Biography of hoshang merchant

SOURCE: THE HINDU

Born 1947, Hoshang Dinshaw Merchant is as old as India’s independence and first openly gay poet. Best known for his gay writing Yarana- which is India’s first gay anthology- he is a distinguished voice in gay liberation in India. 

It is said or rather indisputable that Hoshang has been crucial in shaping the identity of modern queer Indian poet-writers. His enduring influence has given a lot to every queer Indian poet writer even though not many know him better. Being queer is a very lonely feeling, often making one cornered based on the singularity of their experience. One looks for the similarity in experiences and Yaarana: Gay Writings from South Asia is one such anthology edited by Hoshang that every queer person find their sense of belonging. It speaks of the multiplicity of experiences substantiating their desires to be valid for one who can’t speak of it in public. Being introduced to the queer voices around the world crossing timelines, he is a guide who introduces us to even those hiding in the background. 

Hoshang is of the opinion that great literature comes with tradition. To study Spanish literature, one needs to make sense of Cervantes, English Literature of Shakespeare and American literature of Hawthorne and Whitman. To make sense of his idea and style of writing, Hoshang went deep into studying two traditions: the Indic and the Anglo- American and while putting together Yaarana, he went to the roots of erotic writing of Bhakti poetry and the homo-eroticism of Urdu ghazal. He states that his writing on queer ghetto isn’t about sex, but ‘ writing by a queer person living in a straight world.’ Through his writing, he wants to shelter and make the queer community recognisable in the society. 

Introducing gay canon to Indian English writing and guiding closeted writers to come out in writing, it is not wrong in saying that the avant- garde liberated the queer c

Rainbow Warriors was written as a response to my belief and my lived life that political activism is not the only activism but art can also be an important form of politics. I kept out the people at the barricades but included gay pioneers in the arts from the 1910s to 2010 who led by example. The idea came when we had lost all hope with Justice Shah’s 2009 pro-gay judgement being overturned in 2013 by the Supreme Court but gained a new momentum in light of the 2018 decriminalization of homosexuality in India. I carefully included Ashok Row Kavi because I understand his conservative politics as a gay person who grew up in the 1960s and was saved from an isolated life by the deep understanding shown to him by the Ramakrishna Mission monks. He has written his story. The human story interests me more than the political flavour of the day because politics is a passing show while humanity endures. My own celebrity status thrust upon me in old age merits a relook at my own prejudices and begs an explanation for the aesthetic positions I have taken.

What has been your journey with queerness and its expression over the years and the role that literature has played in it?

I studied literature to know the ‘WHY’ of my own outré homosexuality. This was when I was 16 in 1964 and someone like me living even in westernized Bombay was an anomaly. I continued and didn’t give up on literature till I wrote my PhD on Anais Nin whose own sexual experiments with incest, bigamy, episodic lesbianism not only gave me the courage to analyse the decadent Parsi and by extension the Indian family but her friendship as an older writer with young gay male writers gave me a template for my future life as the first out gay poet in Indian English poetry.

What has influenced your poetry