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.

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.

Of Monkeys, Kiwis and Avian Inhabitants of Eden

So I watched a cricket match after more than 5 years - the first India-New Zealand 20-20 match in which India got soundly thrashed by the Kiwis. Some things never change huh :) I watched it on a large screen in an English pub with B and R and three beers to help soften the pain...OK I admit I'd have had the beers even if we were winning.

Anyway, the Indian team, with their lack-lustre bowling attack (for want of a better word), might want to think about visiting the local temple, (or mosque or church for that matter) to seek divine intervention to ward off an impending series white-wash. But if they do, they'd be well-advised to NOT wear their new uniform to the temple - the one being modelled so proudly by Dhoni in this embedded video.


Especially NOT the new sweat-pants which have that rather intriguing orange/red patch on the ass (partly visible in its infinite majesty when poor Dhoni turns around on the ramp). People might pelt them with stones mistaking them for mistake them for human-kind's pesky, distant cousins (pictured below) who often inhabit temple environs and harass hapless worshipers.

However, I do think there's a designer somewhere who does need to be given a one-way ticket - perhaps on one of the old Sahara Airlines planes - to the Okavango where his talents can be much better utilized designing winter-wear for pet macaques.

Speaking of fauna - R. enticed me to get off my couch and go watch India be routed on a big-screen by telling me about how good looking, the New Zealand team members are. And he was right, case in point being the wicket keeper Brendon McCullum...
Someone tell me why they're called the Kiwis again? I think Birds of Paradise might be a more appropriate appellation.

Urban Pools of Meltwater

"While there have always been meltwater pools. There are many more of them covering a far larger area of ice....This meltwater is now believed to keep sinking all the way down to the bottom, cutting deep crevasses and vertical tunnels called 'moulins'. When the water reaches the bottom of the ice, it lubricates the surface of the bedrock and destabilizes the ice mass raising fears that the ice mass will slide more quickly towards the ocean"

- Al Gore in the Inconvenient Truth

Al Gore was talking about innocuous looking pools of melted ice (meltwater) that have been spreading across the surface of Greenland. The adjoining picture is NOT Niagara Falls; its meltwater flowing into a deep moulin. How deep is the moulin? Well, the tiny black dots at the top of the picture are actually people.

While ice-sheets already formed on the Arctic and Antarctic Oceans are also breaking away and melting, this does not raise sea levels. Meltwater on the Greenland's landmass is significant because it may help huge chunks of land-based ice to slide into the sea which WOULD raise the sea levels.

I believe that metaphorical meltwater pools have also formed in urban Indian society...that has an equally large potential to change the climate in India - in this case, the social one. Unlike global warming, this climate change is likely bring positive change to most people's lives (even if they don't think so themselves :)

The meltwater pools can be found in places like Buzz in Delhi where young couples dance, smoke, drink and kiss in abandon every weekend night...or for example in Mocha in Bombay - where packs of barely-teened girls and boys spend horrendous number of hours and huge amounts of deep-pocket money on melted-Lindt hot chocolate and green-apple flavored hookahs.

The signs of climate change are everywhere. Here's a few examples:
a) Rising divorce rates (specially amongst the under-35 age-group) - Ask yourself how many divorced friends your parents had and how many divorced wonderful friends you do
b) Falling rates of pre-marital virginity. The perceived virginity rate in the eyes of parents is probably still at its 1960s level - I know many many couples who've lived-in in India but almost no parents who knew about it :)
c) The laissez faire attitude...fancy way of saying live-and-let-live...of most of my friends and relatives to my coming out. "But even then, why do you have to move to the U.S." I was asked a couple of times. Or the increasing number of gay nights in Delhi - at last count it had doubled to 2! - each, I believe, well-attended.
d) The increasing number of kissing scenes in Hindi films - even Ash did it...yes Amitabh, she did it and even if its cut from the theatre runs of Dhoom2 its probably already on Youtube for eternity. I do think though, that Ash kissing-in-movies is like Microsoft bundling IE with Windows - its a free gift that people didn't expect and thats designed to put wannabes like Mallika Sherawat (or poor Netscape) out of business

Sceptics will argue that there was always a tiny Page-3-population that lived like they were in Malibu rather than Mumbai - I think the difference is that:
a) The people swimming in the thawed meltwater pools today, are overwhelmingly middle class - not the upper-class people Shobha De famously wrote about
b) They don't regard themselves as social revolutionaries unlike the 1960's (1970's in India)
Flower-Power generation - the increasingly blase attitude towards sex, divorce, marriage etc is truly subversive - one that is likely to infect contemporaries in smaller towns, as well as younger siblings, kids and nephews/nieces who are now growing up. Quiet creeping revolution is more difficult to put down than bus-window-shattering protests

I, of course, selfishly applaud the omens of a new social climate - it may allow me to have a dating scene based in Delhi/Bombay before I'm 80 and can't dance anymore.

But there are others who should be worried. Human action has led to the drying up of the Aral Sea (Yeah really - the whole sea literally evaporated into thin air) and left shipping fleets stuck in the sand (see adjoining picture).

Indian conservative political parties - the ones that tend to riot on Valentine's Day - may find themselves similarly left stranded by the wayside along with their Ice Age ideas - if they don't change with the