R. Raj Rao

 

                R. Raj Rao

 

ABOUT:

                Ramachandrapurapu Raj Rao (born 1955) is an Indian writer, poet and teacher of literature who has been described as "one of India's leading gay-rights activists". Rao was one of the first recipients of the newly established Quebec-India awards.

On the recurring themes of homosexuality in his works, Rao says:

"I am myself a poet, novelist, playwright and writer of non-fiction. Similarly, my teaching and research interests in queer (same sex) theory and queer literature are a direct and natural outcome of my being gay and imaginatively tackling the subject in my fiction, poetry and plays.

 

There’s hardly anyone as vocal and straight-forward about homosexuality as writer R. Raj Rao. Rao’s own tryst with identifying his sexual inclination came early on in life.

 “My homosexuality is of the exclusive kind. I was never attracted to girls,” he says, adding, “I grew up in south Bombay and during my late teens, I wanted to find out where homosexual desire could be gratified. I soon found out and that’s how it went on for a long time.”

By 1990, Rao had completed his PhD (with poet Walt Whitman as his topic) and started teaching at the University of Pune. Just a few years after that, he went to the UK for a post-doctoral research fellowship and that, he says, was a turning point in his life.

 “In the UK, he realized that being a homosexual was not just about having sex or a different sexual preference. It was about identity and politics as well. The UK has student as well as faculty LGBT societies then. The year that he spent their taught him a lot and once he was back in India, he decided to plunge completely into gayness. He realized there was nothing to be ashamed or scared of,”

Soon, Rao started channeling his intellectual side towards bringing a change in the perception of being gay. “In 1999, He started a clandestine group called Queer Studies Circle, at his office at UoP. Representation of gayness became important to him and he enjoyed taking these risks.

He also say, “Activists might call me reckless but I don’t want to conform to norms set by the society. Gay marriages, starting a family etc are all ways of adopting norms that are established in the heterosexual world. “

It was because of this thought process that he never got pressurized into marrying, didn’t face any issues in his career and never felt the need to come out to his parents.

He further says, “I never felt the need to sit down with my parents and tell them that I was gay. For me, my writing and interviews did the ‘coming out’. Even in terms of my career, I didn’t face issues.”

 He even started a course on LGBT studies at the University of Pune, only the second place to each such a course in India that time, after University of Hyderabad.

He shares, “Practically speaking, I am happy that Sec 377 is scrapped. However, I will regret not being an outlaw anymore. Society tends to set norms and I don’t want to follow them; these are my radical thoughts coming into play. Society made me a victim, but I am a victim who is fighting back and wants to do so till my last breath. I am so used to fighting back.”

 

WHAT IS SECTION 377?

The Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) is an act that criminalizes homosexuality and was introduced in the year 1861 during the British rule of India. Referred to 'unnatural offences' and says whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal, shall be punished with imprisonment for life.

However, in a historic verdict, the Supreme Court of India on September 6, 2018, decriminalized the Section 377 of the IPC and allowed gay sex among consenting adults in private.

This colonial-era law was first challenged by NGO Naz Foundation and AIDS Bedhbhav Virodh Andolan, in the Delhi High Court in 2001. However, both the petitions were dismissed in the court. On September 6, 2018.

 

Works:

·       His 2003 novel The Boyfriend is one of the first gay novels to come from India. It was released with fanfare by Penguin India all over the country in 2003. The Boyfriend is a tragic-comic love story set in the jumbled up heart of Mumbai. "[The Boyfriend] also deals with unsparing irony the realities of caste, class, religion, masculinity and the gay subculture in India". It created quite a stir when it first appeared and was discussed in many prominent magazines as a guide to the then underground gay subculture in Bombay. It went on to be used as a model for the queer scene in India in researches in the field of queer studies.

·       His works include Slide Show (poems).

• ·       He has edited Ten Indian Writers in Interview and co-edited Image of India in the Indian Novel in English (1960–1980).

 

• ·       His poems appeared in many prestigious poetry anthologies like The Dance of the Peacock besides other noted journals and anthologies (collection of selected writing).

 

 

• ·       Poems from Rao's BOMGaY collection served as the basis for Riyad Vinci Wadia's film Bomgay (1996), said to be India's first gay film.

 

• ·       Rao published the non-fiction work Whistling in the Dark in 2009, the novels Hostel Room 131 in 2010 and Lady Lolita's Lover in 2015.

 

·  Slideshow (Peepal Tree Press, 1992), poems

 

·  Image of India in the Indian Novel in English (1960–1985)

 

 

· Nissim Ezekiel: The Authorized Biography (Viking, 2000)

 

· One Day I Locked My Flat in Soul City (Harper Collins India, 2001), short stories

 

· The Wisest Fool on Earth and Other Plays ( The Brown Critique, Kolkata )

 

·   The Boyfriend (Penguin, 2003), novel

 

·  Whistling in the Dark: Twenty-One Queer Interviews (Sage, 2009

 

· Hostel Room 131 (2010), novel

· Lady Lolita's Lover (Harper Collins India, 2015), novel

· Madam, Give Me My Sex (Bloomsbury India, 2019), novel