marriage is okay, why was it not sanctioned by the Roman era, which was a fairly permissive one?’ This is what most people here say too: ‘If homosexuality is okay, why doesn’t the Ramayana have it?’The answer lies in understanding that for the longest time, we have dealt only in binaries: male-female, black-white, upper caste-lower caste, civilised-heathen. Only now, as humans progress in terms of how we understand and ensure personal freedoms that we are beginning to see the world that lies in between, in the greys.
Black-white marriage was once a crime. Marriages outside the caste were taboo and were, and often still are, punished by death. Tribals and aboriginals were ruthlessly decimated, black people enslaved, Dalits treated as sub-human. No religious book formally forbade any of this. But that did not make any of it right.
Finally, the inhabitants of these spaces outside the binaries sat up and demanded justice. People (and their actions) considered abnormal because of narrower definitions of ‘normal’ pointed out that they were human, had rights, and to deny them would be gross injustice and inhuman.
That’s happening with homosexuality today. Gay people’s different sexuality does not make them untouchable or criminal. Forcing a gay man into marriage with a woman to ‘cure’ him, or to ensure that social prestige stays intact, ruins not one, but two lives.
Second, with fairly robust support systems and counselling circles, even in India, gay people must take responsibility for their lives. It is unforgivable to agree to a heterosexual marriage just to please parents or society. Don’t come out if you don’t want to or if you are not ready to, but don’t get married either to a heterosexual person.
Vaishna is a Senior Deputy Editor with The Hindu. Mail her at vaishna.r@thehindu.co.in
