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Pride parades in India immediately are vibrant affairs, the place 1000’s collect to precise themselves and supply assist to the queer neighborhood. But issues had been very completely different in 1999, when the nation’s first Pride stroll was organised within the jap state of West Bengal. Journalist Sandip Roy revisits the trailblazing occasion.
On 2 July 1999, Pawan Dhall, a queer rights activist in Kolkata metropolis, was among the many 15 intrepid marchers to take part in what was later referred to as the primary Pride stroll in India.
But July is monsoon season in India, and the 15 marchers of their custom-made vivid yellow t-shirts with pink triangles had been quickly soaked to the bone.
“It was more of a wade than a walk,” Mr Dhall says.
The marchers additionally didn’t name the occasion a Pride march, as an alternative going for the extra innocuous-sounding “Friendship Walk” to keep away from bother.
In 1999, homosexuality was nonetheless criminalised within the nation – a Victorian relic within the Indian Penal Code – and homosexual life was largely underground, although a number of teams devoted to supporting the neighborhood had fashioned in some cities.
Queer Indians discovered one another by way of mailing lists and Yahoo teams, and the concept of a Pride march surfaced there.
On 28 April 1999, Owais Khan, a convener of the LGBTQ+ India group, instructed doing one thing to rejoice “Gay Liberation Day” in New York – he referred to as it “a small pada-yatra (procession) complete with pink triangles and rainbow-coloured peacocks”.
Mr Khan mentioned he was impressed by the Pride parades in cities like New York, but additionally by Mahatma Gandhi’s famous Salt March throughout India’s independence wrestle.
But not everybody shared his enthusiasm. Rafiquel Haque Dowjah, a communications marketing consultant and one of many 15 marchers, says some members of the neighborhood referred to as Mr Dowjah an “attention seeker” and accused him of “copying a western idea”.
Even Mr Dhall remembers being lower than enthusiastic. “Another procession in Kolkata! I’ve been part of many processions and it’s quite a pain,” he thought to himself, he mentioned.
But Mr Khan was decided to make the march occur. In the e book Gulabi Baghi, an anthology of essays on the LGBTQ+ motion in India, Mr Khan recollects telling his friends: “Friends, The Walk is happening even if I am the only walker.”
But it wasn’t straightforward for a motley group of volunteers to tug off a march with virtually no cash.
Mr Khan says he wakened on the day of the stroll with “a stomach full of fluttering butterflies” and puzzled if anybody would flip up.
Eventually, 15 folks participated, seven from Kolkata and the remaining from Delhi and Mumbai and from smaller cities reminiscent of Bongaon and Kurseong in West Bengal.
An aged girl, who was passing by, requested one of many contributors why they had been marching. He mentioned they had been demanding their rights. The girl shook her head and puzzled aloud why the state had nothing higher to do than “police people’s private lives”.
Others had been extra bemused. After their preliminary stroll the marchers cut up into two teams and visited non-governmental organisations and the state’s Human Rights Commission to distribute data brochures.
“We met a junior official there who was completely bewildered by the issue,” says Mr Dhall.
At a press assembly later within the afternoon, reporters complained that that they had no footage of the parade.
So the group re-staged their historic “walk” for the cameras. “That’s what eventually appeared in the newspapers,” Mr Dhall laughs.
Not the entire contributors had come out to family and friends on the time. “My relatives had no idea where I disappeared on the day of the walk,” says Navarun Gupta who lived in Atlanta however was visiting family in Kolkata that day.
Aditya Mohnot, now a designer in Kolkata, mentioned he joined the stroll as a result of his mother and father weren’t on the town that day. But he didn’t realise footage from the march would seem in newspapers the subsequent day, with headlines like “15 friends walk with gay abandon”.
At first, Mr Dhall mentioned the stroll felt like “an unnoticeable ripple” because the contributors went again to their lives.
But the ripples had been observed – and so they sparked a flurry of reactions.
Mr Mohnot mentioned his good friend’s mother and father examine him within the newspaper. Luckily they had been “surprised but proud”.
In Mr Dowjah’s case, his neighbour reduce off all ties with him after she discovered in regards to the march.
“It was very hurtful and painful. Her family had known me since I was born,” he mentioned.
Mr Khan, nonetheless, remained hopeful. “Fifteen was a modest number but at least one needed two hands to count them,” he mentioned.
Soon, reactions started to pour from overseas as nicely.
“I am moved to tears,” mentioned Faisal Alam, founding father of the queer Muslim assist group Al Fatiha within the US, in a letter to the organisers.
“For a young queer person like me, the march showed that we could struggle for a better and more queer-friendly India visibly, proudly and publicly,” mentioned Parmesh Shahani, writer of Queeristan – LGBTQ Inclusion within the Workplace.
“It showed us literally, and not just abstractly, that queer alternatives are possible in our country.”
In 2019, Mr Dhall and Mr Khan recreated the Friendship Walk to mark its twentieth anniversary. But this time, they felt like they had been marching in a distinct nation.
Homosexuality had simply been decriminalised in India in 2018. In a number of years, the Supreme Court could be listening to arguments to legalise same-sex marriages. Transgender activism had led to a landmark (although controversial) transgender invoice. And a panel they organised noticed participation from a number of small cities and cities in India.
Then once more, not all the pieces had modified. “The 20th anniversary walk was also quite a washout because of the rains,” Mr Dhall says.
There was a happier postscript although. Years after she stopped speaking to him, Mr Dowjah’s neighbour knocked on his door and at last apologised for her behaviour.
Mr Dowjah says it simply confirmed one needed to preserve doing the suitable factor. “People will come around, if not today, then in 20 years.”
Sandip Roy is an writer and journalist based mostly in Kolkata metropolis.
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