Mr Tiwari had called the Prophet gay.
After Arun Jaitley spoke about the need for the Supreme Court to revisit its stance on Section 377 which criminalises homosexuality, Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan had said: "The RSS men are gay. That is the reason they don't marry." Mr Tiwari's statement on the Prophet was issued in this backdrop.
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Unglue the layers of the intellectual sententiousness behind this state of affairs, and it becomes clear that the word "gay" is ripe for usage by certain members of our political class as a term of abuse. Azam Khan could think of nothing better to disparage the RSS than call its members "gay", certain that this would get a rise out of them. It did, too, and now the controversy has snowballed to mass gatherings and death threats.
There is an impression among certain members of the LGBT set in India that gay people here have it relatively better. Due to the issue here not being in the limelight as it is in the West, gay people can lead lives relatively untouched by rank bigotry. This is nonsense, of course, and not just because it is false. I know plenty of gay men and women who have been shunned by family for coming out, or for even telling their near ones that they are gay.
But this so-called Indian tolerance for alternative sexuality, which is sought to be evidenced by texts such as Kama Sutra and the traditional accommodation of the transgender in rituals, is absent for another reason: the cult of masculinity. An Indian male would countenance any barbs against himself - but not questions on his manhood. And what could be more damaging to the Indian male imagination than being called gay? That word immediately brings to mind deeply disturbing questions about femininity and sexuality. Anything but that, please!
We have such twisted notions of sexuality and masculinity that it is impossible to make most Indians understand how complex sexual identity is. That gay men occupy the entire spectrum of so-called masculinity and that their sexual preference is only one aspect of their identity is the most obvious thing but refuses to be accepted as truth. Our jokes and our non-vegetarian humour relies so often on poking fun at the submissive position in sex that it is anathema for the straight Indian male to even articulate that position without awkwardness. Gayness then becomes not an identity or a mark of personhood but a deviation, one that is too damaging to associate with.
This is what is happening in the Azam Khan-Kamlesh Tiwari tussle. When nothing else is available, raise the bogey of homosexuality to bring out the worst in your opponent, because why not? The opponent would gladly oblige. How can he not when you have questioned the very core of his being, his most precious sense of self, his all-round belief in the certainty of his maleness? And see him respond in kind, and attack your religion's founder. And when non-thinking members of your religion do not allow even pictorial representations of the Prophet, when the world has witnessed violence for something as innocuous as cartoons of Muhammad, surely calling him gay, that ultimate insult, is nothing short of inciting war.
I am certain that this controversy would get murkier. Someone from the Hindu right will present the Muzaffarnagar gathering as evidence of the intolerance among Muslims. Another segment will try to bury the controversy, saying in hushed tones that Mr Tiwari went too far in attacking the Prophet. This latter bunch would win the day - because, notwithstanding how much the Hindu right despises Muslims, it still wants to play by the rules of the game, and homosexuality, under those rules, is not on. That's hitting below the belt, mate.
In this political slugfest, what hope for the gay Indian who looks to the same political class as represented by an Azam Khan to repeal Section 377 after the Supreme Court, in its December 2013 judgment, put the ball in the legislature's lap? To the gay Indian, the Azam Khan-Kamlesh Tiwari mess is merely an outsize representation of the casual injustices he faces every day, injustices that repeatedly tell him to lead a life of silence and secrets, to change how he behaves or gesticulates, to hide his real self in order to belong. What hopes for LGBT equality in a country where nothing is more fearsome to the powers that be than a whiff of homosexuality tarnishing their made-to-order, "adarsh purush" masculinity?
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