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Tushar M, in view of the recent controversy and subsequent ’suicide’ of Dr. S.R. Siras, conducts an interview of various openly gay professors and academicians across India to know about their views and how difficult it is to be out in the academia.

Dr Sreenivas Siras, a Marathi professor at Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) sacked for being gay, was found dead on April 7, 2010. Siras, 64, was suspended by the conservative institution after a secretly shot videotape surfaced, showing him having sex with a rickshaw puller. On appeal, the Allahabad High Court had stayed the suspension and ordered his reinstatement. “Now, I can go back to my beloved university,” Siras had said to NDTV, after the court ordered AMU to not just take him back, but provide him accommodation till he retires later this year. Days later, he allegedly committed suicide.

We talk to three eminent openly gay academicians across India about the controversy, about what it means to be open about their sexuality, it’s repercussions, and about their coming out experiences.

In conversation with Dr. Ashley Tellis from IIT Hyderabad, Dr. R. Raj Rao from Pune University, and Prof. Shivji Panikkar, MS University, Baroda-

PP: Your immediate reaction to the whole Dr. Siras controversy?

Rao: Obviously it’s very unfortunate, what happened. It should never have. There are many things about the entire episode that continue to puzzle me. I mean, whoever installed those hidden cameras in the professor’s house, how did they enter the flat without his knowledge? People who live alone tend to be especially on their guard. Did Dr. Siras know the guys who sneaked into his house before hand? Then of course, his sudden death remains a conundrum. It’s only when a thorough inquiry into all this is conducted, that the answers to these rankling questions will be known.

Panikkar: All through the events related to Dr. Siras my reaction was of absolute shock, disgust and disbelief. But such things do happen, right? Despite the repealing of IPC 377 by the Delhi High Court, the ground level commonsensical perceptions, antagonisms and the general structurally ingrained homophobia remains strongly in our society. It may take centuries of consorted efforts for that to go.

I see such events also as a backlash to the recent repealing of IPC 377 by the Delhi High Court. It is precisely at this point that the conservative sections of the society would try to take out the antagonisms on us more severely. In a country where getting legal justice is a very slow process, the other centers of authority and power in people’s lives – like the university administrative system, media and even police would capitalize on such time lag and corner and victimize vulnerable individuals like Dr. Siras. The crux of the matter is the violation of privacy of an individual and that it was not a by-chance or an accidental event, it was a schemed and pre-planned violation and victimization. This is a terrifying situation to imagine. How far and to what extend the reactionary forces can go in victimizing individuals is a matter that would worry me for a long time.

Tellis: The Siras case is in many ways a watershed moment in Indian LGBT history, which we must analyse closely and learn from. To my mind, there are three major culprits in the case: the AMU establishment, the media and the so-called ‘queer movement.’

Shivji Panicker

The AMU establishment gunned for this man for two reasons: one to take revenge as Siras was part of the movement on that campus to hold the corrupt VC accountable and two to deflect from the real issue on the campus which is the VC’s corruption. The real issue is the corrupt VC, the fact that Siras had countered his corruption in the past, stood up to him and that this was payback time. This becomes clear if we ask a few questions: how is it that AMU discovered Siras’ homosexuality and the fact that he picked up rikshawallas only when there is one year to his retirement and when he has been there for decades? Who were these newspersons? How did the footage land on the VC’s table? This VC must be removed from his post immediately for instituting an unconstitutional and vicious with-hunt against Siras. Siras’ RTI against him must be made public. All records on him must be made public. The media has shown the hypocrites they are in concentrating on Siras’ sex life, parading it on national television, not even blocking his face out with no thought for the repercussions on this man’s life. They did not even mention the structural issues of corruption in AMU and this VC, let alone reflect on the ethics of their own practices. The ‘queer movement’ rushes in, gets a reluctant Siras to file a case, does a fact-finding and leaves. To me, this is as insensitive as the earlier two invasions. As is clear from all the interviews and coverage, Siras was not ‘gay’ in the conventional sense of what that word means. He was ‘outed’ as homosexual by this VC and his offensive invasion of Siras’ privacy. The media’s abetting of this humiliation by beaming Siras across the country rendered him even more vulnerable. He stated AMU and his family as being his support systems. One had already betrayed him; the other in all probability was going to as well. He goes home, the Allahabad High Court stays his suspension and at the moment of his legal triumph, he is found dead. We still know nothing about what caused it. Whatever the facts of what happened, to my mind the queer movement should have been there with him when he went home, asked him and respected what he wanted right through, instead of simply marshalling him to a cause, a cause he clearly did not see as his own.

PP: What did you think of Dr. Siras’s reaction to the whole issue?

Rao: I am told he was in a state of shock and confusion when the story broke. Perhaps he never expected such a thing to happen in his fiercest dreams. Anyone in his place would have become a sort of nervous wreck. What beats me, however, is that when he got a lawyer like Anand Grover to fight his case, and when the Allahabad High Court delivered a judgment in his favor, causing AMU to revoke his suspension, why then did he commit suicide–if suicide it was? Was someone threatening and blackmailing him? As I said, we shall never know the answers to these questions unless a full investigation into the matter is conducted, which seems unlikely.

Panikkar: One can just imagine what the hell the man must have gone through. The fear of social disgrace and ostracism, and the latent homophobia and its disabling effect in the victim must have been absolutely numbing. That the world should not know this must have been his first reaction and the main concern. But then, the University authorities had ulterior motive of suspending him from the job while getting the whole event orchestrated. By the time he got the suspension notice it was already a bit too late for him to have taken pro-active steps.

Sadly political activism and empowerment is the last priority for many academics, and if Dr. Siras was an activist, I believe this would not have happened, at least the way it has happened – so crude, cruel and direct the assault had been. In my experience if one tries to cover up and live, people will hound you all the more. That is why I wish that all gay people working in institutions or otherwise, be pro-active within their institutional/work spaces. More-over for self protection we need to consciously build-up supportive net-works of friends. Further, as university teachers we should be able to discuss queer issues in the class rooms, if needed make changes in the syllabus and introduce new courses based on queer studies, particularly in the field of humanities and social sciences. Gay people of all classes and professions should make an effort to express their sexual preferences and identity in open and remain in touch with the community, which more than anything will provide them the much needed empowerment. I do think that Dr. Siras got flustered and terribly confused initially and understandably so, when he should have called out for help from the world of activism, which unfortunately he didn’t do for a while at least.

Tellis: This is precisely what I have been building up to in my first answer. Siras was homosexual, not gay and certainly not a gay activist. The classic illustration of this is the Barkha Dutt-Siras encounter when the story just broke. She was full of liberal, righteous rage and he answered in monosyllables that simply did not rise to the bait of her questions, probably did not even comprehend them. He spoke of people forgetting his homosexuality soon, he spoke of being ashamed, he spoke of loving AMU and feeling sad that they had rejected him. He was packing his bags, he did not think of protest. Now all of this might seem deeply objectionable and annoying to us, but if we are really supportive of homosexual subjects in this country, then we have to respect this man for who he was and wanted to be. Support has to be offered on the terms of the subject, not on the terms of the activist. I feel that the activists should have been with him throughout, gone home with him, had sustained interaction with him and seen what he wanted.

PP: How you would have reacted had you been faced with a similar situation?

Rao: I would have been livid. But I wouldn’t have let it get me. I would fight tooth and nail to get justice. Perhaps I would have to fight alone. Unlike Dr. Siras, who won everyone’s sympathy, I have many detractors within the queer community itself, who do not see eye to eye with me because of ideological differences. My kind of queerness is subversive in the extreme, which many people dislike. I believe Dr. Siras made certain mistakes. For one thing, he should never have lived on campus. This is a decision that academics like me or Dr Hoshang Merchant made early in our careers. If Dr. Siras were in his own flat, would a so-called sting operation of this kind make any sense?

Panikkar: Faced with such a gross violation of privacy, I would have immediately filed an FIR in the nearest police station and would have rushed to the media and to the activist circles for support and assistance. We should always remember that for an out of closet gay person there is very little to loose – to accept what one is in public empowers you, gives you freedom and self-confidence. I believe that resisting attempts at victimization and defending oneself from violations is equally important as being pro-active.

Tellis: Mine would have been a very different story as I am a proud and out gay person; I am a gay activist, I would have dragged AMU to court on the first day and done much else. But that is really the issue here. The point is that Siras was not gay and if the ‘queer movement’ really wants to engage with Indian same-sex subjects, then they have to understand the sociological particularities of these subjects rather than just steamroller them with universalizing, empty categories of rights and identity.

PP: What has been your experience and what were/are the difficulties being an openly gay academician in India?

Rao: I have no coming out story. My entire body of work is my coming out story. As for being an openly gay academic in India, please refer to Georgina Maddox’s piece entitled “Not AMU Alone” on the op-ed page of Indian Express dated 15 April 2010. Unlike many others, I’m afraid I can’t really say I’ve been persecuted or harassed or victimised in 22 years of teaching in an Indian university. I’ve conducted an international queer conference in my department in 2007, and since that year, I run a course on LGBT Writing in India, which is well-subscribed. I firmly believe that the world looks to us gay people for cues as to how to deal with us (since they have no clue), and it is up to us to give out the right or wrong signals and vibes. If the signals and the vibes are right, one can survive without much hassle, even enjoy a measure of happiness. One does not have to wear one’s sexuality on one’s sleeve, as some queer people tend to do. At the same time, being closeted is bad. Dr. Siras was gullible and vulnerable because he was in the closet. Mainstream society is a monster. The meek and the weak are its obvious prey. But if one is able to bare one’s chest (and one’s fangs) and stand up to society, it automatically withdraws and leaves you alone.

Panikkar: There is no end to coming out; it is an ever reckoning process for me. In other words to see one’s truth and telling it to the world is a continuous process. Each time one speaks through a painting or writing a story or an article or giving an interview like this surely are enabling acts. This is important to do because we are constantly warned from conservative quarters to maintain secrecy for whatever reasons. Silence was imposed on me all through my growing-up years. There was fear, guilt and shame associated with the feelings I had towards men, and relationships I shared with them. In the 1970s through the larger part of 1980s there was a great sense of bewilderment, dishonesty and confusion. Groping through all those one also committed blunders and irreversibly wronged ones’ self and others. My coming out in public was partly circumstantial (like the break-up of the marriage), partly through confessions in intimate friendships and partly self willed. But, mostly and throughout I tried to maintain discretion, considering the appropriateness and the feelings of concerned others. It is only in the past ten years or so that I am able to truly realize and accept what I am.

As an academician I always believed in maintaining intellectual honesty and integrity in what I did. So, it was in the academic spaces that I became what I am and so it is there that I began to open-up, including exploring my interest in cultural expressions of sexual minorities. In a short a while I began living an open gay life too. But, it was not always easy to know or clear as to what actually my colleagues and students are pr were thinking and talking (gossiping?) about me, and in any case I had not been bothered about that either.

Frankly it had not been very difficult for me to live the day to day of a gay person. But, at specific situations I have definitely experienced structurally latent homophobia and discrimination. For instance I was kept out of a sexual harassment enquiry committee on the basis that I am gay. But then I always confronted these and have asserted my resistance to such attitudes, sometimes I was successful but at times I was not. But, in general I do not want to judge the situation for gay academicians all over India on the basis of my experiences; I suppose there would be considerable differences depending on various factors.

Tellis: It is bloody difficult being an out gay teacher in India. I have faced incredibly hostile institutional reactions and had my career damaged because of it. I began my teaching career right after my MA in 1991 in Bombay University (I was barely 21). Teachers were using students as spies, checking their notebooks for what I taught and claiming students were upset and complaining. I quit the temporary post within the semester. It was the first taste of what was to be life-long homophobic harassment.

When I did an interview with Venkateswara College for an ad hoc job, for example, I was not given the post because I was homosexual. I know this because one of the experts on the panel informed me of this later. When this expert asked what connection my homosexuality had with the job at hand and my qualifications for it, there was no answer. These were minority religion institutions and got away with what they like and were part of a joint campaign against me where the only thing they could use against me was my homosexuality.

I then got a job with Kirorimal College where I was involved with a Gender group in college called Parivartan and a University-wide group called Forum Against Sexual Harassment (FASH) which was instrumental in formulating Delhi University’s belated sexual harasment policy. As a punishment, professors told a student of mine who had poor attendance that she would get to sit for the exam if she filed a sexual harassment complaint against me. So, not only was I gay, I was also harassing women students. Clearly, I am a man of many talents! They expected me to feel terribly ashamed about this complaint and expected to have taught me a lesson, but I thought this was a perfect moment to put the policy into action and so I demanded a copy of the complaint and the setting up of a committee. To date, I have not got a copy of the complaint.

This is part of the problem with DU and University-based harassment histories. There is no documentation, no taking of issues forward, no sustained engagement, and institutional memory is very short in these matters. To them, it is all a big joke. Some teachers would send effeminate male teachers to Parivartan meetings saying we had called them, to prove that they were napunsak and needed to do gender stuff. This is the attitude toward gender issues on campus.

There is something about the homosexual that allows people to spread whatever stories they like about him and everyone believes them. The stories I have heard about myself coming to me from so-called well-wishers who heard them makes me feel like I do not know myself at all. I am supposed to have had rave-parties-turned-orgies in my rooms at St. Stephen’s, stood outside schools in Delhi waiting to prey on little boys, supplied women students to Jat hostelites in exchange for blowjobs, I could fill a scintillating novel with these stories. Alas, I am just a boring fool who does not drink, smoke, do substances and hates parties and children. But my alter ego is quite a star. David Halperin makes this point in his book Saint Foucault which talks about his own harassment at MIT. No matter what you do or not do, stories are going to spread. Heteros can do what they like. They have affairs with their students, marry their students, but all that is okay, because heterosexuality is okay. But if a gay man so much as sneezes, it is an epidemic.

PP: Prof Panikkar, you openly supported your students in 2007 when they made paintings considered ‘obscene’ by the right wing, and were not just suspended from your post but also physically attacked by the Sangh Parivar’s ‘moral police’ soon after. How did you handle all that?

Panikkar: Curiously, the 2007 painting controversy at the MS University outwardly had nothing to do with my sexuality or personal life. But, in retrospect, I can see that whoever wanted to throw me out, and did what they had planned was primarily because of my non-conformist life and approach, and how it was making a difference within the educational institution. At that volatile point of crisis when I was compelled to go underground, I am told that the rightwing goons were continuously hounding around my flat, trying to also find out the whereabouts of my live-in partner. At the time of those actual physical attacks which I was subjected to, they were also using abusive language referring to my sexual identity.
The last three years, since my suspension, had been the worst period in my life, emotionally and academically because I am still deprived of even access to the library, archive and to the entire university campus. With a hind sight, I can say that I had been victimized for my differences, and it was all done in the pretext of not abiding to a university’s administrative protocol.

PP: Dr Ashley, in your opinion will attitudes change if there are more out professors?

Tellis: There are very few our professors and the ones who come out face professional lives like mine. Who would want to come out in these circumstances? We just need safeguards, legal safeguards, against homophobia. I am not interested in heterosexuals accepting me. I’d rather be dead than accepted by heterosexuals, who are the sickest, most hypocritical people in the world. But I simply will not let them get away with their hush-hush, closed door homophobia. The fact is that in DU I could do nothing about it. Legally, I had no ground to stand on. Even the so-called historic judgement of the Delhi High Court last year can do nothing about structural homophobia in institutions. 377 has not gone entirely anyway outside of consensual gay sex in bourgeois bedrooms and that too bedrooms only in Delhi. Siras’ bedroom in Aligarh is a free zone for all.

What we need are legal safeguards in Universities that protect sexual minorities. This can only happen if the University recognizes sexual minorities as categories in their universe. Right now we are not even legible to them as subjects, though through informal means they can harass us, suspend us, throw us out of jobs, do what they like; use the probation period to throw gay faculty out as has just happened to me. This is the wonderful homophobic, sexist, anti-feminist and oppressive world of Indian education.

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