When a leader, especially a political figure who vows to serve people, demonises an entire community, it goes beyond rhetoric. Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) State Secretary and former MLA KM Shaji’s homophobic remarks, which vilify the LGBTQIA+ community and advocate for the banned ‘conversion therapy’, are politically irresponsible and damaging.
In an interview with a Malayalam news channel, the Kerala Muslim Youth League president said that homosexuality is a “disease” and that he does not support lesbians and gays. Flaunting it as a firebrand stance, he added that he is “not ready to change his position for a few votes” and that queerness will “promote social anarchy”.
Further, taking it a notch higher, Shaji equated homosexuality to bloodlust in psychopaths and pedophilia. “One of the accused in the TP Chandrasekharan murder case said he gets ecstatic while seeing blood spill out of his victim. So can that pursuit of pleasure, or seeking pleasure through pedophilia, be called a sexual orientation?” he asked.
What Shaji’s words reflect is not just extreme homophobia, but also a pathologisation of queerness. This is a common tool, long used by conservative forces like religion to negate human rights to the LGBTQIA+ community.
Not just Shaji, but several IUML leaders have made such homophobic remarks from time to time. In 2023, IUML leader MK Muneer also made dehumanising remarks about a trans man who gave birth. Earlier, in 2022, senior IUML leader Abdurahiman Randathani claimed that co-ed schools teach masturbation and homosexuality. Shaji himself has previously called the LGBTQIA+ community a “shame” and the “worst kind of people”.
It must also not be forgotten that Shaji’s recent call to “give psychological treatment” to queer individuals to “convert” them is in contravention of the National Medical Commission’s (NMC) 2022 circular banning Sexual Orientation Change Efforts (SOCE), or what is widely known as ‘conversion therapy’. Administering such therapy to “cure” LGBTQIA+ individuals is categorised as professional misconduct in India.
TNM’s 2023 investigation into why this banned practice continues in India revealed that several psychiatric and rehabilitation hospitals in Kerala administer electric shocks and use torture mechanisms to “straighten” LGBTQIA+ individuals. In an interview given to TNM in July 2023, Sumayya Sherin and Afeefa, a lesbian couple from Kerala, spoke about the inhuman treatment. Afeefa was subjected to such procedures at a prominent hospital in Kozhikode, to “make her straight”. All these procedures are conducted at the behest of the victim’s families, who hold views similar to Shaji’s.
What Shaji advocates is not only illegal in the country but also dehumanising and cruel. The problem, though, is not limited to the illegality of what he said. Shaji also made a categorisation within the LGBTQIA+ community to explain who he thinks “deserves” society’s empathy.
“Those who are born with mutated genitals are the most deserving community. They must surely be given help and medical treatment to reassign their sexual organs. But LGBTQ is a broad category, and everything that category encompasses cannot be supported. That is my point of view,” he said.
By creating such a distinction, Shaji is playing to the patriarchal society’s conservative humanity by ascribing moral value to only those who want their genitals to be rearranged. He places them as anomalies deserving of empathy and help, while ousting anyone else who tries to express their sexuality outside the binary as “mentally ill” and “anarchic”.
These statements must also be looked at in the context of what the law says. In India, consensual homosexual acts were decriminalised by the Supreme Court in 2018. When a person of influence, especially a political leader, places morality above the legal rights of citizens, he goes against his basic responsibility to uphold the dignity of all citizens.
It is also the duty of every public servant not to inflame cultural anxieties for political or personal gain. Shaji’s statements vilify the LGBTQIA+ community and further narrow the paper-thin cultural space they are already negotiating in society.
Leaders like Shaji and their parties must keep in mind that democracy thrives on debate and inclusion. It is their duty to respect and uphold the rights of every individual, even in the face of personal disagreements.
Further, if such personal disagreements stem from prejudiced moral positions, they must open themselves up to unlearning and renewal.
Views expressed are the author’s own.