Pride and Judicial Prejudice

One day after World Human Right's Day, India’s most progressive and respected institution stained its proud record of protecting and advancing citizens rights - perhaps indelibly. In 2009 the Delhi High Court in an inspired verdict, that decriminalized homosexuality, had said

"If there is one constitutional tenet that can be said to be underlying theme of the Indian Constitution, it is that of 'inclusiveness'. This Court believes that Indian Constitution reflects this value deeply ingrained in Indian society, nurtured over several generations. The inclusiveness that Indian society traditionally displayed, literally in every aspect of life, is manifest in recognising a role in society for everyone. Those perceived by the majority as "deviants' or 'different' are not on that score excluded or ostracised.

Where society can display inclusiveness and understanding, such persons can be assured of a life of dignity and non-discrimination. This was the 'spirit behind the Resolution' of which Nehru spoke so passionately. In our view, Indian Constitutional law does not permit the statutory criminal law to be held captive by the popular misconceptions of who the LGBTs are. It cannot be forgotten that discrimination is antithesis of equality and that it is the recognition of equality, which will foster the dignity of every individual."

After a long, convoluted appeals process that stretched four years, the Supreme Court of India overturned the Delhi High Court’s 2009 thereby re-criminalizing gay relationships. In doing so, the Supreme Court of India stands apart – in disgraced isolation - from the judiciary in every other democracy in the world – including developing countries like South Africa, Nepal, Mexico and Brazil.

In throwing the ball back to the Executive branch, the judges sought to couch their decision in terms of showing constitutional deference for the role of the executive. However the SC has never shown hesitation in striking down central and state laws over the years and has been perfectly willing to create laws (mostly good) out of thin air (e.g., the recent one banning criminals from contesting elections). In this particular case, the Indian government’s final submission supported the repeal of Sec 377 (i.e., supported decriminalization of gay relationships). This would indicate that the deference to executive authority was a fig leaf – enabling the justices to render a regressive and prejudiced decision without overtly appearing to do so. The news media rightly greeted the ruling with headlines like “SC: Gay sex illegal” and “Gay Sex is a criminal offense rules Supreme Court” - for once the media’s inability to handle nuance working in the favour of truth.

While India’s brave community of LGBT activists and their heterosexual allies will continue to fight for equality – one that they will doubtless win in the long run; in the short term, this decision does real damage to the lives of gay people who are out or in the closet. It will expose lesbians and gays to even more harassment and persecution from the police; give a fresh institutional cover to discriminatory practices in every aspect of life – housing, employment among others and could shrink the already rather limited spaces that the LGBT community has carved out for themselves in public life.

Today, the Supreme Court of India has abjectly failed in its fundamental duty to protect the fundamental rights of an individual and of minorities. Here’s hoping justices Singhvi and Mukhopadhyaya will see the repudiation of their prejudices by the same Supreme Court in their lifetimes.

Show Off Your True Colours

 

It's National Coming Out Day

A day to determine that you WILL come out. 

Come out like a butterfly. Not too early when you may be easy prey. 

Come out having used the "cocoon" not simply as shelter but to gain strength and grow wings. 

Come out knowing it is going to take work to break out. But that it is work you must do, else your beauty will wither constricted and unseen.
 

Determine to come out so you experience the joy of flying. Free.

You Just Think You're Lost

The Inexorable Wheatening of America

First of all, this is really COOL. America really is becoming an inclusive, multi-coloured nation in many ways. It's had people of colour forever but the difference is that they're gaining access to institutions of power and pop culture that have traditionally been closed to them. From a  Black/multi-racial man in the Presidency to Hispanics in the Federal Courts to an Indian Miss America - it does seem that America, specially in the public space, is steadily becoming a more off-white or wheatish (as we say in India) country.

Second of all, check out the  tweeted reactions from some of the neanderthals that still inhabit this land. Their ignorance and hatred are sociologically fascinating. Lots more here.

And before Indians all over the world get on their high elephants I'd like to quote from a FB commenter - "Let's also not forget that Nina Davuluri would not have even a remote chance at winning Miss India because she is not 'fair-skinned'." Good point.

My Sabbatical From Suck

(Hopefully a) Prologue

I’m not naturally a negative person. I can see a cloud with a silver lining in a clear, sunny sky. Ask anyone who knows me.  So it would have been an easy thing – once I embarked on my indeterminate number of months-long sabbatical – to write a blog about what an amazing, life-transforming experience it was. But all of us already have insecure, narcissistic Facebook friends who try to make us feel bad about our mundane lives by posting pictures of the fabulous things they’ve been getting up to. You don’t need more of that from me or from this blog. This blog won’t make you feel bad about your lives.

This is a feel-good blog. It will make you feel good if you enjoy reading about other people’s misfortunes. Especially tiresome people, who take sabbaticals, fuelled by a spiritual awakening and LOVE. You know they only do it so that an innocuous question about how they met their partner can be turned into a dinner-long monologue about their amazing life and relationship. You know they’re going to repeat the same story at all dinners for the rest of their lives.

So if you’ve been looking for an antidote to Eat, Pray Love. For a tale of someone who chucked everything to chase love and to perhaps find himself but instead, between Delhi’s heat and a lover’s deception, he lost his appetite and prayed for a quick way to end the sabbatical that had sucked right from the first day. Well then this is the blog for you.

Or at least that was the plan when I started writing this a few months ago, on a luxury bus to Dharamsala as it lumbered through the darkness over an unapologetically unpaved, unlit national highway. (If having the Dalai Lama traverse a road a few thousand times cannot inspire a government to pave it, then nothing will.)

I was resolved to recount to you, dear reader, everything that went wrong on my trip. To see every glass as at least half if not fully empty. To forget not a single, unpleasant happening - not the inconvenience of missed flights or the incontinence of queasy stomachs; not hours spent in traffic jams or days spent wallowing in self-pity.   

And I shall still try to do it. But it will no longer be a spiel of unrelenting despair as the one I’d hoped to write. You see, my ambitions of writing an uncompromisingly negative narrative were constantly derailed by family and friends, old and new. As a collective bunch they insisted on inviting themselves to every step of my (mis)adventure – and constantly showering me with such badly disguised love and support that it was difficult to sustain a crabby mood for very long.

They let my dog trample and shed over their beds and couches simply because they’d seen him sprawl on my furniture in Facebook pictures. They played Santa Claus on a grand scale – offering me the use of their fantastically-located, furnished South Delhi home and automatic cars and then tearing up checks I made out to thank them in a small way. They booked bus tickets for me when I had the desire but not the energy to figure out how to get to the mountains. They called and messaged me from across 6 or 12 time zones to make sure I wasn’t down or if I was, to determinedly drag me up. Drove twenty kilometres on a scooter through rush hour traffic so I could have 3G on my phone enabled a day or two sooner. Demanded an explanation for my skipping meals. Let me traipse in without notice and request sliced mangoes and three-egg omelettes for brunch. Bought beds on Craigslist (yeah there’s a context to that that makes sense). Went to the same sites for the fourth time so I would have company for my first time (Even Bali must get boring after the third time!) and then insisted on paying for the trip. Set me up with eligible bachelors. Showered me with professional contacts so I could find a job I liked in India and in SF. Didn’t get upset when I reached out to only a fraction of those contacts. Involved me in writing and marketing projects. Invited me to their homes and insisted I stay - in Faridabad, Chhatarpur, Vasant Kunj, Mayur Vihar, Safdarjung Enclave, Gurgaon. In Jaipur, Bombay, San Francisco, Fort Lauderdale, DC, New York and Jakarta. 

Listened to me for hours even - actually especially - when I wasn’t my most entertaining, attractive self. Cooked Goan curries and roasted whole chickens for me. Drank with me. Gave me Reiki. Meditated with me.

But there I go missing the dark clouds for the silver lining. Let me practice looking at this with a jaundiced eye. It isn’t hard to do – it’s just a different way of looking at things, right? Just needs a little practice. Here goes:

So basically - at the end of nearly five months off, I’m certifiably single, still without the perfect job, separated from my beloved dog, with considerably lighter pockets and all I have to show for it is the knowledge that there are people scattered across the globe who love me lots and love me back? Dear Universe, I kinda knew that already. Clearly, this sabbatical sucked.  I'll try and do a better job of proving it in future posts. 

And given a chance, I shall do my bit to make sure my friends' and family members' future sabbaticals will suck too.

Sounds of laughter, shades of life Are ringing through my open ears

Inciting and inviting me

Limitless, undying love, which Shines around me like a million suns

It calls me on and on across the universe

****
From the poem Across the Universe by John Lennon

Stand Your Ground in Florida - Unless You're Black

A (Black) Florida Mom has just been awarded a 20-year prison sentence - yes, you read it right, 20 years - for firing warning shots at an abusive husband. This despite invoking Florida's infamous Stand-Your-Ground law which allows the victim of an ongoing crime (which can simply be feeling threatened) to immediately retaliate with lethal force in self-defense, instead of having to first attempt to run for safety and resort to violence only when all possibilities of escape have been exhausted. 

How does this square with the verdict in the Trayvon Martin case, where the guy who trailed and killed a 17 year old black kid - simply because he thought the kid wearing a hoodie was looking suspicious - was acquitted?? In the Martin case, the shooter also invoked the Stand-Your-Ground law and won! Maybe it's just a coincidence that in both cases the law's been interpreted to the detriment of black protagonists.

But it seems to me that in  Florida the stand-your-ground law applies to black people only if they're the person facing a gun not holding one.

The New Algeria?

 I'm a fervent believer in both democracy and in keeping church and state strictly separate. In Egypt these two values were in conflict - if not war - when Morsi won the popular vote to become the country's first democratically elected President. It was soon clear that the Muslim Brotherhood leader was not going to hesitate to bring a more religious bent to the new constitution and to Egyptian public life. So a part of me cannot but be happy that Morsi is gone. Deposed by his own purblindness and an even larger popular revolt than Mubarak faced two years ago. My hope was that if religious parties again won a large vote share in the next Presidential and parliamentary elections, they would be more focused on economic development versus driving a religious agenda - taking a cue from Turkey's ruling party, the AKP.  The AKP is also mildly Islamist but took a softly-softly approach in the first ten years of being in power - since they faced an entrenched, arguably anti-democratic secular establishment (army, judiciary, elite). The AKP government had to deliver astounding growth ((Turkey's GDP per capita has tripled in nominal terms in the last ten years) before it was strong enough to enact religion-influenced laws without the danger of being over-thrown.

However, if today's New York Times article is right, and the Muslim Brotherhood is going to be banned once again - then it will put paid to the hopes of establishing a real democracy in the country. And the fact that the power cuts and gas shortages disappeared almost as soon as Morsi fell, leads me to believe that the army/secular establishment was hard at work behind the scenes to artificially create conditions that would bring a cross-section of people out into the streets. The people of Egypt have been had, I think.

A democracy that excludes the main Islamist party from public life will by definition be truncated. The coup has established a year as the time within which a government must deliver tangible improvements to be judged worthy of staying in office. And when the new government fails to deliver significant improvements - (as is likely - who can turn around a country battered by 60 years of despotism amidst a slow-growing world economy in 365 days?) - it will also lose legitimacy.

Real democracy requires allowing the Muslim Brotherhood an unfettered right to win elections (if they can), form a government and fail to deliver on the mundane things - over 4-5 years - that ultimately all governments are judged on, by voters the second time around. That would be the best way to demystify and defang the Islamist parties. Otherwise, what the Egyptians liberals will be left with, is another frozen peace - where they have social freedoms but no real political freedoms. Or if they're unlucky, they'll face an internecine conflict with the disenfranchised Islamists, a la Algeria.

No Egyptian should want that.

The Evisceration of DOMA and why It's Important

I was lucky enough to be in Washington DC on 24th June 2013 and in front of the US Supreme Court building at 10:00 when it annouced two momentous decisions - one legalizing gay marriage in California and the other repealing a key provision of the discriminatory law, with the Orwellian name - Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Here's my description of the scenes outside the SCOTUS building and how the DOMA decision impacts gay rights in the US and beyond.

Take a gander.