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“We are contributing to the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan too, helping clean up the streets. On the banners, in large print, was mention of collaborations with the Canadian embassy, and Rotaract Club of Chandigarh. In Chandigarh, Saksham Trust tied up with Panjab University ahead of last year’s march. An evening meeting of the LGBTQ community at the headquarters of the NGO Sarathi Trust in Nagpur. The headquarters of the gay rights movement in Nagpur, a dimly lit room next to a chai-kachori stall, has posters of the goddess Laxmi and BR Ambedkar on the walls. “That’s how we get an audience to begin building a crowd,” says Dhananjay Chauhan Mangalmukhi, director of the Chandigarh gay-rights NGO Saksham Trust. In smaller cities, the movement has found that it benefits from being associated with other social groups and initiatives - via assorted NGOs, political outfits and educational institutions. “In these areas, the emphasis is on reminding onlookers that it is the bias against homosexuality that is a Western import that our myths and epics, our history, embraced the sexuality spectrum long ago.” We realised that we needed to portray this as a desi movement if it was to gain momentum or acceptance,” says Pallav Patankar, a gender and sexuality consultant from Mumbai. “In the smaller cities and towns, there is a conscious effort to move away from the Western image of the cause. The costumes, signs and language are all part of an effort to remind onlookers - we’re one of you.Īctivists from Mumbai and Kolkata have been helping organise the marches, and they’re having to do things very differently here. The Lucknow pride parade is called the Awadh Gaurav Yatra Nagpur’s is called the Orange City Pride March Chandigarh’s, the Garvotsav. Each of these drew between 50 and 300 people.Īs with the costumes, the marches have names that invoke a sense of regional identity and pride.
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Chandigarh hosted its fifth, Guwahati its fourth and Nagpur its third. Bhopal, Lucknow and Panaji hosted their first LGBTQ pride marches in 2017.
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In Mumbai, 14,000 participated in the 2017 march. Giant flags, rainbow-coloured wigs, selfies with tongues sticking out and costumes that range from unisex rainbow drapes to unicorn hats.īig city marches are almost aspirational - they look like marches anywhere in the developed world people straight, gay and from across the sexual-identity spectrum participate it’s a big bash open to anyone who is, or wants to seem, liberal / enlightened / woke. In the metros - Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Bengaluru - the pride marches are between 8 and 18 years old, and have grown bigger and louder in that time. Guwahati’s was quiet and calm, like a smoothly flowing river.” “Delhi’s was loud, there were outrageous costumes and so much make-up. “When I attended the march in Delhi last year, I was shocked by the differences,” says Mao Debojit Gogoi, 20, a student from Guwahati, laughing. Signs in regional languages, literature carefully translated to avoid shock or offence, meetings held at chaurahas - the effort is to include the community rather than rebel against the mainstream. The LGBTQI movement is moving to smaller cities and towns, and taking on interesting new avatars. In Nagpur, they wear kurtas, pajamas - and masks. In Lucknow, they march in silk saris and pagdis.