In conversation with Hoshang Merchant

I spoke to Hoshang Merchant few months back with regard to my research work. The inimitable poet was at his sarcastic best, refusing to be politically correct and taking potshots at the who’s who in feminist and queer circles. What you read here is a less censored version of the interview that was published in Firstpost few weeks back. 

RD. Last year we witnessed tremendous outrage from the intelligentsia due to the murders of several authors, rationalists and people from religious minorities. In that context where do you locate your dissidence?

HM: Let me tell you dear, I am not from any political wing. Do you really want to hear my answer? Mr Kalburgi was not killed by those who opposed him but by his own men – his own Lingayat faction. They are politically very strong in Karnataka; you can not go against them. He had no business insulting innocent ignorant villagers telling them that they are worshipping stones, not gods. Devotees are not fools. Those stones for them are invested with divine power. That’s what murti means. But then Dabholkar and Pansare were different. They were the old rational order exposing the so-called miracles. Also you should know your audience.

RD: So then what does dissent mean for you?

HM: It is the general public which calls me a dissenter. Most of these (heterosexual) men are fucking girls, getting children and messing up their lives. That is what I don’t do. I also stop other fairies from doing that.

RD: How does it pertain to your writing? You have been openly gay since a time when hardly anyone in India had even heard of the term. You call it “forbidden sex” –

HM: Forbidden not by me but by the state.

RD: Of course. So is that your source of dissent?

HM: Hmm. I don’t think I would have dissented had I been straight. That’s my dissent. Yours could be something else.

RD: Since sexuality is integral to your work and we are all talking of free sex –

HM: Free sex?? What’s that? I paid for everything! There is no free lunch. The only thing in life which is free is the air because it is polluted!

RD: Do you conform to the tag of the “anti-national” since homosexuality is criminalized by the IPC?

HM: What is anti-national? Homosexuality is doing the greatest service to an overpopulated nation. Else I would be labelled as the mother of this nation. I would have been given a gold medal!

RD. You were openly gay in US when the gay movement was just evolving and the Queer manifesto was still two decades away. Can you draw a parallel between the politically charged movement in the US and the contemporary resistance to the nation-state in India?

HM: Are you comparing the gay movements in America and India?

RD: Not necessarily. I am referring to the anxiety over sexuality in general. Take for example the recent JNU dossier that accuses the campus of being a den of a sexual racket –

HM: I know. I always said that JNU is a brothel –

RD: What?! 

HM: (laughs) Only it is cheaper than a hotel. Look I haven’t been open about my sexuality out of choice. I was born with a limp wrist and I am a dead giveaway. I can not hide even if I want. I made a virtue of my necessity by saying I am out of the closet.

RD: But do you see any parallel?

HM: We are imitating the West. Our society is different. That’s why Ashley Tellis does not go to these Pride Marches because he feels our society is poor. We are not a consumerist society.

RD: But if I am not mistaken the Leftist queer groups don’t take corporate sponsorships –

HM: They wear masks! In these Pride marches they are even ashamed to show their faces. Either you are out or in. You can’t be half in and half out!

RD: But isn’t the closet always shifting? It is not fixed, right?

HM: Well… I am so unmasked that I can’t mask myself with anything. I remember nobody wanted to print me. I was hitched on to this bandwagon by these big presses as I was writing something which sells in the West. I have been co-opted too. I am no Joan of Arc of the revolution.

RD: Any of these books got censored?

HM: No. Why would they? Who reads English? You think Modi is threatened by my snarls?

RD: There is a feeling that most gay men in India are Right wing and homonationalist –

HM: No. You see, the middle class wants money. When Sonia said that she will give them reforms, they voted her to power. It is the corruption which turned then off. Modi has nothing to do with it. He means different things to different people. He knows how to please people.

RD: So you don’t think of the Indian gays as homonationalist, for example when you denounce same-sex marriage in Forbidden Sex?

HM: That’s the West! Heteronormativity and homonormativity.

RD. So how do you see the embracing of consumerism and neoliberalism by activists like Laxmi Narayan Tripathi and Tumpa*?

HM:  Manish is such a piece of shit. Laxmi at least is honest. She got the transsexual bill (sic) passed by the Supreme Court. She changed the lives of transgenders in India. What have Tumpa and his mother done besides getting publicity for themselves? He thinks he will fool us?

RD: So what do you make of the Queer movement in India? Is there a movement?

HM: You think?

RD: I do.

HM: Who is the leader? Laxmi writes in her new book that in the Supreme Court there was not a single representative of the gay community. Not one face.

RD: But Tumpa thinks he is leading us.

HM: God save us!

RD: There is Ashok Raw Kavi too

HM: He has done so much. He should retire and be left alone.

RD: So what is the future of the movement?

HM: Firstly let’s recognize class in urban spaces. What does gay liberation mean for that chakka who has to show his organs for fifty rupees? And macho man like Boomer* should stop despising queens like me. You know, he came and caught me by the collar at one of these Pride parades? I had asked Bula* for the police helpline. He left after I counted till three. What movement are you talking about? Thirty years I have fought and taught for them. Did I deserve this? They came yesterday. Where were they when I was screaming in the wilderness like Moses in the Palestine?!

RD: Of late a lot of emphasis has been on a Queer Marxist feminist resistance to the state. Do you see such acts of intersectionality as constructive or mere idealism?

HM: All bullshit! …maybe in the West, in the textbooks, in the dreams of these intellectuals. Here in practice, there is no solidarity. They only want to co-opt us for their own purposes. I am not a harem eunuch. Thank you! These feminists are witches. They should be ashamed of themselves. Once I made up a joke on how this postcolonial feminist would slap her husband in midnight and tell him, “Colonise me”! She went livid and now calls me Horrible Hoshang!

RD: But don’t you think that feminism brings together people from the margins?

HM: Only on paper! I have seen feminists in Palestine, Iran, America, Germany and I have seen these witches in Hyderabad for last thirty years. It’s bullshit. It does not exist. This is not Indian feminism.

RD: What is Indian feminism then?

HM: Indian feminism is for the maid who is working for those bob-cut walis for thirty rupees a day. That woman needs feminism. When that woman is empowered by that bob-cut wali; that will be Indian feminism.

RD: So you associate real feminism with the working class and Dalit rights?

HM: See, feminism in India was imported. It was Beauvoir and all those theorists who they couldn’t even pronounce. When that phase was over, then they wanted to co-opt the Dalits. The onus of the Hyderabad suicide could also be laid on the Left’s door. Now these witches have come to the Queers.

RD: You reduce feminism to a despicable word.

HM: Feminism is a stupid word. Doesn’t mean anything to a country of poor women.

RD: So there is no Leftist-Dalit solidarity?

HM: A Dalit who is un-empowered can not be empowered by a privileged Left. That’s not the way power evolves. It does not trickle down like that. It is not some dispensation from Moses to unenlightened Israelites and from God to Moses. It does not work like that. Let the grass roots people come up. But even when they do, they become bourgeois. That Googli* has become so bourgeois. She sits in Air India cabin with her children and laughs at me. Is that Dalit feminism? I am ashamed of them!

RD: You want me to keep the names?

HM: Of course. They need to be exposed! These people should have a united party for the shameless. Imagine them trying to co-opt me!

RD: OK. Your poems use sexuality as a way to mark places and bring ethnicities together –

HM: See. The colour of blood is red. The colour of semen is white. There are no different labels or signs for desire. That’s why the most democratic creature is a prostitute. Second most is the teacher and third most is the artist. I am all three. I do what I say and I say what I do. I don’t have a party dictating my line.

RD: You don’t like any political party?

HM: I am an anarchist. That’s what Ashley tells me.

RD: You seem to like him.

HM: He is an honest creature but a rude bitch. But I would rather have an honest person who is rude than a dishonest person who is polite like Chaudhury or Dutt – corrupt to the core! It is disgusting how this Shoma defended her boss (Tarun Tejpal) against that poor girl.

RD: So what is the future of writing as a form of dissent?

HM: What do you think? When the revolution comes I will be the first to be killed. But when will revolution come? Never. Haha!

RD: So there is no hope from any quarter? What do you make of the revolutionary claims of the Left in university spaces?

HM: I am ashamed of the Left. They are disrupting the universities to get even with Modi. And the Right is Right. They had no shame anyway. No hope.

RD: Finally, what is the purpose of poetry and writing in general?

HM: Poetry sweetens human beings. It gives hope to the defeated. The first sentence of my new book Secret Writings of Hoshang Merchant is from Heidegger –“What are poets for? Poets are there to sing the night of the world”. Coming to the second part of your question, writing is to change the mind and heart of these stupid people. They reject me because I don’t use jargons, read Derrida or conform to labels like Queer.

RD: So what’s the legacy of Hoshang Merchant? Anyone in particular who you can think of?

HM: It is the people who will read and think. There are many poets who have been inspired by me. There is Akhil (Katyal). Women poets love me – Nabina Das and Sridala Swamy. There are Urdu poets like Ali Zahir, Jamela Nishat and Mazhar Nehdr. There is S Anand too. Promabho Bhownik in Jadavpur is also inspired by me. You know envy is also a way of admiration in Urdu poetry. It is called rashk. We don’t have it in English.

RD: Thank you for being so frank and relentless.

*These names have obviously been changed.