Mumbai's decade-long tryst with the rainbow hangs in abeyance after the Mumbai Police withheld permission for the Pride where members from the LGBTQIA+ community and organisations along with their allies assemble to march from Mumbai's iconic August Kranti Maidan. A police communique admits permission was requested for the annual feature since 2008. However, cops feared the rally could also talk about the Modi government and its contentiously enforced CAA and NRC.
This has raised several eye-brows, since the police allowed protests by thousands against CAA and NRC on December 19, 2019 at the same venue. Many are intrigued this is happening when the BJP is not in power in Maharashtra.
Those present at the meeting say the cops wanted an assurance that no banners, posters or slogans critical of the government or the CAA and NRC would be used. Human rights activist Harish Iyer told the cops, “Trans lives are being affected by NRC and this will be highlighted,” and told FPJ, “Whether community members and allies agree or disagree with us, we want Pride for all.” Iyer also underlined how the LGBTQIA+ identity is a mix of many. “Queer rights issues are not removed from those of caste, class, food habits, region or religion. We don't exist only in the token forefront or invisible margins but also in intersections, many of which criss-cross. As a mature movement we should include these.”'
In the past other Prides in Hyderabad and Delhi have addressed intersectionalities, but Mumbai (where upper caste, upper class English speaking voices have been strongest) has stuck to the homogeneous. “In a cruel irony this leads to alienation within the straight and narrow rainbow space,” admits Bharti Torne, a Dalit resident of Ghatkopar pursuing her final year BCom. Attracted to women from class 8 she was conflicted till she got intimate with an older woman. When this neighbour moved cities, she began “going steady” with another partner. Closeted because of her conventional family she admits her partner made her accept her sexuality.
But she has stayed off the Mumbai's Pride March since 2017. Violence at Bhima-Koregaon, off Pune, on January 1, 2018 left her angry when cops picked up her elder brother, the family's main breadwinner for being at a protest. “Like my late father, he too is a civic conservancy worker. When jailed he almost lost his job.” Her upper-caste partner of two years, broke up soon after. “She became aloof when my brother and my caste came up, and stopped responding to calls asking me to sort my problems and not bother her,” she remembers and adds, “My education and even being able to speak some English wasn't enough.” After trying to fit it in “the English speaking, westernised, largely upper caste milieu,” she says LGBTQIA+ events now make her uncomfortable “because of the pronounced invisibilisation.”
If you thought Torne is overstating her point look at well-known right-wing journalist and defence expert Abhijit Iyer-Mitra's tweet on the issue: “First casualty of the left hijack of the #LGBT rights movement & forcing intersectionality down our throats: Mumbai #Pride 2020 permission denied, fearing it would turn into a CAA protest. What rights we have is not because of lefty scumbags it’s in spite of you.”
It will be recalled how several veteran voices in the LGBTQIA+ movement “close to the BJP,” have had issues when anyone in the movement spoke against ghar wapsi, Gujarat 2002 or the state-sponsored terror in Kashmir.
Kolkatan cultural historian Meghna Kashyap laughs at this. “The rainbow community should develop a sociological framework to locate gendered power relations and oppression within structures of caste and class domination, inequality and social stratification,” and adds, “Critical sociological understanding of social relations and structural differences need to be built. Such a framework grounded in theories of socio-cultural subordination could explore complex and dynamic interconnections between caste, class and patriarchy.”
Others like Dr Shaileshkumar Darokar Associate Professor Centre for Study of Social Exclusion & Inclusive Policies, TISS say the root of the problem is the deeply embedded sense of domination–subordination Indian society is socialised into from early childhood. “While we believe and talk of equality as a norm, we create convenient inconsistencies to continue our behaviour. The extent to which discrimination is graded and broken down in India is unique. The LGBTQIA+ community is no stranger to this.”
Many like Bindumadhav Khire, the Pune-based gay rights and AIDS activist whose organisation Samapathik Trust has been working with sexual minorities for over a decade differ. “It is too early to bring up intersectionality for the LGBTQIA movement. The fledgling movement will splinter further and won't be able to put up a united front, a bigger need of the hour.”
Deepak Garudi, a transgender Maang sex worker from the Maharashtra-Karnataka border town of Nippani has an interesting take on this. This 30-year-old says, “Nationalists who oppose celebration of Bhima-Koregaon which let reins of India slip into British hands feel the same way. But what if the discriminatory injustices we face and our fight against them go beyond the concept of a nation-state?
source https://www.freepressjournal.in/weekend/queer-azaadi-pride-march-intersectional-clouds-hang-over-mumbais-lgbtqia-community
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