Lgbtq movement india
An LGBTQ revolution in India sets the pace for global change
For more than a decade, the couple put in the hard work of building a life together. They bought a house, adopted a child and cofounded companies. They came out to their families and marched in pride parades.
This year, Anand and Dias became part of the first group of Indians to petition the Supreme Courtfor the legal right to marry. In doing so, they’ve come to symbolize a remarkable wave of change in India, where grassroots lobbying and aggressive litigation have converged in recent years to shape one of the world’s most effective movements for rights for LGBTQpeople.
In quick succession, India’s Supreme Court has affirmed a constitutional right to privacy, toppled a colonial-era statute criminalizing sex between men and expanded legal protections for “atypical” families, a category that includes gay couples as well as blended and intergenerational households. Companies run advertisements with same-sex couples to market everything from jewelry to spirits to insurance. And India’s massive film industry, where onscreen kisse
LGBTQ+: India’s first Pride protest which made history
Pride parades in India today are vibrant affairs, where thousands gather to communicate themselves and offer sustain to the queer collective. But things were very different in 1999, when the country's first Parade walk was organised in the eastern state of West Bengal. Journalist Sandip Roy revisits the trailblazing event.
On 2 July 1999, Pawan Dhall, a gender non-conforming rights activist in Kolkata city, was among the 15 intrepid marchers to participate in what was later called the first Pride walk in India.
The event was timed to coincide with global celebrations marking 30 years of the Stonewall riots in New York which sparked the LGBTQ+ movement in the US.
But July is monsoon season in India, and the 15 marchers in their custom-made bright yellow t-shirts with pink triangles were soon soaked to the bone.
"It was more of a wade than a walk," Mr Dhall says.
The marchers also did not call the event a Pride rally, instead going for the more innocuous-sounding "Friendship Walk" to avoid trouble.
In 1999, homosexuality was still criminalised in the land - a Victorian relic in th
The LGBTQ movement in India
DEVDUTT PATTANAIK
IN Ancient India, there were over fifty words for non-heterosexual gender and sexualities in Sanskrit, Prakrit and Tamil: napunsaka, kliba, kinnara, pedi, pandaka. These references are found in veda, itihasa, purana, dharma-shastra, kama-shastra, natya-shastra, ayurveda, of the Hindus, as well as in Jain agamas and Buddhist pitakas. Today most are still used in local languages but in a pejorative way.
This reveals how we have forgotten ancient Indian heritage of recognizing, and accommodating, third gender and queer sexualities, and have submitted to Victorian morality. This colonization of the mind was reflected in IPC Section 377 that saw non-heterosexual non-procreative sex as ‘against the order of nature’. This outdated law was finally read down by the Supreme Court on 6 September 2018. Now it is time to reclaim our ancient Indian heritage.
Same-sex adore is a robust part of Indian tradition and needs to be distinguished from same-sex attraction. The former is affectionate, bordering on the romantic, but is not sexual. Krishna and Arjuna, for example, referred to each other as sakha, or beloved friends. One can speculate
How the LGBTQ+ movement grew over the years
In the heart of the glorious cacophony of Hazratganj market stands a multilevel parking lot, its modern facade jutting out incongruously against the crumbling edifice of centuries-old landmarks. Yet, it was not always here.
In its place once stood an imposing police station, one that turned into a battleground for India’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer (LGBTQ+) movement one sultry afternoon in July 2001. That day, the local police picked up activist Arif Jafar and his co-workers from a non-governmental organisation that worked among vulnerable queer populations, ransacking their office, seizing HIV/AIDS literature, dildos, condom boxes, video cassettes, and thrashing the men in public before throwing them in jail.
For the next 47 days, Jafar and his fellow activists were beaten in jail by other inmates and the police, their revulsion at encountering a gay human writ large on their faces as the local media reported wildly untrue stories of “gay sex rackets” and “gangs”. By the time they limped out of jail, their predicament had brought abode to India’s queer movement the horrors of their criminalised existence and the st
On August 11th 1992 the first widely known protest for gay rights was held outside the police headquarters in New Delhi. The protest was triggered because of policemen who were arbitrarily picking up men from Connaught Place on suspicion of homosexual activity. At the time, Article 377 of the Indian Penal Code, a law from British rule in 1860, was still in effect. The law deemed homosexuality a criminal offence.
In retaliation a group of activists from the AIDS Bhedbhav Virodhi Andolan (ABVA) blocked off the entrance to the headquarters. In 1994, the AIDS ABVA filed a public interest litigation questioning the constitutionality of Article 377. It is with this step that the protest for gay rights was solidified.
In 1999, the first gay celebration was held in Kolkata. It was named Calcutta Rainbow Pride and had 15 attendees. It is only many years later, in 2009, that the Court took a step towards legalising homosexuality in the Naz Foundation v. Govt. of NCT of Delhi. In the case, the Delhi High Court ruled that criminalising sexual relations between two people of the same sex is against the fundamental rights enshrined in the constitution. This judgement was passed, only to be