In memory of Famila.

So, the Programme in Memory of Famila is happening on the 6th, this Sunday, at 5 pm. Famila was a woman who did crucial work for queer women - trans, lesbian, bi - in Bangalore. I'm making it a part of the WHaQ! Sunday meeting agenda.

The programme is the official agenda of the WHaQ! meeting. I'll open the office at 4, and stay there till 4:45 - anyone who wants to come but doesn't know the way to 1 Shanti road can come to the office and we'll go together. Others can meet us directly there.

We can do dinner after, for those who don't want to come to Famila's programme but want to meet the WHaQ! group in any case.

Here's the original invite, from the CSMR list:

Dear Friends,

We invite you for this program.

Organised by

Friends of Famila

A PROGRAM IN MEMORY OF FAMILA

Organized by friends of Famila

Famila, a radical feminist, very active in queer politics, a Hijra who questioned all forms of hierarchy and feudalist patriarchal systems within and outside the community, a beautiful person who brought in new visions and aspects to queer politics died in the year 2004 when she was 24 years.

Famila identified herself as a Hijra, sex worker, bisexual and a feminist. She was a board member of Sangama, an organization working for the human rights of sexual minorities, an active member in Vividha, an autonomous collective of marginalized sexualities and genders. She was also working in Sangama as a project coordinator for Hijras and transgenders.  Her everyday life itself was a challenge to the hetero-normative patriarchal society. Many people during her time boasted about communal living but never succeeded. She was a real example for communal living, as there were many people who lived in her house. It was a house of marginalized sexualities and genders. This shows that she not only identified herself as Hijra but also respected and accepted different sexual and gender identities in its real meaning.

Famila was born on 6^th November 1980. She was the first person to go against her own community to accommodate all queer identities, especially the female born sexual minorities, in her house providing shelter.

Famila was well known for her clear, straightforward and radical articulation of the struggle of marginalized sexualities and genders in many conferences and programs. She took a lead role in organizing the 2^nd Hijra Habba in Bangalore through the autonomous collective Vividha, mobilizing more than 2000 people for the program and collecting funds from public to fight for the rights of marginalized sexualities and genders.

Unfortunately, she passed away in 2004 July, at the age of 24. There has been a huge loss to the work that she planned to do and also that kind of radical politics. For friends of Famila she is not dead and is very much alive for many of us in our memories. A few friends of Famila from last year have started celebrating her birthday in her memory to keep her radical politics alive.

We are organizing a program in memory of Famila on 6^th November 2011 at the 1, Shanti Road, Shantinagar, where her friends will share their experiences with her and some footage will be shown about her. People who would like to share their experiences about the interactions with her are most welcome to do so.  

Speakers – A.Revathi, Shakun Mohini and Chandini

Venue – 1, Shanti Road, Shanti Nagar, Bangalore - 560027

Date and Timings – Sunday, 6^th November 2011, from 5 PM to 7 PM

WHaQ! meeting: 31th July 2011

Small meeting yesterday, 4 women showed up. Funness, and Matteo's after. 


Short summary of what we discussed:

• A few OBLs ago, we used to screen movies rather more regularly than we do now - something to actively think about doing again? This is a good opportunity to remind those of us who missed it about Deliver Me - D's first movie. We watched it as a group back in June. More of the same? Not every week, since sometimes we do have other agendas - agendae? - but it would be nice.
• At least one of the people at the meeting is an avid photographer, so there was some technical and thematic discussion along those lines. We didn't discuss this at the meeting, but Gaysi is running a Queer Photo Contest: Queer Tasveer, looking for the best pictures of gaysi love. Click the link to check it out!
• We talked about lesbian stereotypes - in India, the lesbian stereotype is in fact that she is invisible. Women are traditionally supposed not to have sex drives, and when they are traditionally represented as sexy they are either vamps or they're mother goddesses. If a woman's sexuality is placed at the feet of her man, how on earth is a woman supposed to have a sex drive, a libido, if there is no man there but simply another woman? The simple answer to "Who is the Indian dyke?" is "Whatever we want it to be!" because that stereotypical invisibility works to our advantage here. 
• Following on from the last point, we talked about being in the closet in straight spaces, and staying in the closet in queer spaces because sometimes other queer women, men, could not be trusted to respect that you might not be out in your professional and other social spheres. If we have the freedom to be whatever we want to be, we have the freedom to be utterly human, and therefore the freedom to be Not Nice as well. 
• Menopause: The Musical. Just take a look, yo.
• Is Simi Garewal homophobic? In other new, Karan Johar is a bitch, and we like it.
• Lesbian weddings! Savita and Beena, whose families declared yesterday that they were willing to reconcile with their lesbian daughters. “Savita's parents as well as mine have accepted our relationship and forgiven us. It was Savita's parents who had agreed initially. Now, my parents too have fallen in line after several media reports. However, my uncle Satbir Singh still has a problem with our marriage and has threatened to shoot both of us," Well, okay. I'm not sure they should leave their fifteen day protection. But okay. We spent some time yesterday wondering about the legality of the marriage, but really so long as it is not challenged in the courts - especially now that the marriage is acknowledged in a Gurgaon Sessions Court - it may not make much practical difference. We'll find out, I guess.
• We talked about a few other lesbian weddings, specifically Baljit Kaur and Rajwant Kaur. The marriage was melodramatic and troubled - Rajwant left Baljit and Baljit slit her wrists in court. No. Really. The reporting style has changed a great deal in the four years between Baljit and Rajwant's marriage and Savita and Beena's. 
• Mangalsutras. The round ones, with little dots in the middle. They're breasts. No, don't argue, they are well-shaped boobies with perky nipples. The husband ties it around the wife's neck. He is giving her her sexuality. Okay? Which is tied into her feeding motherhood. 
• I found a new minion to write on this blog! We are pleased.

Then we left, acknowledging that the garage door was indeed an obstacle the defeat of which should be rewarded with cookies. We went to Matteo's, where there was nice coffee, and a yummy gossip session.

"Writing our own history - Finally!"

So this wound its way onto the WHaQ mailing list, and it seems like a good idea to pass it around as much as possible. 

Hello Queer People!

A recent chat, actually let’s say a recent comment thread on Facebook
led Udayan Dhar and I to a realisation that we’re sure most of you
would agree with — something that should have happened by now, but
hasn’t! So we took it upon ourselves to get this idea into action and
here’s why you’ve received this mail.

It’s been a good, super-happy and challenging 2 years since the law
‘came out of the closet’. Yes, we’re legally gay and how! But what
seems to have been missed in all this celebration or the lack of it,
are the wonderful stories of people who were involved in or affected
by the movement — personal narrations of varied individuals who were
most actively involved or affected by the high court ruling that week.
From the high spirited celebrations of the multi-city pride, news
stories of which, still elicit a tear in anyone involved in the
struggle in the smallest of ways, to the country erupting in joy over
the final high court order — we hope to capture and re-live those
moments, those nail-biting hours and those euphoria filled festivals
from the mouths of the very people who made it happen.

We’re looking for 15-20 stories and 15-20 nominations of people who
you think should make it to the book... and then we shall contact
these people and get them to share their story.

As they say, “Only when it is written, will it be known to have
happened”, and hence, this is our very own, small yet much-required
step towards writing our own History.

Please send us nominations and broad areas in which you think your
nominees can represent that wonderful week.

For example: Someone who worked on the legal front could be nominated
to write his/her experience with a legal perspective — personal, yet
legal all the same.

Get in touch with either of us, before the 23rd of July.
Udayan Dhar — udayan@pink-pages.co.in
L Romal M Singh — elromal@gmail.com

Looking forward to hearing from you.

P.S. Please mail us all your nominees. Comments on the social network
service will not be accepted — only to avoid confusion.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gurl in the World has already blogged this, but please, take a look, pass it on: Children have been separated from their mother, kept captive in a foreign country. Their mum has legal custody, their dad kidnapped them anyway. Sign this petition, please? Help reunite a mother with her children.

Gays and Mahatmas Not Allowed (and women don't exist)

There's been a lot of hoohaa about this book:

Joseph Lelyveld is a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist. To be precise, he won the Pulitzer in 1986 for Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black and White, which Amazon USA tells me is an examination of South Africa's racial policies in a (very) critical light. Lelyveld was foreign correspondent for The New York Times, stationed at Johanesburg, at this point - and apartheid in South Africa continued till 1993.

Five minutes of Wikipedia and Google, ladies.

Those of us who've been indoctrinated in the Gandhian fairy tale - which removes much from the grittier, uglier, more human and courageous story - will remember that Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi went to South Africa in his early twenties. Any biography of the man will cover this period, and I daresay Lelyveld looked at this period with an especial interest, or at least a more educated interest, steeped as he had been in South African culture for however many years. (I'm going to throw in Nelson Mandela here, and suggest that South Africa is where Lelyveld access Gandhi for himself in the first place.)

Anyway. Lelyveld writes his book, publishes it, and the Daily Mail gets hold of it. Wikipedia describes The Daily Mail as a "middle market tabloid", which is code for "sensationalist stuff written mostly for entertainment value rather than information sharing or truth seeking".

As far as I can make out, it was The Daily Mail which first decided that Great Soul chronicled Gandhi's love affair with Hermann Kallenbach, his racism, and his lifelong bisexuality, though generally reports finger both the US and UK newspapers without naming any.

You should read the entire article, because it is interesting in a certain way, but here are some excerpts, included ere because they are BEAUTIFULLY funny:

At the age of 13 Gandhi had been married to 14-year-old Kasturbai Makhanji, but after four children together they split in 1908 so he could be with Kallenbach...

...Although it is not clear why, Gandhi wrote that vaseline and cotton wool were a ‘constant reminder’ of Kallenbach....

...As late as 1933 he wrote a letter telling of his unending desire and branding his ex-wife ‘the most venomous woman I have met’.

I'm being very mean to The Daily Mail here, and I would apologise if the image of the venomous Kasturba Gandhi, evil hag, ex-wife who for some reason still tagged along with the Mahatma, was not dancing around in my head.

In today's patchily enlightened world, it is a big deal with Mahatma Gandhi gets "branded" bisexual. The Maharashtra and Guajarat governments have banned the books*. Lelyveld is getting not-so-veiled death threats.

The book hasn't even been released in India yet!

So, with absolutely nothing to go on, it's hard for us to be sure if Gandhi did in fact have a torrid romance with Kallenbach. Gandhi did tend to write extraordinarily emotional, frighteningly frank letters. This man did not hide his vulnerabilities. (Though apparently he hid his male lover? Or didn't make a big deal about him, the only time Gandhi downplayed someone important to him?) He wrote of love, of connection, of yearning. During his lifetime people were throwing scandalised fits at this business of sleeping with naked young women - because he did it all where people could see, and discuss. He presented it as a philosophical principle of living. (Some people, I am sure, were throwing fits at the business of sleeping with naked young women and not having sex with them. Such a waste!) We're still having to read all about his sex life, alleged or otherwise, decades after his death. A mere letter of love is not enough of a tell-tale for an affair. So we shall put aside this issue and move on to actual questions of interest to us.

(This is an article that seems to summarise reviews rather than have anything of its own to say; it's much more informative than I expected it to be.)

Do we want Gandhi to have been bisexual? (If you hate the term/category, rephrase that as "Do you want Gandhi to have had homosexual/homoromantic relationships?") Do we, as LGBTIQ people, as a collective formulating our own icons and writings and histories and cultures (and integrating at will into mainstream society), want Gandhi the man on our team?

You know, he has never struck me as a very happy man. He inherited, adapted and refined a strong set of values from his parents and in general from his childhood environment, and seems to have been the sort of child who took badly to having to hide things, to not earning his parents' love and respect. Just look through the chapter headings of his autobiography, especially in the first two sections. This is not a man who is proud of his younger self, and I have always personally felt like those younger failings drove him farther than any positive ambitions for his Self did. He was shamed of his youthful sexual drives, he was ashamed of his lies, his thefts, his small betrayals of his father. (And of course, that last, horrible one.)

In a time when homosexual activity was a crime, was socially condemned, was considered wrong - the Manusmriti is not fond of it either, so we can't wave around Hindu accepting happiness - for Gandhi to have desired, wanted, loved men would have just one more thing for him to be ashamed. He'd have done a fairly decent job of hiding it, too - or at least, everyone around it would have done it for him. To be so dishonest - I can't see him being happy with that. I can see him being more ashamed, more disgusted. One more canker in his already abraded soul.

And really? Really? Gandhi was an amazing man, yes, and a strong personality, yes, but he was married (which for me complicates things) and celibate in the most tortuous way possible. He was a skinny man who kept starving himself. His fashion sense was non-existent and his glasses were dorky. He was always hanging around with other people, not having sex, discussing matters of "greater import". If you weren't his minion, you were both at loggerheads. He did a lot of walking, talking, arguing. He'd travel to England and not bring back any souvenirs.

If this man was bisexual, he didn't live as bisexual, he didn't express love physically and was so wrapped up in his own personal goals he had very little time for other people's. (Jinnah and Ambedkar had some very valid reasons for wanting a separate state, quotas, reservations, what have you.) People either bent to his way of life or they left.

I'm not running around screaming Gandhi is bad and anti-gay! Some of the flaws we point out now were part and parcel of the force, the natural charisma of the man. These have led to some very good things, some very beautiful things. And homosexuality was, in many ways of necessity, an invisible absence in colonial society, so the fact that I can't find him saying anything about homosexuality at all tells me he was just too busy to ferret out new things to take care of.

Mind you, I am so going to read that book.

[Edited to add clarity] SO TO VEER OFF ON A TANGENT:

In all this hoohaa about the desecration of Gandhi's memory, no one speaks about the women in his except as vehicles for his celibate-sexual antics. A (male) friend who read this post told me he thought that was perfectly valid. But it does make me wonder. If we recast a man as queer, we need to address the people around him, recast their relationships with him. Not much. There's no need for venom. But just a little. Don't we? [/edit to add clarity]

What woman do we know, which Indian historical figure, would create nearly as much controversy if someone did hir research and declared her gay? Or "really" a man? Are there any (female) historical figures we'd like on the team? (Many of my arguments re: Gandhi do not apply!) It seems like every second historic male is declared gay, repressed or a pervert these days. Represent, people, I want us wymmyns to have some love too!

(What did Kasturba do when Mohandas was apparently cavorting around with his paramour? Stay at home and feed the children?)

Why do we examine, so very closely, the sexual relationships of our historic men, while it seems like our women get, at most, called a "slut" and confined to boring extra-marital heteronormativity? Why do angry Hindus (male!) stop at "Sita is sitting on a monkey's tail and masturbating, and this makes me angry!" without going farther to "Sita's only contact at that point was with Raavana's demoness minions and THEY GOT IT ON and this makes me angry?"

I've run out of thoughts to think.

* This paragraph was edited to remove an egregious error.

Susan Hawthorne: feminist, lesbian, activist, poet

Some of us from WHaQ had the good fortune of attending Susan Hawthorne's lecture on biodiversity and feminism yesterday. It opened up alot of new ideas in my mind, I've been positively buzzing (and no, gurls, it wasn't just the beer I had) ever since, and spinning all kinds of web like thoughts around in my head ever since.

I want more out of life, gurls. More living, more enthusiasm, more action. It was really beautiful to see another woman, older and definitely wiser, who's gotten to have just that through her work and writings.

Check her out :)