The future of queer marriage in India is now sealed at the apex court; from what transpired within those walls it is difficult to ascertain what the judgment is going to be. Listening to the proceedings while in Allahabad, and coming across the State’s comment that this issue is an elitist and urban one was mind-boggling. This is when I spoke to poet and queer activist, Aditya Tiwari, who hails from Jabalpur. We discussed how easily the Centre negated the existence of LGBTQIA+ people living in smaller cities and villages across the country.
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I met Tiwari on Clubhouse, the audio chatroom app, where we shared our unique experiences of living in small cities and interacting with fellow queer people with similar backgrounds. Last year, he became the first South Asian queer person to host and produce a six-part podcast series for BBC Voice. The activist’s new book, titled Over The Rainbow: Queer Icons of India, is set to be published in the next quarter by Juggernaut. Excerpts from our conversation:
Apart from the many reasons given by the Centre as to why the Supreme Court shouldn’t hear the matter regarding queer marriages, one key point raised was that the queer community should wait till there is acceptance in society and then move forward. But in the same hearing, they said there is no discrimination after the Navtej judgment. How do you see this dichotomy?
It is appalling that even in 2023 we have to fight to be considered equal Indian citizens. The question remains the same: why do we not have the same rights as our heterosexual counterparts? We are often told that we are just a ‘minuscule minority’, but it is for everyone to remember that just a handful of queer people have been able to move the Supreme Court and get Section 377 out of our private spaces. We need to keep working on eradicating hatred from both physical and virtual spaces so that we can build a more loving society. But waiting for society to magically transform itself is a misleading argument. Just a few days ago, a lesbian couple had to reach out to the Delhi High Court to seek police protection from their own families. That’s the ground reality even after the Navtej judgment.
Aditya Tiwari | Photo Credit: Judy Hume
I am glad you mentioned that incident because it’s not a one-off case; this is the unfortunate social reality of many natal families of queer people. Last September, Cuba passed a progressive ‘Family Code’ that redefined the legal definition of a family and expanded it to chosen families. Do you believe that we should also focus on achieving that feat?
For people living in the Indian subcontinent, it shouldn’t be difficult to imagine an alternate family unit as the Hijra gharanas have existed for a very long time. These are small groups of transgender people living together under the authority of one guru who has several chelas [disciples]. The chela is treated as a child and the relationship between the two is deeply personal. Some time ago, a teenager from Jabalpur called me and narrated their ordeal about the strained relationship at their natal home. As things became more difficult, they joined a Hijra gharana. How can anyone deny them the legal recognition of being a family? Even during the queer marriage proceedings, advocate Vrinda Grover stated that queer people are susceptible to violence from natal families and in some cases are also forced into conversion therapy.
People deny the existence of queerphobia and crimes against our community just because there isn’t any ‘proof’, or the fact that specific cases aren’t filed in the courts...
The sad reality is that not much has changed for queer people living in smaller cities and villages after the Navtej judgment. We still have to hide as we are more prone to violence. The denial of the state to identify such hate crimes as a separate database is the exact reason why people are oblivious to the existence of such rampant attacks on the queer community. Transgender people are most vulnerable to horrific crimes. In 2020, a 60-year-old transgender entrepreneur, Sangeetha from Coimbatore, was murdered by a 23-year-old man because she rejected his sexual advances. Her story in the official database won’t highlight the fact that she was a trans woman and will be brushed off as just a murder case. Recently, we also lost Paveen Nath, a bright young trans man from Thrissur, Kerala, to cyber bullying.
The divide between the queer community in urban and rural or smaller cities is truly visible. Maybe we need to start from the grassroots rather than just focus on metros. How would you want the movement to steer forward?
Even though there’s a clear divide, we are finding our voices and creating our mics in our smaller cities. While earlier we used to meet in the dark to be safe, now there are multiple queer collectives in smaller cities trying to reclaim the space we deserve. The conversation is finally moving away from just English to Indian languages. Xomonnoy, a queer collective from Guwahati, along with the Foundation for Social Transformation and Queer Chennai Chronicles, Orinam and The News Minute have come up with queer terminologies in Assamese and Tamil. Whether it is Sonu Kinnar, a trans woman who recently won from Mughalsarai (now known as Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Nagar) in the UP local elections, or the Marathi poet and writer Disha Pinky Shaikh being made the spokesperson of Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi, these cases are examples of the queer community reclaiming our right to exist and be heard.
We are also coming across incidents where queer people from villages are fighting against society to be themselves and love against all odds. The story of Ritesh and Sunita from Hamirpur, Uttar Pradesh, is one such case where they faced ostracisation by their own families but were supported by the pradhan of their village.
We have seen the government present its discriminative views on queer marriages, but they have also claimed to safeguard the rights of transgender people at the G7 summit. What should be our demands for the betterment of the queer community?
It’s high time our lawmakers understand that the future is queer and as diverse as India is. It’s time that the world’s largest democracy starts treating all its citizens equally. If we indeed want to be the Vishwaguru then we need to work on our civic issues of which queer issues are an integral part. Our declining status in several indexes is a red flag for the international community.
The queer writer and translator from Allahabad is a co-founder of RAQS, a collective working in the city on gender, sexuality, and mental health.
