Episode 4. It’s Really Happening: Our First Pride March

In just a few days, on Sunday, June 28, an historic event will occur in Chennai – the city’s first Pride March. We’ll join Mumbai, Bangalore, and Delhi (which had their first marches last year), as well as Kolkata (10 years of marches!) and Bhubaneshwar (first march) as members of the gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, kothi, aravani, queer, and questioning community, along with heterosexual allies, family, friends, supporters from Dalit groups, women’s rights groups, NGOs working on all sorts of issues, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, the young and old, will all march together in solidarity to honor and celebrate the lives, dignity, rights, and courage of same-sex loving and gender non-conforming individuals, to vocalize the need for just treatment of all people, to make ourselves visible.

Last week, we received police permission for the march, the official stamp saying “go ahead. Do. Yo. Thang.” I remember the nervous excitement in the air as my friends and I stood outside the police commissioner’s office, writing the request letter and waiting to enter his office. I remember how we cheered on the street and hugged each other and shared this feeling of “We did it. We’ve got the permission. It’s really happening!”

This march will be the culmination of what has been a complicated and colorful term as a William J. Clinton Fellow for Service in India, a period wrought with frustration and disappointment, mainly with myself, and blessed with experiences, observations, lessons, and relationships that have made the year ultimately a fulfilling one, that have made me 100% sure that I will be coming back to India – a place I can now also call a home – soon after my fellowship ends at the end of August.

As I write this, I’ve just come back with my partner-in-crime, my sistah, Ani, from picking out massive amounts of satin cloth for the tailor to transform into huge rainbow Pride flags that’ll playfully dance in the wind Sunday as we march, skip, frolic, stomp along Marina Beach, the main beach in Chennai, from the Labour Statue to the Gandhi Statue. After leaving the tailor’s, Ani and I sat at the local juice shop, sipping fresh lime-mint-ginger fruit juice loaded with too much sugar, reminiscing about the past couple months and the back-and-forths in preparing for the march: Hey folks, shall we do it? Let’s do it! Who’s gonna help? We’ll all help! Who’s putting in time and effort? No one. Maybe we shouldn’t do it this year. Of course everyone f*cking WANTS a march, but who’s going to put in the time? Let’s wait to build a stronger community. We’ll do it next year, when there will be more people willing and able to put in the effort. Next year. Not this year. Let’s do it. Let’s DO it this year. I’ll help. And I’ll help. And we’ll help. And they’ll help. Hey, I want to get involved! Hey, I can take on this task. And I can do that one! . I’m straight but can I help? Of course! Straight allies welcome! I’ll march! I’ll definitely be there. I’ll spread the word. Are you for real? I’m there! What started out as a meeting between a few of us grew into a community-wide coalition, with people from many different parts of the community spectrum working together to make the Pride March and the various events of Pride Month HAPPEN. As Ani and I sat at that juice shop tonight, we could rejoice in the success of the Pride events that occurred the previous weeks and pulse with anticipation about the upcoming march. The kind of energy I’ve been suffused with over the weeks while working with the other coalition members, coordinating tasks, recruiting volunteers from the queer and ally communities, and spreading the word about Pride Month has been a noticeably unique type of energy, one that has made me vibrate and smile uncontrollably.

It’s only fitting that as I near the end of my fellowship – I go back to the U.S. at the end of August for a few months before coming back to India – I am able to work with my queer sisters and brothers on Pride Month – sisters and brothers of a community and a culture and ways of life that for the past 10 months I’ve had the privilege of connecting with, bonding with, getting the opportunities to understand the complex nuances of – from the intricacies of sexual identities here, to the politics within and between sub-communities, to the variety of work being done around sexual health and civil and human rights. I think about some of the ways I’ve been fortunate to experience and understand the world of gender and sexuality in India…

• the way sexual identities differ along class lines….“gay/queer” identities are used by those with more class privilege, higher education (and thus more English-speaking) and Western exposure, while “kothi” and other local identities are used by those from more working class and poor SES, who have thus had less access to education and are non-English-speaking
• the elusiveness, complicated nuances, and infinite permutations of gender identity/sexual orientation…for example, the fluidity between “kothi” (same-sex loving men with a strong feminine identity) and “aravani/hijra” (male-to-female transgender…aravanis are the TGs in Tamil Nadu, while hijras are the TGs in other parts of India)
• the extreme lack of visibility and support for lesbians and trans men (female-to-male)….the suicides that have happened among lesbians.
• the pressure within hijra and aravani communities to conform to a strict idea of how to be hijra/aravani…the disdain they have for hijras/arivanis who have romantic relationships with other trans women
• the Tamil Nadu government’s progressive stance on and support of the transgender community when compared to the rest of India – ration/identity cards where you can choose M for male, F for female, or T for transgender; free sex reassignment surgery; a welfare board; public toilets specifically for TGs (but this is laden with controversy). It’s funny how in India, there is much more acceptance of TGs than gays and lesbians, but in the U.S., it’s the complete opposite. Despite TG support, gay/bi/lesbian/kothi/f2m issues lack attention in India.
• attending the Koovagam festival in Tamil Nadu, where I saw thousands of aravanis and kothis embark on this small town to symbolically marry-and-widow the god Aravan at the temple, a festival where massive amounts of sex happen between the local men and the aravanis/kothis, where major HIV/AIDS agencies sponsor beauty pageants and other events
• the homophobic and heterosexist stance among some members of the trans community who believe that if you’re a man and you’re attracted to other men, then you should become a woman like them. It’s wrong to remain a man if you love men.
• Integrating myself into the queer community in various parts of India: volunteering at the Bangalore Queer Film Festival and forming lasting bonds with queer activists there; befriending queer activists while in Mumbai and having the older ones share with me their histories, frustrations, and joys of the city’s queer activism over so many years; being a part of Chennai’s emerging gay/kothi/aravani/queer community
• Observing the grassroots work my NGO and other HIV/AIDS NGOs in Chennai, Bangalore, and Mumbai do with kothis, aravanis , and female sex workers around prevention, counseling, advocacy, police harassment, and empowerment
• Seeing men everywhere being physically affectionate with each other in public as a normal part of male bonding culture – holding hands, playful touches. The prevalence of men having sex with other men, including while married (and many kothi-identifying men are married).
• Observing the courageous work of my friends at the Lotus sangam performing street plays in villages to sensitize elected officials and residents on the harassment and issues that kothis face
• Sharing with my NGO colleagues my views on and experiences with queer activism and the culture of gender nonconformity and sexual orientation in the U.S., answering their questions, and hearing their experiences working with MSM and female sex workers in Tamil Nadu over the years
• Counseling and being an ongoing resource to a man who called my NGO and wants to become a woman, and is sexually attracted to other women, but who doesn’t see any examples of lesbian trans women in India.
• Being in India while the battle against Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code – which criminalizes homosexuality – has been fought in the Delhi High Court. Some of my friends here have been on the team fighting the case, and I’m inspired by their determination, by the determination of the community nationwide, to fight this unjust and archaic law handed down to us by the British Raj. The community is waiting to hear the final verdict. Will same-sex love no longer be criminal in India?

These conversations and experiences have been sporadic. They’ve only made up, unfortunately, a small portion of my time here when compared to how many days I’ve been in India since September. But I feel like I’ve been able to learn and see and attach myself to a lot of aspects of India’s sexual minority community and its realities that most people don’t get a chance to know (or choose to ignore), including many people who’ve lived here their whole lives.

There’s of course so much more to experience and understand, so much more growing to do. But it’s a start.  And as I march down the streets of Chennai with my queer comrades, voices booming, hearts engorged with exhilaration (and some with fear), history being made, I’ll feel like the luckiest man, having been able to achieve a long-standing goal of mine that started when I was in college – to be in India and become a part of the country’s queer movement.

P.S. – Sorry for not posting in months!  I have 10 months worth of photographs to upload online, but I’ve already started, and I’ll soon post links to those albums in case you’d like to see visual representations of the exhilarating adventures of Desiqueer throughout these many months.  In future posts, I hope to backtrack to different  aspects of the fellowship term and go into further detail about each professional and personal experience.  Sorry it’ll all be in severe retrospect, but better late than never!

~ by desiqueer on June 24, 2009.