The Rediff Special / Varsha Bhosle

Pandit Nehru: A streak of Gay?

Since I haven’t read Stanley Wolpert’s Nehru: A Tryst With Destiny, I’m not sure if one should, on principle, condemn the Union government’s threat of a possible ban on the book for its assertions on the alleged homosexuality of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. As you may have surmised, this jingoistic columnist is not one to beat the fundamental-rights-artistic-freedom drum for the sake of it, and most certainly not when the irritant is imported.

Apparently, Wolpert has stated that Panditji had had several homosexual encounters during his schooling in Allahabad and Harrow, and youth in Cambridge. The book is peppered with male 'constant companions' and their 'influences', 'clever games' in 'velvet-draped Victorian sitting rooms', 'artistic tableaux', and such phrases which we instantly associate with the flamboyantly gay Oscar Wilde.

Worse, there are those bits about Nehru in drag: 'Wearing his wig, made up with lipstick, powder and eye-shadow, his body draped in silks and satins, Jawahar most willingly offered himself up night after night to those endless rehearsals for the Gaekwar’s At Home as a beautiful young girl… Nor was that the only time he used those expensive silks and wigs.'

The director of the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Professor Ravindra Kumar, immediately said, 'These insinuations are absolutely nonsense and absurd… to the best of my knowledge, there has been no such whisper.' Not quite true. Given the (still intact) power of the Nehru clan, the whispers did the rounds with uncanny discretion, that’s all.

For instance, poet Firaq Gorakhpuri was said to have been 'advised' by Mahatma Gandhi to put an end to his close friendship with Panditji – after which, it is said, Firaq never wrote another nationalistic ghazal or nazm. Even assuming the tattle about Gandhiji’s interference to be true, it’s possible that the friendship was just that. But then, it doesn’t fit into our profile of Gandhiji: Why would he proscribe a cordial relationship between his lieutenant and a national poet?

The English believe their aristocracy to have been rampantly homosexual, and their historians have no qualms in 'outing' those of it. But we’d rather die than open our eyes to the nature of our gentry. Ask the right people, and the clues are there for the picking: For example, in Maharashtra, a certain royal bloodline was forever broken due to the gay disposition of one particularly macho, married scion. Everyone knows – and everyone exercises self-censorship, (very rightly, I think.). However, if some author does let out the cat, I’m loath to put on the injured act for the defence of 'honour'.

No less significant is the traditional reputation of the British public-school system (which also catered mainly to the aristocracy till recently). The disdainful term 'fag' for a homosexual stems not just from 'faggot', but also the ancient custom of junior schoolboys 'fagging', i e, performing tiresome tasks, for senior students. And guess what these tasks are said to have sometimes included.

The publication of two famous reports, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1952), by American biologist Alfred Charles Kinsey first provided a realistic picture of homosexuality and helped demystify it. Kinsey found homosexuals in all walks of life, growing up in all kinds of families, and in all religions. As a result of the ensuing scientific debate, the American Psychiatric Association, in 1973, eliminated homosexuality from its list of mental disorders and, in 1980, dropped it from its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Obviously, India hasn’t yet heard of Kinsey.

The statistics in the report are very illuminating: It was found that as much as 33% of the 18,000 men surveyed had had continuous homosexual contact for nearly 12 years of their lives; out of which lot, only 5% remained exclusively homosexual. The reasons for what heteros think of as a temporary deviation were revealed to be sexual experimentation, curiosity, or adventurism. In short, it’s possible that your friendly, neighbourhood womaniser may have several homosexual encounters hidden in his past.

What I find most curious is the much-bandied relationship between Lady Edwina Mountbatten and Nehru: Most books insinuate – and all educated Indians firmly believe – that there was definitely some sort of hanky-panky going on there. Perhaps. But is there any proof of that, either? And yet, there’s not a mai ka lal in the government or the press who takes it as a slur on Nehru’s character and India’s honour. In fact, it’s almost like a feather in the cap of Indian manhood. Add to that the status of the supposed cuckold, and the affair becomes a point of nationalistic honour.

The point of it all is: contrary to the editorial shrieking 'Sacrilege!' in The Pioneer, our former prime minister’s alleged homosexuality is not the most impossible thing in human history. Even if Nehru had had a streak of gay, what’s the big deal? Does it subtract from his achievements or add to his flaws? Talk about male chauvinism… or is that plain old homophobia? Tch, tch.

I’m astonished by the mullah-ish tone of the said editorial: 'A perusal of the biography establishes beyond reasonable doubt that Mr Wolpert has not even the thinnest evidence to buttress his scandalous conclusion'; 'the biography is patently the work of a perverted mind'; 'blasphemy cannot be part of legitimate discourse'. In short, ban the damn book and off we go to ring around the bonfire.

How many leave a clear, drafted trail of one’s sexual activities/orientation, anyway? Did JFK leave a written confession about Marilyn Monroe? Did Tchaikovsky notate his troubled homosexuality somewhere? Almost all the 'facts' on the carnal liaisons of historical figures is coexistent hearsay, and, like all of anthropology, nothing more than educated guesses. But 'blasphemy'? The root of that word is ecclesiastical – as in slander against God and religious beliefs. And this is the intelligentsia? Oh heavens. It was bad enough to have statesmen posing as Defenders of the Faith over a Saraswati canvas – now we also have editors as High Priests canonising dead politicians. What next? Heresy? Fatwas? Tch, tch.

Strangely, the editorial had nothing to say about the political calumny heaped upon Nehru in the book. Charles Wheeler (BBC’s South Asia correspondent from 1958 to1962) has highlighted and ripped apart precisely that in his review in The Sunday Times of January 26– while casting credible doubts upon Wolpert’s claims of Nehru’s sexual activities. Objectivity is the only correct approach to history, especially our own.

All in all, now methinks the book should not be banned. If I, for one, have already detected the stench of prejudice and fanatical touchiness in this blasphemy business, I’ve a right to decide for myself if I’m right or wrong, and whether Wolpert is indeed 'perverted' or not. Otherwise, this just adds to the ongoing victory of, shall we say, dynastic fundamentalism. Not to speak of sycophancy.

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