It's All about the Colours of Pride

VOICES THAT MATTER

Upbringing of people in our villages happens in a very binary manner. They have very simplistic approaches to life and acknowledging a spectrum of identities is definitely not common to them. Even in healthcare facilities, when the diagnosis is related with genital-related issues or sex hygiene, sexual orientation of a person is questioned at the first place and then vehemently judged while prescribing a healthcare routine or giving treatment.

What is the overall scenario of the LGBTQ community in a state like Assam? Please elaborate in terms of factors like discrimination, access to employment opportunities healthcare facilities and legal rights etc.

The scenario has not changed much despite full-fledged awareness generation initiatives and campaigns. However, this is not a condition exclusive only to the state of Assam. Everywhere else in the country the scenario is pretty much similar. It has been four years since Article 377 got pulled down. This has raised awareness amongst people who are more in a state of acknowledgment than actual acceptance, for the time being. The discrimination in terms of handling cases pertaining to legal rights violation and the discrimination in terms of access to employment opportunities has certainly dipped for the trans community as compared to before but is still quite a challenge for other identities under the queer umbrella. Many nationwide organisations/companies or the local startups have started queer friendly spaces for the people of this community. However, colleagues within the organisation still refrain from sharing a very comfortable spaces/equations with a queer person because of underlying confusions (regarding the gender types) or some common phobia. Even in healthcare facilities, when the diagnosis is related with genital-related issues or sex hygiene, sexual orientation of a person is questioned at the first place and then vehemently judged while prescribing a healthcare routine or giving treatment.

Please mention some specific challenges that people of this community face in times of public emergencies (like covid, natural calamities etc). How are organisations stepping in to address their challenges that arise/aggravate in terms of public crises? For instance we are experiencing the worst ever floods in the state and several people have lost their homes?

Many trans people had struggled to cope up with basic needs including daily food and paying off their household bills during covid lockdowns. Their situation becomes particularly challenging during natural calamities and other emergency situations as unlike other people they generally have much lesser support from their immediate families and neighbours. The hardships and social alienation (since they could not travel to meet people of their community living within their respective cities or towns) during covid have resulted in many suicides. Consequently, NGOs like Sakha and Saathi had taken a slew of initiatives with the help of various state governments to recruit trans people and give them a working space. Incidentally when the state of Orissa was hit by a severe super cyclone in the year 2019, the government had taken special schemes for restoration of houses and other basic amenities for the trans community. I strongly feel that such initiatives need to be taken by other state governments too. Also our organisation, the Parichay Collective, had started crowd funding for the LGBTQ community during the time of pandemic and had tried to reach out to people who lived in remote areas to help out them in the trying and tough situations.

Sensitisation towards the LGBTQ community is lacking in rural areas of our country. Your thoughts and views on this please. What steps are being taken to improve this situation?

That indeed is true and the state of their well-being has been in fact quite in danger. People in the rural areas are deprived of basic food, clothing and shelter. It is near utopian to think that while contending with such massive and vociferous discrimination people of the LGBTQ community in villages will even have a drive for education and employment. The acceptance of one's own identity comes much later. Before that one has to be able to acknowledge and comprehend one's gender. Upbringing of people in our villages happens in a very binary manner. They have very simplistic approaches to life and acknowledging a spectrum of identities is definitely not common to them. However if a LGBTQ person in a village gathers the requisite knowledge about his/her gender and experience/feel the closeted identity strongly he/she might express this a little. However, a little amount of expression can get 'unconventional' for their standards of life and they eventually succumb to verbal/physical abuse or ostracisation. Our organisation had taken steps to visit people from certain villages and through the help of local anganwadis or NGOs is looking after the welfare of the trans community. In villages we have started conversations regarding the existence of the LGBTQ community. We have also done our part in terms of informing them about the law that protects the people of this community. Sensitization drives have also shown some surprising results as some families in a few Indian villages were aware about their children's closeted identity and only feared about their safety above everything. They only wanted their children to have a healthy employment and settle in far off cities rather than living in the villages in fear.

Please elaborate on your campaign Baatein Unlocked

Baatein Unlocked is a youth led-movement to engage young people in India to come together to talk about everything "taboo" and break barriers around cultural and social norms across India. The campaign uses mixed media (approaches) to reach a wide range of young people and engages with a cohort of youth to build their interest, participation and engagement on the issues of gender, sexuality, sexual and reproductive health rights.

With the idea of bringing authentic narratives rooted and relevant to young people's realities, our aim is to engage with the youth and build platforms where they can set the agenda. We basically engage with youth who are from the LGBTQ community, youth with disabilities and youth hailing from diverse castes, socio-economic classes and religion backgrounds so that they can represent their own narratives and stories.

The LGBTQ community is vulnerable to violence and crimes . For instance in many villages of India there are honour killings and corrective rapes that happen. Now the point is the law enforcers, particularly the police, need to be very sensitively and correctly oriented with the term LGBTQ and the specific hazards they face in terms of safety and security. Do you think this has been adequately done in Assam or any other state? If not, what is the way forward in terms of sensitizing all the people who are connected to their safety and wellbeing? You can talk about lawyers, medical practitioners etc too.

With this question, I believe there would be a very mixed response that would ultimately be hinging towards the inadequacy of law enforcers in providing protection to the people of the LGBTQ community. The drive to sensitise people belonging to the category of law enforcers or protectors have quite been meted out with mockery and a sense of ridicule. There is a general urge to dismiss off a serious case coming from a queer person even after the decriminalization of homosexuality. However, thankfully, over the years, there has been a change in the attitude of the law enforcers and extreme grave situations have been handled with utmost vigilance and strictness. In the month of June, a gay person was looted by miscreants who he had met from an online networking app for gay/trans men and the police has been quite swift with its action. The outcome of sensitization may have been healthier in some states but it may not have caused much improvement in others. It is high time to conduct seminars or conferences with tighter and more focused approaches. The objective should be to explicitly explain about all the identities that come under the queer umbrella. It is important to bring up topics (for interactive discussions) on gender dysphoria, gender stratification, their effects on both mental and physical well being and even the physiology part of all the sexes for a clear and better understanding, under the supervision of professionals. As law enforcers would refrain from violating the law in the first place, the knowledge inculcated by them would give them a better understanding while scrutinising a case or exercising their just power.

Last but not the least, what have been some of the tangible achievements of Baatein Unlocked in this pride month?

The Parichay Collective stepped into five years of its existence on the 22nd of this month. Since the month of May, a total number of five pre pride events were carried out. There was a poetry session and literature reading event that was conducted in collaboration with Bhubaneswar Poetry Club on queer literature, a poster-making event that was conducted in collaboration with Artisana, an online art class of Indian folk art forms and a queer film screening event that was done in collaboration with CFAR (Centre for Advocacy and Research) where queer based Indian movies were shown.

At the end of this interview Melange wonders what could be the future of the LGBTQ community in the coming years .Indeed the decriminalization of homosexuality by the Supreme Court has brought a new light and direction to the community in terms of breaking, challenging and questioning all the shackles and unfair notions that surround their existence. Today more and more pride parades are happening , the issues pertaining to the life and choices of this community are being openly discussed and even deliberated upon from a legal, medical and academic point of view.

Overall there is an unprecedented wave of assertion across the country. However all this today is largely at an advocacy level. People from the community are therefore hoping that the coming years will see all these efforts manifest into more tangibles. This means they are hopeful of a society where there is genuine acceptance of their gender identity. Yes the discrimination has come down in recent years but society on the whole is yet to reach that stage where members of this community are welcomed seamlessly and effortlessly welcomed into every fold. In the words of an LGBTQ person "We should not be thankful to people for treating us with respect and in equal terms with our heterosexual counterparts. We are as much human as them." In other words the narrative of support should be truly inclusive and not based on any sort of altruism.

Going forward there will be more national platforms and seminars where the momentum and milestones of the LGBTQ journey towards self assertion and equality will be reiterated. Academic institutions are likely to have gender sensitization workshops and there is a need for history books to document the struggle of the community.

Also the LGBTQ community hopes that punitive measures are enforced against crimes that are specifically targeted at them. For instance the heinous corrective rapes that sexual minority women and lesbians undergo, the honour killings that people of this community are subjected to ...all these crimes need to be very severely punished and specific laws need to be enacted to take cognizance of these crimes and protect the victims

Also in a bid to mainstream this community in the collective psyche of society, cinema and performing arts should have more narratives revolving around them and inspired from their lives and realities.

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