out of the twilight zone
by
Douglas Messerli
Sridhar
Rangayan and Saagar Gupta (writers), Sridhar Rangayan (director) Breaking Free
/ 2015
In
one of my reviews of Indian gay films in early 2000—and there have now been a
number—I rather fatuously commented that it was amazing that such a film might
be allowed to be made in India. I won’t exactly take back that statement, but
after watching the documentary Breaking Free, which was seven years in
the making, I’d suggest that I might simply have restated my comment, noting
how important films like the one about which I was writing were for a strong yet
still somewhat nascent LGBTQ movement in that country.
Indeed, about a fourth of the way into
this important recounting of the development of a Rainbow coalition in India, I
paused in watching the film, convinced that what I was observing was so similar
to such conscious-raising shifts in many other countries, including the US,
that I might need to continue.
With regard to gay, lesbian, and
bisexual, individuals, the British-created Section 377, however, made it near
to impossible for an open LGBTQ community to exist. The law reads: Whoever
voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man,
woman or animal shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with
imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years,
and shall also be liable to fine.
Even if one were suspected, as were many
kothis (effeminate gay men), of same-sex relationships, they could be arrested,
imprisoned; or, just as often, they might be sexually attacked by the police or
military and bribed, with threats of reporting such activities to their
families, which in that patriarchal society might lead to their expulsion from their
homes, jobs, and social interactions, ending in perhaps even death. In many
other cases, young women and men secretly involved in same-sex relationships,
were married-off by their parents in the long tradition of Indian matchmaking, about
which Netflix recently posted a new comedic series.
As the director and early narrator of
this film declares, gay and lesbian love, in their world, was without a name.
They hovered in the shadows, lived for years “in the twilight zone,” sharing
the reality of their sexuality with only a few close friends.
Was it any wonder that so very few films
about LGBTQ life were made before the gradual and somewhat startling changes which
this film documents?
Kothis are, in fact, at the heart of this
film, relating particularly to cases in Lucknow, Delhi, and elsewhere, in one
case of which a young transgender woman, Kokila, simply waiting for a bus in Delhi at 10:30
at night, was picked up by police and taken to the station where she was raped
by 11 officers.
Pandian, a 21-year old street sweeper in Chennai was also gang-raped one night at a police station, where they used Section 377 as permission to orally attack him, tearing away the lining of his mouth with their penises; when he protested in pain they rammed their batons into the soft tissue, returning the next few nights to repeat the attacks. Suffering and in fear of further abuse, Pandian committed suicide.
Pandian, a 21-year old street sweeper in Chennai was also gang-raped one night at a police station, where they used Section 377 as permission to orally attack him, tearing away the lining of his mouth with their penises; when he protested in pain they rammed their batons into the soft tissue, returning the next few nights to repeat the attacks. Suffering and in fear of further abuse, Pandian committed suicide.
Finally, the Lucknow-based Bharosa Trust,
a National Government Organization that was conducting an HIV prevention drive
(the movie makes clear just how difficult it was to distribute condoms and teach
the LGBTQ community safe-sex practices when most of those involved were nearly
invisible), were raided in 2001 by police and taken to an open courtyard where
they were repeatedly kicked in their asses and forced to drink filthy
open-sewer water.
The previous cases, described above, were
taken to court, but since the lawyers and others had filed for the society at
large rather than for the individuals involved, they were dismissed.
Heeding the court findings, the same
individuals—many of whom we encounter in Breaking Free—determined to
hold, along with Mumbai LGBTQ activists, their very first public rally, which
suddenly offered, in a manner similar to the US Stonewall police raids, new possibilities
for gays, lesbians, and others. The young Kokila, who was attacked in Delhi,
filed and won her case in the Karnataka High Court in 2004.
When the Bengaluru police determined to
evict hijras from their city, along with the previous attack against the
Bharosa Trust group the national case against Section 377 became stronger. In
2009 the Delhi High Court finally decriminalized consensual sex between gay
persons in private, the now-growing LGBTQ community, many of their members
breaking into tears, finally feeling the burden of the British law had been forever
removed from their shoulders.
As journalist Hemal Shringla writes in The
Leaflet (a newsletter dedicated to issues of Indian justice):
The
best part of Breaking Free, however, are the testimonies of the
generation which came out after the 2009 Delhi High Court judgment. You wonder
at how much the movement managed to achieve in just eight years. Balu is a
handsome young gay man and he recounts how amused he was at his parents’
perplexity when he came out to them. Sonu is a young and bright-eyed
transsexual who is waiting to have SRS (Sex Reassignment Surgery) after which
he will marry his girlfriend. The movement also encouraged parents to come out.
One of the most inspiring images in the film is that of Chitra Palekar, film
and theatre personality, in a pride parade wearing a placard that says “Mother
With Pride.”
So, it might seem, ends the story of the
rise of the Indian LGBTQ community. Yet in 2013, the Indian Supreme Court
surprisingly reversed that decision, with justices declaring “The Court held
that there is very little evidence to show that the provision is being misused
by the police.” Section 377 had come back to haunt them, and although they
declared that from their experiences of mobilizing their community, things
would never be the same, you can easily recognize through their display of
tears and facial expressions of horror, that all their hopes had been quite
suddenly dashed. And this mix of frustration and hope is, in fact, how Rangayan’s
important film ends.
In that highly wrought reversal of justice
I suddenly could perceive a possibility that I had hardly considered in my own
life, that with the highly conservative court we have in the US today, let
alone the possibility of an addition of one or two further conservatives—which
could well happen if Trump were to be elected for another term—that such a thing
could even happen here, in my own country. The reaction to such a decision would
surely cause a far more militant outcry in the US, but the effects it might
bring about would be absolutely devastating for our young Balu’s and Sonu’s of
the younger generation.
Since the 2015 release of this film,
however, the same Indian Supreme Court reversed their opinion once more on
September 6, 2018, permitting consensual sex between adults of all sexual
orientations. As Justice Chandrachud argued: “Sexuality if the fundamental
experience through which individuals define the meaning of their lives.” As the
renowned Telugu actor, Siddharth, tweeted: “When judges speak with such beauty
you want to fall at their feet and say thanks. Why is it raining in my eyes
dammit?”
Los
Angeles, August 1, 2020
Reprinted
from World Cinema Review (August 2020)
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