"Goan Sands, Global Gays, and Pink India" - PINK PAGES (India - Monsoon 2013)

The message was confusing. In May 2013, several news sources across India, and online, had headlines that seemed to burst with pink pride: “This July, Goa will be a Gay Haven,” they said, while serving as an advertisement for IndjapInk, reputedly the country’s “first and only gay boutique travel agency.” IndjapInk was organizing a “Life is a Beach” package for travellers wanting a “most sensational, super sexy gay group tour of the year to Goa.” So, what was so perplexing about all that then, one might ask. Well, to accompany this ebullience and gay abandon, IndjapInk provides images of the wistful scenarios that patrons might aspire to once at the “gay haven.” The company’s Facebook page depicts scenes where swimwear-clad men lounge on sandy shores, get massages, look upon companions lovingly, and even laugh it up in groups of four that hint at the promise of, shall we say, more to come. One of the problems is there is no guaranteeing that any of these idyllic settings are actually in Goa (last I checked, most beaches have sand...). And all of the men in the pictures are white. 

What exactly is IndjapInk offering? Is it: a) Goa as a destination for white men? b) Goa as a destination where Indian men can access white men? or c) Goa as a destination where the people themselves are, perhaps, white? 

While beaches litter the coasts of India, what sets Goa apart as a favoured holiday destination in the Indian imagination is the liberality associated with it. Undeniably, the Indian film industry – Bollywood – has influentially played its part in crystallizing this perception, often by negatively representing Goa and Goans, through such movies as Dum Maro Dum (2011) and Go Goa Gone (2013), which portray the coastal location as a hedonistic playground for the pleasure of those that seek it. However, it must also be contended that assumptions of Goa’s permissiveness are tied in with its divergent colonial history from the rest of the country, which adds to its exotic allure for Indians. Goa was a Portuguese dominion between 1510 and 1961, thus pre- and post-dating the colonial association of most of the rest of modern India with Britain. Because of the nearly 500 year presence of the Portuguese in the region, a notion that persists is that Christianity and interraciality generally characterize Goan identity, giving its people a more Western and, so, more tolerant bent toward sexuality for one thing. Ironically, not only have Christians been a Goan minority since before Goa was decolonized, but white-Asian miscegeny had been a rarity that only saw its heyday as far back as the early sixteenth century. So much, then, for choice c, above, even if it is what IndjapInk might subliminally be selling with the Goan tag on its package.

Because Goa is an international tourist destination, white bodies do dot its beaches, making options a and b viable. Nonetheless, there is an interesting tension between the two possibilities. Does a company that chooses to name itself with a moniker that conjures the orientalist fantasies of a repressed colonial sahib (say “Indja” and try not to think of a stiff upper-lipped fellow with dreams of the Kama Sutra running through his head...) have any choice other than to offer an India of days gone by to white gay tourists? At the same time, what option b presents the Indian gay traveller to Goa with is, conversely, a modern experience. Because the Indian tourist may potentially share the same space as white gay men, his identity is placed on par with others on the gay global scene, which makes him just as modern and emancipated as them. The Indian gay tourist to Goa is being told that he has “arrived” because he can avail of the same pleasures in Goa as gay men of international origins.

Goa’s liminality plays a peculiar role in affording Indian gay men the opportunity to establish their identities as tourists and as members of a global fraternity. And afford is the key word here. The 25 May, 2013 Times of India headline puts it best when it notes of businesses like IndjapInk, that theirs is the task of “Luring the Pink Lucre to Incredible India.” Partaking of a gay lifestyle and demonstrating one’s liberation as a gay tourist is clearly only the domain of those able to drum up the right amount of pink rupees. This, therefore, is not about gay rights for all and sundry but, instead, a demarcation of the privilege of a few – a few men, at that. It is evident that the company is not aimed at drawing in women travellers. For the Indian gay male tourist, then, Goa becomes a proving ground of his liberation because he might encounter gay men from other parts of the world, but it also fixes Goa as India, but not quite. 

In his essay titled “Tourism and Nation-Building: (Re)Locating Goa in Postcolonial India” (2007),

anthropologist Raghuraman Trichur argues that Goa’s unique position as “India with a ‘difference’,” not only presents the region as a commodity for tourist consumption, but does so to integrate Goa with India. What Trichur alludes to is the manner in which Goa was subsumed by the Indian nation-state in 1961 though “Goa never figured in [the] imagination of independent India,” because “[t]he shape and form of postcolonial India is largely defined by its history of British colonialism.” Therein, Goa’s decolonization occurred not as an act of the self-determination of its own people, but at the hands of a nation that took it over. 

What the current wave of Indian gay tourism does is to reinforce the identity of a narrowly defined segment of the population, those of a certain economic ilk, by hailing them as elite and moneyed members of the nation. This homonationalism simultaneously sees the gay male subject as a participant in the ordering of India along ethnocentric and class lines, to the exclusion of the marginal, while he is concurrently given the chance to see himself as a player on a global stage that is similarly narrowly defined. So while the IndjapInk slogan might proclaim that “Life is a Beach,” the subtext reads: “Gay rights, one sandy shore at a time, but only if you can pay your way there...”

This article appears online here and also in the Winter 2013 issue of Trikone Magazine.

"The Man Who Wouldn't be King" - INDIA CURRENTS (California - August 2013)

It was May 1992. Los Angeles was still on fire. Although the tumultuous scene was on our television set in India, it could not have felt any closer to home. The newscaster offered a recap of the story that my family had been following intently since April. Tensions had flared in the aftermath of the verdict in the Rodney King beating trial. Despite videotaped evidence, the jury had exonerated the policemen responsible for violently assaulting the black motorist. The acquitted policemen, as well as the jury, had been all white. In a year, we would be emigrating to the United States. Los Angeles was our destination. And, like King, my first name is Rodney.

King was so much a part of my consciousness that I would often introduce myself as “Rodney… You know… like King? Rodney King?” I often needed the added qualification because, as I was told on more than one occasion, it was odd that someone of my racial background would have “a name like that.” As a teenager, newly immigrated to the States, my job at a fast food restaurant was my firsthand introduction to my new city’s racialization. In many ways, my workplace was a representative microcosm of Los Angeles – they were both equally diverse. Yet, what was plain to see was that while the staff at the restaurant were generally first generation immigrants, it was largely upper management and the clientele that were white.

During the unrest, when King famously made his televised plea for the people of his city to “get along,” his statement became the stuff of legendary ridicule. Was it that the notion of co-existing amicably was so simplistic, or that the sentiment had come from an ordinary black man with a rap sheet who had been beaten by the police? What the incident had done was to raise questions about police brutality and whose rights the keepers of the peace were protecting. For South Asians, among members of other ethnic communities, similar issues of racial profiling and civil rights violations rose to a crescendo in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks. Racial injustice may not be unique to any one minority group, but it is this very ubiquity of violence that should make us more mindful. Events in the current moment prove the need for us to voice our outrage, especially when it comes to those as defenseless as an ordinary, unarmed, young black boy whose life and rights seem to not matter at all.

Itself a legacy of the civil rights era, the Hart-Celler Act of 1965 aimed to disprivilege national origin in changing how immigrants would be allowed entry to the United States. Even in so doing, the express purpose of this change was to draw in highly skilled immigrant labor. The contemporary visibility of an upwardly mobile South Asian, and more specifically Indian, presence in America can be attributed to the 1965 measure. While 9/11 proved that class privilege was no deterrent to racial victimization, clearly, not all South Asians who immigrate to America do so from the technocratic ranks. Provisions made through family reunification clauses have diversified the community’s class demographics. In my family’s case, our petition for immigrant entry was made on the basis of my mother’s East African roots. As Goans of Kenyan heritage, despite the lack of quotas, it is evident that our case was helped because we were not only South Asian but also African – we ticked the diversity boxes for two developing regions. 

It is within these slippages of race and nationality that my personal experiences of being a dark-skinned resident of the United States have taken shape. The arrest occurred in January 2009. It had been a few short months after I had become an American citizen; short months after I participated in an election that brought to office America’s first black president – a man who, like me, had an East African history. Just off the bus from work, I was on foot, a few blocks away from my apartment in West Hollywood when a siren blared behind me. In broad daylight, I was handcuffed in my own neighborhood and shoved into the back seat of a deputy sheriff’s car. Citing a violation of the fourth amendment – which protects people from search and seizure without justifiable cause – I took my case to the ACLU, stating that I had been a victim of racial profiling. “What makes you think this

was about race?” the lawyer had asked. “What would make me think it wasn’t?” I wanted to say, but was stopped from doing so because the case just was not high profile enough for the organization. Technically, I had not been arrested because I had not been brought to the station; never mind that one never forgets what a pair of cuffs feels like.

“Rodney, huh?” The officer was looking at my California ID while the cold steel continued to bite into my wrists. Upon finding my UCLA identity card, establishing that I was an instructor there, the officer’s tone changed dramatically. “The reason I stopped you,” he said while uncuffing me, “is because you resemble a man who committed a burglary in this area earlier today.” Leaving aside the ludicrousness of why someone would be traipsing about on a brightly lit sunny day just after they had perpetrated a crime, I got straight to the point and said, “You stopped me because you made an assumption about my race.” Inadvertently confirming my suspicion, the officer responded, “It doesn’t matter if you’re a black. All that matters is that you matched the description I have.”

Was it because “a black” was in the wrong neighborhood? The irony should be apparent that in an area thought of as being liberal because of a large gay and lesbian presence, my complaint to the West Hollywood Sheriff’s Department was met with the party line that, after an internal investigation, it was ascertained the officer had acted in accordance with policies and no evidence of racial profiling could be found. I am sure it was also not racial profiling when a San Mateo policeman stopped me for questioning in September 2011 claiming that I resembled a criminal. “I’ll show you what I mean,” the officer said, producing an image. “You have the same eyebrows,” he explained helpfully. It was probably also not racial profiling when I was questioned extensively at airport immigration in September 2001. 

In spite of my name, my dark skin, and my African history, unlike Rodney King, I have the “privilege” of proving that I am not African American. “Long after your case is closed, you are going to have to be Rodney

King for the rest of your life. Do you think you can handle that?” attorney Steven Lerman had asked his client, the Los Angeles Times reported in a story following King’s death last year. “Steve, I just don’t know,” King replied. The same article quotes an earlier interview in which King had mused, “People look at me like I should have been like Malcolm X or Martin Luther King or Rosa Parks. I should have seen life like that and stay out of trouble … But it's hard to live up to some people's expectations, which [I] wasn't cut out to be.” King was an ordinary man upon whom national attention had been thrust without him having asked for it. As I mourn the miscarriage of justice in the Trayvon Martin case, I am reminded of an ordinary King. These are the legacies that remind us that injustice is all the greater because of its ordinariness, and all the more ordinary when one is black. 

The print version of this India Currents article appears online here, and also on The Aerogram. My thanks to the San Francisco Peninsula Press Club for recognizing this piece with an award for analysis at the 37th Annual Greater Bay Area Journalism Awards on May 31, 2014.

"Pramod Kale and Sharon da Cruz: In Memoriam" - THE GOAN: I'm Not Here (3 August 2013)

On June 23, 2013, Dr. Pramod Kale passed away. About a month later, on July 25, so did Dr. Sharon da Cruz. I did not know Professor Kale personally, but Sharon was a classmate of mine at St. Xavier’s College, Mapusa. The news was shocking. In their passing, not only have Dr. Kale and Sharon’s families lost their loved ones, but our community has lost two academics who researched different aspects of Goan culture and history. While having had many publications to his credit, Dr. Kale is perhaps best known for his article “Essentialist and Epochalist Elements in Goan Popular Culture: A Case Study of Tiatr” which appeared in an issue of Economic & Political Weekly in 1986. The weekly also carried Sharon’s “The Partido Indiano and the September Revolt of 1890 in Goa,” which she co-authored with Dr. Max de Loyola Furtado in 2011. In addition, Sharon had her hand in other publications, and was well known as an instructor at Cuncolim College. 

Dr. Kale’s article on tiatr may be considered an important intellectual intervention for having given an often derided art form its critical due. Aware of the negative social attitudes towards the theatrical genre, Dr. Kale highlighted the exact reasons for such dismissiveness by saying of tiatr that “[i]t is a form ... rooted in the working class and lower middle class Goan Catholic population living in Goa or outside expressing their trials and tribulations, hopes and aspirations.” He saw in its audiences that they gathered to witness the metatheatrical, evidence of one of the major political dramas of Goa in the 1980s – the language issue. In regard to this, Dr. Kale notes in his essay that for those audiences of tiatr, “Konkani [was] not merely a language, a medium of communication, but a cause...” In so saying, the researcher acknowledged the socio-cultural significance of this traditional style of Goan theatre, its class and caste affiliations, and its ability to rally a community concerned with the socio-political theatrics beyond the stage. 

In her role as a historian, Sharon’s interest in the Goan past ranged from her doctoral research on the Franciscans to the Opinion Poll, on which she co-wrote a book, and the aforementioned September Revolt of 1890, among other topics. Of the politics of 1890, Sharon’s article astutely points out that while the revolt had an “elitist ... nature, it [also] had a mass popular base ... from [within] the Mundkar community.” Thus, she underscores not just the alliances formed in challenges to colonial power, but also “contesting versions” of historical events which, when taken into account in their multiplicity, may “[enable] us to view the historical process holistically by visibilising the other...”

As we mourn, it is necessary to consider not only the legacy that researchers like Dr. Kale and Sharon leave behind, but also how their work could have been studied while these scholars were still with us. It is generally only at the postgraduate level that students in Goa are supported in their choice to take up the study of the region and read the writing of researchers like the ones memorialised here. Yet, how much more might we have benefitted from a curriculum of Goan Studies that

pervades our educational system at all levels while encouraging established scholars of Goa to be an interactive part of the process? One imagines that it would have allowed students to interact personally or virtually with thinkers like Dr. Kale and Sharon whose dedication to studying Goa is inspiring. Even though they are no longer with us, their scholarship lives on and what we can do to sustain and build upon it remains to be seen.

To see the print version of this article, visit here. My thanks to Dale Menezes for providing the EPW essays quoted herewith.