Gays running India's biggest cheating scam, really?

Amit Kumar Maurya is a PhD candidate at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research in Mumbai. He also thinks there is a vast gay conspiracy afoot at Indian educational institutes. Here's a letter signed by him doing the rounds of social media this morning:

This letter is really something. You feel bad for the guy because he seems to believe this shit. If only! The last time I checked, gay men were using Grindr to meet other gay men for a quickie, if not something more respectable, but not, to my wildest imagination, for taking help cheating on an exam.

For Maurya and others of his ilk who believe there is a vast underground gay mafia that helps its members grab top positions in industry and academia, here is a reality check:

1. In Agra last week, a Class XI student burned himself after he was bullied by classmates for being gay.

2. Last year, a student at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore was outed by a colleague when he refused to respond to extortion attempts by the latter.

3. Except for a few organisations, such as Godrej and Goldman Sachs, LGBT visibility is not even on the radar of the Human Resources (HR) divisions of most companies in India

That is the landscape we are dealing with. Yes, gay men help one another to the extent the law will let them. This normally involves coming to the support of those who are victims of violence, police brutality and all-round viciousness.

Maurya writes: "They [bureaucrats and politicians] are very likely to use their power and prestige to promote their community, sometimes legally, but more often not." Which country is Maurya talking about? We belong to a nation whose Parliament won't even allow a discussion of Section 377, forget actually debating and scrapping it.

Maybe some of our parliamentarians are gay, sure. Maybe some of our bureaucrats and film makers and industry leaders are. How is that even relevant? They may meet up behind closed doors, and release rainbow-coloured balloons into the skies, but they have no power in this land.

Most of them can't even bring themselves to live openly, which is ironically the strongest ammunition in the hands of bigots like Maurya who think we are conspiring to destroy the social order.

I, for one, would not mind some nifty desecration, true. Come out on the roads, ye all, the bullied and the beaten, the shaken and the sullied. Let's take the world over. But sadly, these are mere fantasies. Nothing like that is happening anytime soon, and maybe not ever. We are and we will be a nice tight breeder society, so Maurya really ought to chill.

Oh and Vyapam? Seriously? We don't kill, Maurya. You won't find bodies turning up by the tens when we involve ourselves with stuff. We are too busy dealing with our own mess: finding love and lust, which is no different from your mess, but I don't expect you to understand that.

To you, we are a different breed, this other species that bundle up on winter nights and fuck one another crazy and, when we are done, storm the pearly gates of the IITs and IIMs.

I went to an IIM, not that you are interested in a real success story, Maurya, and I can tell you I met no other gay man there. There was someone I spotted on Planet Romeo whom I had seen on campus but he was too closeted to take things forward. That, in fact, is the real conspiracy.

A social structure that is so heavily patriarchal and heteronormative, it won't allow a gay man to reach out to another for fear he would be outed. It would have been great if the two of us queers had formed our own cute society and conspired to beat the system and get all the plum postings! Oh yes, that would have been rad, if only he were comfortable enough to speak to me.

I am certain that Maurya will get his PhD if he devoted time to it. I personally assure him that I will tap the "gay mafia" and ensure that no flaming queer robs him of his well-deserved chance. If only he would apply his articulacy to his dissertation and not to spinning such delicious but impotent fantasies!