No Sex Please, We Are Indian

—Limerick inspired by Christine Keeler, 
mistress of British minister of war John Profumo, in the '60s.

IF by a wobble of time and space, Bill Clinton could somehow have sought the counsel of Ram Manohar Lohia, his torment about the "inappropriate relationship" with Monica Lewinsky may have been somewhat soothed. Because Lohia, fiercely socialist critic of Nehru's Congress, disdained all appropriate relationships. "Between a man and a woman," he said, "everything is permissible, so long as there is no use of force or breach of commitment." Lohia himself never married. He lived almost all his life with Rama Mitra, a lecturer at Delhi University, an arrangement which psephologist Yogendra Yadav describes as "similar to a contemporary situation of living together and rather bold by the standards of the '60s". In fact, former minister Vasant Sathe says he remembers seeing Lohia with several companions. "The point is that he was honest. He never lied. So it never affected his public standing," says Sathe. How's that for alternate morality, Lohia style?

The world's only superpower looks a trifle immature compared to our rich tradition of "inappropriate relationships". There are the Mahatma's whacky "experiments", Nehru and Edwina's "attraction", and the "magnificently built and good-looking" yoga teachers of former prime ministers. There are Peeping Tom books such as M.O. Mathai's My Days with Nehru, teasing tell-all tomes like P.V. Narasimha Rao's The Insider. There are mysterious "disappearances" en route official tours, and ministerial grabs at bureaucratic bosoms. There is the staccato advance made by a powerful I&B minister to an actress while on a visit to the Soviet Union: "You Vidya, Me Vidya!" There are defamation suits on the innovative peccadilloes of Congress chiefs and chief ministers. And there are snide references to famously bigamous chief ministers, and "unwed" mothers.

But unlike in Clinton country, where the president's prickly problems have prompted the press and the public to turn rapaciously prurient, a bit of executive DNA on a dress simply seems an occupational hazard of the body politic in India idest Bharat. Hormonal tumult in high office hardly merits any public attention. While Americans publish, read about, sell, confess, televise and film their leaders sexual preferences, out here in the steamy tropics, we may gossip, we may guffaw, but we certainly don't judge in public. Says Rajendra Yadav, editor of the Hindi magazine Hans: "Sex scandals in India are the talk of drawing rooms, not matters of political debate."

Is it all in our genes?: Sociologist Veena Das says the difference between us and the Americans in our attitudes and responses lies in the place politics occupies in the two cultures. In America, politics is located in the ambit of popular culture; a "confessional" culture, centred around a let-it-all-hang-out discourse as seen and heard on TV talk and game shows. The "confessional" story about a lapse from virtue is highly saleable because it is the wicked opposite number of the underlying structure of Protestant Puritanism in American society. "In India, however, the display of emotion, the need to share intimate details in public is simply not a part of societal norms," Das says. In any case, Dasharath was possibly a bigamist, Draupadi committed polyandry, Arjuna married several times and Noor Jehan was already married when claimed by Jehangir.

Little wonder Mathai's book, detailing Nehru's so-called "philandering"—even hinting at a love child from a sadhvin—bombed. Although Mathai revealed the bust size of Padmaja Naidu, Indira Gandhi's "involvement" with Dinesh Singh, and spoke of a "video" of her activities with a foreign visitor in the Dwarka suite of Rashtrapati Bhavan, the

book hardly sold and is barely remembered. "Nobody took it seriously because it was too full of innuendo," says Sathe. If those sepia-tinted images died a quick death, a similar fate awaits the present, cutting across party lines. Sample:

• A BJP minister's old friendship with her party colleague. 
• A blue-blooded Congressman's dalliance with a publisher. 
• A JD top-notcher whose name figured in a prostitute's dairy. 
• A CPI(M) leader's well-known obsession with his sister-in-law. 
• A southern chief minister's frank weakness for women. 
• Another's famously public bigamous life. A former aviation minister who reportedly swings both ways. 
• A known spinster's rapport with a known bachelor.
• A Congress veteran's proximity to a journalist.

Little wonder, the BJP takes little note of a chief minister's alleged proximity to a woman corporator. "Everybody says we should keep politics and religion apart," says a senior party leader. "We say, let us also keep sex and politics apart."

It's a recipe political parties—and the press which covers them and the public which votes for them—seem to be following. M. Karunanidhi's bigamous life in Madras interests so few. Again, the friendship of BSP party bosses Mayawati and Kanshi Ram attracts so few raised eyebrows. A senior Bahujan Samaj Party politician says that from the point of view of his party, the relationship between the two is a complete non-issue. They live together but retain single status and believe that marriage would be a distraction from the far more crucial objective of creating the "bahujan samaj". "It's unfair," says the politician, "to look upon any woman who enters politics in our party from That Angle. Look at the number of women in the Left movement, are such questions asked? But this is an open society and anyone is free to fall in love."

 Clearly, the public concurs. Although the marriage of BJP MP Sanjay Singh with Ameeta Modi after the murder of her husband, national badminton champion Syed Modi, created wild media excitement, voters banished the thought. And Singh went on to win in Amethi by a convincing margin, showing that his constituency at least wasn't worried about whether or not his conduct had been appropriate. Modi says she was a victim of press sensationalism, but agrees that public memory is short. "I've found that people are often not swayed by one-sided accounts and are quite sensible about their opinions."

Even prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's rather ambiguous "family" may have spurred an underground joke movement but it has hardly come in the way of the bachelor leader being anointed as the most popular political figure of the late '90s. Veteran journalist Inder Malhotra recalls that there was only one reference to Nehru and Edwina in the press, when Blitz reported how Nehru once excitedly kissed her. Inder Malhotra also points out that it was not until the '60s when Nirmal Kumar Bose published a book on Gandhi's experiments with sex and celibacy that they actually become known. "Before the publication of this book, it would have been unthinkable to write about these details."

According to senior columnists, when Sikandar Bakht began to court his Hindu fiancee, the opposition Jana Sangh erupted in protest in Parliament. Communal riots seemed imminent. Congress leader Subhadra Joshi vigorously took up the cause of the religion-crossed lovers only to be roundly castigated by the Sangh. Bakht later married but no public mention of the drama was ever made. The handsome and patrician C.D. Deshmukh, ICS, only announced his decision to get married years after he embarked on a well-known relationship upon the departure of his English wife. And when the police came to arrest Lohia in 1942-43, he was allegedly found occupied in not-so-revolutionary activity with the stunning younger sister of an even more stunning CPI leader.

"Scandals were different in those days because the nature of the press was different. Today the press is much more intrusive. Even the full extent of Kennedy's love life was not known until after his death," says Jayant Malhoutra, MP.

The allegedly secret affair of Y.S. Parmar, former chief minister of Himachal Pradesh, who announced at the age of 70 that he was finally ready to wed, remained buried for decades. More recently, the "indiscretions" of another scam-struck Himachal leader found some mention in the papers. Although former railway ministers and senior Congress politicians have been known to repeatedly violate the Seventh Commandment, there have been only a few salacious references here and there. Former president Giani Zail Singh was once accused of having had a long liaison with a member of the royal family of Malerkotla and according to some reports even married her. During the Emergency, raids on Orissa chief minister Nandini Sathpathy's house yielded the diaries of her son Tathagatha, in which Sathpathy was accused of sexual excesses.

In 1984, Donald Trelford wrote in The Observer, London, about the "now greying former lover" (Dinesh Singh) of Indira Gandhi. Singh was referred to as Prince Consort and Malhotra quotes Mathai as having written about the "loose and unfortunate" talk about Dinesh Singh because of his "access to her bedroom." In the early '70s, the Left papers reported chief minister Siddhartha Shankar Ray's alleged infatuation with a lady officer. After the affair became known, Ray's wife reportedly reacted badly. But the scandal did nothing to dim Ray's rising political star. He served as Punjab governor with distinction, and was even ambassador to the United States.

When Morarji Desai was a minister in Nehru's cabinet, apparently his close friendship with deputy minister Tarakeshwari Sinha too set political corridors abuzz with rumours. At one point in 1969, Sinha allegedly attempted to end her life, reportedly with an overdose of sleeping pills, but was rescued in the nick of time by Desai. Barring the odd report in Blitz, the media ignored Sinha. But the scandal did not harm Morarjibhai's standing. Soon after the Emergency ended and the Janata Party was voted to power, Morarji emerged as the great white hope of the nation.

"As long as there is mutuality between two persons," says Sathe, "it is a private affair. But in India people always judge a woman harshly, Indians are partial to men and unkind to women. If there is no mutuality and if the person in power has exploited his position, then he should be exposed."

Is it none of our business?: Exposes hardly ever happen not only because they never seem to affect political careers but also because of the general indifference to politicians' sex lives. According to sociologist D.L. Sheth, the American obsession with sexual misdemeanours is a result of Anglo-Saxon puritan Christianity, where adultery is considered a grievous sin. In India, where celebrated poets have written of their passion for their sisters-in-law, adultery is not a sin as long as the marriage endures. "There is no strong revulsion to the violation of sexual norms," Sheth says. "Nor does the public get any voyeuristic pleasure. In America, sexual fidelity reveals character, firmness, determination and so on. But personal fidelity is not such a crucial indicator of political virtue here."

Sheth also believes that public leaders are not seen as "guardians of family values," as they are in America. Instead, in the Gandhian style they are supposed to sacrifice family life to enter public service. The hypocritical hagiography of 'sacri-fice' is well developed. So not only is family life sacrificed but so are family values and bourgeois duties. Neither Gandhi nor Nehru was exemplary father and husband. Harilal Gandhi has been portrayed as a 'victim' of paternal neglect and Nehru didn't exactly treat Kamala as an equal partner in greatness. In fact, after MGR's death, it was his 'mistress' Jayalalitha who encashed his goodwill, defeating his wife, Janaki, at the polls.

Sheth thinks there is still no well defined political morality in relation to general morality. On the one hand, we impose impossible and hypocritical moral standards—perhaps a legacy of Gandhi—yet we are also naive about the fact that what is purely moral may not make much political sense. We don't live up to Gandhi but we don't have too much Kautilya either. Nor does morality have a vote the way caste and dynasty do. You don't have to be good in order to govern, institutions do not embody national virtues, political aspirants don't have to stand forth and declare in the American way: "Vote for me because I'm good and have a wife and two children".

Yet if morality is not important then why is the public conscience stirred violently by financial scams? "The middle class morality," explains Union power minister Rangarajan Kumaramangalam, "does not really exist here. The poor cannot afford it and the rich can do without it. The noveau middle class in fact do not have modern attitudes, their attitudes are a carryover from more traditional times."

Financial scams, on the other hand, are seen as a depletion of scarce resources, a fact which dominates the everyday lives of most Indians. More importantly, Kumaramangalam says, financial scams are seen to affect society in general, whereas a personal affair is simply a family matter. Because of the strict separation of the personal and the political, in contrast to America, there is outrage at official corruption but indifference to personal frailties. Also, corruption shatters an unspoken covenant between 'raja' and 'praja', and casts doubts on the king's sacred duty to provide for his subjects.

Furthermore, the oppressions of an Indian arranged marriage—sanctioned as the marriage of families rather than of individuals—and the consequent craving for real companionship amidst deadening convention, is a widespread experience. There is almost some understanding for leaders who attempt escapes from stifling marriages. "Divorce, on the other hand, however, is still very shocking," points out Dipankar Gupta, professor at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems at JNU and "may not be forgiven.But flings are okay." But apart from a few reports in film magazines nobody took any notice. "The assumption is," says Gupta, "that if a woman is Bad enough to do what she did then she deserves what she gets."

The Slut/Sita stereotype is so strong that very few men would support a woman publicly claiming to be a victim of harassment from a "respectable" male. Not many women would share her anguish either. In an article Gupta writes, "Only when women are considered to have no worthwhile qualities of their own are they elevated as pure symbols," or condemned as fallen angels.

For a "scandal" to surface, a woman must risk her reputation. "The point is that for a liaison to become a scandal and a media event, the woman has to complain publicly," says Shekhar Gupta, editor-in-chief of The Indian Express. "And if the woman comes out she risks terrible social stigma." Often a woman's own sense of traditional "maryada" prevents a public statement. "In any case," says Shekhar Gupta, "the public accepts a degree of flawed behaviour from their leaders. Even gods have often been presented as promiscuous." He also says that our politicians are too old for sex scandals about them to be interesting. The blow-dried Clinton at least looks the part.

Is the Press weak-kneed?: The other reason why scandals are left untouched is because the press is simply not strong enough to really risk such "exposes". A decade ago The Illustrated Weekly of India ran a cover story on how Orissa chief minister J.B. Patnaik was sexually exploiting those who came to him for jobs. Patnaik sued the Weekly and banned the magazine in Orissa. The case went up to the Supreme Court. Finally, the magazine's publishers, Bennett, Coleman & Co, had to pay a massive out-of-court settlement and editor Pritish Nandy had to issue a public apology.

Nandy says now that although he had 28 sworn affidavits, witnesses began to "disappear". "Over the past years the press has slowly begun to make its peace with the power elite," Nandy says in retrospect. "A large number of owners have started becoming editors and stories have become softer. Unless the press becomes independent of the 'malik' it will remain weak." Nandy, however, believes the internet could provide a forum for "free" stories. Indeed, the Lewinsky story was first broken on the Net by a department store salesman turned self-styled journalist, Matt Drudge.

Laws on libel and defamation are so strong that no owner will back a reporter on such stories, says media critic Sevanti Ninan. The powerful have the police on their side, they can harass, intimidate and subvert the activities of reporters. Shekhar Gupta points out that in America, by contrast, no politician could ever threaten mainstream papers like The Washington Post or established magazines like Newsweek. Columnist Amita Malik says the press is still too genteel and old-fashioned about sex. "The press is far too dependent on the government, for newsprint and so on, to ever really take risks with powerful politicians who are very well protected."

Is nothing private?: Do those in public life have a right to privacy? Jayant Malhoutra, counting his prayer 'mala' as he speaks, says no. "Today the press in India cannot do what they can in America. But it will get there. There will be no getting away from the fact that people in public life have to follow a public code, which they have to live by.If they cannot live by this code they should opt out of public life." At the moment, Malhoutra feels, people here have too many problems with prices, water and electricity to bother about private excesses, but with rising affluence and leisure, public concern may rise.

"Clinton carried out a private abuse of a public office and it was wrong," says Congress MP Kamal Nath. "The press should investigate public figures, but beyond a point everyone has a right to a private life. The ethos of India is permissive. The Roaring '60s and Swinging '70s happened here a long time ago. But for god's sake, why should anybody grudge politicians having hormones?" Clarifying that the rumours between him and a party colleague, Kiran Chaudhary, are untrue, Congress MP Jagdish Tytler says: "The press should investigate affairs which affect the state, but if personal problems and circumstances are involved, then they should be left alone."

 At this moment, exposes such as the Weekly on J.B. Patnaik or the magazine Surya and its famous report on Suresh Ram, son of Jagji-van Ram, are not only rare but also cannot be sustained. When Maneka Gandhi published pictures of Jagjivan Ram's son in compromising positions, Ram senior, then a minister, lost no time in telephoning the publisher and 'requesting' him to drop future installments, a request that did not go unanswered. A former 'attar'-scented chief whip of the Congress who was minister in 1947 and went on to become governor of Madhya Pradesh was known to be an "active womaniser" and, was known to be entangled with his junior personal assistant in a Clinton-type situation. But once again, the incident was never reported, however exploited his personal assistant may have been.

Ninan believes that the press does not have a tabloid culture in India. "The press is consumer-oriented but not tabloid. Sex scandals are not an issue with the mainstream press because it's not an issue with the electorate." A tabloid readership assumes a mass, low-brow reading public which doesn't exist in English in India, probably the reason why a product like Blitz, for example, never really became a mass-circulation redtop like, say, Rupert Murdoch's The Sun whose Unique Selling Proposition is s-e-x. Likewise, in spite of its Suresh Ram expose, Surya quickly vanished off the newsstands. A similar fate has befallen most such editorial ventures.

The regional press sometimes publishes sexually explicit material. Das recalls a Hindi magazine based in Benares which often carried cartoons of political pornography centred around the homosexual activities of certain leaders. Recently Dainik Bhaskar and Navbharat Times carried reports from Bhopal about ministers in Digvijay Singh's government. The chief minister's name was mentioned in one of the cases—that of Sarla Misra, who burnt herself to death. The Bhopal-based Parchand newspaper carried a report of the imported accessories of intercourse imported by a high flying MP from Madhya Pradesh: dolls, ropes, Spanish Fly, even toys. The editor of Parchand unfortunately languishes in Tihar jail; some say he's been "fixed" for his overzealous reporting. "The problem with local scandals in the local press is that they are often used to settle scores and their accuracy is dubious," says a media critic.

So perhaps we are too fearful and traditional to take our sexy statesmen to task. Or perhaps in the Indian scheme of things the private and the public are by definition totally independent of each other and a "double life" is an accepted social norm.Celebrated writer U.R. Ananthamurthy says Indians are mature about sex scandals. Yet scandals are double-edged. Some cases could simply reflect the fever pitch of media competition, others may be genuine cases of oppression which are quickly suppressed. But as far as Indian democracy is concerned, the Clintonian conundrum of whether a bad husband can ever be a great politician seems quite irrelevant.