Being LGBT in Today's India

Today, being an LGBTQ person or having queer identities may be more acceptable than ever, but is it?

on 6th September 2018, the Supreme Court of India made it legal for someone to have homosexual identities and live with their partners. A step forward in LGBTQ activism. But are homosexuals today really any better off than they were 2 years ago?

Far away from pride marches and heated debates on Twitter, the urban and rural population of India have had their own share of dealing with LGBT individuals. Forced heterosexual marriages, beating up and even killings are rampant around the country. The only way for some of these people to survive is to run away from their homes, come to the cities and earn money to stand on their own. Those who survive, live an independent life and those who don't, they die or live a life being someone they are not. Sadly, even after the law, the scenario remains similar.

The Government will not stop you from being something, that does not automatically translate to the Government will help in your journey to assert being that thing.

Even before the law was removed there were many secretly LGBT people, mostly in the rich, urban households. After the law was repelled, the scenario remains the same.

In some parts of the country, lesbian women are subjected to family-sanctioned corrective rapes, often perpetrated by their own family members. In fact, lesbian women and transgenders end up at the bottom of the hierarchy when it comes to basic human rights in the village. Heartwarming stories of family acceptance that we see on TVs and other media is largely an urban phenomenon.

Many people have to closet their feelings and often come out to only their friends. Many think it a good idea to be financially and emotionally separate from their family before coming out so that if the family forces corrective measures, they can distance themselves.

But in a way, it captures the capitalistic nature which today governs even our sexuality. Become rich, and you can be whatever you want. Remain poor and you will have to allow society to shape whatever way they feel right.

Recently, I talked to an acquaintance of mine. She had come out as a lesbian. Although her family was very supportive, she has been constantly bullied by cis-gendered men from her school. Which really just goes to show how very wrongly LGBT people are being treated in India.

In a society bound by a set of rigid set of social and cultural norms that dictate the terms and conditions of everything, families need to understand that nothing is more important than happiness. Some people regard the repelling of the law as the final step towards ensuring equality. It is not.

The problem with the movement is the same as all other movements. It is for a very specific set of people. The people being the rich, urban households. But LGBT people come from many backgrounds. And in India, with so many movements together, people identify themselves as LGBT activist, democrat, feminist all together.

The problem is that the life of LGBT people is connected with a lot of other problems. This is the reason that it has not succeeded as of yet. The movement needs to be more broad-reaching, people must realise that everybody has a different aspect with which they show themselves to the world. Maybe, we can't even capture them as one movement. But we have to be far-reaching. Because we just cannot allow any more torture or deaths because society will not accept some people. We have to stop this slaughter. Support these people around you and we will see a huge change.