by Benjamin Law
In a few quick moves, Ramdev refolded his robes from a flowing neck-to-toe number into the skimpiest pair of running shorts imaginable. Now displaying his famously luxurious mat of chest hair, he led us through the moves slowly and methodically: slow-motion star jumps, long-limbed cat stretches, knee-to-nipple leg pumps, bridge-like spine arches. In the middle of that last stretch, a middle-aged Indian woman in front of me released a fart, a floppy honking arse-trumpet that resonated throughout the chamber. The man next to me completely lost his shit, giving up on the stretch to collapse with his head on his mat, spasming with laughter.
‘These are traditional Indian exercises,’ Ramdev said in English, ignoring the echoing fart.
The moves became more complicated: Russian Cossack leg thrusts, thalidomide-baby elbow claps. We briefly retreated to familiar territory with salute-the-sun routines, but soon Ramdev was performing them as fast as a breakdance, complicated manoeuvres that looked as if they’d cause permanent spinal injuries in most people. Ramdev pinned his hands on the floor in a push-up pose, flinging his entire body and legs through his arms – back and forth, back and forth – before sitting with his legs crossed to show us something cool we could do with pranayam breathing. Closing his eyes, he sucked in his gut to make a concave shape between his ribs, a hollow big enough to fit your entire face. He jiggled his gut around rapidly, like a lava lamp in time lapse. We applauded. It was as impressive as it was gross.
If these were the moves that were supposed to straighten out gay people, I would be gay for the rest of my natural life.
As the conference went on, I warmed to Ramdev. A lot of what he said made sense. He told people to reduce their meat consumption, not just because it was a good Hindu thing to do but also because of environmental concerns. He believed in chewing your food properly, eating raw vegetables and limiting the use of air-conditioning and heaters, because global warming and energy consumption concerned him. Ramdev was also a beautiful orator. In Hindi, he described the other delegates who had gathered there as ‘saints and seers’.
In the afternoon, Ramdev held a two-hour Q&A session in a cavernous auditorium. Shirley, the conference organiser, sat beside Ramdev on-stage and sorted through a Santa-sized pile of letters, selecting the questions she considered the best or most interesting. Those of us who couldn’t understand Hindi wore headsets that broadcast a live English translation. Some of the questions were general; others were bizarre: How do we reduce obesity in woman after HRT? How does one eat right, and when should one eat? Which yoga practices should and shouldn’t be done during the menstrual cycle? Can yoga address autism? What about yoga for muscular dystrophy? How can we use yoga to help enlarge our prostates? Can yoga help with multiple sclerosis?
Ramdev nodded and answered each question in the affirmative: yoga could help with all these things. All of them. He insisted you would never need anti-wrinkle cream if you did yoga, citing his sisters as living evidence. Yoga could also cure osteoporosis and cancer. If you had glaucoma, eye drops and laser surgery weren’t necessary. Natural ayurvedic medicines could easily reverse the condition. In fact, he’d recently cured a woman of glaucoma with a simple natural remedy, combining white onion, ginger and lemon juice, which the woman administered directly to her eyes. My eyes involuntarily watered thinking about it.
‘I can’t tell you to recommend this to your patients in the West,’ he told us, clapping his hands together and laughing with a donkey wheeze. ‘Over there, they’d sue you! So perhaps you can “recommend” it to them, but don’t “tell” them to do it! And don’t tell them I told you!’
He laughed again. I imagined it was the kind of laugh that came after convincing someone to squeeze onion, ginger and lemon juice into their eyes.
Then came a question about sex.
‘When we do more yoga,’ Shirley read out in English to Ramdev, ‘should we also feel like wanting more sex?’
Ramdev smiled again, greatly amused for someone who’d apparently never had sex himself. It was the first time sex had been mentioned during the conference and he approached the answer boldly. ‘Through yoga, wives and husbands will have balance restored,’ he said. ‘They will be loyal to one another from the core of their hearts. When you do yoga, sexual disorders will be removed.’ He nodded, certain in his convictions. ‘Through yoga, your sexual desires will be balanced.’
The following day, when I got to meet Ramdev one-on-one, I could see he was wrong about the wrinkles. Crows feet had gathered around his eyes, though his skin was still smooth like a polished apple. There was also a single crease on his forehead, as though someone had run a blunt fingernail through it.
Ramdev had agreed to grant ‘private’ interviews, albeit ones in which we would be surrounded by his all-male entourage, one of whom was a man in a business suit who would translate Ramdev’s Hindi for me. Ramdev understood English well enough, but needed help communicating his responses. After we sat down together, surrounded by his team, I asked him about some of his health claims, like the one that yoga had the power to cure people of HIV. Ramdev laughed – every thing seemed to amuse him – and said he stood by those claims.
‘I never claimed to have personally cured HIV,’ he said. ‘But as far as HIV is concerned, there are three things that I’ve witnessed and claimed, and will say even now. One is the viral load. The CD4 counts responsible for your immune system, in some people with HIV, have decreased from 700 to 800 to as low as twenty-five.’
I nodded, understanding. By this stage a person would technically have AIDS.
‘But through pranayam breathing, the CD4 count becomes normal,’ Ramdev said. ‘The decrease in viral load is significant. The infection normalises. Even now, there are patients who experience these benefits.’ He looked me in the eye, as if to challenge me. ‘It can still be achieved with any patient you wish to refer or to send.’
On one level, I was impressed: Ramdev was familiar with the language of HIV and knew about CD4 levels and how viral loads worked. But the idea of AIDS patients doing breathing exercises to boost their immune system?
‘Then in 2009, with the repeal of Section 377 –’ I started.
Ramdev nodded, putting up his hands and interrupting, knowing what I was about to ask.
‘When I visit the US or the UK, people – the gay community, gay individuals – they look at me and think, “Oh, this could be a dangerous person.”’
He laughed again, raising his eyebrows at his entourage as if to say, Am I right? They nodded their agreement and laughed back at him.
‘But I think positively of their conditions! It’s a habit. It’s a wrong habit, and also, it’s a mental disorder.’ He switched to English, as if to make his statement more official. ‘Homosexuality,’ he said, ‘is a bad mental habit.’
His interpreter looked at me sternly to make sure I’d understood. I nodded.
‘The perversion can extend up to a level,’ Ramdev continued, ‘where people wish to have sex with animals.’
‘Right,’ I said, taking notes. ‘So it’s a sliding scale, then. A spectrum.’
Ramdev turned out his palms and nodded. ‘It’s a spectrum of perversion, from normal sexual desire to perverted sexual desire. Most male homosexuals? They are actually heterosexual, you know. They have their usual sexual relationships with women, but they also wish to have homo sexual behaviour sometimes. So it’s normally an extension, a perversion of normal behaviour.’
‘And what about female homosexuals?’ I asked.
Silence.
‘Lesbians,’ the translator said ominously in English.
Ramdev shot me a little smile, as if he’d heard a dirty joke. ‘Oh, it’s also the same thing! If they were purely lesbian, you could argue that it was biological. But behaviourally, they are heterosexual also. Only the minority – 1 per cent – of these people are purely not heterosexual, purely gay or lesbian. Most are not attracted to each other sexually, but to each other as individuals. And then it becomes …’
; ‘Something else?’ I offered.
‘Something else,’ he said. ‘These relationships can have a normal spectrum, but also a perverted spectrum. The practice of pranayam and meditation can give us a mastery over it, so we’ll be able to get out of the bad habit. People want to come out, but they don’t feel confident enough because they don’t have tools to come out.’
I looked at Ramdev confused, before I realised he didn’t mean ‘coming out’ in the usual sense, but ‘coming out’ of a life bound by homosexuality. Looking at his beaming face, I felt conflicted: what he was saying made me squirm, but I also wanted to reach over and squeeze his adorable cheeks. For someone so insane and hateful, he was almost lovable in a cartoonish way. How horrible could he possibly be?
‘You say you can cure all this,’ I said.
Ramdev sighed. ‘Pranayam and meditation can help.’
So Baba Ramdev’s infamous de-gayification program was all about breathing correctly? Pranayam was the basis of breathing techniques taughed in yoga classes all over the world. I thought of my yoga classes back in Australia. Often these classes were packed full of gay men who wouldn’t be straightened out even if you surgically inserted metal rods into their spines.
‘Do you see homosexuality as a Western import?’
Ramdev shrugged. ‘This is not a Western or Eastern thing. Only a bad habit. It’s unproductive sex! It’s like throwing the seed into the fire.’
‘Like masturbation, then.’
Upon hearing that word, everyone nodded and murmured disapprovingly.
‘Have people come to you for advice?’ I asked. ‘I mean, say if I was to come to you and say, “Baba Ramdev, I am a homosexual, help me,” what would you say to me? What step-by-step advice would you give?’
‘Of course I would help,’ he said. ‘We’d start with the pranayam practice, and that will lead the way forward –’
‘It’s as simple as that?’
Ramdev gave me an exasperated look, like a teacher working with a dim child.
‘It’s those four breathing practices that you’re aware of now,’ he said.
‘The internal change comes from practice,’ a member of his entourage whispered urgently.
‘Uh-huh …’
Ramdev snapped. ‘Next question!’ he said, shaking his head, decidedly offended. ‘Stop this! Stop!’
His entourage bit their lips and looked away awkwardly.
‘Stop this!’
So we stopped.
In New Delhi, I sat in a plush hotel room, sipping tea and listening as someone gossiped to me about Ramdev.
‘Oh, I’m convinced he’s gay,’ Dr Anjali Gopalan said. ‘You see him with those young boys on his TV shows …’
‘You mean his disciples?’
‘Whatever they are,’ she said. ‘The way he touches them and looks at them …’
I laughed. Anjali raise her eyebrows, mock-serious.
‘There’s something there!’ she said.
Anjali Gopalan was in her fifties and had thick salt-and-pepper hair, an intimidatingly intelligent brain and the constant suggestion of mischief in her eyes, as if she was plotting something diabolical. She also had a lot of history with Baba Ramdev. Before, during and after the repeal of Section 377 – the so-called ban on homosexuality – Ramdev and Gopalan often appeared on nightly current affairs programs to spar about the issue. In that time, Anjali’s face became synonymous with the fight against Section 377. After all, it was her organisation that was the petitioner in the case of Naz Foundation v. Government of NCT of Delhi.
One of Anjali’s most memorable confrontations with Ramdev had taken place when they were miked up in TV studios in separate cities, waiting for the host to introduce them. Because the connection was already live, guests were able to talk among themselves. Baba Ramdev had gestured to Anjali on the monitor and snidely asked the TV producer a question.
‘So, she is also like this?’ he said, implying she was a lesbian.
‘You know, Babaji,’ Anjali said, ‘I am exactly like you are. There is no difference between you and me. Meanwhile, it looks like you’ve found one great way to sell more of your medicines.’
Furious, Ramdev was about to fire back when the cameras started rolling.
‘Oh, he was so fucking angry with me,’ Anjali said. ‘He’s a vicious queen.’
Whenever they had these televised debates, Ramdev was hostile but also appeared confused by Anjali. Unlike the flamboyant gay male activists Ramdev was happy to dismiss and mock, here was a woman whose title was ‘doctor’ and who dressed traditionally and conservatively. It was hard for Ramdev to attack Anjali for being stupid or an outsider to Indian culture. And she was also straight.
‘He didn’t know where to place me,’ Anjali said.
Anjali was famous throughout India for establishing the Naz Foundation in 1994, an HIV organisation that now occupied a five-storey building, including three levels where twenty-seven HIV-positive kids lived. Some were orphans, others had been given up by HIV-positive parents who could no longer take care of them. On the walls were brightly coloured murals of butterflies and birds. It looked like a well-funded day-care centre you’d find anywhere in the world, except for its panoramic views of New Delhi.
When it started in 1994, the Naz Foundation had focused exclusively on men who had sex with men. Anjali had worked in New York City at the height of the AIDS crisis and saw close male friends die hideous deaths: slow, painful and shrouded by stigma. She saw how quickly the virus spread and knew India would be hit soon. When she got back to Delhi, Anjali teamed up with a doctor named Rajiv – who was also straight – and together the pair would go to Delhi’s gay cruising parks with sample medications and supplies for sexual health tests.
‘Poor man,’ Anjali said, chuckling, thinking about Rajiv now. ‘Rajiv didn’t know what hit him. These boys would fall in love with him, but he was so good.’
They met with a lot of resistance. Older queens in the park would tell the younger boys not to listen to Anjali. She had come from the West, they said, and was spreading false rumours about a disease that didn’t exist. Some of them speculated that the real reason Anjali was there was that she, like Baba Ramdev, wanted to make them all straight. Anjali laughed thinking about it now but, looking back, realised she had been on a steep learning curve too.
‘You’re very clear in the States when you go through your training,’ she said. ‘People are either straight, bi or gay. Here, in India, there’s like this whole other world. One had to relearn everything.’
For a start, most of these Indian men didn’t identify as ‘gay’. They had no sense of community or even sexual identity. The Naz Foundation set up phone lines, which they advertised in public spaces where men were known to have sex. Besides the men themselves, parents called in constantly, bemoaning the fact that they’d discovered their son sleeping with other men. When Anjali and other Naz counsellors told parents homosexual behaviour wasn’t a disease, the parents weren’t convinced.
‘Every time we counselled parents, we’d beat our heads against the wall,’ Anjali said. ‘It always came to this: “If you think we should accept our son as he is, and it’s really normal and natural for our son to be like this, then why is it criminal?”’ Anjali looked at me with both her palms facing upwards, exasperated. ‘How do you argue with that?’ she said.
Anjali and the other counsellors tried persuading the parents that Section 377, a law that dated back to 1860, was an unfair legislative relic and that they were doing everything they could to fight it. The parents were never convinced. Deep down, Anjali, too, felt that nothing was ever going to change. The Indian legal system was infamously slow and inefficient, and sexual minorities would never be attended to with any urgency. Every other day, Anjali would end up at the local police station, negotiating with the cops to release Naz Foundation outreach workers from detention. They would be caught in the parks trying to engage with men about safe sex, and the cops would haul them off. The p
olice gruffly explained to Anjali that her staff were technically promoting an illegal behaviour. For Anjali, the breaking point came when the Naz Foundation discovered a young Indian man who had been forcibly given shock treatment for being gay. When Anjali and Naz took the case to the National Human Rights Commission, they were told it wouldn’t be investigated – once again, because homosexual sex was illegal.
Out of exhaustion and anger, Naz teamed up with the Delhi-based non-profit Lawyers Collective in 1995. The timing was canny: Lawyers Collective had just been funded to work specifically on HIV issues and shared the belief that Section 377 could be repealed on both civil rights and public health grounds. If Section 377 was repealed, they felt, it would decrease HIV rates dramatically. Once the ban on homosexual sex was lifted, you could speak openly about it and educate people about safe sex. Lawyers Collective had already drafted the petition for repeal and just needed a responsible party to file it. In 2001, Anjali filed the petition with the Delhi High Court in the Naz Foundation’s name.
Lawyers Collective was headed by a human-rights lawyer named Anand Grover. But Anand was not India’s Harvey Milk. Like Anjali, he wasn’t even gay. Nowadays, Anand worked upstairs in a narrow building that relied on a gated elevator with a human operator. His office reminded me of the Being John Malkovich film set: the walls leaned inwards and the dimensions felt impossible. Volumes of legal tomes lined up in glass cabinets. Receptionists worked hidden behind towering stacks of manila folders.
Anand seemed ageless and had the kind of face that made white hair look so terrific that you looked forward to turning grey. He wore a crisp white cotton shirt, thick-framed designer spectacles and coloured rubber wristbands for different charities over his expensive wristwatch. His heart was grassroots; the rest of him was fabulously tailored. Although Anjali said she’d always been skeptical that their joint efforts to dismantle Section 377 would fail, Anand said he’d been sure of success.
