Get well soon, Mr Azad

Relax. Our health minister Ghulam Nabi Azad means well. He really would like to identify and perhaps cure those suffering from the disease of homosexuality. Feel his frustration.
“The disease of ‘Men having Sex with Men’ is unnatural and not good for India,” Mr Azad lamented at the National Convention of Parliamentarians on HIV/AIDS this week.

And hastened to point out that this was a disease of the West, which “has now unfortunately come to our country”. Worse, the disease of homosexuality was “now fast spreading” and was tough to detect. “It is a challenge,” sighed the beleaguered minister.
With reason, of course. A disease, especially an “unnatural” disease, is not good for India. As Union health minister, Mr Azad has responsibilities, and it is difficult for a man to tackle a disease that is difficult to detect. Especially when he is innocent of new trends in medical science. One of the new trends — certainly newer than the purported import of homosexuality in India, given that the “condition” has been recorded for centuries in this ancient land — is that homosexuality has not been medically regarded as a disease for about four decades. In the big, bad Western world teeming with homosexuals, it was declassified from the list of mental disorders in the early 1970s.
In India, however, homosexuality was never regarded as a disease, but as a criminal act. Till exactly two years ago when the Delhi high court decriminalised it in a landmark judgment on July 2, 2009. So now we see the rebirth of homosexuality in India as an annoying, insolent disease that cannot be handled by law.
But we must not be annoyed with Mr Azad. He is merely uninformed and uneducated in health matters. In India, we have a glorious tradition of not letting lack of education be a deterrent in ruling the country. But we must help him in identifying diseases, especially social and mental disorders. We must lessen the poor man’s frustration.
Dictionaries define “disease” as “a pathological condition of a part or all of an organism resulting from various causes, such as infection, genetic defect, or environmental stress, and characterised by an identifiable group of signs or symptoms”. It could also be “illness or sickness in general”. Or, more generally, “a condition or tendency, as of society, regarded as abnormal and harmful”. As a quick exercise in identifying diseases to assist the honourable health minister, let’s take just one example from last week’s papers regarding medical matters.
Surgeons in Indore are carrying out sex-change operations on babies and small children, sometimes as young as one year old, to “convert” girls into boys. It’s not the fault of doctors, you may say — they have the parents’ consent.
Son-seeking parents force their little daughters into this complex surgery, the doctors make money, and the baby girls just suffer this painful procedure as they are cut up and surgically rebuilt and pumped up with hormones. And when the wounds heal, they slowly grow into man-made impotent, infertile men as opposed to naturally healthy, fertile women.
Let’s see if the definitions for “disease” fit this scenario. This hankering after sons and violent dismissal of daughters is part of a larger condition, which makes us actively kill the baby girl in the womb or in the birthing chamber, or passively kill her by denying nourishment and medical care after birth. If she refuses to die of malnutrition, untreated health issues and systematic neglect, we deny her education and other rights, limiting her choices of dealing with life. If she still struggles on, we get her married at an early age to a man she may dislike, and kill her if she tries to run away with a partner of her choice. Or her in-laws may kill her in their effort to get more dowry. Or she may just die at childbirth. In short, we exhibit our vicious disregard for women in hundreds of ways, at every step of her life.
Is this abnormal or harmful? Well, it’s certainly harmful for the women getting killed or brutalised. And for a society where female foeticide and infanticide has changed the gender ratio and artificially created a dearth of women. And for a society that propagates disrespect for half the sky. And for human rights. And for civilisation in general. Besides, all of this is hugely abnormal, of course. And unnatural. So it does seem that this hankering for a male child or the ill-treatment of women in the name of social convention and other violence against women are symptoms of a severe social disease.
But what is the source of this pathological condition? Infection? Hereditary defect? Environmental causes? Perhaps a mix of all. But we must allow the honourable health minister to sort that out with his team of professionals. Unlike the imagined disease of homosexuality, these social disorders are usually not difficult to detect. The symptoms are flagrant and often predictable. Perhaps Mr Azad could target these and maybe try to eradicate such endemic sickness?
And if he doesn’t mind some more education, there are enough studies on social ailments that his team could seek guidance from. Happily for him, many of these are on homosexuality. One study, for example, had shown how families that hugely emphasise certain traditional values, like the importance of religion, marriage and child-bearing, were more opposed to homosexuality. Another found that parents who oppose their child’s homosexuality have lower self-esteem, as well as negative attitudes towards women than families who are more accepting of their children’s sexual orientation.
Now that Mr Azad is keen to detect and fight social diseases, we have a great opportunity to build a cleaner, healthier society. Let’s give him a helping hand.

The author is editor of The Little Magazine. She canbe contacted at: sen@littlemag.com