out of the twilight
zone
by Douglas Messerli
Sridhar Rangayan and Saagar Gupta (screenplay),
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 not need to
continue.
Yet
as the director/writer Sridhar Rangayan makes clear, India is a very special
case. First of all, Indian culture had never truly rejected same-sex love until
the British Raj of 1858-1947 which enacted a great deal of laws hitherto
unheard of in the sub-continent. Even throughout British rule and including
today, the Hijra (or Kinnar), a broad gathering of eunuchs, intersex, and
transgender people, continued to be recognized as a third gender.
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.
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), was
raided in 2001 by police and taken to an open courtyard where its officials
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 is 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).
