Despite India’s economic success, it is still home to millions of the world’s poorest people. Martin Buckley lived in Bombay, as it was known, in the 1980s. He recently went back and found, as he walked about after sunset, that the essential character of the city remains unchanged.
Bombay by night. It is hard to think of three words more expressive of history, exoticism, and empire.
And I do not begrudge the "new" name, Mumbai (the city was renamed in 1995).
The city’s presiding goddess is Mumba-Ai, and I spent a chunk of the 1980s living close to her temple in the heart of the city.
It was my first job after university, working on a magazine called Business India. Very few foreigners worked in Bombay then.
Pre-boom India was still locked into its Soviet-style command economy.
Paid local rates, I lived in a succession of seedy rooms in downtown Bombay.
We sometimes put the magazine to bed at 0300 local time, and I would walk home.
On the pavements were string beds, where men lay, totally abandoned in sleep.
I never felt threatened for an instant.
Slum living
We have heard a lot lately about Mumbai’s slums, so I thought it would be interesting to revisit my old haunts.
Mumbai is a long, thin city, and on its northern fringes, residential suburbs are mushrooming.
I went to visit Dharavi, the slum made famous by the film Slumdog Millionaire, which is nearer the city centre on land the developers would love to get their hands on.
This "slum" has electricity, workplaces, temples and mosques.
I asked a street trader selling school exercise books if he had heard of Slumdog Millionaire.
"Of course," he said, adding that tourists had been turning up in droves to see where the film was shot.
But he said they should go home, as no-one wanted them there.
I felt no danger in Dharavi, at least, not from people.
Stepping on a sleeping dog – an actual "slum-dog" – was far more of a worry.
‘Light beatings’
The next night, a hot, sticky evening, my first stop was at a downtown police station in central Mumbai, to interview a police inspector.
He was a sleek character, with manicured nails, dyed hair and an expensive-looking Swiss watch.
Sipping sweet tea from an improbably refined china cup, I sheepishly asked about the brutal police torture shown in Slumdog Millionaire.
"Ridiculous," he replied, though he did admit that what he called "light beatings" were routine. And no, I could not visit the cells.
He moved hastily on to more comfortable territory, showing me his CCTV screens, and declaring how modern forensics had transformed criminal investigation.
His biggest task, he stressed, was managing tensions between Hindus and Muslims.
Doggedly, I asked about police corruption and drugs mafia, but received peremptory replies.
Prostitution he claimed, was sharply down, but not through policing. Rather, he claimed it was because people were terrified of catching Aids.
Decomposing facades
Physically, central Mumbai has changed far less than I expected.
There are some elevated highways from which, I am told, motorcyclists periodically plunge.
But the great tenements still rise in terraces draped with washing, their Victorian or art deco facades slowly decomposing.
Few of the 1960s-style Fiat taxis have been replaced by newer cars.
There are bullock carts toting jute bales, tiny shops with colonial interiors, hawkers selling fruit from trolleys, men sitting cross-legged in the street selling shoes, basket-weavers working and living on the pavements.
Markets sell everything from metal ware to fresh fish, and as 2200 approached, I could still see live mullet writhing in baskets.
Nearby were the entrepots of Mumbai’s thriving dockyards, with the seedy, raffish air of a Conrad novel. And it is much easier to buy a beer in contemporary Mumbai than it was in my day.
Religious tensions have worsened, but I passed Hindu and Muslim traders working side by side.
Decay and ambition
In Bhuleshwar, in the old heart of Mumbai, I visited the city’s presiding Hindu goddess.
The pillars of Mumba-Ai’s tiny temple were entwined with flowers to resemble an indoor forest, and people urgently jostled for a glimpse of the deity.
By midnight I had reached Falkland Road, Mumbai’s infamous red light district.
Women stood around gloomily, their faces showing none of the flirtation that is supposed to be their profession’s stock in trade.
Mumbai’s sex industry caters to millions of poor men, and its squalor and joylessness are all too evident.
A pimp was hanging onto my arm. I asked him if it was true that client numbers were down. He became aggressive. Was I there to spend money or ask nosy questions
I flagged down a taxi, and slid on to the back seat. Through the open window, the air was now pleasantly cool.
The essential character of the great city I had known and loved 25 years ago, seemed to me unchanged, and it was still a Dickensian canvas of decay, ambition, and exploitation.
But Mumbai is pragmatic. It looks chaotic, but it works.
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A victory for gay rights in India
The Delhi high court’s decriminalisation of homosexuality is the first step towards equal rights for gay Indians
A protracted legal battle has finally come to an end. In a landmark ruling, the Delhi high court scrapped parts of Section 377, a colonial law that criminalised gay sex – and indeed anything other than heterosexual vaginal intercourse – in India. Hence, consensual sex involving two adults of the same sex can no longer be a criminal offence.
The importance of this verdict cannot be understated. This is the first time that an Indian court has gone on record to say that sexual minorities are not second-class citizens, and that they cannot be discriminated against. Granted, the anti-gay law was seldom used to secure convictions. However, for decades, the police and sometimes society at large used the law as an excuse to persecute gay men and women, who were harassed, blackmailed, detained or raped, unable to seek any protection or justice from the law. In addition, the law was also a significant impediment to fighting HIV/Aids among sexual minorities.
No longer. More importantly, the ruling may finally pave the way for sexual minorities to lead open lives, and ultimately to provide them with legal equality. At least, that’s the hope.
But is it too soon to be that optimistic? No sooner had the judgment been passed than all the religious groups in India started opposing it. While the law minister has said that the Congress-led government will study the judgment carefully, the main opposition party, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party, is firmly opposed to it. Gay sex is immoral and unnatural and Indian society does not approve of it, they say. The usual pseudo-arguments invoking a nebulous notion of “Indian culture” also abound.
There is a very real worry that in order to appeal to the religious groups, and regional political parties, the government might choose to appeal the decision to the supreme court, though preliminary reports suggest otherwise. After all, only a few days ago, after initially conceding that it might consider scrapping the law, the home ministry backtracked the next day when the news made front-page headlines in national newspapers, triggering opposition from religious groups. Even if the government doesn’t, religious groups and opposition parties have indicated that they will challenge the ruling.
What if that happens? It is quite possible, though unlikely, that the supreme court might overturn the current verdict. It is easy to forget that when the public-interest litigation was first filed eight years ago, the same Delhi high court rejected the plea twice, if only on legal technicalities. And the same court had ruled, only a decade ago, that society’s disapproval was sufficient enough for the law to remain in force, an argument that was used by the previous Congress-led government.
In my opinion, Indian society does still overwhelmingly disapprove of homosexuality. A neighbour walked into my apartment in India as I was watching the story unfold on BBC world news. “What’s gay sex?” she asked. When I explained, she was shocked, and believed that this was further evidence that India was becoming morally depraved; that urban Indians imitate the west with unquestioned readiness. Such sentiments are widespread. Indeed, it is telling that none of the regional television channels in south India have yet to report on this story, which has made national headlines.
I also worry that today’s verdict might trigger a flurry of state legislations, and perhaps national ones too, that are blatantly anti-gay. For example, same-sex marriage and adoption may well be outlawed. In a country where 11 states have independently banned sex education in schools, it is very possible that acts similar to Section 28 in the UK might be enacted. Perhaps I am being overly pessimistic. But having grown up in conservative India where sexuality in general is a big taboo, and having been repeatedly told that homosexuality is abnormal and disgusting, I cannot help but wonder if things really have changed that much. It is easy, and comforting to believe so, but not necessarily true.
Hoping that homosexuality remains legal for good, the most important task ahead is to educate the public and raise public awareness about sexual minorities. Sure, popular culture might help. But gay rights activists need the support of the national and state governments, which need to take a secular, long-term outlook, and invest the necessary resources. Unfortunately, where that kind of support is often considered political suicide, achieving equality will take a long time. Today’s verdict is just the first step in the right direction.