HOW HINDUISM IS FIGHTING HOMOPHOBIA ABROAD?

[Based on an article written by Himanshi Dhawan, published in The Times of India dated 10th September, 2017 (Sunday)].

Rama Ramanuja Achari, Head of the Australian Council of Hindu clergy, recently wrote a blog supporting same sex unions. His argument: Same-sex attraction is not a personal choice like "Should I have dal makhani or dal fry?" - It is an orientation with which one is born. In the Western context one is said to be 'genetically pre-disposed towards same sex attraction'; in a Hindu context it is a samskara inherited from one's previous birth, said the Sydney-based priest. Clearly Hindu religion in foreign climes is adapting to change times, even as India itself appears to be frozen in 1860, clinging to the arachaic Section 377 of Indian Penal Code that rules sex between homosexuals illegal and against the order of nature.

Achari has conducted three marriages for same-sex couples, and describes them as "sambhandam" (relationship) and not a vivaha samskaram (marriage ceremony). He argues, "From a legal point of view, when two people engage in consensual sex what is the problem? There is no crime if there is no victim. And from a dharma point of view, all beings must be treated with compassion and kindness and allowed freedom to pursue their own self-actualisation. Any opposition to their self-actualisation is Adharma". Similar weddings have taken place in South Africa, Canada, United Kingdom and the United States of America. In August 2017, Leicester-based Chand Vyas conducted the United Kingdom's first inter-faith lesbian wedding. Kalavati Mistry, 48, met her Jewish soulmate Miriam Jefferson more than twenty years ago on a training course in America. They tied the knot in a traditional Hindu ceremony, wearing red-and-white bridal colours. Even on the happy day, Mistry spoke about how she kept her sexuality a secret for years and how difficult it was for her to be an Asian gay woman.

Indian laws proscribing homo-sexuality are based on Christian Victorian Laws which have been rejected even by their country of origin - Britain. Dr. Arvind Sharma, Birk Professor in Comparative Religion at Canada's McGill University, says that Hinduism does not share the intensity of aversion to homosexuality found in the Abrahamic religions. In his essay on Homosexuality and Hinduism, Sharma stresses that "we should distinguish between Hindu religious attitudes, and Hindu cultural attitudes" because "as a religion, Hinduism is probably more tolerant than it is as a culture". 

"Hinduism is a plural religious tradition so one should not be surprised to find different views in it on such matters", he says. In fact his essay was quoted by the Hindu American Foundation, one of the first bodies to support Delhi High Court's 2009 judgment that struck down the validity of Section. 377. In its policy brief, HAF has held, "One of Hinduism's core teachings is that every being is divine or a reflection of divine qualities, regardless of one's outer attributes. Aside from the humanitarian imperative to offer equal treatment to all, the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) believes that this and other fundamental and ancient Hindu teachings may allow Hindus to more openly embrace LGBT rights and marriage equality". 

Britain's Hindu Council has also supported gay and lesbian rights after a 2009 legislation made same-sex union legal. Its founding member Anil Bhanot says, "Hinduism doesn't discriminate against homosexuals but gay marriage is not what it ordains in scripture - it's always man and woman. However, gay couples can seek spiritual blessings which Hinduism can't deny". Back home in April 2017, Punjab Police female sub-inspector Manjit Singh donned a turban to get married to her love. Though the wedding had the approval of both families it was a quiet affair with many denying knowledge about it later. Not everyone who comes out of the closet finds acceptance. Often culture and society are harsher in their interpretation of religion which leads to suicides or unhappy marriages. 
Mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik says that there have always been references to the queer and gay in Hindu texts. He gives the example of Valimiki Ramayan which has descriptions of rakshasa women who kiss women on Ravana's bed on whose lips lingers the taste of their master. There is the Krittivasa Ramayana that recounts the story of two widows who drink a magic potion and, in the absence of their husband, make love to each other and end up bearing a child without bones (traditionally believed to be the contribution of semen).
"How does one interpret these stories? Are they gay stories? They certainly shatter the conventional confines of gender and sexuality. Ancient Indian authors and poets imagined a state where the lines separating masculinity and femininity often blurred and even collapsed", Pattanaik says. But Europeans who came to India viewed these stories as yet another indicator of Indian effeminacy and Oriental debauchery. Mocked by them, the Hindus became defensive and apologetic, he adds.
This liberal, inclusive strain continues to be marginal in the popular narrative today. In a rebuttal to conservatives, Rama Ramanuja Achari says, "For certain astrological reasons, we marry young girls to banana tress ar young men to pots of water (kalashas), and we take these ceremonies seriously and consider them as 'valid' marriages. We also perform the marriage ceremony of a stone (saligrama) to a bush (tulsi) - so how can we seriously and morally object to the marriage (meaning 'union') of two people who are in love and wish to make a formal commitment to each other to live and love in peace, dignity and happiness?"
--Challapalli Srinivas Chakravarthy--
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CALL OF THE CONSCIENCE ELICITS CONFESSION FROM JUDGE.

The judge's conscience gnawed at him a little more every year after he retired from the bench. With every news article he read about a wrongful conviction, Frank J. Barbaro, the former Brooklyn judge and assembly-man, would return to a particular murder case in 1999 and question whether he had made the right decision to send a man to prison for fifteen years to life. Not long ago, Mr. Barbaro (85), decided to contact the lawyer for that defendant, Frank Kagan. Mr. Barbaro got a transcript of the trial, during which Kagan had waived his right to a jury and put his fate in Mr. Barbaro's hands.

"As I read it, I couldn't believe my eyes", the former judge said in an interview. "It was so obvious I had made a mistake. I got sick. Physically sick". Barbaro's change of heart led to a highly unusual spectacle this week in a Brooklyn courtroom: He took the witness stand in state Supreme Court to testify at a hearing that his own verdict should be set aside. His reason was even more unusual: As a diehard liberal who had fought as a politician against racism in Brooklyn and weathered the race conflicts in Bensomhurst, Mr. Barbaro said he had been biased against Kagan because he was white, and the shooting victim. Wavell Wint, was black.

"I believe now that I was seeing this young, white fellow as a bigot, as someone who assassinated an African-American", Mr. Barbaro testified before Justice ShawnDya L. Simpson. He added: "I was prejudiced during the trial". Barbaro's statement, reported in The New York Post has re-opened a case that had seemed airtight and put in question a verdict that had survived an appeal in 2004. Experts on appellate law said it was highly unusual for a judge to try to overturn his own verdict, much less admit a bias, and it raised unusual legal issues, akin to when a juror is found after a trial to have a hidden prejudice. 

"I have never heard of this happening before, and I have been doing this a long time", said Richard Greenberg, the lawyer in charge at the Office of the Appellate Defender, which was not involved in the case. Relatives of the victim, Wint, however, said they were stunned that Mr. Barbaro had changed his mind. During the trial and sentencing, the judge had made it plain he did not believe Kagan's argument that he had acted in self-defence when he shot Wint. 

"We think it's ridiculous what's going on", Carmen De Jesus, the Mother of Wint's son, said. "After so many years, they are going to bring all this back?" Wint (23) died in a struggle with Kagan outside a movie theatre on Linden Boulevard in Brooklyn on 04th November, 1998. Evidence presented at the trial showed Kagan (then 24) had gone to the movies with an unlicenced pistol in his belt. Wint also went to the show with some friends and had been drinking heavily. After they left the film - a showing of Hype Williams' hip-hop movie Belly - the two got into a fight. Kagan said that Wint had tried to rob him of his gold chain, so he flashed his gun. Wint's friends pulled him away, but he broke free and approached Kagan a second time. As they argued, Kagan pulled his gun again, and Wint grabbed it. Two shots hit Wint in the chest and abdomen.

Kagan was found guilty in October 1999 of murder and criminal possession of a weapon. A few years later, Mr. Barbaro retired, he found he could not let go of the case. "I began to have doubts", he said, "and the doubts grew". In 2011, he contacted Kagan's lawyer, Jeff Adler. Mr. Barbaro said that as he read the trial transcript, he came to believe Kagan's self-defence claims were valid. 

"With these undisputed facts, I should have acquitted him", he said in the interview. "There was no way I could have found him guilty". 

Generally, appellate courts in New York state have been unwilling to overturn verdicts when jurors come forward to express doubts. But a judge saying he made a mistake because he was biased raised different questions, according to another of Kagan's lawyers, Richard E. Mischel. "My contention is that by waiving a jury, you are not waiving your impartial jurist", Mr. Mischel said. 

[Based on a news item published in New York Times News Service, written by James C. Mckinley Jr.] 

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THE RIGHT TO MURDER.

The gunning down of journalist Gauri Lankesh is yet another bullet in the heart of those who value free thought in India. Gauri's murderers remain unknown, some pointing to a Naxal link, others like her own lawyer alleging that 'Hindu terror units' took her life. When it comes to allegationsabout 'saffron terror', not since Nathuram Godse has a Hindutva-inspired assassin openly taken authorship of his act of murder. while Islamist or Maoist extremists generally claim responsibility for their killings, 'saffron terror' has been suspected in several cases like recently in the murders of rationalists Dabholkar, Kalburgi and Pansare, arrests have been made but there haven't been any convictions. 

We don't know who killed Gauri, but we do know who is celebrating. Those on social media jubilant at proud Hindu nationalists, people who Gauri described as her greatest enemy. In fact, Hindu nationalism seeks a new enemy every day. If Gauri had been alive and expressed her views fro example on how India should not deport Rohingya Muslims, she would surely have been screamed at by furious 'nationalist' television anchors and branded as a traitor, anti-national jihadist and Naxalite. The fever pitch of TRP-driven accusations often builds to such a crescendo that the individual against whom prime time fingers are pointed ends up becoming public enemy No. 1, the equivalent of a criminal who is publicly paraded on TV every night with a metaphorically blackened humiliated face even as a gladiatorial mob on social media howls for her blood. 

Violent minds, violent language and violent speech beget violent acts. In an atmosphere where violence is legitimised, endorsed and even seen as a ticket to creating an electoral constituency, the actual act of murder of an 'anti-national' only becomes part of a 'war'. The so-called 'just war' against those who insist on the right not to be Hindu nationalists, to be atheist and rationalist, or to criticise superstitions, or to eat beef, to wear mini-skirts, to be homosexual, to attack government policy on Jammu and Kashmir, or to speak in support of JNU students. The toxic divide between 'nationalists' and 'traitors' is deeply worrying. Gauri had strong ideas, she spoke out against Hindutva politics, attacked caste discrimination, pushed for Naxals to abandon the gun and argued passionately for sexual liberation of women. In a conservative regional milieu, her voice may have been offensive to some but instead of mounting counter-arguments, someone decided her voice had to be forever silenced.

Her killers may have used a gun but don't we see a symbolic gun pointed at the heads of student activists like Kanhaiya Kumar and Umar Khalid in the manner they are publicly vilified? Doesn't the gun loom large when hit lists are circulated, naming women journalists and activists as next targets after Gauri? The cult of violence is breeding faster than the aedes aegypti mosquito and infecting many with the fever of blood lust against those they disagree with. Particularly violent language is directed at the media. Ministers can label media as 'presstitutes', a BJP MP can call for a noted author to be tied to a jeep, noxious foul-mouthed abusers get strength and even legitimacy from the fact that they are 'followed' by our top political leadership. Journalists have been threatened, intimidated and murdered before, especially in far flung areas where telling the truth means risking all. But today, are attacks against journalists being endorsed by the ruling party when it issues only perfunctory condemnations of Gauri's murder, instead of a ringing declaration that attacks on media persons will not be tolerated?

When the government itself takes pride in an anti-media stance, when certain journalists are boycotted by ruling party ministers, when critical journalists are censored and labelled 'news traders' by the political leadership, when lawyers who beat up female reporters are not censured, then is the government itself creating an environment encouraging violence against the Press? Too much religious ideology in politics inevitably creates violence in society. Those rulers who practice 'soft Islamism' or 'soft Hindutva' open the gate for more radical extremists to gain legitimacy. The divide between Hindus and Muslimsis being catastrophically sharpened today, with every new issue like azaan, or beef ban or Vande Matharam or even the so-called competing claims of shamshans and kabristhaans becoming a tacit political signal for violent goons to take over the argument and physically attack the targets of their rage.

'Shout don't shoot' is supposed to be the mantra of democracy, but when democracy becomes entwined with irrational religious ideology then shout becomes tacit permission to shoot, all norms of parliamentary democracy brushed aside by those empowered by blind faith. In a recent interaction former RBI governor Raghuram Rajan said that open-mindedness is a crucial pre-requisite for high growth economies that rely on the services sector. The manner in which Gauri's death is being legitmised as just punishment for traitors shows that far from open-mindedness, those who dare to think differently are seen as natural targets for assassination.

If we as a society don't speak up now, there will be more deaths, and each 'anti-national' murder will be celebrated more noisily than ever. As TV anchors unleash deadly calls to metaphorically eliminate the enemy, the legitimacy of violence will become widespread. That's why, strict exemplary action must be taken against those who celebrate violence because they are just as culpable as Gauri's killers.

---Challapalli Srinivas Chakravarthy---

[Based on an article written by Sagarika Ghose, published in The Times of India dated 13th September, 2017 (Wednesday)]

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