GLR May June

to close. Lawn-tennis may have left one other trace. Nijinsky’s bal- let Jeux (1913) has a tennis-playing threesome at its core. Those dance historians aware of Mourey’s play have said point- blank that there is no connection between it and Nijinsky’s cho- reography. I’m not so sure. The music for the ballet was commissioned by Claude Debussy. He and Mourey were friends and collaborators, the former providing libretti and lyri- cal texts for the latter. Nijinsky, on the look-out for subjects for an up-to-date ballet, was attracted to tennis because of its up- wards swinging movements. He also hoped to create gender confusion by dancing in toe shoes; this idea was negated, al- though in performance he did wear a red tie, international badge of cruising males.

Debussy may, as a joke, have mentioned Mourey’s Lawn- tennis to the impresario Sergei Diaghilev. We know that Di- aghilev, with his homophilic predilections and fondness for scandal, would have preferred the trio to be all male. Ultimately, it was Nijinsky, who often chafed at Diaghilev’s playing “the stronger,” who made the ménage à trois two women and a youth. The ballet ends with the boy and one of the girls exiting into the shrubbery. When the composer was presented with the scenario, he boggled at the suggestiveness. He needed to have his fee doubled before he undertook to compose the score. If the depiction in a ballet of modern-day heterosexual “troilism” (three-way sex) in a ballet could shock so cultured a person as Debussy, two women pairing off would have been unthinkable. Audiences still needed to be shielded from lesbian love.

Coming Out Twice: Gay and Asian in the UK INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM

those trying to be gay and Muslim. Most of his participants in interviews felt guilty and be- lieved they were doing something wrong. While some rejected their Islamic faith to rec- oncile this contradiction, others struggled to meld the two. Fear of physical violence and even “honor killings” have led some to keep their sexual orientation a secret. But things are not all doom and gloom. Lit- tle by little, gay British Asians are feeling more confident and safer about coming out. Slowly, this community is becoming more vis- ible. I talked with three men who are active in the UK with promoting acceptance of the gay people in Asian society and awareness of the issues of living between multiple cultures. Bobby Tiwana (BT, below), with a Punjabi Sikh background, is a cultural activist who creates live performances and is currently pro- ducing a play about same-sex love in Asian communities. His work evolved out of a proj- ect involving interviewing British Asian gays and lesbians to record their story. This led to his blog, Safar (which means “journey” in Hindi), and to continuing work to demystify taboos and make these stories culturally visi- ble. Bobby’s partner, Dr. Abhi Shetty (AS), a Hindu born in Bangalore who moved to the UK ten years ago, is a consulting psychiatrist. Khakan Qureshi (KQ), a Muslim, is the founder of Finding a Voice, a Birmingham group that meets in the heart of the city and welcomes people of any faith, background, or disability. Ken Powell: Bobby, why did you create the Safar project and were you surprised by what you heard? BT: I was inspired by a visit to Bangalore in 2011 when I met a group of educated, middle- class gay men who had come out openly and yet enjoyed good relationships with their fami- lies. I wanted to see such openness in the UK. I interviewed a number of GLBT people in 2012 because I felt the stories needed to be

heard, and Safar is part of this. Sowing the seeds that “we exist” in the media is so impor- tant. I found such a strong sense of survival from the interviewees, of resilience, and of making lives work. People need to see this. It is important to create positive role models and for gay British Asians to realize that even holding hands with someone is activism. There were many surprises. The single largest group who contacted me were gay Muslim women. I interviewed a couple of women living together in Coventry—one is a Sikh and the other a Muslim. Traditionally, these are two completely separate communi- ties yet they are in a relationship together and living peacefully in the same street as the Sikh’s family. Similarly, I met a Bangladeshi Muslim woman wearing a hijab who talked of liking blond women! We see a veiled woman and imagine what she must be thinking, but this woman turned that notion on its head. KP: We tend to think of Islam being against homosexuality. Is it possible for gay British Muslims to retain their faith? What about non- Muslims? KQ: Of course, there are those in life who give up the faith completely and seem to ac- cept or acknowledge that being Muslim and gay is not permissible in the Qu’ran. But there are GLBT Muslim people who come together in a charitable organization called Imaan, based in London, for social activities, retreats, conferences, and workshops in an attempt to seek answers about how their sexual orienta- tion fits in with Islam. In my own organization we have Sikhs, Muslims, atheists, and agnos- tics, and we discuss the problems of faith. The key issues faced by gay Asians—and gay Muslims in particular—concern the question of how you can be both Muslim and gay, feel- ings of guilt that one’s sexual desires are “ haram ” (forbidden), and dual discrimination of Islamophobia and homophobia. BT: Activities like going to the temple in the

K EN P OWELL N OT LONG AGO , I wrote in these pages about issues facing the Bangladesh GLBT community (“Activism Strug- gling to be Born,” Nov.-Dec. 2013), having worked there for many years. When I returned to the UK last year, I wondered how much British Asians identified with these problems and what others they have to deal with. British Asians live between two worlds. Most are second- or third-generation, born in the UK rather than abroad. But much of their cultural heritage is fixed firmly in India, Pak- istan, or Bangladesh and is thus quite foreign to Britain. Most still have family in Asia, and some British Asian men will go back to marry a woman chosen by their family and bring her back to the UK. But in these countries of South Asia, homosexuality is taboo, if not ac- tually illegal. According to The Sunday Times last year, a recent poll in Pakistan found that only two percent of the population believed homosexuality should be accepted by society. A Gallup poll in Britain in 2009 found that none of the 500 British Muslims interviewed believed that homosexuality was “morally ac- ceptable.” In India, section 377—a law from the days of British rule making homosexuality illegal—was thrown out by a high court ruling in 2009 but then reinstated by the Supreme Court in 2013, leaving a trail of legal confu- sion. Thus Asian Brits who are gay live in a country that’s broadly tolerant but tend to come from families and communities that frown on their sexual orientation. Not surprisingly, this leads to distress and even psychological damage for many British Asian GLBT people. Research by Dr. Rusi Jaspal of the Department of Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London, looked into the lives of gay British Asian men of Pakistani origin and found that this divided identity is a huge issue that can produce seri- ous psychological problems, especially for

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