The matrimonial ad has become an unexpected harbinger of social change. In an English daily this week, amid the wheatish complexions and the convent educations, a mother was looking for a groom for her 36-year-old son. Sure, caste preferences were also mentioned — a prejudice that will have to be fought in its own right. But these orthodoxies seemed to coexist quite easily with the idea that an adult might seek love and companionship in another adult of the same sex.
Too often, a narrowly defined version of Indian tradition and culture is brandished like garlic to the vampire of dangerous and radical leanings, such as the belief that individuals should have the freedom to love whom they will. India’s first gay matrimonial draws homosexual relationships into one of the most conservative social institutions, the arranged marriage. It shows that tradition is infinitely more inventive and complex than its anxious champions, that it has the ability to evolve and assimilate new social imperatives. The ad is also a refreshing contrast to many more unhappy stories about gay people in India, forced into heterosexual marriages or isolated by social stigmas.
Unfortunately, the son, should he find a suitable boy, will not be able to marry him here. The last decade has seen a growing openness about gay rights that our laws do not reflect. The liberal Delhi high court judgment of 2009 that read down Section 377, which criminalises “intercourse against the order of nature”, was overturned by the Supreme Court in 2014. Section 377 remains on the statute books, barring the way to same sex marriage at a time when countries across the world are recognising it. The UK legalised gay marriage last year and the law in most US states allows it. India, however, refuses to recognise the most natural of unions by holding on to an unnatural Victorian law.
