Every year, unfailingly, I walk with family and friends and thousands of others in New Delhi to Jantar Mantar, possibly India’s most famous protest site, to express our pride as a queer family. We walk with many others like us of differing ages, genders and social and economic backgrounds. Despite our differences, we make this journey in solidarity to mark the occasion of queer pride in Delhi, an annual event to express the pride that Indians like us feel and to remind other Indians that we exist.
It’s true, we walk to express our pride in being who we are, but the fact is that we walk for a lot more. We are different in some ways, as everyone is, and proudly proclaim and celebrate our unique choices. Yet, we also walk to celebrate our similarities in a society and country that seem increasingly fractured. We celebrate love, longing, happiness and misery that are a significant part of all our lives — even of those who do not walk with us.
Many walk with us in solidarity with a loved one — a friend or family member. Some others walk in solidarity with the right to love, to help many understand what they know to be irrevocably true — that every human being has the right to love and seek happiness without prejudice. A right that continues to be denied to some.
We also walk because we recognise that it is fear that stops us from loving. We know our fears are often exactly the same as everyone else’s.
We walk for our fears, but also for yours. And for those who want to walk with us but whose fears won’t let them. We hope that many can let go of their fears, and consequently their hate, someday.
By walking, we want to remind everyone that our fears give birth to our failures. The failure to understand us and our right to love and to co-exist peacefully. The failure to understand that the right to choose one’s gender or to seek and build a fulfilling life unquestioned by society is a basic human right. We walk to record these fears and failures and the anguish this brings us.
We also walk for those that mocked justice, fairness and humanity. We protest against an unjust and ugly judgment by an unfair court, which made our existence illegal and termed our right to love unnatural.
We protest an ignorant judicial bench that took justice, stripped her naked and pronounced her truthful form ugly and unnatural. In the end, not letting the truth triumph.
Yet, through these walking thousands, we reaffirm that a judgment cannot take away dignity. Our dignity as human beings and queer people continues to be unassailable. We are neither easily coerced nor frightened. We continue to view our rights as inalienable and our determination to fight for them remains resolute.
We also walk to remind this country of its own social and cultural history, where diversity in sexual identity and same-sex love were always celebrated. Throughout our history, it was never criminalised, let alone stigmatised, until colonisation came and tried to erase through Victorian law our cultural beliefs, an intellectual openness and human values that had existed for centuries.
Finally, we walk because we believe in India’s democracy and the ideas it represents — the idea of inclusiveness, of freedom, of equality. Unlike what India’s Supreme Court asserts, we believe being a minority is not an argument for depriving anyone of the right to love or living in fear of who they are.
In this country, everyone is a minority in one way or another. These minorities overwhelmingly form the foundation of the idea of India. These minorities believe that despite the onset of majoritarianism, whatever their identity, their status, their language, their religion or their choice of gender or the gender they love, India will allow them to exist without fear or subjugation.
As a few thousand people walk, why should India notice? Because in walking this short distance, this walking mass is standing up not only for themselves or every minuscule minority but for the very idea of India. They are reminding us of our own rich and diverse cultural history, our social values, our fears and hopes. They are also reminding us what we can be as nation — and what we should be fearful of becoming. Why do they walk? They walk for themselves, but also for you.
The writer is an independent public health consultant
