Gender and sexual politics — once a matter of very little private debate — have now reached the global stage. As international relations scholars Manuela Lavinas Picq and Markus Thiel aptly point out, we now occupy the era of the “gay international” in which private and personal sexual issues are matters of international public debate and increasing government scrutiny. From the massive victories for same-sex marriage advocates in North America and Western Europe over the past few decades to the continued repression of LGBTQ+ rights in the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa, sexual and gender rights-based claims continue to polarise people across jurisdictions. And while it is undeniable that a lot of progress has been made, the journey is neither linear nor necessarily progressive.
A good example is Russia — a country that decriminalised homosexuality in the late 1990s (after the fall of the Soviet Union) yet continues to adopt what political theorist Nikita Sleptcov calls “political homophobia” as a rather effective nation-building tactic under Vladamir Putin. Homosexuals are routinely targeted for the nation’s socio-cultural failings and most Russians buy into this logic.
Boycotts galore
The increasing visibility of LGBTQ+ people in the public domain and louder calls for equal rights have predictably led to a backlash and censorship and no place is this more prominent than in the media. Most recently, Disney-Pixar’s animated film, Lightyear was met with backlash and boycotts from the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia, Egypt, and Indonesia for violating their “media content standards” because the film featured a same-sex kiss. Homosexuality is outlawed in all these countries, with the maximum punishment being death in some cases.
And this backlash comes at the heels of Disney’s recent controversy with Florida’s Parental Rights in Education Bill (also dubbed the “don’t say gay bill”) which Disney publicly opposed earlier this year after public pressure. This bill, introduced in the Florida Senate by conservative governor Ron DeSantis, prohibits most classroom instruction about sexual orientation or gender identity for children in kindergarten through Grade 3. Soon after its introduction, American conservatives reignited age-old “groomer” tropes to justify the bill’s existence (the idea of “homosexual grooming” is an age-old trope dating back to the 1970s on how LGBTQ+ issues were supposedly morally corrupting for the youth, especially children — and Anita Bryant was a prominent American anti-gay rights activist who popularised this position during that era).
Cognitive rigidity
Just like the United States, India too decriminalised homosexuality by a court order in 2018 (albeit 15 years later than the US). However, studies show that social attitudes towards homosexuality remain rigid in India even today.
A 2000 study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health found that of a sample of 500 undergraduate medical students in Delhi, more than half of them did not consider homosexuality to be natural. A minority even thought it to be a crime (8.7%), a sinful act (8.5%), or abnormal behaviour (1.4%).
Pew survey data finds that social acceptance of homosexuality has indeed risen in India; in 2002, only 15% of Indian respondents said that homosexuality should be accepted by society.
That figure rose by 22 percentage points to 37% in 2019 (after the landmark Navtej decision that legalised consensual gay sex in India). So while this jump is impressive, it is still not good enough, because, by comparison, 92% of Dutch, 81% of Australians, 89% of Spaniards, 85% of Canadians, and 94% of Swedes approve of homosexuality.
And it is this slow pace of acceptance that has made LGBTQ+ representation in Indian media also subject to varying amounts of censorship and criticism.
Last year, Dabur withdrew an advertisement featuring a same-sex lesbian couple celebrating Karva Chauth after Madhya Pradesh Home Minister, Narottam Mishra, threatened legal action over the advertisement. He called the ad “objectionable”. And this came at the heels of the still-ongoing debate in the Delhi High Court over the legality of same-sex marriage in India. While homosexual people in India are no longer seen as criminals in the eyes of the law, marriages between them are still not recognised and the ruling government has made it clear that it does not support recognising such marriages. And while this battle goes on in the courts, questions about LGBTQ+ representation continue to rouse the Indian media and film industry. Pleasantly, 2021 and 2022 saw the release of two major Bollywood films that depicted the LGBTQ+ community somewhat accurately — Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui and Badhaai Do — both of which highlighted previously unexplored aspects of LGBTQ+ people’s lives and struggles. Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui put the spotlight on transphobia, while Badhaai Do focused on lavender marital arrangements between gays and lesbians. And while it is great that such films are slowly becoming more mainstream after the Navtej judgement, there is still a long way to go.
A tightrope walk
According to veteran gay filmmaker, Onir, the film industry still has a lot of catching up to do because LGBTQ+ characters in Indian cinema oftentimes lack depth. Storylines mostly hinge on trite themes like “coming out” and acceptance while more radical themes like queer politics and intimacy are rarely discussed. Although movies like Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui and Badhaai Do challenge some of these clichés, they are the minority in doing so (the widely popular 2008 film, Dostana, for instance, largely perpetuated homophobic tropes under the guise of comedy). While most of North America and most of Western Europe may have progressed on many LGBTQ+ causes (it should be noted that the United States is an outlier here, for it has passed more than 300 pieces of anti-transgender legislation in 2022 alone), the global journey of LGBTQ+ acceptance and accurate media representation remains long fraught.
In the South Asian region, Taiwan became the first country to legalise same-sex marriage in 2019, meanwhile, Japan recently upheld its ban on same-sex marriage. And then there is India — somewhere in the middle — with the media playing a game of tightrope trying to cautiously represent queer characters on screen, but not to the extent that it would cause a backlash (as with the Dabur ad, or the infamous screening of Deepa Mehta’s lesbian romantic movie Fire in 1996, which was vandalised by Shiva Sena workers). And even though the incidents of Fire and Dabur happened 25 years apart, what is common between them is the fact that they dared to unapologetically portray same-sex female intimacy within the rubric of religion, specifically Hinduism.
The backlash by Hindutva forces under the Shiva Sena and the BJP point to how non-normative sexualities continue to be the battleground for contested subjectivities, especially for the Hindu right-wing. This backlash, however, is not restricted to Hindutva forces only. For example, during the IPC 377 hearings in 2018, only Christian groups backed the archaic law, and while the All India Muslim Personal Law Board decided not to contest the law, they did not express support for homosexuality either.
Changing perceptions?
Quite surprisingly, there has been no significant backlash from Christian or Muslim groups in India in recent times to the spate of queer-themed movies and/or advertisements — including the 2021 short film, Sheer Qorma which portrayed queer love within the context of the Indian Muslim family unit. In spite of its somewhat controversial intersectional theme, it was met with little to no backlash from religious fundamentalists. As the world continues to grapple with complex questions of sexuality and identity, many of which sit at (un)predictable intersections, it is, on the one hand, wonderful to see cinematic portrayals of queerness and sexuality in mainstream Hindi media. But also disappointing to realise that vernacular penetration of such stories is so profoundly lacking. Following the Allahabad High Court’s recent decision to reject two women’s plea to recognise their same-sex marriage, it is clear that the path ahead for LGBTQ+ activists is going to be long and difficult. Here’s hoping that in the years to come, public perception of this community improves and that the media plays an indelible role in this process.
(The author is a Programme & Communications Manager at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy and Nyaaya and can be reached at sahgalkanav@gmail.com)