LGBTQ Rights In India

YAruna Desai, the founding member of Sweekar The Rainbow Parents of India, could still remember the distress call that came in the middle of the night in September.

It was a call made by a teenage boy who could barely speak through his tears. He had recently opened up about his homosexuality to his parents and they didn't take it well. They were threatening to throw him out. They had even taken him to a Hindu faith healer who promised to rid him of the homosexuality by any means possible. "He said that he could not bear to live anymore and that he was going to take his own life. It was heartbreaking listening to his situation," recalls Desai. She consoled that boy for several hours, organized a meeting with the boy's family and answered all their questions.

Several such incidents motivated her to establish 'Sweekar', specifically to support the parents of LGBTQ children. "I want to change their mind and make them comfortable, remove that gap and build that bridge between them," she says. India is believed to be home to the world's largest LGBTQ+ community, according to Indian and international activists who use the globally recognized Kinsey scale to estimate that it numbers around 135 million people - or 10% of India's population of 1.4 billion. Yet the country remains conservative when it comes to matters of love, sex and marriage.

To change the course of this story, a group of 18 same-sex Indian couples has petitioned the country's Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage. Their lawyers have presented their arguments, and now the Indian government's counsel is arguing its case in opposition. If the case succeeds, India's LGBTQ+ community will be afforded greater visibility and access to the same societal rights as their heterosexual peers.