Hoshang Merchant is poet, professor and mother hen for generations of gays who have come across him in restaurants, in academia, on streets in the Irani cafes. As the justices of Supreme Court read down the antiquated, intrusively draconian Section 377 of Indian Penal Code, Hoshang Merchant shares his thoughts, views and anecdotes about what it is to be gay before the intervention of SC and what is likely to be the scenario for the LGBTQI community in the coming days in India.
Excerpts from Hoshang, as told to Serish Nanisetti:
There will be a backlash. From yesterday I have not stepped out fearing a backlash. The women were ill-treated in the American in the 60s when feminism came up. Rise in divorces was blamed on feminism. Feminism is about equal rights. It was never a war against men.
On judgement day
In this judgement the court has not decriminalised all kinds of sex. It has read down the law to legalise sex between consenting adults in private. The operative word is private. When I was in Iran, I heard a joke. A couple were caught in a place of worship by the priest. Who admonished them saying: “You have no shame, you have no God, you have no religion, you have no manners, you have no country.”
The youngsters listened and finally asked, “Sir, have you finished?”
Yes.
“Sir we have everything. We just don’t have a place,” said the couple.
What will they do
This is like begging for transgenders. You can be a transgender but cannot beg. What can a transgender do? We borrow some ideas from the west and put them on Indian reality which could be an African reality or a reality on Mars. This is the problem with our education. Even our lawyers are trained in western law. God bless Justice Chandrachud for delivering the verdict. He has had a good education.
Many people think homosexuality is endemic to certain societies. It is not. It is endemic in any bourgeois society where men don’t have access to women. Where women are property. Where capitalism thrives.
Being a gay icon
I am writing a book called Gay Icon . I am calling myself a gay icon because everyone knows what I have done. But nobody knows what I have gone through. I have written this to show what all I have gone through to become a gay icon. There were these boys from Aurora college who would throw stones at me while I was walking to.
After some time, I began throwing the stones back at them. One day I asked myself. What are you doing Hoshang? You are a professor, why are you behaving like a lunatic. And I stopped throwing stones and later one of the boys dropped out and became my student.
