BackWe need to engage with whoever is in power: Anjali Gopalan
The original petitioner of the '377 case' talks about why despite the negative Supreme Court verdict, it is not a case of 'back to square one'
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Mumbai: When Anjali Gopalan returned to Delhi in 1994, after a nine-year stint in the US, it was as though she had walked through a looking glass. Gopalan worked in the field of HIV/AIDS prevention shortly after it was first discovered in 1982 and caught the beginning of what the 56-year-old now calls the world’s most political disease. At the time, she says, it was perceived as a gay man’s cancer. Gopalan returned to India intent to prevent the same mistakes born of misinformation and prejudice that she saw happen in the US. What she saw here was a reverse stigma: many gay men thought of the disease as an American problem.
On return, Gopalan, who received the Chevalier de la Légions d’honneur—the highest French award—last year, started the Naz Foundation (India) Trust on the mezzanine floor of her parents’ home. As outreach work increased, Gopalan began an HIV testing clinic, and soon opened wards for HIV-positive patients. With a grant from the MacArthur Foundation, Naz also began holding sexual health programmes with youngsters in schools, which eventually led to the opening of the city’s first lesbian, bisexual and transgender women helpline and safe space in 1997.
In 2001, the Naz Foundation filed a petition in the Delhi high court against Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalizes homosexual intercourse. The petition faced a long legal battle, with several other parties from the queer community joining the fight for recognition and equal rights. In 2009, the Delhi high court delivered a verdict that was hailed globally as a human rights win—the archaic colonial law was read down to not apply to consenting adults. However, certain religious groups and individuals appealed the judgement in the Supreme Court, and the apex court delivered a verdict on 11 December 2013, which overturned the Delhi high court verdict. The Supreme Court judgement was challenged by the original petitioners, including Naz, and at present awaits a curative petition hearing—the final step in appealing against a judgement delivered by the highest court of the land.
In an interview, Gopalan talks about her HIV prevention work, the petition against 377 and why although homosexuality is again criminalized, things aren’t the same as they were before the Naz petition. Edited excerpts:
You began working in the field of HIV/AIDS prevention at a time when there wasn’t much knowledge about it. What was it like?
The first case of AIDS was detected in 1982, so a lot of research was ongoing even as I was working in the field. I was trained by the US department of health. At one point, we were taught to ask people to wear two condoms instead of one, because they assumed it made sex safer. There wasn’t also much medication available, and I attended funerals every second week. Many doctors and nurses didn’t touch AIDS patients. There were also underlying moral connotations to getting affected. This is why it was largely ignored when we first saw it emerge in the gay community, and later among those who injected themselves (such as heroin users). It was only when the third wave hit, and women and children began getting infected, that people sat up. They felt that it’s not just the “bad people who God wants to punish" that are affected, but “innocent" women. For a long time, it was seen as a gay disease. Now, this is something we have learnt over the years, that it’s just not true.
Were things similar in India when you returned?
I felt very strongly that we could learn from what happened in the US, and not repeat the same mistakes. I had seen the impact of good prevention. We knew what worked by the time I came back, so I thought it would be good if we stayed ahead of the game. But I also had to relearn many things. I’ll give you an example. During my HIV training, we were told that people were straight, gay or bi (sexual). But when I first started working with the queer community here, I realized that people are not as pigeonholed into identities in India, as they may be in the West. Several men who had sex with men were married to women. What became clearer to me was the impact on the lives of women and children in India. What also became very clear very quickly was that there were no role models for men and no spaces for them to learn how to resist the pressure of marriage.
One of the criticisms the legal fight faces is that it has been very HIV/AIDS-oriented, and a number of other pressing issues such as marriage, property inheritance and adoption have been ignored. What would you say to that?
What else could we have done? We are not a gay organization, and I am not gay. Further, if it is a criminal activity, what marriage, inheritance, or adoption can you fight for? The only way to enter the debate at that point when we did was through HIV. Also, at that time, there were no gay groups out in the open. Nobody was willing to come out for fear of harassment and blackmail, although both were rampant. A gay person came in for counselling with his parents around that time—he had been given electric shock as part of the aversion therapy, and the Human Rights Commission did not admit the case, because they said that he was indulging in criminal activity. That’s when I realized we had to do something.
The case is now pending hearing as a curative petition before the Supreme Court. If the court disagrees to the hearing, the legal battle ends right there. Does that push us back to square one?
We will fight the battle all the way, because we feel very strongly that wrong has been done. How can we live in a country where we deny rights to people? What’s different now though is the number of queer groups out in the open. In colleges, students talk to others and have peer groups that discuss sexuality. All this happened within a short span of time, after the Delhi high court judgement. So no, we’re not back at square one. What we need are larger coalitions with women’s groups and trade unions. We need other groups to join the conversation about sexuality and human rights. How else can change take place? I don’t believe the Supreme Court judgement would prevent people from coming out. The environment has always been so negative, which is why people have not come out over the years. They can’t even come out to the people closest to them, such as parents. That says something about us as a people.
The Bharatiya Janata Party president went on record saying that the party is in favour of Section 377. With the party now in power, what will be the way forward for the Naz petition case, and HIV/AIDS prevention?
No matter who comes to power, we need to make sure that programmes in the HIV/AIDS arena continue, and a lot more is done in the field of care and prevention.
No matter who is in power, we need to continue to engage. Even though they have taken a negative stand, we have to get them to look at things differently, because it’s not possible to continue our work with the MSM (men who have sex with men) community without Section 377 out of the way. To do this, we need to join hands with more people, who’re fighting for rights for different marginalized communities. How can any work happen unless rights are granted?
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