When India decriminalized homosexuality in 2009, GLBT equality
advocates rejoiced. But the high court’s historic ruling has proved to
be a victory also for heterosexual women, who are now leaving fraudulent
marriages and marriages of convenience to gay husbands.
Expressindia.com
reported in an Oct. 25 story that a change in the social mindset is
taking place, and women whose marriages have not been consummated, or
who have other grounds for believing that they have married gay men, are
now starting to seek divorce or annulment.
"It isn’t that such
cases have not been filed with the courts earlier," a lawyer in Bandra,
Shabnam Kazi, told the press. "We have had many women who after a lot of
prodding and investigations spoke up. A change, even though slight, has
been seen in the court when women narrate their case. That is a major
mind change."
Another lawyer, Audrey D’Mello, described the case
of a woman whose marriage to a businessman went unconsummated for
months. "When she discovered her husband was involved sexually with a
much younger boy, she confronted him and her parents-in-law," D’Mello
said. "It was a shocking revelation for her when she discovered that his
parents were aware of his preference. His marriage was just a counter
to the social stigma." D’Mello said she knew of a dozen similar
instances in which women had married gay men, not realizing that they
were, in effect, cover for gay men caught in a society that until
recently punished gays with steep penalties.
D’Mello described
another marriage of convenience in which the relationship had been
consummated, making it more difficult for the wife to seek an annulment.
"It is a very tricky case, said D’Mello. "She has had evidence
collected where she can prove that her husband is involved in a gay
relationship. She hacked into her husband’s email and found various
interactions he had with a gay partner. But here she could not file for
nullity on the grounds of non-consummation of marriage. We suggested the
ground of cruelty and fraud."
With the end of gay
criminalization, the frequency of such marriages may fade over time.
Already, a few same-sex marriages have taken place between Indian
men--in one case, between a Hindu and a Moslem, a sign that love can transcend even deep-rooted hostility between religious traditions.
The 30-year-old Muslim man, identified only as S. Khan in an Aug. 17 article at the Times of India,
explained why the couple needed to travel despite the recent
decriminalization of homosexuality in India. "We read on the Internet
that Nepal’s Supreme Court has approved of same-sex marriages," said
Khan. "Since they are still not legal in India, we decided to come to
Nepal to get married."
The wedding, which took place Aug. 17, was
officiated by a Hindu cleric and included an exchange of vows and rings.
Officially, however, Nepal has not yet made marriage equality legal.
"Though Nepal’s apex court has approved same sex marriages and
instructed the government to enact laws in accordance, the actual laws
are yet to be formulated," said Sunil Pant, an openly gay member of
Nepal’s parliament and the founder of the Blue Diamond Society, which
advocates for LGBT equality.
"We were hoping the new constitution would be promulgated in May and
legally validate same-sex marriages," added Pant. That did not happen,
so now "we hope the marriage laws will now be ready when the
constitution comes into effect in May 2011."
The men may have
overcome social and religious obstacles, but they have yet to navigate
the bureaucratic hurdles that await: the Hindu groom, identified in an Associated Press story as Sanjay Shah, a 42-year-old social worker who lives in Britain, plans to return home and take his spouse with him.
Pant said that Pink Mountain Tour Company--a
GLBT travel service that he also established--has already made plans to
host two additional weddings in Nepal, one for an American lesbian
couple and one for another transnational family, an Arab-Filipino
couple. The travel company was started earlier this year, with an eye to
the international same-sex wedding market.
Gays in India are
still celebrating the victory of no longer being treated as
criminals--or subjected to crushing blackmail demands--following the
July 2, 2009, High Court verdict that scrubbed anti-gay language from
Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. Family parity remains outside of
the grasp of LGBT Indians, but simply not being persecuted remains a
cause for joy.
"It does mean a lot. People don’t avoid us these
days," Anshuman Bludagoti told the Associated Press for an article on
the occasion’s first anniversary. That joy is tinged with apprehension,
however, as the country’s Supreme Court has yet to confirm the High
Court’s finding.
Social pressures also remain. Only two days after the first same-sex wedding
in the Indian state Manipur last March, the families of the two men who
had wed called the police in to convince them to split up, lest their
marriage stain their families’ honors.
The two men were wed on March 25, reported the India Gazette
that same day. The 25-year-old groom--identified only as
Sandip--referred to his 28-year-old male spouse Nikhil as his "wife,"
and told the media, "We are indeed happy."
But though the men had
been together for six years, their marriage displeased their families so
much that they went to the police for help in breaking up the marriage,
which ended on March 27.
Though so much time has elapsed since
India’s High Court struck down the law that criminalized physical
intimacy between consenting adults of the same gender, anti-gay
religious leaders continue to press for the Indian Supreme Court to
reverse the High Court’s finding, according to a July 2 Associated Press article.
