Presence is not power: Anish Gawande and the politics of being seen

Anish understands this instinctively, and it shapes how he occupies space. He is not a politician of volume but of calibration. He thinks before he speaks, edits before he offers, and carries into public discourse a discipline that is increasingly rare. On panels, he does not chase noise; he constructs argument. On camera, he resists theatrics. There is a quiet confidence in his cadence, a refusal to simplify for applause. This is not passivity; it is precision. In a culture that rewards aggression, that precision becomes both his strength and his strategy. It also makes him legible to those who might otherwise resist him. He does not arrive as disruption alone; he arrives as coherence. There is also, quietly, a sense of humour — measured, never mocking — that disarms without diminishing. It allows him to humanise debate, to soften the sharp edges of disagreement without surrendering ground. In a medium addicted to outrage, that restraint reads not as weakness, but as work.

And yet his presence is disruptive, because it unsettles a long-standing absence. Indian politics has not made sustained, structural space for openly queer individuals. Visibility has appeared in fragments, in gestures, in moments — but visibility is not participation, and participation is not power. India has decriminalised homosexuality through the reading down of Section 377 but legality has not translated into legitimacy. We have decriminalised love without fully dignifying it. Dignity is built not just in courts, but in institutions, in everyday interactions, and most visibly, in politics—where who speaks, who is heard, and who decides still follows older, narrower scripts.

Across parties — the Indian National Congress, the Aam Aadmi Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party — there have been gestures toward inclusion. But the structural question remains: where are the openly queer leaders with enduring power? Not symbolic selections, not invited voices but decision-makers who draft, debate, and deliver policy. Representation without power is performance. And performance, however polished, does not rewire institutions, it reassures them.

This is where Anish becomes more than a profile; he becomes a prism. In our conversations across cities, what is evident is his ability to situate himself within politics without reducing himself to identity alone. He neither performs queerness nor conceals it. He integrates it. That integration resists both tokenism and erasure. He is not “the queer voice.” He is a political participant whose queerness is present, but not performative. That balance signals a shift, not just in optics but in orientation. It suggests a politics that can hold multiplicity without collapsing into labels, a politics that can speak of roads and rights, budgets and belonging, without treating identity as either distraction or destiny.

But individual shifts do not automatically create systemic change. Outside curated rooms, the country continues to reveal its discomfort in quieter ways. Across India — from metros to smaller cities — queerness is acknowledged but not engaged. It is mentioned, then moved past. There are rooms I have not been invited into, not explicitly, but unmistakably. There are spaces where I have felt present but peripheral, where what matters to me is not seen as mattering. This is not hostility. It is omission. And omission, repeated, becomes structure—quiet, consistent, consequential.

The contrast with global contexts is instructive. In cities like New York, in activism and policy spaces, the queer voice is expected, not exceptional. It is part of the democratic fabric. That expectation changes participation. It allows queer individuals to engage not as symbols, but as stakeholders — shaping agendas, not merely responding to them. India remains in transition, culturally visible, politically cautious, where acceptance is often aesthetic and inclusion, intermittent.

We know that many of the country’s most influential figures in art, design, and media are queer. Their work shapes imagination, defines culture, travels globally. Yet many remain publicly unacknowledged. Not for lack of courage but because the cost of visibility remains real. Known, but not named. Seen, but not said. That silence is structural and it is precisely why Anish matters. He occupies the space others have learned to navigate carefully. He names what many manage. He stands where many still step lightly.

Because he is inside the system. He is engaging with it, not standing outside it. He represents a future where queerness is not an external critique of politics, but an internal presence within it. That shift, from opposition to participation, is significant. It moves the conversation from rights demanded to roles inhabited, from recognition sought to responsibility assumed.

Globally, leaders such as Pete Buttigieg and Leo Varadkar have shown that identity need not define political legitimacy. It can simply coexist with it — steady, stated, unremarkable. India is not there yet. But Anish stands at that edge — with a steadiness that suggests both awareness and intent, and a patience that understands change is not only argued; it is accumulated.

The question is whether the system will meet him there.

Individuals can open doors. Institutions must decide whether they stay open. Political parties must move from symbolic inclusion to structural integration — ensuring queer individuals are not just visible, but viable. That means candidacies, not just commentary. Leadership, not just language. It means trusting queer voices with constituencies, not confining them to conversations. It means recognising that representation is not a concession; it is a correction.

What I felt at Kala Ghoda, and later in Delhi, was a glimpse of possibility. Two openly gay men speaking of identity and nationhood in spaces that did not reject them. It felt like arrival. But arrival is not acceptance, and acceptance is not integration. Those require repetition, reinforcement, and the slow work of normalisation.

Anish Gawande represents transition. Not completion, not culmination —but movement. From invisibility to visibility. From marginality to participation. He brings to politics a sensibility that is measured, mindful, and modern — one that suggests a different grammar of public life, less about volume and more about value.

But he cannot be the system.

India does not lack queer individuals of capability. It lacks their sustained inclusion in power. Until that changes, we remain a society that accommodates difference without fully trusting it. And trust — not tolerance — is the true measure of democracy.

Anish presents a future. But whether that future arrives depends on whether we ensure he does not remain the exception.