Indian Gays Step Out

South Asian gays emerge to challenge the staid conventions of the community.

Have you ever experienced the claustrophobic feeling of being in a deep dark abyss, imprisoned by despair, rejection, violence, bigotry and above all ignorance? Not just from the mainstream, but even more so from within your own community?

Welcome to the world of the gay and lesbian South Asians in America.

Ancient Indian literature may be littered with stories of same sex relationships between men as well as Gods, according to authors Ruth Vanita and Salim Kidwai in their highly acclaimed and popular book Same Sex Love in India, but that is not the tradition of contemporary India.

Being homosexual in the South Asian community is extremely painful and heart wrenching, because even before dealing with society’s reprobation, most gays have to deal with their own internal homophobias and denial that they can be anything but heterosexual. Even so, more and more South Asians in the United States are stepping out of the closet, and at relatively younger ages and by so doing are challenging the staid conventions of the community.

Siddharth (name changed to protect privacy), 25, the only child of two physicians, says that he was brought up to believe that there are no gay people in India. Siddharth, who works for a national television network, recalls, “In my high school, which was in a rural area, nobody I grew up with was openly gay. There were not even TV shows dealing with the issue of homosexuality. I went to college in a big city and saw two guys kissing for the first time. I was so shocked, because I never thought something like that happened in real life or was even talked about. I never thought I could be that way or that this could even be a life choice for me.”

Dr Aditya Kar, a professor at Georgia State University, says growing up in Calcutta, he knew he was attracted to men, but lived in denial and continued to date women. “Sexuality is never talked about in any way in South Asia, so sexual orientation was one step further away. I finally came to the United States to search my soul and find out who I was. Talk about being in a closet, I was at the farthest end of it, and in America it was not easy to fit in. Here, my skin color, my accent and then my sexuality made me a minority of the third order.”

Navarun Gupta, an engineer pursuing studies at Florida International University in Miami, Fl., who lives with his partner Sam, says he figured out his attraction to boys only after coming across one of his father’s psychology books, which described homosexuality and how people in the West acknowledged the lifestyle and were at ease with it. It was not until he went to college that being different from the others really hit him. “I felt like an outsider, it started affecting my studies. People would make fun of gay people, so I did not have the courage to approach anyone. It was a secret I could not share with anyone, friend or family and it starts to eat you from inside.”

Ifti Nasim, a well known Pakistani poet, said that he was similarly anguished when he realized he was gay. “I wanted to be a straight man because my father was straight and I had no role models to be anything but straight.

Outwardly I appeared very strong, but deep down inside I was very scared. It was a very sad existence.”

When one of his close friends got married, Nasim cried all night, and wondered if he would be alone all his life. “Why was I chosen for this torture, why couldn’t I be like anyone else, get married, have a wife, a house and children. I became deeply religious and would go and pray to God incessantly to change me, my desires. I must have some kind of very strong spiritual and intellectual conviction or ideology or I would not have survived. On top of that my older brother found out and he hated me and he used to beat me black and blue.”

That same religious conflict tore at Faisal Alam, who came to United States at 10 and at 16 decided to embrace Islam, becoming very involved in the Muslim youth movement as well as mosque activities. At the same time, he was battling his sexual identity. His first gay relationship occurred at 16 when he met an American convert in the mosque. “I would have a wonderful time in his company, then come home and cry reciting verses from the Koran that condemned homosexuality.” The relationship shattered under the strain. Alam was engaged at 18 to a Muslim girl. Eight months later she broke off the engagement, saying she felt that something was very wrong with this relationship.

“What was very wrong was obviously that she was going to marry a gay man,” recalls Alam.

Soon after began his dual life, where during the day he would be brother Faisal Alam, a role model for every Muslim youth, and at night he indulged in a fast pace gay lifestyle. As his ideology and sexuality clashed, Alam had a nervous breakdown. Lying in the hospital, watching his mother stay with him day and night, her anguish and pain made him all the more determined to live honestly from then on. “I grew up with the ultimate dream of marrying a woman; I always saw myself in the bridegroom’s chair. I also grew up being told a gay Muslim was an oxymoron and I knew deep within that there were others like me, who needed help from isolation and depression.”

The forum to connect South Asian gays like Alam is a South Asian gay magazine Trikone, which is currently edited by Sandip Roy, a former software engineer and currently a full time journalist. It started as a four page newsletter in Silicon Valley in 1986 to reach out to other gay South Asians. Roy was growing up in Calcutta at the time and says that the classified ad page in Trikone was the most widely read section of the magazine. “I remember getting the magazine in the late 1980s and being petrified of receiving it. I would meet people through Trikone and the classified ad page was the only safe way of getting to know someone. I knew in high school that I was attracted to men so I never considered dating a woman. I just kept struggling to come to terms with the consequences. From my perspective, the best way to eradicate homophobia is to dispel ignorance on sexuality.”

Salman Hussainy, a mental health therapist at the Pacific Clinics in Santa Fe Springs, Calif., who came to the United States at age 13 from Pakistan, says he always knew he was attracted to men, but being homophobic suppressed it totally. When he moved to college, he started volunteering at the college’s gay and lesbian resource center and attending support groups, but it still took him two years to come out to himself and others, integrate his cultural and sexual identities and accept that he could be gay, South Asian and Muslim. “But when I went to the mosque I still hid my sexual orientation.”

It is a feeling with which South Asian lesbians can surely identify. Far more South Asian men than women seem to be visibly gay. However, lesbian relationships between women have existed from ancient times, according to former table tennis star Giti Thadani in her book Sakhiyani, which traces lesbianism in ancient and modern India. South Asian culture encourages strong bonding between same sex members. The love, empathy and understanding, which emerges as a result of the segregation of sexes, often crosses the fuzzy barriers of platonic and non platonic love.

Anjali (name changed) who is in the information technology sector, grew up in a very conservative family and always knew she was attracted to women, but never looked at it as anything sexual. In college, Anjali fell in love with her best friend and things came to a head. “I didn’t know how to make a sense of it, because in our culture women bond so closely. At the end of my second year I had a breakdown and went into a pretty deep depression. I didn’t feel safe telling anything to anybody around me, because all I saw was homophobia.”

For five years Anjali was depressed and even attempted suicide. As she pulled through she decided she would not live a fake life anymore. A lesbian girlfriend took her to gay clubs and gradually Anjali started dating women and acknowledging her lesbian identity.

Rashmi Choksey, an office manager for a software consulting company in Los Angeles and currently president of Trikone, says she suppressed her feelings of attraction to other women, because she was intensely homophobic. When a good friend asked her if she was gay, she was horrified and denied it vehemently. It was only while attending a self-help seminar that Rashmi realized it was time she started living her life honestly and when another friend asked her she did not deny that she was a lesbian.

The journey was far more tortuous for Shilpa (name changed), an academician from an elite, high profile, highly educated family in South India and an incest survivor. At 20 she ended up in an emotionally and physically abusive marriage. After getting a divorce she came to study for her PhD in the United States, where she first heard the word lesbian. She says knew she always had intense relationships with women. “I think there are people for whom it’s clear cut. For me an understanding of what I desired was muddied by the sexual abuse I had suffered. I think one of the painful secrets a lot of lesbians hide is that they are incest survivors. It is easier to be a lesbian than that.”

Shilpa returned to India and started a relationship with a close friend Aditi (name changed), and asked her to move to the United States with her so they could live together, but Aditi refused. “It was a very foreign concept to her and though she said she loved me she could not imagine being married to a woman.” Shilpa went on to marry a man who was her closest friend, who understood and accepted her sexual identity. When Aditi moved to the United States after her mariage, Shilpa rekindled their romance. “My husband knew of my relationship with Aditi. Her husband found out and he hit the roof. I ended the relationship because it was taking its toll on me. I couldn’t live in a closet any more. What is interesting is that neither of us felt any internal homophobia that we were doing something that was wrong. These feelings came from years of trusting and sharing.”

Once South Asian gays acknowledge their sexual orientation to themselves, the next step is gaining acceptance from the family. That can be hard.

Siddharth, being an only child, ended up getting caught when his mother read some emails he had written to his gay friends while overseas. His parents confronted him. Siddarth panicked and denied that he was gay. “It’s just the way we kid each other,” he told them. Before his final exams his father called him crying, “I need to know that you are not gay.” A panicked Siddarth hung up on him. “I think it had been on his mind and I don’t think he believed my denial and needed some reassurance from me. I almost thought of committing suicide.”

Finally he decided to go home and talk to his parents about it. The first time he tried, his father went into deep depression, stopped eating and going to work; his mother cried, but reassured him that she would always love him. “I was literally watching my father die in front of my eyes. At one point he even said maybe we should all commit suicide. It was the worst thing I ever went through and I said I’ll do everything to become straight.”

Two years later Siddharth had an affair with a man. One day he was watching a TV documentary on gay teens being kicked out of their houses by their parents when his father walked in and demanded to know why he watching it. “He said, ’I thought we had already gone through this and that this is a closed issue,’ and I said you know I don’t think it is, and it started all over again. He stopped eating and going to work, but this time I was more prepared for it. I said to him that he was being selfish and my mother stood by me. She said whatever you do you’ll always be my son and I’ll always love you. The first time it came up, dad brought all these books on psychiatry with the chapters on homosexuality all highlighted and how you can suppress the feelings. My father thinks I am suffering, being the way I am. He doesn’t realize how happy I am, though I have told him.” Siddharth is in a loving relationship with a middle eastern man and wishes his father would accept his partner.

Kar began dropping hints to his younger brother, but the more he tried the more homophobic his brother acted. He saw a wedge developing with his parents and brother. “Drifting away from the three people I loved the most was more scary to me than the fact that I was gay.” Aditya came out to his brother who has been very supportive since and then went home to tell his parents. “It was not easy for them. It has taken them six years to become comfortable with it. There were no tears, no emotional blackmailing. If anything they have been very supportive, but I had to give them space. Also they had no support group in India.”

Gupta decided to come out to his family after his parents started pressing him for marriage. He first told his best friend in India and then his sister Vismita. She stopped him from telling their parents just then as she wanted to acclimatize them to the concept. Thus began a two-year struggle to do just that. She recalls, “My brother was the perfect son. Affectionate, brilliant, his school academic records are still unbroken. How do you tell Indian parents their only son is gay? I am not very religious, but there were times I would sit in a temple and pray, that God please make it all right, let my parents survive this.”

She began by telling her parents that she was planning a documentary film on gays and lesbians in India. Her father’s response, “Why not make a film on poverty? I don’t know why you media people have to go for sensational stuff.” Two years later Gupta came home and told them he was gay. “It took my mother a long time to accept that,” says Gupta. “They were also worried about my sister. If word gets out my sister might have trouble getting married. They said to me, ’Don’t tell anyone else, not even your closest relatives, even the ones who live in America.’”

Vismita Gupta says she on the other hand would tell every prospective bridegroom she met that she was doing a film on gays and lesbians. “It was very important to me that the guy I marry should be very comfortable with this because I am not going to lie to my children about who their uncle is living with and they should know and respect it. I could see that most of them felt uncomfortable, and these were very highly educated guys and some of them lived in America.”

Even families that come to terms with their children’s sexual orientation are apprehensive of the community’s reaction to it. Janak Desai, a gay engineer working for Hewlett Packard in Atlanta, who came out of the gay closet while a student at the University of Wisconsin, first told his sisters, one of whom told his parents. “The reaction was, okay we are glad you told us and don’t worry about it, but don’t tell anybody. I never had any fears that they will reject me and there was no hysterical reaction, but I could see that my parents were really hurting. They really didn’t know what was going on.” His sisters even expressed the hope that this was a passing “phase,” as being gay “was not the natural thing,” but they have since recognized that he is happier as a gay man.

Roy returned home to come out to his family, hoping that breaking it to them in Bengali would soften the blow, bringing a physician friend in tow, just to be safe. “My parents are more resigned to the fact that I am gay than accepting. My mom would be thrilled if I came and told her well, this is it, I decided I would like to marry.”

Explains Roy: “When people come out in the West they move away from the family. There is this element of family rejection on both sides. In the South Asian family it’s the reverse, the whole family goes into the closet with you, and you often hear, ’Don’t tell anyone; it’s a secret shame for us.’ There is not the rejection that you are not my son anymore, but at the same time the shame is there. The biggest misconception among the straight South Asian community is that the lgbt (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) community does not exist and I genuinely believe that our parents and family really do care about us, but they also really believe their children can’t be happy in this lifestyle and we need to try and show to these mothers and fathers what it is to be happy, and reinforce the point that I am coming out to you so I can be happy and you can be part of it. It is my attempt to be closer to you.”

Roy adds that, being a Hindu, coming out for him was a social process and not a religious issue, since Hindusim is more accepting of homosexuality. “My Muslim and Catholic friends are deeply troubled about their homosexuality and how it conflicts with their religion.”

Alam agrees. “We are dealing with an issue that has been neglected in our community for 1,400 years. Homosexuality has always existed, especially in the Islamic culture, and was flourishing and dominant until colonization. The amount of homophobia that exists in the South Asian and Muslim communities is the product of colonization. I do believe that Islam needs to be reinterpreted.”

Alam says Muslim imams and scholars are divided on the issue of homosexuality.

“There are a handful of parents who accept their children and speak against homophobia. When they do they too are marginalized and become the pariahs who everyone needs to avoid. My fear is that we may end up becoming like our parents and that these experiences are going to change our familial lives.”

The desire to help and connect with other gay Muslims gave birth to Al-Fatiha, an organization headed by Alam, that helps gay Muslims come to terms with their sexuality and offers peer counseling. Unfortunately for Faisal’s parents, he became such a celebrity, his organization covered by all the major media, that his coming out became a public circus.

“My parents and relatives came to know through the media that I was gay. It was a triple slap in my mother’s face. First not only was her son gay, he was telling the whole world about it and also telling the world that it was okay to be gay, when very typically in the South Asian community taboo secrets are shoved under the carpet and everyone lives in denial. My mother had kids come up to her at the mosque where she taught Sunday school and taunt her, ’your son is a faggot.’ She disowned me for six months. I am slowly rebuilding my relationship with her.” Faisal says his parents are tolerating his sexual orientation, but still have a hard time accepting it.

Salman Hussainy recalls how he initially showed his parents movies that were related to gay people, like the one on Greg Louganis, the gay Olympic diver who has AIDS. His mother, while sympathetic, warned him to be careful working on the AIDS project, so that he didn’t become like them. At that point Hussainy responded, “Mom, I am one of them.”

His mom was terrified, he recalls, saying, “You have to go and pray at the mosque everyday. This is all wrong; why did we bring you here. You have become this way because of the western influence. What will the family think? Your dad and grandma will have a heart attack.” Husaainy says, “She actually meant herself, but wouldn’t say that! My father on the other hand said, ’He is our son, we love him. I don’t understand it, but if this is what he wants then we have to support him.’”

Choksey came out one by one to her siblings, who after the initial surprise and denial were very supportive, though her older sister suggested she not tell anyone and live a life of a quiet spinster. Choksey refused: “You mean while all of you get married, have children, and a family and live happily, I just watch you be happy and remain lonely? I don’t think so!” One thing that really helped her was the fact that her family loved her. Choksey’s mother was the last to know. “She is accepting, but still cannot come to terms with it. She does not want others to know, and wants me to keep a low profile, but my relationship is very close with her. She worries about who will take care of me in my old age.”

Because of the societal pressures, it is not uncommon for gays and lesbians being forced by family to get married and having affairs on the side. Adnan (name changed), a gay Pakistani Muslim software engineer, fought with his family, but finally gave in to their pressure and married a beautiful, well educated Pakistani woman. They have been married for five years and she still does not know that he is gay. He has affairs on the side and says there is a pool of other South Asian men doing just that. Besides, he says, he loves children and thinks getting married is the simplest way to have a child.

Gupta remembers his mother telling him, “Maybe you can get married and still have boyfriends. I was shocked, but she said that’s the way it happens here. Family and kids should come first, and what you do on the side, is your business.”

Says Dr. Ramki Ramakrishnan, of the University of Texas, Austin: “There is no denying our society is patriarchal and propagating the family line by producing a son is the sacred duty of every male, especially in Hindu culture, which is a subset of Indian culture. So everybody gets married no matter what their sexual orientation may be. As long as they marry and perform their duties of having a family, and taking care of their children, society often turns a blind eye to whatever else they may do, especially if they are men. These double standards are also coupled with the fact that women have much less social and economic mobility and fewer opportunities to leave home and go on sexual explorations than men.”

Some gays have decided to confront these double standards head on. BJ, a chief financial officer with a major company in California, and her lesbian partner Kamila, were married last year after being together for seven years. Enter Salman Hussainy. He is a good friend of the couple and is the father of the twins BJ is carrying by in vitro fertilization. Both BJ and Kamila had considered adoption and an anonymous donor, but decided that since the children will have an unusual upbringing it was best they not be burdened by the question of who their father was. Salman says he is very excited and all three of them are very close and committed to raising the children together.

While some members of the South Asian gay community are beating the odds and living life on their own terms, gay activists are taking up the cause to educate the South Asian straight community, which by and large repudiates homosexuality as a “western disease.”

Kar says that most parents, who came to the United States in the 1960s and 70s, are very conservative, even though a majority of them may not have been that way when they were living in India. It has been easier for South Asians living in South Asia to come out to their parents than the ones who grew up here, he argues. “The former are seeing the changing times in India while the latter have a warped view of India, and movies like Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham add to that unrealistic viewpoint.”

Siddharth agrees: “Growing up I had always heard that homosexuality did not exist in India, that it was a purely western thing. My father told me that in the West people are very quick to categorize people as black or white, straight or gay. In India things traditionally flowed much more, especially in Hinduism, and he told me that I shouldn’t feel pressured to pick one path or pick one category. From that day I have used that philosophy, but I feel that it is his hope that I’ll become straight.”

Ramakrishnan says that South Asian American youth, who grow up in mostly all-white surroundings are subjected to racism and internalize some of it. Even though there is rampant racism within the U.S. mainstream gay community, and South Asian gays are not necessarily accepted fully, some of them are so happy to be accepted in any circles at all, that they overlook the racist undertones, because they have a hard time reconciling their gay orientation with their South Asian identity, which is totally dismissive of them.

“It is for this reason that social and support groups such as Trikone and mailing lists such as Khush and Desidykes are important,” Ramakrishnan says. “To provide a sense of community and show that alternate sexuality and South Asian culture can be reconciled, and that they are not immiscible identities.”

Navarun Gupta’s sister Vismita Gupta Smith, went on to make a critically acclaimed documentary on gays and lesbians, titled For Straights Only. She says, “There is not even a respectful Indian word to describe homosexuality in India and I would feel very anguished at the thought that all those people who love my brother and look up to him are just going to be disrespectful once they found out he was gay. You have jokes about this terrible portrayal of people who are gay and insinuations that are perverse, especially in Hindi movies. I got married four years ago and when I took my husband to India there was this big ceremony, indicating social, legal, emotional acceptance of this complete stranger from 300 relatives, and my brother has been with his partner for over 11 years, and there is no recognition. So the essence of our culture is only for straights and not for your gay and lesbian kids. That is a sad, sad statement.”

Shilpa says the younger generation still faces the difficult challenge of talking to their parents and siblings. “Even though they are born and brought up here they are living as if they are living in the India of the 1960s. They have no language with which to talk to their families. I am amazed at the number of second generation South Asians who are so abysmally conservative and extremely homophobic. I feel that the struggles in some ways haven’t chanegd and they are even more isolated in some ways than I was.”

That can only change by creating visible role models for future generation. Alam says, “I think if we are not out then how are our nieces and nephews and cousins going to come out. They will still have to go through their internal struggles, but at least they won’t face the external struggles that we faced. Right now we have no South Asian elders as role models for the lgbt community.”

Ultimately, Ramakrishnan says, “From my perspective the best way to eradicate homophobia is to dispel ignorance on sexuality. I believe in the inherent goodness of most people, and that given the choice and enough information they will not be homophobic.”

Left Out of the Margins

Bisexual and the transgender people are two less visible segments of the lgbt community. According to the authoritative Kinsey Report, which compiles data on human sexuality, almost eight in 10 people have some characteristics of bisexuality, wherein an individual feels attracted to both sexes.

However, bisexuals have to confront not just the homophobia of the straight community, which brands them as promiscuous, even though most are in strictly monogamous relationships, they also face derision from the gay community, which considers them closet gays, hiding behind the veneer of bisexuality because they are afraid to come out. Not surprisingly, therefore, that a recent study by the Australian National University found that bisexuals “had the worst mental health on measures of anxiety, depression and suicidality.”

Ramki Ramakrishnan, who came to the United States nearly ten years ago for graduate studies in biology and teaches at the University of Texas in Austin, says in adolescence he found himself being attracted to both boys and girls. “In the gender-segregated society we lived in, opportunities for ’fooling around’ were much more readily available with peers of the same sex. I thought everyone in my circle was like me. So when I came to the United States it was very surprising to find that there were some individuals who were not attracted to men and others who were not attracted to women.”

When Ramakrishnan told his father of his attraction to both men and women, his father simply said that though these desires were natural and most people had them, eventually he expected Ramakrishnan to get married and have a family. “Even though his message was that it was preferable to get married to a woman, I was struck by his statement that same-sex feelings were natural, and by the fact that he didn’t put same-sex desire down by calling it a perversion or sin.”

Ramakrishan says, “People have this misconception that bisexuals are promiscuous. I have been in strictly monogamous relationships and most of us are perfectly content with that. If people have made up their mind something is abnormal they can come up with as many reasons as to why it is so, and if there are people who think otherwise, they too can come up with a variety of reasons to prove their point. Why can’t we approach this from a humanistic viewpoint that people have the right to love whomsoever they want to, as long as it is consensual?”

Pooja a bisexual student in her 20s, says that growing up she dated men, because of internalized homophobia and led a fairly promiscuous life. However she finds her current relationship with a woman far more intense and fulfilling. Pooja has confessed to her parents that she is bisexual and is graduating soon. Her parents expect her to get married. “I am very confused, and I feel they are taking advantage of that. At times one gives in and the sacrifice results from not just thinking about the family, but the entire community and how you will be perceived.”

At the bottom of the heap is the transgender community. According to Raja (name changed), an MBA, who works in Georgia, the word transgender includes the whole gamut of heterosexual cross dressers to androgens, to transsexuals to effeminate gay men. Raja was the youngest of four siblings and as long as he can remember he never felt like he was a girl. He decided that some day he would become a man. Finally between 1998 to 2000, he completed his transition from female to male and adopted a male name.

Growing up, Raja says his idea of transgender people were the hijra community. “Now I realize the transgender community is the western version of the hijra community in a loose parallel. We are just more educated and intellectually advanced.”

He says he built a strong support system and an extended family before he finally told his father and siblings. ” Every transgendered person comes to this point, where he/she has to ask this question, ’If my family disowns me can I go on?’ I was ready, but my father’s acceptance just blew me away. He said, ’Raja, my son, why did you not tell me, I would have helped you.’ One of my brothers disowned me. There was a major theological discussion what a cardinal sin it is against Islam and that I would be hell bound for eternity. We won’t be able to show our face in the community. No one will marry our daughters.”

Raja says he told them he was the same person they knew and that he has made his peace with God. Raja was initiated into a Sufi order last year. “That has been such an overpoweringly beautiful experience. I almost rejected Islam because of the fundamentalist right wing interpretation of the faith”.

Raja, who heads up the southern association for gender education, in Atlanta, says his activism is education. “You can’t stand in my shoes. At best you can sympathize. I am not looking for acceptance or approval. All I am asking of you as another human being is just show me respect.”

This story was nominated for “Outstanding Magazine Article” by the Gay Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) at the 14th Annual GLAAD Media Awards.