When a Delhi High Court
decriminalized homosexuality three years ago, fury
at the ruling was such that Hindu and Muslim
groups typically at each throat's united in
opposition. However, recent plans by the
government of neighboring Nepal to recognize
sexual minorities haven't seen a single complaint
from the country's religious organizations.
The Home Ministry of Nepal's decision in
May to provide citizenship to gays under the
"others" category to members of the lesbian, gay,
bisexual, transgender and intersex
(LGBTI)
community is just the latest
in a series of successes Nepal's movement has seen
in recent years.
In an interview with Asia
Times Online, petitioner and the country's openly
gay lawmaker Sunil Babu Pant said that it started
with a December 2007 judgment by the Supreme Court
directing the government to introduce laws
providing equal rights to the LGBTI community and
amend all discriminatory laws against them.
After the court's decision, most
human-rights groups and political parties openly
spoke in favor of sexual minorities, and religious
groups, often the loudest opponents of gay rights
elsewhere, promptly accepted it, said Pant,
sipping tea at a garden restaurant.
The
judgment came days before a historic parliamentary
bill which declared Nepal a federal republic and
thereby abolished the Hindu monarchy. But Hinduism
remains integral to the lives of the people and
culture of Nepal. The thousands of temples, built
during the period of monarchy, still characterize
the country's landscape.
It's one of the
few countries where even hardcore Maoists
associate themselves with religion, though just
its cultural aspects. Maoist leader Puspa Kamal
Dahal, better known as Prachanda, wore a red
tilak (vermilion) covering his broad
forehead, even as dozens of marigold garlands
enveloped his chest and shoulders right up to his
ears, when he was sworn in as the first democratic
prime minister of Nepal in August 2008. He is
credited with leading a bloody civil war, which
when joined by mainstream political parties in
2006 overthrew the Hindu dynasty.
Despite
being a deeply religious country, Nepal has
"already mainstreamed" sexual minorities, Pant
said. The transgender still find it difficult to
get jobs, but "social acceptance is increasing by
the day".
Pant believes that 10% of
Nepal's population is gay. "Like any other
society," he said, referring to Alfred Kinsey's
1948 book, Sexual Behavior in the Human
Male. The Blue Diamond Society, an LGBTI
rights groups Pant founded, claims it has served
over 200,000 people in 36 districts in a little
over 10 years.
Based on the court
directive, a seven-member committee is finalizing
a same-sex marriage bill to be presented to
parliament for approval. The country's three major
parties - the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist),
the left-of-center Nepali Congress and the
Communist Party of Nepal (Unified
Marxist-Leninist) - have missed four deadlines to
build a consensus over a new constitution to
cement the country's transition, but they have all
supported the LGBTI community in their manifestos.
A parliamentary committee tasked to
propose fundamental rights in the new constitution
has included protections for sexual minorities.
The government-run Nepal TV has given Pant
a prime-time slot for a new weekly show called
"Pahichaan" or "Identity", which features Nepali
celebrities who join the gay activist to promote
human-rights for the LGBTI community.
Why
are Hindu leaders in Nepal not protesting? Pant
smiled at the question, and responded by saying
that some of India's Hindus might have learnt "the
art of getting into politics" from the United
States. Some religious groups, he charged, are
"into everything except religion itself ... But in
Nepal, religious institutions have remained pretty
pure ... and are more focused on the religious
aspect."
Nepal's Hindu institutions have
remained confined to religious aspects perhaps
because there was little political space under the
monarchy, Pant said. Besides, "religion, ideally,
is not against basic human rights. The
interpretation usually is very wrong. Even in
India, the UK and the US, not all religious people
oppose gay marriage."
In Nepal, he said,
most Hindu leaders know that "Hindu deities are so
diverse and have been gays, lesbians and
transgender themselves." He referred to temples
that have statues of the fire god drinking the
sperm of god Shiva. He pointed out that many
Hindus believe that a marriage lasts for seven
lives and although there is no guarantee whether a
spouse will be born male or female in the next
birth, the relationship continues.
There
are many transgender gods especially in tantric
Hinduism, Pant said. "The influence of tantrism
has broadened the mindset of religious sects
here," he said. Tantrism, which came with the
Vajrayana sect of Buddhism from the neighboring
Indian state of Bihar and became syncretized with
local practices in Nepal, doesn't have a single
coherent doctrine and is more world-embracing than
world-denying.
Some Hindu leaders have
"suggested" that same-sex marriage should be named
differently, as conventional marriage involves
rituals meant for male and female, Pant said. They
would like to call it gandarbha marriage
(love marriage). "Apart from this, there is no
other concern Hindus have."
The minority
Christian and Muslim communities in Nepal do not
approve of homosexuality, Pant said, but they are
struggling to establish their own rights and find
it counterproductive to oppose gay marriage in a
Hindu-majority society. However, he added, he had
good relations with leaders of the minorities,
too.
The gay community's success in Nepal
perhaps cannot be emulated elsewhere in the world
because this South Asian nation has a unique
religious and social context. But this young
democracy's experience at least teaches one
lesson, especially to advocates and opponents of
gay rights in the West. For, some religious groups
in the West have gone to the extent of attacking
the human dignity of LGBTI people. Likewise, some
gay advocates aggressively reject basic religious
tenets as well as faith-based foundations of
nations.
Nepal shows that such radical
reactions are not intrinsic to the conflict.
Finding a solution, no matter how long it might
take, through dialogue and without hatred is
perhaps a better option than seeking to destroy
each other, which is a lose-lose proposition.
Vishal Arora is a New
Delhi-based journalist. He researches and writes
on politics, culture, religion, foreign affairs
and human rights, primarily but not exclusively in
South and Southeast Asia. His articles have
appeared in the Guardian, the Washington Post, the
Huffington Post, USA Today, World Politics Review,
Foreign Policy in Focus, the Religion News
Service, and many other outlets. He can be
contacted at vishalarora_in@hotmail.com and some
of his articles can be read here. Follow him on
Twitter: vishalarora_in
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