Nexus between employees of international aid agencies and the gay underworld

[Guest guest]

The problem is not homosexuality

August 23, 2004

The ability of small but resourceful interest groups to manipulate

the media and public debate is among the less appetising features of

a democracy. This month, the country, and Delhi in particular, has

witnessed a determined effort by well-connected gay activists and

rent-a-cause liberals to turn perversity into victimhood.

In the backdrop of a grisly double-murder in a posh South Delhi

colony, a campaign of intimidation has been mounted to force both

the police and media into meekly acquiescing to bizarre notions of

political correctness.

At one level, the seemingly ritual killing of USAID worker Pushkin

Chandra and his so-called 'companion' Kuldeep is a plain crime story

that can, at best, arouse fleeting local interest. Yet, it was

apparent from the outset that this was more than just another

murder. The Pushkin story grabbed popular interest because of what

it revealed about the seamy underside of what passes for alternative

sexuality in Delhi.

The issue was never the right of individuals to pursue their sexual

preferences. Nor did it centre on the apparent violations of Section

377 of the Indian Penal Code which outlaws homosexuality.

Despite this law, what people get up to in the privacy of the

bedroom is of little interest to most people other than pseudo-

sociologists and voyeurs. Contrary to what indignant activists would

have us believe, there is neither a moral police in existence nor is

society fundamentally intolerant of gays.

There are enough openly gay couples who dot the society pages of our

newspapers. They may be considered somewhat odd and, at times,

bohemian, but we haven't heard of cases of gay-bashing. Indeed, so

great is the lure of the Pink Rupee, that many restaurants and bars

have begun to discreetly organise Gay Evenings for this neglected

clientele. As such, the accusations of a witch-hunt of gays levelled

by activists are somewhat far-fetched and self-serving.

What the Pushkin case suggests, however, is that there is another

dimension of gay life which is both sordid and verges on the

criminal. There is nothing remotely normal about well-heeled gays

routinely picking up young boys from deprived backgrounds for the

purposes of sexual gratification.

These are exploitative relationships that would be greeted with

social disdain if it involved a man and a woman. What would our

reaction be to a rich man who takes a vulnerable woman from a

neighbouring slum as his occasional companion? We would perceive it

as a crude power relationship based on lust. Is there any reason to

view it differently just because it centres on two or more males?

Nor is there any reason to put a stamp of approval on reckless

promiscuity, just because it involves gays.

Secondly, there is growing global concern over paedophilia and child

pornography. Earlier this month, Tehelka conducted an investigation

on a child pornography network that was being run by some Europeans

in Goa. This is a problem that has assumed alarming proportions in

popular tourist destinations like Kerala and Sri Lanka, not to speak

of Thailand. Last week, London's Daily Telegraph revealed that

street shelters for young boys in Mumbai run by a British charity

had become centres of sexual abuse. It led to the actress Felicity

Kendal withdrawing her patronage from the organisation.

The Delhi police apparently found stacks of a particular variety of

pornographic literature in Pushkin's flat. This in turn triggered

inquiries over whether he was just a consumer of pornography or

something more. In the West, people are routinely arrested for

downloading child pornography from the internet. Why should the

Delhi police be accused of harassing the entire gay community if it

probes deeper into Pushkin's hidden fascinations, if only to

understand the motives behind his murder?

Finally, the Pushkin case has brought into the open a nexus between

employees of international aid agencies and the gay underworld. Of

particular concern to many is the possibility of the lavishly funded

anti-AIDS campaign being misused to create a gay network.

It would certainly seem that some of the do-gooder foreigners ostensibly

involved in improving the plight of natives see India as just a

convenient place to buy cheap sex with poor slum kids.

The Pushkin case has served to open our eyes to a grim facet of gay

life that many people don't want to acknowledge. Courtesy the steady

degeneration of liberalism and the systematic assault on family

values, ordinary, decent people are wary of speaking out against the

perversions in the gay community lest it be construed as

intolerance. They are further intimidated by the aggressive support

extended to alternative lifestyles by the presiding deities of

culture.

So widespread is the new gay evangelism, that during the contrived

controversy over Deepa Mehta's film Fire, there were loud claims of

homosexuality and lesbianism being part of the Indian 'heritage,' a

claim that angered many Hindu activists.

It is not necessary to comment on every piece of fanciful theology

or attempts to win fame through notoriety. Nor is it necessary to

claim everything that has a history -- and there is no doubt that

homosexuality and lesbianism had a shadowy presence over the ages --

as heritage. Yet, that is precisely what is being done in the name

of freedom and enlightenment.

The problem is not homosexuality but our changing perceptions of it.

What was hitherto a fringe tendency has been given an extraordinary

licence. There is a growing climate of moral laxity that has led to

countries like India becoming new receptacles for what can best be

called criminal deviancy. Gay criminality isn't the whole problem

but it is certainly part of the problem and the Pushkin murder was

an example of that.

It is a problem that should agitate society as a whole. And that

includes gays who see their sexuality as a purely private matter and

not either as a badge of superiority or a proselytising cause.

Swapan Dasgupta

http://in.rediff.com/news/2004/aug/23swadas.htm

____________________________________________________

Delhi double slay reveals intolerance for homosexuals

By Pearson, Agence France-Presse

NEW DELHI—It had all the elements of an enthralling murder mystery:

naked and near-naked bodies of two lovers, pools of blood, multiple

stab wounds and sexual adventure gone horribly wrong at a posh Delhi

address.

So it was to be expected that the local media would splash the

double murders of Pushkin Chandra, a well-to-do 38-year-old project

development officer with USAID, and his lover, a poorer youth

identified only as Kuldeep.

But what has incensed rights activists, social commentators and gay

groups is that far from focusing on the savagery of the incident,

front-page reports honed in on the fact the victims were

homosexuals.

" Queer murder in Delhi, " said The Times of India. " Double murder

outs Delhi''s gay culture, " said the Hindustan Times.

Reports went into minute details of the murder scene but laid

particular stress on the fact that pornographic photographs of naked

men and men dressed as women were found in Chandra's room.

The son of a senior civil servant and a product of India's

prestigious Doon school, Chandra was discovered in his bathroom on

the morning of August 14 lying naked with his throat slit and hands

and legs tied.

Kuldeep was found dressed in a pair of Bermuda shorts and a vest

lying dead on a bed in an adjoining room. His throat, too, had been

slit. Police said both men had been subjected to " frenzied "

stabbing.

In their initial comments, police said there were indications that

Chandra and Kuldeep had been killed out of anger when they tried to

force one or more men to have sex with them.

Another theory was that Chandra was blackmailing the person or

people who killed him.

By midweek police had changed their tune, saying that in view of the

large quantity of goods missing from the murder scene, including a

car, laptop computer and mobile phone, it seemed robbery was the

motive.

Police theories aside, as far as the media was concerned the

killings occurred because the two men were homosexuals and had

drifted into Delhi's sordid underbelly where sex with strangers is

commonplace and robbery and murder to be expected.

The Asian Age commented on a " shocking " rise in the number of

homosexuals in Delhi alongside a report showing the " sexual profile "

of Delhi in which homosexuals are lumped together with eunuchs and

commercial sex workers.

In the days that followed the discovery of the bodies, news reports

were fixated on Delhi's gay community, mapping out their " cruising

places, " detailing the surge of HIV/AIDS cases in the capital among

gay men and how homosexuals lurk in darkened corners of the city at

night along with smack addicts ready to offer or receive easy sexual

gratification.

According to gay rights activist Shaleen Rakesh, the media reports

unmasked the widespread intolerance for homosexuals in India, where

consensual gay sex is still an offense punishable by up to 10 years

in prison.

" The reporting was outrageous, it was not even relevant to this

murder, " Rakesh told Agence France-Presse.

" What the newspapers are doing is highlighting that the victims were

gay—this has nothing to do with the case. They are fuelling

homophobia. "

" The murder was like any other. What difference does it make if a

person is gay? "

Social commentator Namita Bhandare was equally scathing about the

reporting on the case.

" The media haven't stopped at mere crime reporting, " Bhandare wrote

in a newspaper article this week. " One isolated murder has become

symptomatic of the entire gay community. "

" The life and death of one of the victims is now being used to

construct an identikit of gay men in Delhi: they live dangerously,

they cruise the streets in search of poor boys to exploit, they

haunt websites, chatrooms and parks in search of easy prey. They're

obsessed with porn, " Bhandare wrote.

" Suddenly every stereotype that the gay community has been fighting

for years has come home to roost. "

http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2004/aug/21/yehey/opinion/2004082

1opi7.html

[Guest guest]

1) Waging a war that's not of our making

Ashok Row Kavi

2) Let us not denigrate a few Individuals

BRITTO

_____________________

wage a war that's not of our making

Ashok Row Kavi

This is all so tiresome, Poor little Swapan Das Gupta is sort of

going down the same old track: Homosexuals and pedophilia,

homosexuals and promiscuity and, now, of course, how we're spreading

our " network " using government funding. I find the third the most

intriguing as Swapan Das and I have done quite a bit of shadow

boxing on the subjects.

If the RSS can use government funds for its Ekalviya Schools and

Shikshan Abhiyan; if the CPM can use government funds to spread out

into the Panchayats and subvert them for the landless farmers'

causes, I see no reason at all why marginalised

homosexuals/lesbians, sex workers et al need to be chary about using

government funds to mainstream their community work.

I've said it a hundred times and I'm saying it now again on this

list -- we are as much equal citizens of this country as all the

others and we have every right to access every facility available to

the people as a matter of intrinsic basic access to health and

happiness.

What is very interesting is Swapan Das Gupta echoes the same views

as those of the Left which says HIV/AIDS work is the battleground of

ideology, especially of the " decadent West " (read USA here). I've

heard gay and lesbian activists saying that " too much emphasis is

being laid on HIV/AIDS activism " and that we need to work in other

fields. Well this may be a matter of working strategy but even the

assault on Section 377 of the IPC is being launched from a needs

assessment to facilitate HIV/AIDS work and takes a human rights

route riding on HIV/AIDS activism.

Swapan Das, of course, is typical of the intellectuals who started

from the far Left (he was a Trotskyite at Oxbridge) and then got

converted to the Sangh philosophy. Leftists when they fall in India,

fall on the far Right, which speaks volumes for the authoritarian

mindset of the Indian political class, but it's more than just that.

When a man talks of moral values and moves heaven and earth to get

the SMS messages by his wife to her lover then we know

what 'morality' he's taking about; when a man wages a war with his

own office colleague for having seduced his wife willingly, we poor

homosexuals are made to suffer the wages of marital discord in the

name of " moral values " . Such is the low trough, my dear friends,

that intellectuals have fallen into in our beloved Bharat!

There is so much dirt here that it would take me a drum of digging

it out. Actually not, because I know most of these fellows like the

back of my hand, being an old jounralist myself. I have a good mind

to use my poison pen to demolish this trashy argumentative columnist

but then a higher duty calls.

As it is the cannibalism has started with opposing sides using the

Pushkin murders to settle scores - a Pioneer story makes no bones

about " a certain drop-in centre in south Delhi being used for

picking up men " , friends have been questioned for no reason at all,

an 'India Today' story says my poor friend Uffe Gartner is " avoiding

police interrogation " when all he's doing is licking his wounds back

home in Denmark, at not having his UNDP contract renewed and trying

to find another job to return to an India he loves, certain

activists are even tattling on their own colleagues, which is what

my police sources in Delhi and Mumbai are reporting with glee, and I

have to report with sorrow.

In any case, let India's sexual minorities all gird for battle.

We've been asked to wage a war that's not of our making, with false

accusations against a dignified gay man murdered in the most brutal

manner. His parents are not even allowed any respite in mourning

their dead child in a decent manner.

And we hopeless gay men are not even presenting a united front.

It's a call to arms and we all need to gear up and fight this

together. Because as that other hackneyed saying goes -- if we don't

hang together, we'll hang separately.

Ashok Row Kavi

E-mail: <arowkavi@...>

__________________________

Let us not denigrate a few Individuals

BRITTO

Thank you for the very first line: The problem is not homosexuality.

There are all types of criminals in India - the Harshad Mehtas, Ketan

Parikh, and any number of Boards of directors of co-operative banks

who have looted the money of the middle class by thousands of

crores. You have Union Carbide killing thousands and maiming lacs

but goes scot free because it had several big Indian politicos on

its various boards.

Every country as any system develops mechanisms for system

maintenance (police, army, judiciary, commissions...) for system

adaptation to meet emerging needs (has not Manipur approved needle

exchange and bleach distribution) and system integration in order to

achieve the broad goals of the society.

In the context of HIV, gays who have been in the closet are coming

out and asking for system adaptation of archaic laws. I beg to

differ. There have been harassment of gays in some parts of Mumbai

by the police.

Recently there are reports that one Duncan Grant has been charged by

Mumbai police for pedophilia. If true, he must face the process of

law here and in his own country - the latter the better because our

legal machine is rusted and it will take two decades for the case to

conclude.

Let us not denigrate a few Individuals who are lobbying for removal

of the British non-sensical Judeo-Christian notion based law of a

hundred years vintage. Even Hong Kong repealed a similar law.

Harm reduction is required urgently.

Thank you friend, let us all work toward a society which is alert to

all potential harm and to protect ourselves.

BRITTO

Director: NARC & DRC

E-mail: <britto@...>