Connecting The Dots: Two Suicides That Tell The Story Of Prejudice

Two suicides that show how we’re victimising both men and women when it comes to homosexuality and misusing the law.

I spent the whole of yesterday screaming and hyperventilating. I was unable to make any peace with my mind after what I read. This was a story of two women in Bombay. The two were in a relationship. They were lesbians. Bombay is a city where you could literally live in gay abandon. The girls did the same. They hugged each other and expressed their romantic emotions on a beach in a city that is bursting out of the closets, and is rightfully termed as the gay capital of India- Bombay. While strangers would have given a stare or two, there was someone known to the families who came and complained to one of the fathers.

Like they show in the movies, this father blamed the other girl for spoiling the life of his daughter. Things got worse. The girls were separated. They were confined to their homes. What followed was unfathomable. Both the girls attempted suicide. One hung herself from the ceiling and died instantly. The other drank poison and is battling for her life in hospital.

There were other characters involved in this tragic love story too. According to reports, a local politician by the name of Mahendra Nagte stepped into the picture too. Many of the threats by the father were given at Nagte’s office. What was the business of a local politician in this? One fails to understand.

Why was this article – a front page piece reported with names and photographs, with the profession of the girl’s father explicitly mentioned – one fails to understand. One also fails to understand why a journalist, a person who I have also had the good privilege of working with, where he had shown utmost sensitivity, would write such an article? Was that a fluke, or is this a fluke?

A parallel, in the north of India, which is infamously known for female foeticide as much as it is known for Olympic medals (read Haryana) had a different scene to offer. A married man recorded his statement before he committed suicide. He was troubled by his wife and his in-laws. This video is chilling, just for the calm on his face before he died.

In this video he says that there was a fake dowry case slapped on him by his in-laws. He also shared that his in-laws were demanding money from him.

I see a common thread in these two cases, more than the fact that they occurred in two parts of the same country. Both are suicides. Both victims of the law and societal perceptions and lawlessness. Both go through double victimisation. One because of their gender, the other because of the law or the absence of it.

Queer women in india get a raw deal. First, because they are women, and second, because they are not heterosexual. They are asked to cover up not just their bodies but also their identities. The prejudice is accentuated by the fact that they are considered baby making machines with no independence to love.

In many places, we still cover them up so that some rich buyer could rape them in the name of arranged marriage. Most girls who are queer, are forced into arranged marriage. Arranged marriage, the forced variety, is nothing but forced prostitution, where the pimps are the parents.

People think that this would ‘cure’ them of their ‘sexuality’. Science be damned. The Quint has time and again invoked science and taken a stand to reiterate that homosexuality is not a disease. And what’s not a disease, needn’t be cured.

On the other side is a man who committed suicide. From his point of view, the law is used as a tool to victimise him. He is a victim of a society that sees all men as predators, wife beaters, dowry seekers. This case was a vice-versa situation. He was part of a society that unduly misuses the power granted to it, keeping in mind the majority of cases that get reported. It is not untrue that there are fake cases like these.

I have enough male friends who have complained to me about extortion by their in-laws of their heterosexual matrimony, though the number of women who have complained of dowry related issues have always been more. Men who get caught in marriages where ‘dowry’ is demanded from them, using the law as a pretext, need to be protected too. They are victims because of their gender, and because of the law.

I reiterate what I have said always – the victims of patriarchy are men themselves. We cannot solve women’s rights issues by demonising men. We need to work with them and also take a stand against people who work against men, irrespective of gender.

Basically, we need to look at a case for the case and not merely assume innocence basis gender. Unless of course, the victim is a child or an animal.

The issue is that in India we reduce everything to a statistic, a number. And one’s gender, one’s sexuality, one’s victimisation has to be of a great percentage for someone to take notice and deliberate on reforms on the same.

We still live in a country that prides itself as an equal society, where every individual has the right to an unprejudiced life of dignity. But the apex court of the same country dismisses a large fraction of its population as a minuscule-minority in the section 377 verdict.

The same country took many many years to make a child sex-abuse law that was gender neutral. We have a lot to change. But the more difficult job, that doesn’t need the permission of law, is to change the hearts and minds of people towards a more equal and just ‘society’.