A death in Aligarh

AMUs ostracism of Siras,its gay professor,squashes its loud progressive claims....

We do not yet know if Shrinivas Siras,poet,Marathi teacher,and professor at Aligarh Muslim University,took his own life. We do know that the months prior to his being found dead in a flat in Aligarhs Durga Wadi neighbourhood were filled with disappointment,frustration and anger,as the institution to which he had given more than two decades of service turned away from him because of who he was. Siras had to turn to the courts: last Friday the Allahabad high court stayed his suspension from the AMU faculty,and ordered the university to reverse its decision expelling him from faculty housing in which he had been filmed in an act of consensual sex,which the filmers passed on to the university administration,which instead of being horrified at this blatant invasion of a teachers privacy,suspended him. Because,of course,Siras partner was also a man.

Aligarh Muslim University was born of Syed Ahmad Khans modernising impulse,and has had a long history of intellectual engagement with liberalism. It claims excellence in the study of the dispossessed,of labour movements,of the victims of political violence. Yet the presence of a gay professor,they say,would destroy the great moral credentials that AMU has been nurturing since its inception,tarnish its valued cultural ethos. On the very day that the court directed AMU to reinstate Siras,the dean of its law faculty,M. Shabbir,told a university audience that homosexuality would be fatal to the religious and cultural ethos and social equilibrium and morality. Such bigotry undercuts all AMUs glorious historical claims. Liberalism is not a cafeteria; you cannot withhold compassion from some,lavish it on others.

Shabbirs lecture notionally discussed the decriminalisation of homosexuality. The epochal reading down of Section 377 by the Delhi high court achieved this much at least: Siras harassment by AMU could be halted by a court,could be condemned free of fear. The next step will need universities to lead in ending the ostracism of homosexuals,including in their faculty.