Baba Ramdev has insulted the Congress for speaking out against the unjust and regressive recent verdict on Section 377
Oh the potency of politics! It makes foul-mouthed ruffians out of even saintly gurus. And so today, India’s best known yoga master can call India’s best known and oldest political party a party of homosexuals. Not as a statement of fact. Not as an accusation. Not as a reflection of the Baba’s belief. But simply as an insult. Such a statement is supposed to be followed by sniggers and guffaws in the nudge-nudge-wink-wink style of infantile homophobics.
Baba Ramdev felt the need to insult the Congress because the party did not support the Supreme Court’s verdict on Section 377 that re-criminalised homosexuality and non-procreative sex. Some senior leaders of the party – including Sonia Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi, P. Chidambaram and Shashi Tharoor – had actually spoken out against the unjust and regressive judgment.
The Baba in orange, on the contrary, had been overjoyed by the Supreme Court’s order. Which was not surprising, since Ramdev was one of the petitioners who had challenged the 2009 Delhi High Court order against Section 377. Thus he felt the urge to insult the Congress for not appreciating what he must have looked upon as his moral and legal victory.
So he called Congress a party of homosexuals. It is of course acceptable to insult men by verbally stripping them of their masculinity. A man can be insulted if called ‘napunsak’ ie ‘un-man’ or simply a eunuch or impotent. A man can also be insulted by calling him ‘womanly.’ In our patriarchal society, it is easy to insult men by casting aspersions on their gender identity.
And our politicians encourage such gendered insults. Even clever, but crude women leaders like Mamata Banerjee, who have internalised the power of sexist ways, routinely use such insults, like offering bangles to or physically putting bangles on a male politician she disagrees with. The flip side of this of course is how a woman is praised by bestowing upon her the venerated mantle of manhood. Indira Gandhi was called ‘the only man in her Cabinet.’
So it is not surprising that Baba Orange Blossom would use the word ‘homosexual’ as an insult. Because sex and sexual identity are used in pretty much the same way. In fact, the brilliantly argued 2009 order of the Delhi High Court against Section 377 had also mentioned this. Pointing out that the Constitution forbids discrimination on the basis of religion, race, caste and sex, the Delhi High court had reasoned that the word ‘sex’ here includes not just gender, but also sexual orientation. So Section 377 was discriminatory, and went against the spirit of the Constitution.
But there was reason for the yoga entrepreneur to be livid. These liberal johnnies and their talk of equality and human rights were preventing him from expanding his business. Baba Orange Blossom had loudly declared that homosexuality was a disease, and that he, the television guru-cum- wannabe politician, had the cure. He had invited homosexuals to come to him and be healed.
“Homosexuality is just a bad addiction,” Baba Orange Blossom had declared. “I can cure it.” You need to cure it, because there was no merit whatsoever in being homosexual. “What is the contribution of homosexuals to the world?” he thundered with the arrogance of the ignorant. How many homosexuals does he know? Does he know that history, politics, philosophy, science, literature and the arts are peppered with hugely talented gay and bisexual people?
And to drive his point home, he insisted that homosexuality was weird and disgusting. “Today they are talking of homosexuality, tomorrow they will talk of having sex with animals,” he exclaimed. And went on to say that homosexuality was not natural, because our parents did not practise it.
How does he have such deep insight into our parents’ private lives? Simple. “If our parents were homosexuals then we would not have been born. So it’s unnatural.” Poor Baba Orange Blossom. He has no idea why and how babies are born.
Anyway, he did open his arms to invite these unnatural creatures into his yoga shop, promising a cure. He had perhaps hoped that a hushed stream of shamefaced parents and wives and friends would rush into his yogic chambers dragging in prospective patients. He could then put them all in various curious positions, instruct them to gasp in certain rhythms, and sell them some fine bone-dust from potent heterosexual creatures. He could perhaps even diversify The possibilities were immense.
So all this talk about how homosexuality was not a disease, that it was an inherent sexual orientation, that one was born gay, that it was not unnatural and perfectly normal was a big problem. All these bleeding heart justice-for-all protests against the Supreme Court verdict re-making criminals out of homosexuals could gravely damage his make-hay-while-curing-the-gay plan.
Of course what dear Baba Orange Blossom completely brushed aside in his righteous defence of the archaic law about unnatural sex was that it did not only criminalise homosexuals, but made a criminal out of anyone who had non-procreative sex. That could mean just anyone, including parents of a brood of brats, who had sex for pleasure in some of the various exciting ways we find described in detail in our wonderfully tolerant and diverse Hindu tradition.
So we see that if you want to think straight on sexual preference and the rights of consenting adults in the bedroom, you need to be able to look back and around you. Getting your lungi in a yogic twist with your head stuck between your thighs is perhaps not the best way.
Antara Dev Sen is Editor of *The Little Magazine*. Emial: sen@littlemag.com
Antara Dev Sen
