Sreemanti Sengupta

Malay Roychoudhury (1939-2023): The Explosive Poet of India’s Hungryalist Movement

Malay Roychoudhury, one of the co-founders of the 1960s’ Hungryalist literary movement, was a notorious cocktail of confessional verse that continually flouted norms and flirted with danger.

Kolkata: Poet and novelist Malay Roychoudhury, one of Bengal’s best-known counterculture icons, breathed his last in Mumbai on Friday, October 27. He was 84.

A co-founder of the Hungry Generation aka Hungryalist movement, one of India’s major anti-establishment literary ventures, Roychoudhury was one of Independent India’s earliest poets to have faced arrest and undergone trial on obscenity charges.

“The curses that Malay and his friends spewed in their times feel like gold letterings in today’s times,” said writer, film, and literature critic Sanjoy Mukhopadhyay.

Launched by Bengali writers in the early 1960s, Hungryalist literature triggered nationwide debate and influenced anti-establishment literary movements in Hindi, Telugu, and Marathi during the late ‘60s. His writings have been translated into several major Indian languages as well as English, German, French, Spanish, Russian, and Italian.

Born in 1939, Roychoudhury was deeply influenced by the slum culture of Patna’s Imlitala ghetto where he and his elder brother, Samir, grew up. Living in a neighbourhood comprising ‘low caste’ Hindus, Dalits, and Shia Muslims, Roychoudhury developed his literary vocabulary by listening to his neighbour reciting Ghalib and Faiz Ahmed Faiz.

Later, at Ram Mohun Seminary School, a student-cum-librarian initiated him into Marxism and the works of literary stalwarts like Rabindranath Tagore and Jibananda Das. Two servants at their Imlitala house who were well versed in poet Tulsidasa’s Ramcharitmanas and Ramshalaka were also responsible for moulding Roychoudhury’s artistic sensibilities.

Roychoudhury reminisced about his days at Imlitala, his father’s photography studio, and life among the downtrodden in Chotoloker Chotobela, a memoir published by Charchapada in 2012. Chhotolok is an antonym for Bhadrolok, a nomenclature used to describe the upper-caste, English-educated Bengali Hindus. Roychoudhury always insisted that he belonged to the domain of the chhotolok, or the subaltern.

Roychoudhury’s father had sent him away to their house in Patna’s Dariapur locality and the older brother Samir to Chaibasa (now in Jharkhand) so that they would escape Imlitala’s bad reputation of free sex, toddy, cannabis, and hashish. However, building a voice for the lowest of the low became Roychoudhury’s passion when the two brothers were confronted with the post-Partition upheaval, sectarian violence, and refugee crisis.

As Roychoudhury said in a 2023 interview with Evan Kennedy for the New York-based City Lights Bookstore, “I told my brother, let’s raise our voice. We simple people have nothing to do. Let’s print leaflets against the government, the system. Whatever we like, we’ll write, freely.”

The turbulent 1960s

From humble beginnings, the Hungryalist movement gathered momentum when like-minded litterateurs like Shaileswar Ghosh, Debi Roy, Pradip Chaudhuri, Basudeb Dasgupta, Subhas Ghosh, Falguni Roy, and others contributed to the vision and created a unique language of insult and anger against the establishment.

The Hungryalists wanted to write differently and create a language of the subaltern. “To different authorities, we had sent paper masks of Indian gods, jokers, Mickey Mouse, rakshasas. They were really cheap and for children. On the reverse we had printed, ‘Please remove your mask. From Hungry Generation.’ They never thought that these things could come to them,” Roychoudhury said in the interview.

Writers of Hungry generation. From the top left moving clockwise: Saileswar Ghose, Malay Roy Choudhury and Subhas Ghose Basudeb Dasgupta, David Garcia, and Subimal Basak. Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Tridib Mitra/CC BY-SA 3.0 DEED.

The movement began to attract attention and create controversies from 1963 onwards due to its ruthless verbiage. Allen Ginsberg, one of the pivotal figures of the American Beat Movement, stayed with the Roychoudhury brothers in Patna in 1963. Apart from exchanging literary notes, Ginsberg also took photos of Indian lepers, beggars, and refugees, which angered the poet and his father. Roychoudhury thought Ginsberg was seeing India through the eyes of a common white tourist.

Soon after Ginsberg’s departure, Roychoudhury’s dangerous writings were to change his life unalterably.

It was his 1963 poem “Prachanda Baidyutik Chhutar” (Stark Electric Jesus), which prompted the government’s actions against the Hungryalists.

Oh I’ll die I’ll die I’ll die
My skin is in blazing furor
I do not know what I’ll do where I’ll go oh I am sick
I’ll kick all the Arts in the back and go away Shubha
Shubha let me go and live in your cloaked melon
In the unfastened shadow of dark destroyed saffron curtain
The last anchor is leaving me after I got the other anchors lifted
I can’t resist anymore, million glass-panes are breaking in my cortex
I know, Shubha, spread out your matrix, give me peace
Each vein is carrying a stream of tears up to the heart
Brain’s contagious flints are decomposing out of eternal sickness
Mother why didn’t you give me birth in the form of a skeleton
I’d have gone two billion light years and kissed God’s ass
But nothing pleases me nothing sounds well
I feel nauseated with more than a single kiss
I’ve forgotten women during copulation and returned to Muse
Into the sun-colored bladder
I do not know what these happenings are but they are occurring within me

(An excerpt from Malay Roychoudhury’s “Stark Electric Jesus,” as published in City Lights Journal Number 3 (1966))

After the first Hungry anthology came out in March 1964, police picked up six of them in a string of arrests – Saileshwar Ghosh and Subhas Ghosh from Kolkata; Malay and Samir Roychoudhury from Patna; Pradip Choudhuri from Tripura; and Haradhan Dhara from Howrah. Malay alone underwent trial for ‘obscenity’ in his poem, as the police tried to turn the other accused into approvers against him. However, most of these poets ultimately defended him in court.

While a city sessions court in Kolkata convicted Roychoudhury, he was later acquitted by the Calcutta high court. The entire legal battle lasted nearly three years. The chain of events took Kolkata’s literary sphere by storm.

The Time Magazine reported on the trial in their November 1964 issue, “In a land that has become so straitly laced that its movie heroines must burst into song rather than be kissed, five scruffy young poets were hauled into Calcutta’s dreary Bankshall Court for publishing works that would have melted even Vatsyayana’s pen.”

By 1970, translations of Hungryalist texts appeared in literary periodicals from different parts of the world – Mexico, Argentina, Australia, Germany, France, the UK, and the US. Close to 60 Hungry-influenced magazines were published between the 1960s and ’80s, including Kshudhartha Pratirodh (The Hungry Resistance), Swakal (Our Times), Pphoo (Huh!), Upadruta (Disturbed), Zebra, and Giraffe.

After 1965, the movement fizzled out, beaten out of shape and spirit by the authority’s harsh measures. For a time, Roychoudhury took up a government job at Agriculture, Refinance, and Development Corporation. On his return to literary life two decades later, he won and declined the Sahitya Academic Award for translating Dharamvir Bharati’s Suraj Ka Satwan Ghora into Bengali.

In 1995, Roychoudhury’s literary career took a dramatic turn as he introduced his Adhunantika phase (‘Adhu’ meaning “new”; “Nantik” meaning ‘end’) where he became one of Bengali literature’s pioneering voices in the post-modernist writing style. His poetry collections from this phase are Chitkar Samagra, Chhatrakhan, Ja Lagbey Bolben, Atmadhangser Sahasrabda, Postmodern Ahlader Kobita, and Kounaper Luchimangso. His novels from the period include Namgandho, Jalanjali, Nakhadanta, Ei Adham Oi Adham, and Arup Tomar Entokanta.

Here are some lines from Blood Lyric published in 2011:

“What have I done for poetry plunging into lava-spewing volcano?
What are these? What are these? Result of searches at home
of Poetry? Bromide sepia babies from Dad’s broken almirah
of Poetry! Mom’s Benares sari torn out of hammered box
of Poetry! Breaths are recorded in the seizure list
of Poetry! Show me show me what else is coming out
of Poetry! Shame on you; girl’s half-licked guy! Die you die
of Poetry! Wave piercing sharks chew up flesh & bone”

Roychoudhury continued to be active on the Bengali literary circuit, with books and writings being released regularly in the Kolkata Book Fair and the Little Magazine Fair.

As news of his death broke, the little magazine fraternity of Bengal, India, and abroad took to social media in hoards to express their condolences. Many lamented his loss.

His impact and influence over India’s counter-establishment scenario were beautifully summed up by the late American writer-scholar Howard McCord: “Malay Roy Choudhury, a Bengali poet, has been a central figure in the Hungry Generation’s attack on the Indian cultural establishment since the movement began in the early 1960s. …Acid, destructive, morbid, nihilistic, outrageous, mad, hallucinatory, shrill – these characterise the terrifying and cleansing visions” that “Indian literature must endure if it is to be vital again.”

Malay Roychoudhury is survived by his wife Shalila Roychoudhury, his daughter Anushree Prashant, son Jitendra and two grandchildren.

Sreemanti Sengupta is a Kolkata-based freelance writer, poet, and media studies lecturer.

Body Positivity Is the Solution to ‘Tokenist’ Inclusion in the Indian Fashion Industry, Say Models

Indian fashion is still suffering from the patriarchal mindset where the male gaze allows only fair, slim, and tall models to be appreciated.

Kolkata: Khushboo Sharma was relentlessly bullied in school for being a big girl, and that led her to constantly question her self-worth. Growing up in the small town of Vadodara in Gujarat, becoming a model couldn’t be further from her mind. To combat the shame she felt in her skin, she chose academics, so that people would “at least appreciate me for my brains”. She became a data scientist.

Body negativity, however, is an issue that tends to resurface. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, her insecurities resurfaced when she experienced a relationship break-up. She attributes it to her plus-sized frame.

The mental turmoil hampered her professional work and she started to journal to get out of that sinking feeling. Things took a dramatic turn when a modeling agency noticed her self-styled photos on Instagram and offered her work.

Today, a seasoned model, Sharma talks about how fashion has given her more than money could measure. “It has made me appreciate myself, given me self-esteem and pride. Today, I am a role model for many plus-sized women and I get messages where they say that they have been inspired to wear swimwear because of me”.

Khushboo Sharma. Photo provided by author.

While thriving in her newfound self-love, Sharma rues the fact that not enough is being done to increase the representation of alternate beauties in the Indian fashion industry.

“Proper scouting is not done for the plus-sized community, and only the models who had begun the diversity movement end up getting all the spots. The new girls are hardly featured. There has been no attempt to build and empower a community for upcoming faces and the same faces keep getting the opportunities.”

Sharma claims to have built a plus-sized community of 5,000 women who aspire to work in the fashion industry. Sharma is also proud that her peers from her hometown have followed in her footsteps in owning their bodies and aspiring for a modelling career. “Brands like House of Soho and Sajke are some of my hometown brands featuring plus-sized models,” says Sharma.

Glorification of beauty that often adheres to western standards leads to a huge section of insecure and neglected aspirants. India’s obsession with fair skin is a well-known fact. Due to pressures from a liberated feminist audience, Hindustan Unilever’s popular skin lightening cream ‘Fair & Lovely’ had to rebrand their product to ‘Glow & Lovely’.

Sangeeta Gharu, a dusky beauty from Rajasthan’s Jodhpur, has a similar story. She was greatly stirred when she saw the 2008 Bollywood blockbuster film Fashion, a star-spangled movie directed by Madhur Bhandarkar that dealt with the darker sides of the Indian fashion industry and how models fight them.

“That’s where I first saw tall, lanky, dark-skinned models and fell in love with them,” says Gharu, who has been chasing her dreams across Jodhpur, Jaipur, and finally Mumbai, the home to Bollywood.

She recalls years of gruelling hard work punctuated by painful rejections due to her dark skin tone. She gives a lot of credit to her mentor for counselling her. She was taught to first accept herself as beautiful before expecting recruiters to see the beauty in her.

“I would like to tell every dark-skinned model out there, to love yourself and work hard – you will definitely succeed!” says Gharu.

Indian fashion is still suffering from the patriarchal mindset where the male gaze allows only fair, slim, and tall models to be appreciated.

“The beauty standards in fashion are just the reflection of the beauty mindsets of all women. They are increasingly getting Botox to fix their noses, lips, faces, etc. They do it because they think it will earn them more love and ‘likes’ on social media,” says Geetanjali Adhikari, a model from Delhi, whose fashion journey is one from facing fat-shaming to gaining acceptance and ultimately achieving industry success.

“I consider myself very lucky for being a plus-sized model. The body I was stigmatised for, is now celebrated. But I feel sorry for the big curvy girls who are still struggling within their bodies.”

Also read: Fashionably Queer: What Does Fashion Mean to India’s Queer Persons?

Tokenism in the fashion industry

According to Luna, a transgender model and drag queen, the concept or idea of fashion is inclusive but the business of fashion may not be so. She says that tokenism continues to exist in Indian fashion despite significant strides having been made in inclusion and diversity.

“The business unfortunately has been run by men who have instilled their biases. That said, I am extremely thankful for social media because ten years ago, I wouldn’t have imagined myself where I am today. I always thought fashion was not for me. Now, when I am in a room with people I have grown up idolising, it hits differently,” she says.

Toshada Uma, who is 4’9” tall, has lost count of runway shows she has walked while wearing shoes that are 2-4 sizes above hers. Her height is well below the conventional average. She remembers how, on multiple instances, her colleagues asked her what she did for a living. It sounded like they doubted if she belonged to the same set, got the same pay, and worked the same hours as them.

“The situation makes one think if things would be any different if the industry hired diverse models not just for some brownie points but because they genuinely believed it was important to represent various features,” Uma says, citing the common practice of tokenist inclusion versus an organic attempt to change the culture of recruiting in the industry.

Sharma considers the plus-sized fashion industry in India to be dysfunctional. “The clothes that are meant for us are unattractive and have no sense of creativity,” she says, adding to the narrative that attempts to increase representation on the ramp are much more cosmetic than constructive.

Speaking about the pretentious malpractices, she says one of India’s major fashion events is known for giving out generic casting calls that encourage models of all looks, genders, and ethnicities to upload their photos and videos with the event hashtag. “But they don’t even bother to see these videos that are uploaded,” she claims.

“This is our lived experience. We are ready to struggle for our spots, but giving us false hopes is just cruel,” says Sharma.

However, the fashion diversity landscape is slowly evolving.

Fashion designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee has on many occasions set high benchmarks for inclusion and diversity in Indian fashion. From introducing plus-sized models to giving opportunities to unconventional beauties, Mukherjee has made a name for his originality. The recent controversy where he was trolled for an unsmiling model, also demonstrates his bold choices.

Other designers who have done considerable work in increasing marginalised representation in Indian fashion include Manish Malhotra, Shivan and Narresh, Kunal Rawal, and Pallavi Mohan. Brands like Freakins, Zivame, Puma, Nykaa, Titan Raga, Vulgar, Fenty, Yeezy, and others, have joined the inclusivity bandwagon.

Gauthami Jeji, a bisexual Indian model with vitiligo skin disorder, says that the COVID-19 pandemic was a watershed moment in Indian fashion. According to her, the stagnation in fashion standards and audience boredom prompted designers, producers, and agencies to explore new looks. Her skin condition has been a blessing in disguise, leading to casting calls since she was 17.

“Vitiligo has certainly given me an edge but my position in the industry will be sustained because I am very good at what I do,” she says. She further points out the need for honest representation. She adds that celebrating diversity and capitalising on a disorder are two very different things. “I have faced tokenism personally – for example, for one shoot they take unique models and just don’t employ them again.”

Jeji believes that for things to change, the marginalised representation must be honest and transparent. Only then can beauty adapt to new standards organically.

Gauthami Jeji. Photo provided by author.

“I would like to see a world where models are called models, not plus-sized or trans models. We don’t call doctors plus-sized doctors, do we?”

For Sharma, the solution lies in raising awareness about body positivity and highlighting inspiring stories about fashion professionals who have overcome biases and are successful irrespective of how they look.

Uma looks forward to fashion being recontextualized as just another career path, and not a tool for cosmetic validation. Attaching glamour and self-worth to fashion makes it exploitative and unnecessarily overrated. “It’s good to realise that the only validation we need is our own. If modelling is what you want to do, give it your 100%, confidently. If it works out, it’s great, if it does not, keep your options open!” she says.

Sreemanti Sengupta is a Kolkata-based freelance writer, poet, and media studies lecturer.

Fashionably Queer: What Does Fashion Mean to India’s Queer Persons?

The hyper-inclusive queer world of fashion challenges the view that gayness is a curable tendency in an abnormal society.

Kolkata: “Beauty gives me hope,” said Luna, a non-binary, gay model, drag queen, and make-up artist with a portfolio that boasts of the Vogue India and Femina covers apart from working with renowned designers and international labels.

When Suruj Pankaj Rajkhowa, popularly known as Glorious Luna (They/He/She), presented as a boy with visible effeminate tendencies, they were picked on by their peers and relatives for their mannerisms and also for the single blue shirt they used to wear on most occasions. Not having too many options, Luna would loan a chunni or scarf from one of their cousins and pair it with the overworn shirt. When the tongues still wagged, they would have a cheeky reply “There’s no satisfying you lot!”

Mx Siaan in drag. Photo: Special arrangement

For Luna, and others like them, fashion is much more than an assemblage of clothes and accessories. “As a queer person, fashion is more than a profession – it is a survival skill. My language of rebellion is not asking people for acceptance, but about showing them that I am queer and so is my fashion.”

The world of fashion seems to be one of the most welcoming professional options for the LGBTQ+ community. Though bias and prejudice often make trans and non-binary models merely token characters in an entourage, it also affords them the freedom of expression that is stigmatised in day-to-day life apart from a viable employment option.

Many in the community express gratitude for flourishing social media and support the rise of fashion influencers like Uorfi Javed, who continues making headlines for her unconventional clothing fashioned out of garbage bags, cycle tires, and bamboo baskets among others. This support stems from the queer person’s solidarity with the disruption Uorfi is causing to the status quo. As Luna said, just like them, she too is not treating fashion in the same way as “a middle-aged lady living in a 3BHK apartment in South Bombay who has a lot of Gucci bags.”

For them, Uorfi represents the perils of the patriarchal, capitalist over-sexualization of women in India by creating art out of the absurd and giving men a taste of their obsession with controlling women’s bodies and choices.

Speaking of disruption, the five-decades-old Pride movement has taken the demonstrative route to inclusion. At different points in queer history, the rainbow flag has influenced the use of loud colours, garish make-up, and kinky leather attire that have been used as means to stand out, challenge, and resist the blanket enforcement of sexuality and gendered codes of colour and fashion.

On the subject of queer aesthetic, Rayyan, a Muslim transfemme pansexual content creator and model from Mumbai who goes by she/her and they pronouns, said that a only a tiny portion of the queer population is flamboyant, while the majority try their best to be invisible, belong and blend in, often going to the extreme of entering heterosexual marriages and having children. “The portion that is loud in their fashion choices is the section of the population who have taken control of their bodies and want to stand out,” they said.

Also read: 53% of Adults in India Support Legalisation of Same-Sex Marriages, Finds Pew Research Center

If you are one of those people who think queer fashion is a little “extra”, Rayyan said it’s only natural to be so. “Any minority community that is rebelling tends to go to the extreme. The Dalit movement has young people leaving their families, living by themselves, and making new social structures. Even the Dalit drag movement or Dalit comedians and rappers use words that you will be scandalised by,” they said.

Queer subcultures

Fashion becoming almost a life skill for the queer community also means that subcultures like drag and kink–that allow complete indulgences of their fantasies–are thriving. Drag espouses the creation of fantastic theatrical figures using bold make-up, extravagant wigs, gowns, fishnets, and feathers. Kink gives way to a leather-laden look of androgynous style that hinges on a ‘no-bounds’ sexually indulgent world that has led to alternative sexual practices such as sadomasochism, domination and submission, erotic roleplaying, fetishism, and other erotic forms of discipline.

“Drag is a beautiful world – where you can create your own reality. Even straight people can do drag. It is a genderless world of fantasies,” said Luna, who enjoys drag as an extension of their self-expression.

Photo from a Pink Party organised by brand Dev R Nil. Photo: Special arrangement

“While these worlds may seem transgressive and alienating to the cis-het society, the fact is, both erotic practices and loud fashion have seeped into the mainstream sexual and fashion repertoire,” said gay designer Navonil Das (He/Him/His) of brand Dev R Nil.

Das celebrates the country’s drag scene and has been organising ‘Pink Parties’ across the country for over twelve years. Pink Parties that are aws safe space for queer persons to meet or hang out, originally began as a protest against a university in Delhi that did not allow a trans person to enter due to their sexuality and choice of clothing.

“Fashion for the queer society means wearing their identity, literally,” said Das, who has organised over 120 pink parties till now with activities such as drag races, kink explorations, Gogo boys, and performances by trans people.

“The queer look is all about being visible. It is about rebellion, a form of shock therapy for the society that has ignored and invisibilised us,” he adds.

Not only clothes, but behavioural elements of the Hijra’s thikris (loud high pitched clap) also attempt to stun or intimidate the onlooker. Used both as an exaggerated sign of assent and protest, Hijras also resort to threats to expose their private parts when met with mainstream resistance and disapproval about their identities.

The hyper-inclusive queer world of fashion challenges the view that gayness is a curable tendency in an abnormal society.

“There is no particular definition for drag. I have known a very timid woman who suddenly turned into a bold abuse-slinging personality when in drag, said Rayyan while adding that they also know of a person who identified as a cis-gendered man and how they realised they were trans while exploring and falling in love with their feminine side in drag.

“It is common for people to be straight in real life and queer in drag,” said Rayyan who won a prize at a queer party in the ‘realness’ category, which demanded trans persons to behave and dress the closest they can to their preferred gender.

Despite the limitations and biases inherent in the fashion industry, the queer community celebrates every opportunity to gain visibility in this highly competitive world. Roshini Kumar (she/her, they/them) a non-binary fashion model from Mumbai tries their best to preserve their individuality. “I’ve always been unapologetic and fearless with my fashion and don’t follow trends or beauty standards. I’ve worked with many people from the fashion industry, including the iconic Abu Jani, Sandeep Khosla, Mohit Rai, and Shubhika. They are challenging fashion norms and encouraging actual representation and inclusion,” Kumar said.

Roshini Kumar. Photo: Special arrangement

As we navigate through the 53rd International Pride month, we can definitely boast of coming a long way on the road to inclusion and acceptance of the queer aesthetic. Regarding whether fashion can bring any lasting social change, Mx Siaan (They/He), a non-binary drag king says, “As a powerful form of self-expression, fashion has the potential to bring up deep-seated questions about patriarchy and prejudices. I hope fashion continues to encourage people to evolve, do more, and be more.”

Sreemanti Sengupta is a Kolkata-based freelance writer, poet, and media studies lecturer.

Love in a Time of Intolerance: How Policy and Social Prejudice Are Holding Back the Romantic Indian

Interfaith and inter-caste relationships have always been difficult in India. As the Supreme Court hears petitioners pleading for marriage equality, the time is ripe to see how laws and hatred have stopped love.

Kolkata: When 34-year-old Krishna Gopal Chowdhury (he/him), a designer hailing from Kolkata in the eastern region of India fell hopelessly in love with Anisuzzaman Khan aka Anush (he/him), a fine arts practitioner from Bangladesh over the internet, he knew that his love was pitted against some of the toughest hurdles these countries had to offer.

Chowdhury flew to Bangladesh in September 2019 with a surprise proposal, and the couple kissed at Dhaka Airport ignoring startled gazes, in a country where homosexuality is illegal. Thereafter, Anush faced harassment, torture, and shaming at home, and relocated to Kolkata, settling on a work visa.

Happily staying together since 2022, this inter-faith, inter-country, same-sex couple is a bold statement on the resilience of love against man-made social, religious, and legal barriers.

Krishna Gopal Choudhury (He/Him) and Anisuzzaman Khan (He/Him) Photo: India Love Project (Facebook)

Unfortunately, however, they also symbolise just how difficult it is to fall and stay in love in India, in a time and age where intolerance, hatred, and violence seem to be at an all-time high. The Narendra Modi government’s stand in the Supreme Court, opposing same-sex marriage, is yet another show of intolerance towards the sexual minority.

Given that the LGBTQIA+ community is a minority and can offer only limited support to its members, the growing atmosphere of religious hatred in the country has isolated them doubly. When Chowdhury, who is a Hindu, adopted the predominantly Muslim “Mehfuz” as his middle name, in a show of solidarity with his partner, and started observing Islamic festivals as a way to experience his partner’s culture, he started facing backlash from his Hindu acquaintances among the queer community in India.

“They asked me if I had converted to Islam and if I ate beef. During a Yoga session in the Himalayan town of Hrishikesh, participants had schooled Anush on how India is a tolerant country but Bangladesh tortured Hindus. Several Hindus from the community stopped inviting me to their pujas at home,” Chowdhury said while describing how religious hatred had further divided the already-vulnerable community.

He remembered how a queer friend from Hyderabad quizzed him on his faith. “He was exposing his own hypocrisy. The same person had told me stories about sexual encounters with young Muslim men. When you can sleep with a ‘beef eater,’ what’s the problem in loving a person of that culture and faith?”

Like Krishna and Anush, 32-year-old Rayyan (she/they), a Muslim transfeminine and pansexual content creator from Mumbai has been on the receiving end of prejudice for their faith and sexual orientation, both.

Rayyan (she/they). Photo courtesy: Rayyan.

“Surprisingly, India’s queer community treats ‘Muslim’ and ‘queerness’ as mutually exclusive identities and is uncomfortable about merging the two. Even devout Muslims who pray five times a day and wear salwar kameej have to leave behind their Muslim identifiers when they go to queer parties.” What they meant is, being visibly Muslim would isolate them within the community.

It is not just about sexual minorities. Marriages between Muslim men and Hindu women have become particularly dangerous, as there are non-family and non-state actors who get involved and make a mess of the situation. India’s Hindutva groups are calling such marriages ‘love jihad’ – a false phrase for the bogey of a conspiracy launched by Muslim men to lure Hindu women into the trap of marriage with the aim of gaining numerical superiority.

Also read: The History of ‘Love Jihad’: How Sangh Parivar Spread a Dangerous, Imaginary Idea

Last November, two families in Maharashtra had to cancel the reception to be held after an interfaith couple’s wedding after Suresh Chavhanke, the head of Sudarshan TV and well-known for spreading hatred against Muslims, tweeted a photo of the invite, revealing the address of the venue, calling it a case of ‘love jihad.’

हत्यारे अफताब के वसई में ही अब “ इमरान और दिव्या” का होने जा रहा है निकाह/ विवाह का निमंत्रण सार्वजनिक हैं। उसी ग्राम के “अफताब ने श्रध्दा” के 35 टुकड़े करने के ह्रदय विदारक अपराध के बाद भी यह कैसे होने जा रहा हैं ? #LoveJihad_ActOfTerrorism #LoveJihad #Shraddha pic.twitter.com/8gwmwYVkzm

— Suresh Chavhanke “Sudarshan News” (@SureshChavhanke) November 18, 2022

This February, at Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly, members of Bajrang Dal roughed up a couple, accusing the man of ‘love jihad.’ When the police reached the spot, they took the couple to their station where they also summoned the couple’s parents. No case was registered against the Bajrang Dal vigilantes, as the police said the ‘aggrieved parties’ decided to settle it mutually.

“Interfaith marriages are becoming not only difficult but also dangerous. In Maharashtra, the state government’s recently-formed committee to monitor couples in interfaith marriages has increased the risks of couples living away from family for safety reasons,” said Vishal Vimal, an interfaith and inter-caste marriage activist based in Maharashtra. “Governments are making the lives of interfaith couples tougher,” he said.

Even as the Supreme Court, in February, expressed its intention to hear a batch of petitions challenging recently-enacted laws restricting religious conversion for the purpose of marriage, and sought responses from states that enacted such laws, the situation on the ground remains critical.

Divisive forces gaining strength

Interfaith and inter-caste relationships have always been difficult in India but it is easy to see how the situation has worsened since the BJP came to power.

For marriages of interfaith couples solemnised under personal laws such as Hindu, Muslim, Christian, Parsi, and Jain Marriage Acts, the bride usually converts to the groom’s faith before marriage. For those who do not want to involve religion or priests, there is the Special Marriage Act 1954, which is also used in interfaith and intrafaith marriages.

However, since 2017, several Indian states, most ruled by BJP – Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Jharkhand and Karnataka – have framed laws restricting religious conversions for the purpose of marriage, laws that have colloquially earned the nomenclature of ‘love jihad laws.’ For those who prefer the Special Marriage Act, there is a threat of vigilantism.

Also read: The Journey of ‘Love Jihad’ Laws

For marriage under the Special Marriage Act, the couple will have to serve a notice to the marriage officer 30 days prior to the date of marriage and this notice will be put on display at the marriage registrar’s office for people to raise objections. This helps prevent fraudulent marriages, it has been argued. But in recent years, such notices given by interfaith couples, especially involving Muslim men and Hindu women, have gone viral on social media, often jeopardizing planned ceremonies and inviting threats.

“The atmosphere of fear among interfaith couples has significantly increased and such couples are now exposed to safety and security threats,” said Athira Sujatha Radhakrishnan, who is based in Bengaluru. In 2020, she found to her utter shock that her marriage notice had gone viral on social media and later found a PDF document in circulation on WhatsApp containing a list of 120 interfaith marriage applications, including the one of her with her fiancé Shameem, compiled as cases of ‘love jihad’ going to take place.

“We could navigate through the situation perhaps because we were more privileged compared to many others and we also had access to support mechanisms,” she said, adding, “Most couples wouldn’t initially get permission from the parents. They will first have to deal with their parents, then with their safety and financial stability. They will not have the time to take up the larger battle. Therefore, we decided to take the legal battle one step ahead and petitioned the supreme court for removing the clause mandating prior public notice.”

While the apex court in 2022 dismissed her petition, arguing that she was no longer ‘aggrieved’ as she had completed her marriage, there are others who have filed similar petitions in court.

Riling up the conflict further, Maharashtra recently announced the formation of a committee named Interfaith Marriage: Family Coordination Committee, which is to monitor interfaith marriages and will try to connect the women in such marriages with their parents. As alleged by social workers, the government seems to be tightening its noose around inter-faith couples by making conversions nearly impossible yet largely necessary, exposing them to communally driven hate crimes.

Also read: Maharashtra Panel to Monitor Interfaith Couples Is Another Majoritarian Tool for Control

Large swathes of northern India are known for the notorious practice of ‘honour killing’ – in which family members kill the daughter or her inter-caste/inter-faith lover to protect family respectability.

Though the Supreme Court had, in a landmark verdict in 2018, upheld consenting adults’ choice to love and marry as a part of their fundamental rights, and issued a set of guidelines for the protection of such couples, the clauses in these new anti-conversion laws serve the exact opposite purpose – they expose the couple before family members.

“The government’s objective is clear – there should not be any inter-faith marriage in India. I am okay with the fact that you are establishing laws preventing conversion in interfaith marriages, but then why are you not simplifying the civil marriage laws via the Special Marriage Act?” says Asif Iqbal, founder of Dhanak For Equality, a non-profit organisation that fights for the fundamental right to choose a partner and raise awareness about the same.

Asif is hinting at the confusing web of legal paraphernalia that the government has instituted that gives the false sense of justice but if executed is a clear attempt to strangle the individual’s freedom to choose a partner.

Filmmaker Q has similar opinions hailing love to be a power that is as threatening as it is vulnerable: “When you are in love, you are completely disarmed and opening up your most vulnerable self to the person you love and inadvertently to the society around. In a traditionalist society like ours, ruled by a brutal hierarchy of caste and class, this creates a big impact, and therefore rules are tightened around love that is inter-caste, inter-class or inter-faith.” he says, reinforcing the central idea expressed in his 2009 documentary titled Love in India which explored the complex web of contradictions that love and sex create in the conservative land of Kamasutra.

Will love survive in India amid politically manipulated hatred? Rayyan, a true believer in the potential of love, is still wading through a sea of impossibility. “As a Muslim, it is impossible to be apolitical in India. I cannot chain my religion and censor my voice for the sake of social acceptance” they say.

Equality before the law, and the equal protection of the laws. #marriageequality pic.twitter.com/wevX1WXxaG

— arundhatikatju अरुंधति काटजू (@arundhatikatju) April 18, 2023

Hoping for at least some things to change, Supreme Court lawyer Arundhati Katju tweeted a photo last Tuesday of herself with her legal partner, Menaka Guruswamy, accompanied by the caption “Equality before the law, and the equal protection of the laws” and the hashtag #marriageequality.

This was just about an hour before they were set to enter a big battle not only in their professional but also personal lives – the beginning of the final hearing in the Supreme Court, seeking marriage equality. The advocate duo had played a pivotal role behind the apex court’s striking down of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), that decriminalised homosexuality, in 2018.

Sreemanti Sengupta is a Kolkata-based freelance writer, poet, and media studies lecturer.

Sex and Other Demons: Exploring India’s Complex Relationship With Intimacy and Romance

It is difficult to fathom how this country with a billion-plus population routinely gets red in the face at the slightest hint or mention of sex.

Kolkata: To a foreigner, India may seem to be a country obsessed with romance. What with the booming Bollywood film industry which tirelessly churns out tales of love and glory clothed in brilliant dance and action sequences, a history etched with ideal romantics like Laila-Majnu or the fact that the Taj Mahal has immortalised the love between king Shahjahan and queen Mumtaz. It is difficult to fathom how this country with a billion-plus population routinely gets red in the face at the slightest hint or mention of sex.

It therefore may have come as a shock to many when the ‘couple-friendly’ hospitality brand OYO announced that they are “extremely humbled to share that we observed a record 90.57% increase in Valentine’s Day bookings across India”. What does that say about India’s romantic culture?

“It reflects a deeply institutionalised hypocrisy in Indian society,” said M.K. Arjun, an Ayurvedic practitioner from Kerala. “Most of the time, seeking pleasure is treated as a taboo, a forbidden desire, or something that is morally demeaning.” He attributes India’s classic paradox to the application of ‘Victorian codes of behaviour regarding sex’ in a land famously known to be a hub of liberal sexual expressions in ancient times.

Remnants of our forward-thinking ancestors can be found in the erotic and often explicit architectural motifs etched on the walls of the temples of Khajuraho, in a number of Sanskrit poems and plays, and in the Kamasutra, an ancient Sanskrit scripture attributed to philosopher Vātsyāyana that is famed for illustrating 63 sexual positions. Regardless, sex has gone on to be regarded in the public psyche as an act intended only for reproduction.

The Khajuraho temple complex in Chhatarpur district, Madhya Pradesh. Photo: Juan Antonio Segal/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0

“Sex is ideally the expression of love. The divide between ‘love’ and ‘sex’ is harming the art of lovemaking in India.” says sexologist Dr Deepak Arora, founder of Delhi-based Dr Arora’s Clinic. Commenting on India’s double standards on sex, he says, “Since our parents have not provided us with the necessary sexual education, we are driven to experience it ourselves. This has led to the other extreme of sex being denigrated to a physical act only with no emotional connect.”

Q, a film-maker whose 2009 documentary titled Love in India explored the complex web of contradictions that love and sex create in the conservative Indian society, places the onus of the rising conservatism squarely on the shift in Indian popular culture representation and television programming in the 90s. “From Saas Bahu serials to anchor-driven talk-shows (shouting matches), India is consuming impossible standards of patriarchal perfection, that leaves no space for any ‘other’,” he said. He says that the future is bleak for Indian romantics, “The Bengal Renaissance period, the independence period, and the mythical ancient India where Kamasutra was a common belief – these are specks of time against a history that is a plain patriarchal pyramid structure,” he adds.

Bisaka Laskar (48), sex worker and president of, Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, India’s largest organisation of and for sex workers, says the hypocrisy around sex in India is at its ugliest in the lives of sex workers. “By my calculations, the highest percentage of our clients are married men. These men are happily married but sexually starved. A large population of them dabble in casual or incestuous sex which is an open secret. It is only when I stand in the open street for work, that these men can jeer and mock me for my profession.”

She says that patriarchy’s vision of a society, where women are secondary citizens with non-existent need for pleasure has also played a huge part in the vilification of her community: “All hell breaks loose when a woman has sex like a business transaction and money passes from the male to the female.”

There is the issue of the class divide as well. For the affluent section of society, finding privacy has not been as difficult as for those from the middle, lower-middle class or the downtrodden. “The rich and educated go to nightclubs and participate in free mingling. Where are the shame and stigma there?” asks Mahashweta Mukherjee, Durbar’s liaison officer.

For those from marginalised communities, the going has been tougher. Even as ancient sculptures and murals tells us about the acceptance of same-sex love in our so-called glory days, consensual homosexual activity was a crime in modern India until 2016. One of the major arguments against accepting homosexuality as “normal” has been that it does not lead to reproduction.

According to Shreya (she/they), “It’s been tough for people within the [LGBTQ] community to love out loud and proud for many years. We quite literally were threatened with being jailed until recently – people have and continue to disappear, get murdered, and so much more because of who they naturally are. In what world is that okay?”

Shreya, who is bisexual and works as a photographer in Mumbai, points out how the lack of sex education is exposing the country to heinous sexual offences and creating a population of angry, and confused youth. “By robbing people of the opportunity to get the sex education they deserve, and the autonomy over their own bodies that they could have achieved, we as a society are laying the path for humans who walk around filled with guilt/shame, with the trauma of an unplanned or forced pregnancy. The drawbacks are endless!”

Representative image. Supporters and members of the LGBTQI community hold the rainbow flag as they participate in a Queer Azadi March 2020 at Azad Maidan in Mumbai, February 1, 2020. Photo: PTI/Mitesh Bhuvad

Love’s language lost

In Arora’s opinion, seeing people purely as sexual beings is a sign of how repressed society is: “Words like na-mard place extraordinary pressure on a man’s sexual performance.” Loosely translated to “not manly enough”, na-mard is one of a large family of abuses or colloquial slangs that is linked to sexual activity. Many such words rub off heavily on the woman’s character and sexual behaviour that is eternally under strict societal surveillance.

Rayyan (she/they), a transfeminine content creator from Mumbai, says that the vicious forms of ‘otherisation’ practised by the Indian society are against the nature of humanity itself. “Living as a queer person in a traditionalist society, you start to nurture self-hate by believing what the society tells you about yourself. Your parents tell you that ‘hijra’ is a bad word, the British came and said that hijras are criminals, Bollywood is telling you that hijras are villains and child snatchers, Kapil Sharma is telling you that it is okay to laugh at a hijra person,” they say, adding that when accepting oneself is so difficult, finding love and commitment is too much of a challenge for many.

Mahashweta Mukherjee, the liaison officer of the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, draws from her 24 years of experience working for the welfare and empowerment of sex workers in the infamous Sonagachi, Asia’s largest red light area located in North Kolkata. She cites surprisingly acceptable sexual digressions such as boudibaaji (a colloquial Bengali term defining the relationship between brother-in-law and sister-in-law) and the casual practice of swapping wives and girlfriends in nightclubs. She adds in a voice resonant with defiance, “There are crores of women living off this profession, there is a huge demand for their services. Sex workers are also responsible for the health and well-being of hundreds of migrant workers.”

Is it time to give the Sanskaari Indian a taste of the truth serum?

In the words of Shreya, “It’s about damn time that people in our country accept that this population is not ‘Bhagwan ki Den’ (gift from God). Log sex kar rahe hai (People are having sex), get over it!”

Sreemanti Sengupta is a Kolkata-based freelance writer, poet, and media studies lecturer.

Pure or Profane? Roddur Roy’s Arrest Can Be a Defining Moment for Bengal’s Social Grammar

In jail for nearly a week over ‘derogatory remarks’ against CM Mamata Banerjee, the vlogger is famous for his freewheeling expression. He has a few noted predecessors.

Kolkata: “They are not understanding art! I am not a terrorist, I am an artiste!,” Roddur Roy shouted as the government vehicle carrying him left the Bankshall court premises on Tuesday, June 14.

YouTuber Roddur Roy was charged under 12 sections of the Indian Penal Code, including ‘promoting enmity’ and ‘provoking riots,’ in a case registered at Kolkata’s Hare Street police station for allegedly making derogatory remarks against Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee.

But Roy had a surprise waiting for him when he was produced before the court on Tuesday after six days in police custody. He learned that a fresh case against him had been taken up for hearing by another court at the same complex.

The latest case is in connection with a complaint that had been lodged against him by a private tutor at Burtolla police station in June 2020 on the basis of remarks he made during a Facebook live broadcast in May 2020. In it, Roy had allegedly insulted the Indian Army and Union home minister Amit Shah. While the court hearing the case lodged at Hare Street police station sent him to judicial custody, the court hearing the Burtolla police station case sent him to police custody till June 20.

The arrest has triggered intense debates among Bengalis on social media, with human rights organisations like the Association for Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR) condemning it and demanding Roy’s unconditional release, while there are others who have expressed wishes to see him rot in jail.

Malay Roychoudhury. Photo: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Malay Roy Choudhury, who was a key member of the Hungry Generation literary movement and faced an “obscenity trial” for his infamous poem Stark Electric Jesus, knows a little about this experience. He was jailed for a month in 1964.

“I think that after he is released (from jail), Roddur Roy should stand up on a table in the Coffee House and proudly speak the language of the uncivilised. It is not enough to hurt the (conservative) sentiments of West Bengal. All those who have ruined Indian politics must also be seriously hurt…I have no regrets about the obscenity trial I faced. That is why I can live proudly even as an octogenarian. I wrote what I felt like then, and write that way even now. My writings are my weapons,” Roy Choudhury says.

The Indian Coffee House in College Street is famous as one of Kolkata’s most popular cultural hubs and was once known to attract luminaries.

Roy is a smooth-talking, marijuana-smoking, guitar-strumming vlogger with 3.28 lakh subscribers on YouTube and 4.91 lakh followers on Facebook. His image is that of a dystopian prophet – he has founded his own religion, Moxa, and his growing fan base is fond of his expletive-ridden rants and off-key singing. They call it “true freedom of speech” and thank him for being “the child to point out to the emperor that he is wearing no clothes”.

Hours before Roddur Roy was arrested from his Goa residence on June 7 for allegedly using indecent remarks to describe Banerjee, and her nephew Abhishek Banerjee, a Lok Sabha MP of the Trinamool Congress, he took to YouTube to airily address the issue.

“This language is not meant to insult you. This is completely apolitical – I am not part of your dirty politics,” he said, passionately defending his use of profanity.

“Obscenity is everywhere, it is part of humanity – there is nothing unnatural about it. Am I raising communal violence or threatening to kill someone? Then understand my motive first! The motivation is the commoner’s right to peace. Can’t I speak for peace?…What is so offensive about my language? And who are you to correct my language? Is this a grammar class?…Is your language perfect? Is the perfect language spoken in this state? Do you know there are spelling errors in Government advertisements?”

The use of words deemed ‘obscene’ to express frustration against the socio-political scene is not new.

Bengal experienced a torrid affair with profanity when the Hungryalist movement burst into its horizon in the 1960s. As a true corollary to the Beats in America, this movement concentrated on creating a new idiom of countercultural expression meant to disturb oppressive social hegemony.

In 1964, Kolkata police conducted a spree of arrests, rounding up 11 Hungry writers, including Pradip Chaudhuri, Saileshwar Ghosh, Subhash Ghose, Samir Roy Chowdhury, Malay Roy Choudhury and Haradhon Dhara (alias Debi Roy).

Some writers of the Hungry generation. From top left, clockwise: Saileswar Ghose, Malay Roy Choudhury and Subhas Ghose Basudeb Dasgupta, David Garcia and Subimal Basak. Photo: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Filmmaker Q – who has directed Gandu, a film perceived as obscene – and liberally uses profane expressions to attack the status quo, thinks that Roy has become the ‘art of profanity’ or the ‘character itself’, and has therefore lost the need to be the ‘civilised artist’ with social responsibilities.

Referring to Bengal’s trysts with obscenity, Q said, “If I chart a line from Nabarun (Bhattacharya) to me and then to Roddur, then he becomes the character and loses the need to appear civil to be taken seriously. And that’s a huge progress, that he, in the times of social media, could fully embrace the character and become a Gopal Bhand or Birbal (court jesters famous in Indian literature) type of character who is a constant nuisance but who the king has to pay so that there is a continuous stream of consciousness from the other end.”

However, as expected, not all Bengali intellectuals are on board with Roddur’s generous use of cuss words.

Roddur Roy’s antics had pushed him into the limelight of controversy in 2019, when he punctuated a famous Tagore song with expletives. What riled up the Bengali bhadralok society the most was when students from Kolkata’s Rabindra Bharati University sang Roy’s version of the song during Basanta Utsav or the spring festival in March 2020.

Speaking on Roddur Roy’s reckless use of swear words, Sanjay Mukhopadhyay, film and literary critic said, “Roddur Roy’s problem is that he is not philosophising his language. The poems that were banned from Charles Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du mal had returned with full glory in the post-War period as treasures of French literature. Same with D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover or Henry Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn – once banned and now regarded as literary gems. This is only because we have been able to place them in a larger philosophical context in the present day, and therefore they are successful subversions.”

DH Lawrence, Rabindranath Tagore, Henry Miller and Charles Baudelaire. Photos: Public domain.

However, he also presents the debate in an alternative light when he cites an example from Tagore who in a romantic song asks, ‘Why didn’t you wake me up before dawn? My day has passed in shame’. The song is heard in almost every Bengali household. However, the sidewalks of north Kolkata’s Chitpur area, full of volumes of erotic literature, have this song under the collection titled Beshya Geeti (songs of the prostitutes).

“Even eminent poet and playwright Dwijendralal Ray accused Tagore of penning obscene music. He wondered how Bengalis would protect their civility if these songs are sung in civilised society. The question today is, how do we determine what is obscene and what is not?” Mukhopadhyay said.

Q thinks that to seek philosophy or higher meaning is a standard ‘upper’ class reaction.

“In the 1920s Kolkata, the common language that was used was fairly profane, which is today looked at as an extremely downgraded language. This happened due to the huge pressure from the Tagore family and other Brahmo Samaj members who wanted to clean up the language so they could appear civilised and belong to the genteel society. And what happened as a result is that we completely lost how coolly a different strata of the society could use language at that time,” said the filmmaker.

Howard McCord, a renowned American academic, poet, and educationist, came to India on a Fulbright scholarship and worked in close proximity with the Hungry Generation writers while pursuing passionate studies of Indian literature of the 1960s. When approached on the subject of using profanity in literature, he said “While I swear in my private speech, I do not swear at work (in class or office, nor in my lectures). My writing is largely poetry, or responses to literature.”

As Bengal stands divided on his persona and his language, Roy himself seemed to shrug it off in the last video he uploaded just before police arrested him from his Goa residence, “You can corner me, you can put me in jail. But that will not make a positive history with your name.”

Addressing Banerjee, he had added: “If the people have elected you as the chief minister, then it is your duty to let the ordinary man speak, pick whatever is positive out of it, and use it to make a change.”

Sreemanti Sengupta is a freelance writer, poet, and media studies lecturer based in Kolkata.

‘A Barrier to Performance’: How Mental Health of Athletes Is Perceived in India

In India, a country where the sports fraternity functions in an unorganised environment, questions about the athlete’s psychological health, especially when participating in big-ticket events, is a mirage.

Tennis star Naomi Osaka’s 2022 Roland Garros tour may have come to a disappointing end with a first-round loss, but all is not in vain. The Japanese player made headlines in last year’s French Open by withdrawing from the tournament, citing mental health reasons. The furore caused by this shocking exit has since then thrown the sporting fraternity into incisive deliberations about the pressures of high-performance events on young athletes.

One of the key changes Osaka’s bold step has provoked can be seen in the 2022 edition of the French Open, where the authorities have built a mental health programme with on-site psychologists and psychiatrists to deliver anonymous walk-in appointments to contestants.

“We treat athletes like race horses. We can see injuries on the outside, a limping player, a bleeding boxer, but the scars inside are not visible. We want them to run and jump for us, win medals and then we dump them. How many of us walk up to an athlete and not ask the speed or the kilometres but just hug him/her and ask ‘how are you today?’” Joydeep Karmakar, Indian rifle shooter, said.

According to Indian athletes, sports psychologists, and representatives from sports administrative bodies, it is easy to make a blanket claim that mental health of Indian athletes is not recognised, let alone diagnosed and treated. In India, a country where the sports fraternity functions in an unorganised environment, questions about the athlete’s psychological health, especially when participating in big-ticket events, is a mirage.

Delhi-based sports and performance psychologist, Sumiran Tandon, who has worked with athletes in England and India, said: “In 2015 in Fenesta Nationals, Delhi, one of the athletes was running a high temperature and came to my office to take medicine and rest. He later went out, played, and won the games. This was glorified to say that he had pushed through his weaknesses to victory. I had no say in the proceedings as a psychologist. It was only up to the coaches, the federation and physiotherapists.”

Also read: Are Invisible Battles Unreal?

The frustration Tandon feels is common among the sports psychologists in India. Most of them feel that mental health issues of sportspersons are often overlooked. Many people view sports psychology to be linked to only elite athletes like golf players. Therapists are mostly seen as “fillers” during international athletic events, and are tasked with achieving a last-mile readiness for star athletes before they are pushed into a highly stressful world of performance anxiety and related complications.

The emphasis is always on robust physical health, which is deemed to be translated to “mental toughness”. In fact, the image of a “mentally tough” athlete is given an uneasy pedestal by coaches and federation officials, leading to players being reticent to speak up about their psychological issues as it would most likely lead to them being dropped from teams.

“The major obstacle in the identification of mental health issues in athletes is the framework of “mental toughness” – the perception that if you are an athlete, you have to be mentally tough. Physical well-being and exercise are always equated with mental welfare,” said Abhilasha Saharan, a Delhi-based sports psychologist.

The COVID-19 pandemic further pronounced the repressed psychological issues that athletes were facing in India.

When seven-time Olympic medallist and star gymnast Simone Biles chose to step back from the final competition at the Tokyo Olympics 2021, she said that Osaka inspired her to focus on mental health. Biles was reportedly suffering from a case of “twisties” – a mental block that prevents gymnasts from knowing where they are while flipping through the air. She told the host of NBC’s Today show, “We’re human too and we have emotions and feelings and things that we’re working through behind the scenes that we don’t tell you guys about. And so, I just think it’s something that people should be more aware of.”

Bajrang Punia, an Indian wrestler and silver medallist at the Tokyo Olympics 2021, told this reporter: “During the lockdown, all of us [athletes] faced problems because training had stopped, the grounds and stadiums had closed and then the Olympics were also postponed. I also experienced some mental discomfort and insecurity during this period. When training started again and the Olympics were announced, I could get back on course with my dream to win a medal for my country.”

Bajrang Punia in Tokyo, at the Olympics. Photo: PTI

In November 2020, the Bengaluru FC officials began a mental health support programme called ‘Care around the Corner’. The mental health initiative saw athletes receiving mental health support inside endless bio-bubbles. A slew of group and one-on-one sessions with an appointed mental health professional was started to spread awareness and deal with problems such as loneliness, boredom, anxieties about restarting the game season and so on.

Kunaal Majgaonkar, head of media, Bengaluru FC, said, “Mental health is not spoken about enough and we anticipated it’s going to escalate in the lockdown period. We have knowledge that around 10-12 boys out of a team of 30 have taken advantage of the programme and had more than one personal session with the expert. This was very encouraging for us as it validated our actions. We are going to continue the programme and introduce it to our junior teams.”

Confirming the stressful conditions athletes were exposed to during the pandemic, Sourav Ganguly, former India cricket captain and president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), told veteran Bollywood superstar and game-show host Amitabh Bachchan on Kaun Banega Crorepati (reality television game show), “Mental health struggle is real. Even Ben Stokes pulled out at the last moment after being named in the India-England series. There is extreme performance pressure for all players, all the time. It has always been there, some can speak out and some can’t.”

Deep Dasgupta, cricket commentator and former wicket-keeper of the Indian National team, agreed, “There are more down days than highs – everyone faces it [in sports]. I remember Sandy Gordon [senior sports psychologist accompanying the team] came and spoke to us when we were touring in 2002 – it really helped me. It’s become usual with golfers and tennis players to have sports psychologists with them, and I strongly support it.”

Also read: My Story With Bipolar Disorder, and How to Talk and Not Talk About Mental Illnesses

‘Mentally strong under performance pressure’

The opposite view that athletes are meant to be different – i.e. mentally and physically strong – has a huge following within the sporting world itself.

Bhaichung Bhutia. Photo: Twitter

When asked about how mental health problems are impacting Olympic athletes, Bhaichung Bhutia, former Indian football captain, said, “I feel sorry to see athletes of today becoming softer and softer. When you are competing at the highest levels, performance pressure is expected.”

“We have had great sports personalities in the past that have battled tough conditions, entire administrations, and situations far worse. Legends like Muhammad Ali come to mind…the South American football team had to fight the mafia, there was a Columbian goalkeeper whose brother was shot dead after he conceded three goals…those were the real things! Now you can just have a bad dream one day and don’t show up for the game on the next!” he said.

“I feel mental health issues have become glamourised after the Simone Biles incident. I am not saying real issues aren’t there, but there are more people now trying to create issues that don’t exist after seeing these examples! I mean, if you look at us as Indians, the daily life struggle that more than 50% of the population goes through is more likely to equip us with mental toughness than the foreigners we are comparing ourselves with!” said Jharkhand-based sports psychologist, Karanbir Singh.

One of the major reasons for the downward spiral of Indian athletes may be the drastic jump in their stature after winning international sporting events. Sports psychologist Tandon said that athletes are made demigods and disposed of like rags in a matter of a single medal won or lost. “(In England) athletes are driven by finances, here they are controlled by finances,” she added.

Indian rifle shooting legend Joydeep Karmakar said, “I can emphatically say that the Olympic athletes of India are technically at par or maybe superior to their counterparts abroad. One of the major things holding them back from performing to their potential is the mental barrier/patterns that our society creates for them.”

Mugdha Dhamankar-Bavare, ex-professional swimmer and founder-director of Mind Sports, told this reporter, “As a psychologist, I have always tried to shift the focus from winning to enjoying the sport. This will help more talented people to join the sport.”

Sreemanti Sengupta is a Kolkata-based freelance writer, poet, and media studies lecturer.

Family Prejudice, Lack of Safe Spaces: What the Pandemic Has Meant for India’s LGBTQI Community

Support groups and mental healthcare helplines have been overwhelmed since March last year, pointing to increased distress.

Abhijith had been working as a radio jockey in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit India in March last year, prompting the government to impose a nationwide lockdown. Abhijith returned to the rural Pathanamthitta district, where his parents live with a joint family, including uncles, cousins and grandparents.

Describing the experience of living with homophobic relatives and cousins as “unbearable”, he said, “Apart from the frequent reference to my sexual ‘abnormality’, they took me to a guruji to ‘cure’ me. He gave me something to eat, which made me throw up. The guru assured me that I was throwing up whatever ‘demon’ was possessing me and ‘making’ me gay.”

Early in 2021, Abhijith travelled back to Thiruvananthapuram, where he found support from the members of the queer collective.

Inspired by their work, he also decided to work towards uplifting the queer community. “I wish no one else goes through the mental trauma I have endured,” said Abhijit.

Abhijith’s story of mental distress arising from family abuse is common among members of India’s LGBTQI+ community, many of whom were trapped in their homes and removed from peer support groups during the pandemic.

As India continues to reel from a pandemic that has claimed more lives (235,524) in three months of the second wave (April-June 2021) than in the one year before that (162,960 deaths in March 2020-March 2021), the LGBTQ community has faced myriad problems. Sexual minorities have historically suffered from mainstream prejudice and the pandemic has aggravated socio-economic inequalities, instigated family and institutionalised abuse, apart from limiting access to essential care. This has resulted in acute mental distress which has overwhelmed queer support infrastructure across the country.

Speaking to queer collective representatives across India, I learned that the heightened levels of distress in the community was due to longstanding factors that were unfavourably triggered under lockdown conditions. Family members who are intolerant of marginalised sexual identities, often tagging their orientation as “disorder” or “just a phase”, have always featured among the main perpetrators of subtle and overt forms of violence towards queer, trans and homosexual people.

Sappho For Equality, a Kolkata-based feminist organisation that works for the rights of sexually marginalized women and trans men, recorded a similar trend. Early in the first wave, the organisation realised that the existing helpline number was getting overwhelmed with distress calls. It added a second helpline number. The comparative figures indicate a 13-fold jump in numbers: from 290 calls in April 2019-March 20 to 3,940 calls in April 2020-May 2021.

“Most of the calls we have been getting from lesbians and trans men are urgent appeals to prevent forced marriages during lockdowns. If they happen to resist, they are either evicted or forced to flee home. But where to house them? There aren’t too many shelters, we have one which is already at full capacity,” said Shreosi, a Sappho member and peer support provider.

Shreosi says that the nature of distress calls has also changed. “Earlier people would call in for long-term help, such as professional mental health support. But during the pandemic, it has changed to immediate requests to rescue from oppressive home situations. Often, they will speak in whispers so that the parents can’t hear.”

Lack of spaces

Like many of his fellow queer community members, life for Sumit P., a 30-year-old gay man from Mumbai in Maharashtra, has taken a turn for the worse. The lockdown has led to the loss of safe spaces and prolonged residence at home.

“It has been a really difficult time since the beginning of the lockdown. I am suffering from a lot of mental stress since I cannot freely express myself at home. Even while making a call, I have to check my surroundings to see if anybody is there. If I try to step out, my family demands an explanation to leave the home. I feel suffocated. The loss of safe spaces, which anyway were few, has been immensely debilitating,” he said.

Sumit is also dealing with a peril that has hit the community harder than others – unemployment and income shortage. Sumit had opened a cafe with two other queer friends, which is now running into losses. For others, pandemic-induced job losses have forced queer persons from all over the country to return to their home states and move in with their families who’ve turned abusive during this long period of confinement.

According to Kolkata-based physician, filmmaker and gay rights activist Tirthankar Guha Thakurata, the pandemic has forced some queer people to come out, succumbing to rising discomfort and pressure exerted by homophobic families.

“In most cases, family relations sour when a person reveals their identity. But many do not flee home. They find a breathing space or ‘space out’ in their workspaces. In the absence of these spaces, mental problems rose significantly,” he said.

Not being able to express themselves freely in front of parents who are hostile, intolerant and often address transgender persons by their deadname or misgender them has created situations of severe distress, suicidal ideation and self-harm.

Psychiatrist and queer feminist activist Ranjita Biswas (she/they) cites an incident. A gender-nonconforming person (preferred pronoun: they) died under suspicious circumstances just days after leaving their peer group and going home to their birth parents. The final rites were performed with them dressed in bangles and a saree.

“When a member of our community asked their mother why she chose a saree for someone who had worn androgynous clothes all their life, she plainly said it was natural because after all, the deceased ‘was her daughter’. The absolute invisibilisation of the desires of someone even after they are gone is deeply frustrating,” Biswas muses.

A protest for queer rights. Representative image. Photo:
Eric Allix Rogers/Flickr CC BY NC ND 2.0

Mental healthcare

In India, queer people’s access to professional mental healthcare has been “very limited,” according to community members such as Ankan Biswas, India’s first transgender lawyer who has been working with the Human Rights Law Network in West Bengal.

“A large majority of the psychiatrists still consider homosexuality as a disorder and practice ‘correctional therapy’. It’s only around the big cities that some queer-friendly psychiatrists can be found,” Biswas said. “The pandemic has further widened the inequalities in access to mental health support for India’s LGBTQ community.”

Biswas is spending anxious days fielding an overwhelming amount of calls and rescue requests from queer members trapped in their homes, undergoing mental, verbal and even physical torture. “We don’t have the space, I just tell them to wait and bear it a little longer,” he said.

Anuradha Krishnan’s story, though not involving birth family, outlines how the lack of physical support spaces have affected India’s queer population. Abandoned by her birth family when she came out to them as a trans woman in 2017, Anuradha Krishnan (she/they), founder of Queerythm in Kerala who is studying dentistry, had to move into an accommodation with four other persons. “I am used to talking and hanging around with friends. Isolation triggered my depression and I had to seek psychiatric help.” Living in cramped quarters did not help with quarantine requirements and all of them tested positive during the first wave.

What is deeply worrying is that the Indian queer mental health support infrastructure, already compromised with historical prejudice, is now struggling, placing more and more pressure on queer collectives and peer support groups whose resources are wearing thin.

During the 10 months of the first wave of the pandemic in India in 2020, Y’all, a queer collective based in Manipur, received about 1,000 distress calls on their helpline number from LGBTQI+ individuals. In May 2021 alone, they received 450 such calls (including texts and WhatsApp messages) indicating a telling escalation in the number of queer people seeking help during the second wave.

As India’s queer-friendly mental health support infrastructure continues to be tested, Y’all founder, Sadam Hanjabam, a gay man, says, “Honestly, we are struggling to handle such a large number of calls, it is so overwhelming. We are also dealing with our own anxieties. We are burning out.”

Sreemanti Sengupta is a freelance writer, poet, and media studies lecturer based in Kolkata.

Interview: ‘The Raj Kundra Episode Is a Distraction from Pegasus’

In conversation with filmmaker Q of Gandu (2010), Brahman Naman (2016), Tasher Desh (2012), Garbage (2018) and Ludo (2015) fame.

The arrest of businessman Raj Kundra for his alleged involvement in producing pornographic content on an OTT platform has reignited the debate around the thin line between pornography and erotica, especially amid a boom in the Indian adult film industry. As the debates rage, many of those involved have questioned the basis of the crackdown on their industry, often citing the cult Bengali language film Gandu – which is available on Netflix – as an excuse for showing explicit sex. Adult film producer Nuefliks wrote on Twitter, “Define rules clearly before pressing charges. Don’t be (the) judge… films like Clockwork Orange nominated for Oscars, Gandu on Netflix has explicit scenes. We follow US content guidelines, released from (the) US.”

In this context, The Wire interviewed filmmaker Q of Brahman Naman (2016), Tasher Desh (2012), Garbage (2018) and Ludo (2015) fame. His 2010 film Gandu is often described as the most explicit film an Indian filmmaker has ever made. It earned accolades from viewers in film festivals across the world.

Edited excerpts from the interview below

The Kundra episode has sparked a debate on cinema, sex, porn and voyeurism in the public sphere. What are your views on this?

I truly believe this is not a commentary on the social-sexual situation in India. I believe this is a political distraction from a larger issue, which is Pegasus. This is in keeping with the trend that for the past two years – whenever anything of any consequence has happened or there are elections, there is a deflection and an algorithm set rolling to distract eyeballs the other way.

Given that the Pegasus issue is not directly under state government jurisdiction and the porn film racket is being investigated by the Mumbai police, do you think that’s the case really?

I am not saying this is something super-structured or planned, but simply a serendipitous happening – an issue that came up at the right time and had the right amount of drama which could be used to advantage – a little like Sushant Singh Rajput’s case.

Is there a bigger moral question that has the potential to be explored here?

I don’t think so. This is merely a setup. This is not a landmark decision, not a The People vs Larry Flynt kind of situation where the judiciary is going to look at the situation in a highly liberal way. This is a non-issue that is being hyped. Nothing is going to happen to Raj Kundra.

What kind of social hypocrisies do you think this exposes?

Post 1992, I don’t think it’s fair to call it hypocrisy anymore. This is what we are. We are a nation of fairly racist, casteist and bigoted people, and any form of artistic creation that has to happen will happen from that space. The art world has been completely subsumed by the mainstream. There are activists who are fighting on the streets and getting killed or jailed, and no community leaders will take this on without political affiliations because it is too dangerous. However, as a child of the internet, I find solace in the power of the web, in the next big thing that will happen and disrupt everything and I am keen to be part of it.

Raj Kundra. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

One of the major fallouts of the episodes have been people trying to defend their profession by calling it ‘art’ rather than ‘pornography’ to escape legal implications. In fact, some OTT platforms producing similar content have taken to Twitter to say that it is unfair to question their content when sexually explicit films like Gandu are being aired on Netflix…

Really? I never knew about this! Secondly, everything needs validation. For films to become art, this validation comes from film festivals. Anything that is deemed art will appreciate in value over time. Anything unvalidated or unverified is content, no matter how aesthetically rich it may be. The internet for one does not follow these rules, validation may come from viewers and likes – there is no jurisdiction here. I have been dealing with this argument since Web 2.0 made Gandu possible in 2011 – before that content had to be localised. So the internet which had made Gandu possible in 2011 wants to ban it in 2021 – for me, it is an interesting circle to have made as a filmmaker (chuckles).

So what would you say is the line between erotica and pornography?

Well, historically, erotica is upper-class pornography. In a traditionalist society like ours where tolerance is low, moral repression has made us look at everything and concur that it is against something or the other. Sex scares people, especially patriarchy. Pornography itself is highly patriarchal in nature and forms an underground drug for patriarchy. At the end of this, we are stuck in a conundrum where we continue to talk about non-issues like Raj Kundra and not about real issues like the rape of a minor when both of these have pornographic aspects, but we as a people, have lost the maturity to understand the link between these two.

Would you say pornography is a social evil?

Technically, pornography is something you jerk off to. And erotica is for the upper class who look down upon jerking off but jerk off nevertheless. I have been working on the premise that pornography is social bulls*#t because everybody jerks off, and had made a song about this called Harihar, asking everyone to jerk off. The social premise is that jerking off or any kind of sexual tendency will be seen as a perversion and the moment you flag it as such, kids will download porn – it is an open door to pornography! Since we can’t have normal conversations about sex with our parents, we will forever grow like this, morbidly…where will kids learn about it? From puberty till the time we are sexually active, our bodies want it, our minds are obsessed about it, and society says its perversion – so porn!

Have you chosen the language of sexual frustration in your films to navigate society?

Yes. You see, sexual identity is the centre of our repression, then there’s caste identity. Look at this – like in the caste hierarchy, the lowest is the woman, the lowest in the Dalit is a woman, the lowest of the highest is also a woman. So the gender crisis is in our blood, in our DNA, and that I found is a very effective way of channelising my energy because as a guy I can’t understand it and I want to. All my career has been an effort to understand sexual repression from a boy’s perspective. You will see all my characters are little boys who don’t understand anything and are doomed and Gandus – and they are accepting their Gandu status, they are non-patriarchal, not trying to impose their masculinity on the world. These were things that were very crucial to me – as information to be disseminated inside my artworks.

What does it mean to be part of India’s counterculture?

See, even Gandu was a popular culture phenomenon, albeit in a niche sense. Since then a rap scene has emerged, an indie scene has emerged. Before this subcultures were looked down upon because it’s like a caste system, where certain acts are devalued compared to others. So I have always been interested in shocking the popular culture, showing them naked bodies so that they will be titillated and forced to watch.

How have you handled criticism as an artist?

I love it! In a sense, I am a pornographer for the mainstream world or artists and I am lucky to have got validated from A-list festivals. I happen to use a particular rasa beebhatsaya from our Navarasa culture that is ignored and people don’t want to talk about it. But it has a certain shock value and I just accept that I am exploring things from a different point of view than most. I am aware of how emotionally fragile we are as a nation and so I am not at all surprised at their reactions!

What are your views on the future of sexual liberation in India? Would you have made Gandu today?

It wouldn’t have been possible to make Gandu today. (chuckles) I find solace in the fact that I could predict that we would become the Republic of Gandu. I mean, look at us! We have become the stupidest nation in the world!

What do you think will be the immediate and far-reaching consequences of the Kundra episode?

More blocks will happen, more sites taken down, more stuff prohibited.

How do you think pornography should be handled in India? Should there be a change in laws or policymaking?

Of course! The Cinematograph Act itself is a hundred-year-old one and it is being looked at through the lens of a very modernist yet dated constitution. And I can foresee, in the digital age, all this will be questioned. I am no one to predict the future but I can see the writing on the wall – clearly, all the laws and the games we used to play will have to change. They are changing as we speak.

Sreemanti Sengupta is a freelance writer, poet and media studies lecturer based in Kolkata.

How Swadeshi Brands Benefitted From Rabindranath Tagore’s Iconic Stature

“To most of my generation, talking about Tagore does not come easy. Because to us Rabindranath was more than just a person. He was to us a compelling symbol, a symbol of India’s cultural regeneration.”

– K. G. Subramanyan, ‘Rabindranath and Art: A Personal View in Nandan (1977)

As yet another birth anniversary of the literary polymath whose skills continue to unravel like a universe within another comes by, one cannot help smirking at Rabindranath Tagore’s long and illustrious career as India’s first advertising brand ambassador. If you are experiencing hiccups from the slowly morphing image of our very own snowy-bearded bard into a six-pack clenching, soft-drink-grabbing hero of exceptional parkour talent, you are in for some more of those. With a somewhat accidental beginning in 1889 with promoting his own song album right up to his death in 1941, Tagore has been involved in numerous adverts. 90 is the number that expert and researcher Arun Kumar Roy, author of the book Rabindranath O Bijnapan, arrived at. Cosmetics to food products, books to medicines, the variety of brands he endorsed is comparable only to his choice of themes in songs and literature.

“Two trends can be identified of Rabindranath’s involvement and contribution to Indian advertising. One, where various business owners requested him to write or model for them, such as ‘Poyodhi Doi’ (curd) or ‘Kajol Kali’ (ink) and second, where companies like Bengal Chemical and many others used his quotations or song lyrics for their advertisements,” said Pabitra Sarkar, former vice-chancellor, Rabindra Bharati University in Kolkata.

The history of celebrity endorsements in world advertising is a colourful one, and one that charts more than 250 years today. India has always been partial to its icons, making them gods and demons in the same breath. Over time, it is tough to recall any business vertical in this country that hasn’t used a “pretty face” to influence buyer behaviour at some point in its advertising history. From sensible star personality-product pairings to those that are sufficiently random – both testifying the Indian advertisers’ utmost confidence on endorsements. That being said, endorsements have proven time and again that purchasers identify with the brand through the brand ambassador – transferring the admired qualities of their superstar unto the brand they are promoting.

Also read: The Relevance of Rabindranath Tagore’s Politics on His 158th Birth Anniversary

An advertising icon

Rabindranath Tagore’s rise as India’s unchallenged advertising icon, comes as no surprise, especially if set in the context of an emerging Indian economy, where a number of brands were seeking to exploit the ‘Swadeshi’ environment for pitching their indigenously produced wares.

The Swadeshi movement, which gained momentum as a reaction to Lord Curzon’s decision to divide Bengal along communal lines in 1905, saw Tagore as a leading figure against the division. In this phase of tumult, where Tagore envisioned change would come with unity and education, he wrote songs of patriotism such as Banglar Maati Banglar Jol (Earth of Bengal, Water of Bengal) that bolstered the movements and also epitomised Hindu-Muslim unity. During this time, the British faced pecuniary loss and Indian industries got a chance to flourish in an environment made favourable by nationalist zeal. Among those who benefitted are Prafulla Chandra Ray’s Bengal Chemicals, J.N. Tata’s Iron and Steel Company, the Bengal Luxmi Cotton Mills and the Mohini Mill, newly established banks, insurance companies, ship-building industries and various other factories.

Many emerging Indian companies understood that competition was extreme within and without and gauged that the ‘Swadeshi’ tag could be used to their advantage to effectively tale on foreign products. And who better to strengthen their brand proposition than the country’s cultural ambassador, the perfect face for a brand that oozes Indian pride and world-class quality?

The legendary Hemen Bose-Tagore pairing is worth a revisit. Remembered distinctly for Kuntaline Hair Oil and literary award, the catchy jingle Tagore wrote for him is an absolute delight: ‘Kesha Makho Kuntaline/ Rumaletey Delkhosh, Paney Khao Tambulin, Dhonno Hok H Bose’ (‘Apply Kuntaline to your hair, Delkhosh in your handkerchief, Tambulin in your betel and bring fulfillment to H Bose’).

Bose launched the Kuntaline Magazine 1896 and later introduced a literary award as a clever branding tool for his line of products. Writers were invited to submit stories and win a cash prize. The catch? They had to mention ‘Kuntaline Hair Oil’ or ‘Delkhosh Perfume’ in the story. H. Bose maintained a strict Swadeshi stance, disqualifying the stories that emulated European literature. He used Tagore liberally in his advertisements along with other nationalist icons such as Surendranath Banerjea and Lala Lajpat Rai, and did not shy away from openly calling out the users of foreign products as ‘lacking self-respect’.

The Godrej No. 2 Soap story is a dream made in ‘moment marketing’ heaven. In 1919, Godrej launched India’s first vegetable soap, made with organic elements and free from animal lard, which was an ingredient in all European soaps. Due to his ingenious new technology, Godrej was able to get in the good books with sensitive Indian masses who were at that moment averse not only to European meat-eating habits but just about everything foreign. The brand gained endorsement from Rabindranath Tagore who featured in an advert along with the words, “I know of no foreign soaps better than Godrej’s and I will make a point of using it.” Annie Besant and Dr. C. Rajagopalachary also backed it, whereas Mahatma Gandhi, who was a direct beneficiary of Godrej’s Swadeshi-fuelled generosity, declined his support towards a competitive brand.

Rabindranath Tagore in an advertisement for Godrej Soap in 1930's.
Source- Godrej Archives. pic.twitter.com/KwMbucIPqQ

— Mumbai Heritage (@mumbaiheritage) November 7, 2014

Tagore’s involvement with Swadeshi advertising had the atypical pattern of the ‘ours is better than yours’ – understandable in a market where everything is too new to be loved in itself, and easier to be pitted against a common enemy. For Kajol Kali, he writes that the ink is no inferior to any European ink, praises Dwarkin & Son’s flute saying that it is more suitable for Indian music than foreign flutes; and compliments sculptor Kartik Pal’s work on his statue as superior to the work of Europeans and Americans who wore him out with long hours of posing.

Why was Tagore doing so many advertisements? Sarkar feels that though the reasons for his motivation are not clear, some of the adverts may have been driven by Swadeshi sympathies, but not all. The fact that the poet featured in foreign products Cadbury Bournvita, Bata shoe, and Lipton Tea’s commercials, point at other prosaic and necessary interests. Sandip Dutta, founder, and secretary, Little Magazine Library and Research Centre, Kolkata, says: “In 1927, Cadbury Bournvita took out full-page ads in Deepali Patrika that used both the poet and famous actresses of the era as models. In 1941, he gave his sanction to an advertisement that was published in Prabashi Patrika for Homeopathic Medicine (claiming he is a beneficiary of the same) that cured madness… it is unlikely he used these products, and therefore used them as a source of earning, possibly towards the development of Visva-Bharati.”

Rabindranath Tagore. Credit: Facebook

In her 1981 memoir, titled Jayashree-r Adiparba, freedom fighter and women’s rights’ activist Shakuntala Roy recounted a visit to Tagore in Kolkata in search of a poem or story for publication in the magazine Jayashree. Too tired and yet unwilling to send her back empty-handed, Tagore offered her a lot of Radium Snow powder, saying that they were of no use to him. When Roy and her companions expressed surprise, Tagore said that it doesn’t matter if he used them or not, it’s alright if advertising for them helped fill his ‘begging bowl’.

Also read: Tagore’s Prophetic Vision in ‘Letters From Russia’

According to Prabhat Kumar Mukhopadhyay’s biography of Tagore, the Bard took out his ‘begging bowl’ to raise funds for Visva Bharati, a task for which he accepted more invitations than he would have liked to give speeches in different parts of India and the world.

Tagore grew disillusioned with the extremist form of the nationalist movement that had taken on a form that was narrow, “xenophobic, chauvinistic” around 1908 when he wrote to friend Aurobindo Mohan Bose, saying, “Patriotism cannot be our final spiritual center, I will never allow patriotism to triumph over humanity.”

Tagore’s 1925 essay, Cult of the Charkha, severely criticised the Swadeshi movement and Gandhi’s idea of ‘charkha spinning’ was a means to achieve independence. “A nation,” he wrote during this period, “… is that aspect which a whole population assumes when organized for a mechanical purpose”, a purpose often associated with a “selfishness” that “can be a grandly magnified form” of personal selfishness.

On his 160th birth anniversary, Rabindranath Tagore’s expansive advertising career makes his unimaginable genius almost conceivable, his superhuman stature almost one with common limitations of money, smiling at us from creams and soaps, and claiming the ridiculous. At last, our God has landed!

Sreemanti Sengupta is an internationally published poet and literary editor based in Kolkata.