The Pushkin case has served to open our eyes to a grim facet of gay life that many people don’t want to acknowledge. Courtesy the steady degeneration of liberalism and the systematic assault on family values, ordinary, decent people are wary of speaking out against the perversions in the gay community lest it be construed as intolerance. They are further intimidated by the aggressive support extended to alternative lifestyles by the presiding deities of culture.
Of course despite the veneer of impartiality and objectivity by the author (a prominent right-wing journo) the gay-hatred (along with a jaundiced view of any perceived liberal practices) is never far from the surface.
The underlying assumption of the piece is that gays lead a life of unlicensed promiscuity : which panders to the worst stereotype most Indians have towards any alternative lifestyle. And that gays are being allowed to get away by committing heinous crimes just because they are gay……of course Mr Dasgupta is short on facts when it comes to supporting this contention.
The problem is not homosexuality but our changing perceptions of it. What was hitherto a fringe tendency has been given an extraordinary licence. There is a growing climate of moral laxity that has led to countries like India becoming new receptacles for what can best be called criminal deviancy. Gay criminality isn’t the whole problem but it is certainly part of the problem and the Pushkin murder was an example of that.
And the clincher:
Finally, the Pushkin case has brought into the open a nexus between employees of international aid agencies and the gay underworld. Of particular concern to many is the possibility of the lavishly funded anti-AIDS campaign being misused to create a gay network. It would certainly seem that some of the do-gooder foreigners ostensibly involved in improving the plight of natives see India as just a convenient place to buy cheap sex with poor slum kids.
You can almost feel the rightist’s hatred for NGOs spilling out here: sometimes these naughty NGOs aid foreign missionaries, sometimes they defend gay lovers…ooh these subverters of Indian sanskriti…..Now I am no big fan of NGOs and the champagne socialists who mostly run them [I shall vent my spleen on them in a future post]..but this so-called nexus between the NGOs and the gay criminal underworld alluded to is certainly a figment of the author’s rather colorful imagination [A gay version of Eyes Wide Shut perhaps]
In a culture where any alternative form of sexuality is frowned upon and persecuted [and one only has to look at the IPC’s definition of “perversion”] Swapan-babu seems to think that:
There are enough openly gay couples who dot the society pages of our newspapers. They may be considered somewhat odd and, at times, bohemian, but we haven’t heard of cases of gay-bashing. Indeed, so great is the lure of the Pink Rupee, that many restaurants and bars have begun to discreetly organise Gay Evenings for this neglected clientele. As such, the accusations of a witch-hunt of gays levelled by activists are somewhat far-fetched and self-serving.
“Discreetly” ? Now I wonder why thats the case? In the utopian world of Swapan Dasgupta there is no “moral police” so why on earth the discreetness?
Swapan Dasgupta is a passable columnist. Sometimes he does write well-balanced pieces but the deep well of hatred he has for homosexuality and the perils of “liberal culture” and NGOs have made this piece as intellectually incisive as the fulminations of an old man sitting on a park bench and observing a couple romancing.
In the end his personal biases so fog his judgement and his logical skills that he ends up contradicting himself, making sweeping unsubstantiated claims and in general looking like someone frothing at the mouth in anger and not being able to come up with any coherent words.
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I would like to hear your comments about “Champagne socialism”, better known in the US as “Limousine liberalism”. Anyway, there is a notion among rightists in the US (publicly at least), that anyone who is privileged cannot really be interested in socialism. This implies that any member of the elite must repeat the rightist cant, a sentiment surely appreciated in totalitatrian societies.
Hi there. A really nice one 🙂 I like Swapan Dasgupta generally but as you said this piece was just too much and he exposed himself to the discerning public similar to his commie counterparts.
Arnab, you may be right about Swapan Dasgupta frothing at the mouth – I’m not very fond of his viewpoints in general, but the Pushkin Chandra case is, sadly, a gay-bashing opportunity handed on a platter to those who disapprove of homosexuality.
Pushkin Chandra, from newspaper reports, didn’t exactly seem a very nice character. Pity his case is used to bash even homosexuals who have the good taste of keeping their sexuality in the privacy of a consensual relationship.
I just happened on this site by chance through research on Criminal deviant behaviour. The fact that it was related to this key phrase is astonishing enough, but the underlying homophobic rhetoric on this site was completely outrageous and goes against anything that I believe in or stand for.
On this site? Hello? You are one great researcher…arent you?
read some related news posts too… tragic…