The mahatma and the maharajah

It was news to me when I read nine years ago that Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi might have been bisexual, and had a German-Jewish bodybuilder lover during the years in South Africa.  Shocking it was to even consider the possibility.

Later, Frédéric Martel, a researcher at Sciences-Po Paris and ZHdK Zurich, looked into the original correspondence between Gandhi and the German.

The writings between the two men, as they appeared in Gandhi’s many letters, are surprising: love is present, explicitly; a dominating/dominated relationship emerges, even in the nicknames the two men call each other; there’s talk of Vaseline; and Gandhi tells Kallenbach how Kallenbach “took complete possession of [his/Gandhi’s] body.” The two men took an oath of love, a love whose nature “the world has never known.” And when they were finally separated because Kallenbach did not obtain permits to join him in India, Gandhi wrote to him saying that he dreamed of him. “These letters are very emotional. There is clearly an attraction between these two men,” Eric Itzkin, the biographer of Gandhi’s South African years, tells me when I interview him in Johannesburg.

Nein, nein. That can't be true, right?

India, where hetero-normative rules, is slowly opening up towards the non-hetero human condition.  "India also saw a 22-point increase since 2014, the first time the question was asked of a nationally representative sample there."  Now, about 37% say that homosexuality should be accepted by society.

But, acceptance is not easy.  Even when a maharajah comes out of the closet.

The fallout from his announcement was brutal, beginning with protests in his hometown, Rajpipla, where he was burned in effigy. His mother took out a newspaper advertisement to announce she was disowning him.

Where is Rajpipla?  In Gujarat.  Gandhi's home state as well.  But, worlds apart in so many ways.

Who is the royalty?

Prince Manvendra was born in 1965 to Raghubir Singh Gohil, the current honorary maharajah of Rajpipla, and Rukmani Devi Gohil, the daughter of the former maharajah of Jaisalmer.

Of course, the maharajah title does not mean anything in a democracy.  But, people still remember the old stories.

The prince has a tough time gaining acceptance.

His father, the maharajah, acknowledged in an interview that it was difficult for the family to come to terms with his son’s sexuality and the constant media attention on the family.
“But it’s his decision,” the maharajah said.
His relationship with his mother remains frosty, but other members of the family have been supportive, he says. His grandmother, on her deathbed, expressed her happiness that he had found a partner to share his life with.

I would think that talking more about Gandhi and his German-Jewish bodybuilder friend would go a long way to further LGBTQ rights and acceptance.  I wonder what Prince Manvendra thinks about that.

Feminism in these modern times

Sex in advertisements.

Which is why there was that woman on the sidewalk by a major thoroughfare, holding a sign for fundraising via car-wash.

No, just because it is a woman holding a sign I would not conclude that "sex sells."  But I would because of the clothing that she had on her.  Shorty-shorts that made sure that her legs were all exposed.  And then the skimpy bikini-bra-top that barely contained her big breasts.

We were stopped at the traffic light and she walked like a sex kitten waving the sign.

"Why don't you put a shirt on?" a voice rang out from the waiting vehicles.  The voice sounded friendly, as in a constructive and engaging tone.  Perhaps a middle-aged woman's voice.

I turned to the left, which is where the voice came from.  It was a pick-up truck that had a female driver and an older female passenger.  The passenger was beginning to roll up the window.  I suppose after voicing their thoughts, they were done.

"Am good" the sign-carrying woman replied, with a smile and with a thumbs-up from her free hand.

"A shirt might help" the voice rang out again from the truck.  The woman on the street smiled again.

The light turned green.

The two cars ahead of me kept going straight.  I read the sign that she was holding as I passed her.  I was curious what the fundraising was for.  For ladies football!

As I passed her, I kept watching the traffic in the rear to see if any car turned towards the car-wash.  None.  I was happy that sex does not sell.  At least, not all the time.

We live in strange times.  On the one hand, we have made enormous progress and have largely moved away from acting on our primal, animal instincts.  We don't beat the crap out of somebody when we disagree, and we don't sexually assault another.  Well, mostly.  This kind of a healthy progress has created the space for people to be what they want to be and say what they want to say.  Mostly.  But, this freedom, the progress, now means that a woman can be practically semi-nude on a city sidewalk in the middle of the day.  Is such an element of sexuality a good thing or a bad thing?

That's practically the question that The Economist also addresses in reviewing two books, which are about the troubling aspects of young girls, their sexuality, and modern technology:

That young women often aspire to be titillating should not be surprising given that the most successful female celebrities often present themselves as eye-candy for the male gaze. “Everybody wants to take a selfie as good as the Kardashians’,” says Maggie, a 13-year-old. 

"If you've got it, flaunt it!" has become "normal" behavior.

 [Unlike] past feminists, who often protested against their sexual objectification, many of today’s young women claim to find it empowering. “There are few times that I feel more confident about my body than when I wear a crop top and my boobs are showing and my legs are showing,” says Holly, a college student. “I never feel more liberated.”
This hardly seems like progress, particularly when only certain bodies, those that are sexy to men, are allowed to be a source of pride.

As the review notes, "For anyone raising a daughter, these books do not make for easy reading."  Not easy materials even for us worrywarts who are all done with raising a daughter.

To love whom they please and to marry whom they love

As a kid, as a teenager, and later even as an adult in India, I hadn't known a single gay person.  For that matter, I hadn't known a single black, or a Mexican, or an Arab, or a white ...  But, I had at least seen black and Mexican and white characters in movies, and read about them in fiction.  I had no idea about gays.  Well, the only thing I knew about gays was when in college there was a "wink-wink" about a guy.

Sex and sexuality was not talked about in the old country.  An old Tamil saying captures well the essence: "மன்மதக்கலை சொல்லி தெரிவதில்லை" (the art of the (god of) love is not taught and learnt.)  What I knew, messed up and incorrect that was--as I would find out much later in life--I knew from friends and fellow-classmates, who were also equally ill-informed.

And then I came to America.

I distinctly recall being shocked, intrigued, a month or so into my life in the new country, when I saw two young women locking lips in the public, outside the apartment building, just like how a young man and woman typically displayed their affections in public.

Since that first exposure, it has been one heck of a rapid education about love, homosexuality, and the politics of it all.

It is not only I who have moved, and moved rapidly, from not knowing anything to getting to know gays and becoming very good friends with them:

In the 1950s gay sex was illegal nearly everywhere. In Britain, on the orders of a home secretary who vowed to “eradicate” it, undercover police were sent out to loiter in bars, entrap gay men and put them in jail. In China in the 1980s homosexuals were rounded up and sent to labour camps without trial. All around the world gay people lived furtively and in fear. Laws banning “sodomy” remained in some American states until 2003.
Today gay sex is legal in at least 113 countries. 

A remarkable transformation in our collective attitudes.

What could help spread tolerance? If the past half-century is any guide, the prime movers will be gay people themselves. The more visible they are, the more normal they will seem. These days 75% of Americans say they have gay friends or colleagues, up from only 24% in 1985. But it is hard to be the first to come out in a country where that means prison or worse.
...
For those who cling to the notion of progress, it is hard to believe that tolerance will not spread. After all, gay people are not demanding special treatment, just the same freedoms that everyone else takes for granted: to love whom they please and to marry whom they love.

How are things in the old country?

In India the past decade has brought considerable change. The first national magazine for gay people, Pink Pages, was launched in 2009. Gay-pride marches, if not necessarily very large ones, are a common sight in big cities. Bollywood has produced sympathetic films.
Yet even if it is becoming slightly easier among India’s elite to be openly gay, almost no one in public life dares declare it. And the legal position for homosexuals is in flux. In July 2009 a high court ruled that the ban on “carnal intercourse against the order of nature” in the penal code violated India’s constitution, a ruling which in effect decriminalised gay sex. In December 2013 two Supreme Court judges overturned the ruling. They said that parliament could pass a law to legalise gay sex; at the moment, that looks unlikely.

 With a party that actively talks up Hindu nationalism, odds are far from favorable for India's parliament to pass laws legalizing homosexuality.  But then politics works in strange ways.

While I can claim ignorance of youth for the errors that I made in plenty, I have always felt awful about the "wink wink" comments about that college guy.  I have no idea whether he was/is gay; but, in any case, I suppose I can come clean with a public apology via this post.