AIIMS doctor suicide to Srinivasan's son: Pressure for gay men to marry remains
In a report published in DNA, Ashwin, the son of ex-BCCI chief N Srinivasan, has accused his father of forcing him to marry a girl if he wants a share of the family property. Ashwin has been in a long-term relationship with another man, which his father wants annulled for the son to be reaccepted back into the family.
Ashwin is quoted as having told DNA: “I want my father to give me my share of the family property and let me live my life as I want with my partner Avi. We’re being held captive against our will and tortured by my father who wants me to break up with Avi, get married and have children to further the family line.”
In handwritten letters that Ashwin provided DNA, Srinivasan is reported to have written his son not to expect a share of his “hard-earned” money if he is unwilling to “reenter normal society" that he left years ago. As per law, children cannot be denied a right to ancestral property but can be deprived of the wealth created by the parent if the parent so chooses.
Srinivasan’s letter further states: “Until you change I am going to induct Rupa (his daughter) into the India Cements Board. You can also join the Board after you accomplish the changes I have suggested. The choice is yours.” Rupa’s husband, for the uninitiated, is Gurunath Meiyappan, who has been in the dock on betting charges. He has been indicted for betting during the 2013 edition of the IPL and now awaits punishment from the Supreme Court.
Srinivasan has not once spoken publicly about the allegations against his son-in-law, which case has threatened his own credibility and forced him to step down from the BCCI chief post. The obvious conclusion is that Srinivasan would rather have a straight criminal for a son-in-law than a gay man for a son.
The funny thing about the case is the tone of the letters Srinivasan wrote his son. They are uniformly sweet, cajoling the prodigal son to return to the family fold. Srinivasan continues to provide for Ashwin’s needs (the DNA report claims Ashwin and his boyfriend are “being held captive in Chennai’s tony First Avenue neighbourhood of Boat Club near his father’s residence” but we can perhaps overlook the “held captive” bit here). It would have been easier to make a villain of Srinivasan if he had spewed fire and brimstone against his son. What he has done is slyer. Keep providing the carrot of material comforts that come with an upper-class existence and also keep dangling the stick of all that coming to an end if things do not return to “normal”.
In light of the Priya Vedi suicide, Ashwin’s case is instructive. Every case has its own particular truth, and I maintain that Vedi’s case reeks of several atrocities pulled together into one horrendous bundle. Even so, some of the pressures that members of privileged gay society face can also be seen in Ashwin’s case. If he were a straight man, he would receive broad-based public support over his father’s attempts to deprive him of the family wealth. However, we have heard very little support for him in spite of his case being in the public domain for some time now. When Srinivasan writes to him saying he would want his assets to go to “family” and not “strangers” we find a deep-seated anti-gay mindset at work. The husband to a man is not family, cannot be family, because such a union cannot sire kids and carry on the family name.
Srinivasan’s views come across as particularly outdated since, as Ashwin claims in the report, “he has had the benefit of a foreign education and exposure because of being well-travelled.” Yet, when it comes to lineage, all forward-thinking ideas are thrown out of the window.
Srinivasan’s letter makes it clear that Ashwin would have to be back home and willing to work his way up to a seat on the India Cements Board. Which is a fair demand until one places it squarely in the middle of a social setting where Section 377 makes homosexuals criminals. So, not just on the issue of property, if Ashwin wanted to live in Chennai and work for India Cements he would have to live secretly as a gay man.
I return to the Priya Vedi case. As I said, the details of that case indicate the depth of wrong done to her, but as Ashwin’s case shows, the pressures that family can enforce on gay men to adopt the “normal” way can involve all manner of unseemly tactics. That Srinivasan would not know that Ashwin can have children with a male partner is impossible. That Ashwin can settle abroad and so marry a male partner is a possibility that the family, if it were so inclined, could have looked into. It is to Ashwin’s credit that he has spoken openly about the case and thus shone light on an issue that receives little attention in talk of gay rights.