Homo is a Four Letter Word (tentative title) (Raj Rao), Peace as a Global Language Conference 2003

Throughout the 1990s, and in the first decade of the twenty-first century, the print and electronics media in India have been doing their best to generate awareness about same-sex love. However, to the man in the street and in fact the man in the clouds (India's elite), same-sex relationships are still typified by the word 'homo', literally and figuratively a four-letter word. Two media stories, in which I was personally involved, help me prove my point. One was a TV show entitled "We the People" (ironically, a phrase borrowed from the Constitution of India) aired on NDTV (a satellite channel) on July 6 this year, on which I was a panellist. My opponents, who were seated centre-stage, while I was, so to speak, on the sidelines, included a priest and a lawyer. The other was a fictitious letter I was asked to write for GENTLEMAN magazine, on behalf of a father who discovers that his son is gay. The next issue of the magazine promptly ran another fictitious letter to the son by a real-life journalist, then employed with India's leading daily THE TIMES OF INDIA, asking him to disregard his father's advice in order to preserve the sanctity of society. My presentation includes reading out both letters, that represent very diverse points of view, and throwing the issue open to the house for discussion.

Peace as a Global Language Conference 2003

Homo is a Four Letter Word (tentative title)

Speaker: Raj Rao