GREAT EMPIRES may come and go, but, like the tides, they leave behind a tangled assortment of treasures and trash. In the case of the British Empire, this included much that one might admire, but also a British Protestant morality that was codified in laws that persist to this day. Section 377 of the colonial Penal Code is a striking example. It classed consensual oral and anal sex as “carnal intercourse against the order of nature” and made it a crime punishable with imprisonment for life. When the British administrators withdrew, they took their soldiers, but left their law books behind. Section 377 was recently repealed in India, but it is still very much on the books in Bangladesh.
Prosecutions under Section 377 are extremely rare, so it does not impair Bangladesh’s moderate image in the world. Questions about the country’s human rights record on the issue of homosexuality are avoided in the international arena. Nonetheless, Section 337 forces the GLBT community into a shadowy existence, keeping them out of the public sphere. And because homosexuality is a social and religious taboo in Bangladesh, pressure on openly gay men and lesbians can be intense. In 2003, two Bangladeshi gay men were granted asylum in Australia after a local Islamic council in their homeland issued a fatwa against them. The couple’s lawyer, Bruce Levet, reported that they had been assaulted with whips and stones.
“Sam” is a self-described bisexual living in Dhaka, the capital, where we spoke with him last December. He is a university-educated Muslim-born Hindu, age 25, who works as a university teacher. Six years ago, after graduating from college at the age of nineteen, he discovered that he was gay. He has had sexual encounters with women before but is currently in a romantic relationship with a man. Sam and his boyfriend go on trips together, hold hands on the streets of Dhaka, and share a bed when staying at each other’s places. Since male-to-male friendships are traditionally very intimate in Bangladesh, these practices cast no suspicion upon their presumed heterosexual identities. Family and friends consider Sam and his boyfriend to be close friends. “As long as you don’t come out openly to your family, you are safe,” Sam explains.
Like Sam and his boyfriend, many gays in Bangladesh hide their sexual orientation from their friends and families, and find that it is easy to do so. Coming out, on the other hand, can have a wide range of consequences. Some gay men who inform their families about their sexual orientation are forced into heterosexual marriages. Other parents consider homosexuality a mental illness and subject their gay sons to religious brainwashing or psychiatric treatment. Sam told us of cases in Bangladesh where electric shocks were applied to homosexual men in an effort to “cure” them from their supposed psychiatric condition. He is convinced that, “unless the government, parents, and friends understand that a man or woman can be a gay or a lesbian and yet be a very good and devout Muslim, Hindu, or Christian, the chances for GLBT rights in Bangladesh are low.” Homosexuality among men is acknowledged to exist but is seen as a depraved Western import, while lesbianism is barely on the radar screen.
Starting out as an online group in 2002, an organization called Boys of Bangladesh (BoB) has become a central forum for gay and bisexual men in Bangladesh. BoB currently has more than 2,000 registered members, including students and Ph.D. holders. Their ages range from sixteen to over fifty years old. BoB is run by around twenty young men and has become increasingly public in recent years. In November 2010, BoB held for the second time a festival called “Under the Rainbow” in cooperation with the German Goethe-Institut in Dhaka. Under the slogan “Accept Diversity and End Discrimination,” the five-day festival included movie screenings, art exhibitions, and musical performances, and brought together leading human rights activists from around the country and abroad. BoB organized various other events, mainly in Dhaka, and its representatives attended international conferences on GLBT issues in Nepal and Thailand. The organization further provides gays and lesbians in Bangladesh with information on health and legal issues on its website (boysofbangladesh.org).
Change on the subcontinent is also afoot on the legal front. An Indian court in Delhi decriminalized homosexuality by repealing Section 377 of the Indian Criminal Code in July 2009, saying that treating certain forms of consensual sex between adults as a crime is a violation of fundamental human rights. For Sam, this is a sign of hope. He is convinced that, due to the profound cultural links between India and Bangladesh, the Indian court’s ruling will spark a public debate on gay issues in Bangladesh and encourage the youths here to fight for their rights. “It is the youth, exposed to international media and increasingly educated, that is empowering the GLBT movement in Bangladesh.”
Some movements in Islam, such as the U.S.-based Al-Fatiha Foundation, accept and consider homosexuality as natural and work towards the acceptance of same-sex-love relationships within the global Muslim community. Progressive Muslim scholars around the world argue that Qur’anic verses on homosexuality are obsolete in the context of modern society and point out that, while the Qur’an speaks out against homosexual lust, it is silent on homosexual love. However, in Bangladesh, religion remains the single most persistent obstacle to equal rights.
The GLBT rights movement in Bangladesh is growing rapidly, and the voices for the repeal of Section 377 are becoming louder. The issue is bound to emerge into a public battle over the young nation’s religious and cultural identity, human rights, and modernity, and promises to pose a challenge to policymakers, religious authorities, and leaders of civil society alike.
Rainer Ebert is a moral philosopher at Rice University in Houston.
Mahmudul Hoque Moni is the founding director of the Centre for Practical Multimedia Studies at the University of Dhaka.
