Review of Hoshang Merchant’s ‘Rainbow Warriors’, and poetry collection ‘Lalon’s Book’

Influencers overshadow art, Hoshang Merchant's self-indulgent musings on LGBTQ+ icons disappoint in "Rainbow Warriors of India."

Social media has spawned a class of so-called influencers who make it a point to visit every art gallery, fair and museum here and abroad, and thereafter very generously share their experience of viewing the latest exhibitions with “friends”.

However, there is a catch. The influencers in their glad rags invariably pose in front of the works of art on display, partially eclipsing the exhibit. Art plays second fiddle to the influencer’s ego. 

The same can be said about Hoshang Merchant, who, Wikipedia says, is a “preeminent voice of gay liberation in India”, and is “best known for his anthology on gay writing titled Yaarana”.

When I took up his new book, Rainbow Warriors of India, co-authored with Akshay K. Rath, I expected it to be a collection of short biographical sketches of 22 “extraordinary individuals from India’s queer community. These gay icons have navigated adversity to claim their rightful place in society” — to quote the blurb. Any effort at documenting the pride movement in India should be lauded.

However, it turned out to be an outpouring of Merchant’s self-indulgent and rambling ruminations on the life and times of these “stately homos”, to pinch a truly quotable quote from that truly great gay icon, Quentin Crisp, author of the famous work, The Naked Civil Servant (1968). Merchant can’t look beyond himself. One of the ‘rainbow warriors’, R. Raj Rao, is a gadfly. How I wish Merchant was blessed with Rao’s infectious and irreverent sense of humour. 

Most of the notable queers he mentions are from Mumbai although he makes exceptions of filmmakers Rituparno Ghosh and Onir, both from Kolkata. Quite justifiably, the likes of Ashok Row Kavi and Gita Thadani, who were on the frontline of gay activism in the 70s, are there. From the cultural field there are artist Bhupen Khakhar, poet Adil Jussawalla, photographer Sunil Gupta, playwright Mahesh Dattani and dancers Ram Gopal and Navtej Singh Johar, not to forget Merchant himself. Quite expectedly, the writer devotes one whole chapter to himself, tellingly titled, ‘Mourning Became Meena Kumari’. Sadly, such posturing is just exasperating. 

What is worse, Merchant never stops bickering about novelist and poet Vikram Seth and playwright Dattani, because, he feels, they never came out early enough, or never at all. Seth’s early masterpiece, The Golden Gate (1986), made his preferences clear enough. There was a certain ambiguity, but it is foolish to expect everyone to wear one’s sexuality on one’s sleeve all the time. Must Merchant be reminded that activism and creativity aren’t always on the same page?