Gay Abandon

There are more of them around than there are left-handers (11 per cent) or Muslims (16 per cent). A random list of historical figures with similar predilections includes luminaries such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Michaelangelo, Alexander the Great, Plato, Aristotle, Soc-rates, Somerset Maugham, Wally Hammond, Bill Tilden, Field Marshal Montgomery, Julius Caesar, Dag Hammerskjold, Oscar Wilde, Alan Turing, Thomas Mann, Lytton Strachey, Christopher Isherwood, Noel Coward, Fassbinder, Virginia Woolf, Madonna, Rock Hudson, Proust, Forster and, according to Wolpert, possibly Jawaharlal Nehru. That is an impressive mix of creative people and makers and shakers, isnt it ?

The fact that all of them would have been prosecuted in India under the Unnatural Practices Act (UPA) for doing what came naturally to them is ironical, and conducive to the production of much gaiety. Which is possibly appropriate because, with the notable exception of Nehru, who may or may not have secretly preferred Dicky to Edwina, the rest were all homosexual by preference, though most of them also slept with the odd woman as well.

 

Just think about it. If you knew a 100 people in college, the odds are that 17 or more of them are predominantly gay. That is actually a conservative estimate since most psychiatrists estimate that anything upto 20 per cent of the worlds population is predominantly homosexual with a far higher representation in the creative arts and sciences.

Consider your colleagues at work and your business acquaintances. Arent you wondering which ones fantasize about, or even actively indulge in the sin that dares not speak its name? Does it affect their professional competence one whit? Then, why on earth should there be a hullabaloo about a late PMs sexual orientation? And why should it be a crime on the statute books, so long as it involves only consenting adults? More insidiously, why should it be considered more socially offensive than say, an offensive alcohol habit or heterosexual extra-marital sex?

India hasnt overhauled the IPC since the late 19th century which leaves dinosaurs like the UPA on the books. Incidentally, lesbianism isnt an Indian crime because Queen Victoria refused to believe it existed when she was presented the draft bill to sign.

The reaction Wolpert got is very illuminating from the social scientists viewpoint. There was indignation and horror at the very thought that India could have had a gay PM. But, the supposed homosexual encounters related to a period in Nehrus life when he was a footloose and fancy-free youth with a licence to sow his wild oats and indulge his hormones. The far more circumstantially sound supposition that Nehru as an elderly widower had an explosive fling with a married woman in a position of influence is always dismissed indulgently by the same people who spat their false teeth all over the shop at his alleged recreational activities at Varsity.

Interestingly amidst all the Indignant from Ghaziabad letters and learned editorials about muckraking masquerading as scholarship no one chose to even mention the outdated legal statutes that bind Indian gays to the straight and narrow-minded with hoops of red tape. No one wrote in to say So he swung both ways, so what? Ah well, Mera Bharat may or may not be Mahan, but it is most definitely mournful.