The problem with demonising a pro-Modi LGBT rights activist
Today, “The Print”, an Indian English-language daily, published a piece which was part-interview of LGBT rights activist Ashok Row Kavi, and part-oped about his problematic “extreme right of RSS” worldview.
The piece argued that Kavi, one of the earliest LGBT rights activists in India, “uses a brand of Hindutva” to fight Section 377 — the section of the Indian Penal Code which is interpreted to consider homosexual acts illegal. The article based this argument on his unabashed support for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, his insistence that Hinduism (unlike Abrahamic faiths) embraces queer rights, and his claim that Christianity (or, the British) is responsible for Section 377 in the first place.
The piece also castigated Kavi for apparently opposing identity-based campaigns/protests for LGBT rights — from Muslim LGBTs as Muslims, for example — in furtherance of evidence that he is a right-wing Hindutva proponent.
Let us for a moment set aside the question of the veracity of Hinduism’s embrace of queer rights, or Christianity’s responsibility in introducing homophobia to India.
It is true, in my view, that mixing identity politics with a universal struggle for LGBT rights undermines the latter. Sure, “state violence targeting Adivasi lives, social discrimination of disabled people, patriarchal laws policing women’s lives, and the instigation of fears in the minds of religious minorities” — which this piece referred to last year in its celebration of the politicisation of the 2017 Delhi queer pride— constitute pervasive oppression. No sane person should ever be opposed to an effort to remove these oppressions from society.
However, the introduction of protests against these other forms of oppression into a queer pride march undermines the sole purpose of the march — to secure equality for LGBT individuals. The term “LGBT individuals” conveys nothing more than that they belong to sexual minorities. It does not tell us about their political positions, their personal ambitions, their education, wealth, worldly knowledge, or anything else at all. Therefore, to celebrate the fact that a march for LGBT rights includes people marching for the rights of other oppressed individuals, recasts the primary participants as necessarily sympathetic to these other causes.
But the proponents of the rights of other oppressed communities do not merely agitate for these rights. If that were so, I would have little to complain about a mixed march. They see these rights in the context of a pseudo Marxist-Leninist, postmodernist, “class struggle”. In essence, they have adopted a political position, much more than a humanitarian one, and agitate from this context.
Be as that may, an individual member of the LGBT community, or a straight ally, must not be coerced into marching with people whose positions or views he or she dislikes. Indeed, there are LGBT individuals who support the RSS or Modi, who advocate neoliberalism instead of socialism, and so on. They would be perfectly justified in leaving (or avoiding) a politicised march if they chose to.
This is particularly important given the invective the Modi administration has enabled against those who have a less-than-hawkish position on Kashmir, or demonetisation, or indeed, anyone who opposes it. Seen in this context, LGBT individuals are justified if they are to fear that marching with “Azaadi” proponents (of the Kashmiri variety) would be used against them by the quasi-fascistic right-wing trolls who enjoy the patronage of the government. Indeed, it could one day be used by the Hindu nationalist government itself to cast these individuals as fundamentally anti-India, a particularly dangerous form of slander in these times.
In other words, the politicisation of LGBT pride by leftists threatens to feed the right-wing agenda.
The Print piece also seems to be particularly troubled by Kavi’s belief in the friendliness of Hinduism towards queer individuals. It attacks him for promoting the idea that the Hinduism we see today is, in effect “not the real Hinduism”.
This would be okay if it were a consistent position on all religions. But it is not. In the same article, the authors hint at the bigotry of believing that Islam is an orthodox, regressive faith that is more intolerant to homosexuals. In fact, certain “liberals” go out of their way to defend Islam, or those who attempt to reinterpret it in a positive light (much like Ashok Row Kavi seems to do with Hinduism). So why the double standard? Why do we hear cries of Islamophobia at the slightest criticism of Islam, and anger at the defence of other faiths?
Moreover, the piece also conflates Kavi’s belief in Hinduism with a belief in Hindutva — in other words, it treats both as essentially the same. Let us have some consistency here too then, and do the same with Islam and Islamism? Or let’s drop it altogether?
Lastly, the piece seems to believe, nay, demand, that LGBT individuals must by default be in sympathy with the anti-demonetisation public, the (Kashmiri) Azaadi crowd, or just the Modi-hating audience. After all, how can a person from a disenfranchised group NOT be in sympathy with all these causes? If he or she were not, it would compromise the Leftist stereotype of an oppressed community. It would seriously undermine the Left’s attempt to cast all oppressed groups into a box, and assert not only the content of their feelings, but dictate how they must feel.
This is why people like Ashok Row Kavi have to be labeled “ conservative Hindu fundamentalist” as the piece does. They have to be seen as not really belonging to the disenfranchised group which the Left claims it supports. They have to be cast as people who have sold out to the majoritarian/imperialist/neoliberal narrative, and thus lack any opinion worth considering.
This is not, by any stretch of imagination, a position worthy of those who claim to uphold the human rights of marginalised groups.
