It’s been a fortnight since the story of the AIIMS doctor, Priya Vedi, who was driven to suicide due to mental torture by her gay husband broke out. Now the issue of pressure on gay men to marry members of the opposite sex has once again come into the public domain. Ashwin Srinivasan, son of disgraced ex-BBCI chief, N Srinivasan has accused his father of pressing him to marry and “have progeny to carry on the lineage.”
In an interview with DNA, Ashwin has revealed letters written by his father as evidence of his claims. Ashwin has now told DNA that he and his partner were whisked away to Chennai after Ashwin spoke of his brother-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan having connections with well-known bookies from Chennai and Dubai in May 2014. And that they are now being held captive in Chennai’s First Avenue neighbourhood of Boat Club near his father’s residence.
“We’re being held captive against our will and tortured by my father who wants me to break up with Avi, get married and have children to further the family line,” he said.
When asked for proof of this, Ashwin forwarded six handwritten letters from his father over the years. “In his own handwriting you can see how he sees my homosexuality and partner as an aberration. He has had the benefit of a foreign education and exposure because of being well-travelled. Yet, he continues to harbour such thoughts about same-sex relationships.”
The letters are all written on N Srinivasan’s personal stationery between 2007 and 2008 and indeed speak of the same things that Ashwin brings up. Earlier in 2012, Ashwin had come out talking about the cycle of violence unleashed by his dad to ‘cure him’ of his homosexuality.
One cannot help but compare this with the tragic death of Priya Vedi. Her husband too had faced pressure and he succumbed to it. And he took it out on his wife, allegedly. Priya Vedi’s tale had all the trappings of a horror story, but Ashwin’s story also goes to show the kind of unseemly tactics that families and society can sometimes use when it comes to homosexuality.
For that alone, Ashwin should be lauded for standing up to his father despite harassment all these years and flatly refusing to marry a girl saying that he does not want to “ruin her life”. Many of us were quick to castigate the entire gay community for what Priya Vedi’s husband has been accused of. In the light of what happened to Ashwin, should we not just as quickly also laud the gay men who bravely stood up to pressure and refused to get involved in a sham marriage?
Yet public support for the scion remains sporadic at best. Perhaps, his claims of right to family inheritance may have received wider support had he been straight. As such, this is not the first time that Ashwin has complained about his father and the harassment brought on by his far reaching influence. Despite it all, he still remains at his father’s mercy, trapped in a cage of gold.
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