Flying The Rainbow Flag

A look back at ten years of the LGBTQ movement in India.

- Sandip Roy

It was 2006. I was working as a radio show host and editor in California. I had just got an email asking to add my name to an open letter. This one was about repealing Section 377 that criminalised gay sex in India.

What made my jaw drop were the people who had already signed. Vikram Seth. Arundhati Roy. Swami Agnivesh. Shyam Benegal. Girish Karnad. Mrinalini Sarabhai. Sonal Mansingh. Rajdeep Sardesai. And so many other names I knew and admired.

I always thought gay life, even among those who call themselves progressive, was hush-hush: don’t ask, don’t tell. Every now and then the media would do their boilerplate gay story. There would be quotes from activist Ashok Row Kavi, pretty much the only gay in the village. There would be a few interviews with psychiatrists. Everyone else would have asterisks beside their names to indicate a pseudonym. Their photographs would appear in silhouette.

To see so many Indians, of all sexual persuasions, come out against the law in that letter felt like a yoke lifting. Noble laureate Amartya Sen added his own letter, saying that even though he did not usually sign joint letters, he wanted to include his voice against this “unfreedom of arbitrary and unjust criminalisation.”

This year, a five-judge bench of the Indian Supreme Court finally, unequivocally said that Section 377 was arbitrary and unjust, that the state had no business in the bedrooms of consenting adults and that “history owes an apology to members of the LGBT community and their family members for the ostracisation and persecution they face because of society’s ignorance.” Some would say it was a long time coming. But from another perspective, the change has been astounding.