What colour is bittersweet?

On the fourth anniversary of reading down a part of Section 377, which criminalised homosexuality among consenting adults, an empty feeling engulfs me.

Nervous and fearful, I opened my laptop not to check any ‘development,’ but for an online job interview. It was September 6, 2018. The so-called verdict day, but what will it do for me? Nothing’s going to change, will it? My sister messages me on WhatsApp. She’s happy that her brother is no longer a criminal in the eye of the law. Teary-eyed, I try maintaining a, well, straight face on the video call. When she comes home, she hugs me. My mother thinks I’ve got the job. Not yet, I say. The layers of meaning escape both my mother and sister.

Four years later, an empty feeling engulfs me. Love, both as a verb and a noun, continues to remain distant. My grammar of existence has gone for a toss anyway, as I find myself gender nonconforming and feel no need to be with one person exclusively. As I move further away from the norms, basic rights look like alienable concepts, which they increasingly are in a heteronormative society. Now that I at least feel technically free, rights seem to be closeted. Is it just me or do others feel the same?

Slightly better, nothing else

Founder of a media consultancy and co-founder of Delhi Queer Spaces (DQS), Gurnoor Kaur Behl remembers tweeting a poem while anticipating the verdict. “Before writing that poem, which was about nation[-state], I never realised how important that verdict was for me,” she says. “But I feel it’s just a validation: that you’re not abnormal. Nothing more than that. But because the law is penultimate, it was important for it to declare so. In that sense, it made a difference.” Though “life hasn’t changed much” for Gurnoor, she feels “people are more willing to talk about queerness. Most importantly, allies have become comfortable having conversations; they’ve transitioned from being bystanders to supporters as they feel the law is supportive now.”

But she also notes, “Koi extra haq nahi mila hai. We haven’t got anything special by getting acknowledged. I believe for something groundbreaking to happen, we need a people’s movement — be it marriage, healthcare, or inheritance. In a democracy, people and their votes matter, so legal recognition can bring little change until and unless the society is made more aware, sensitised.”

The director of My Brother… Nikhil (2005) Onir says that “decriminalising the LGBTQIA+ identity was a huge step as it helped more people come out and empowered them to seek further rights.” However, he also feels that mere recognition doesn’t translate to being granted equal rights.

“As an independent filmmaker, everything remains hard, if not harder, for me. Be it the Ministry of Defence [MoD] denying a No Objection Certificate for We Are [sequel to the National Award-winning 2011-film I Am] or OTT platforms dictating storylines." Onir also loathes “production houses favouring cisgender men to curate films” and laments that the ‘space’ that should’ve been there post-377 for queer-themed stories by queer people has been reduced: “Somehow no door seems to be open for me …”

For Onir, an array of battles remain to be won. “Civil rights are interconnected,” he says. “Marriage, adoption, inheritance … all of them. But even that seems far-fetched, as still there are people who don’t understand the difference between gender and sexuality. I believe introducing these concepts as part of the curriculum will have a great impact. So many young people discovering themselves in their teenage feel inferior when they don’t have a reference point. Therefore, learning, respecting, and celebrating queerness should become part of our education.”

Everyday queerness

“In many ways, my queerness has been defined by Section 377,” Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford and the founder of Pink List India, Anish Gawande says. “The first Pride I attended was in Mumbai, in 2014, right after the Supreme Court held up the constitutional validity of the anti-sodomy law. Pink List India, which advocates for queer rights in politics, was created in response to increasing unease with leaving the future of queer rights solely in the hands of our courts,” he submits.“The reading down of Section 377, four years later, seems bittersweet. The joy, the hope, the excitement that came with the September 6 verdict has been replaced by a more sobering realisation that things aren’t going to change so dramatically so quickly after all,” Anish adds.

He dreams “of a future when the fight for queerness spills over beyond courtrooms into the everyday; into the discussions, we have at dinner tables about the politicians we vote for and during the parent-teacher meetings, for example. I also truly hope that we recognise that the queer struggle is not an isolated one. As a [minority] community, we need to speak out against the oppression of all kinds: on the grounds of caste, class, religion, race, gender, and sexuality. To fail to do so would be a disservice to all those who fought before us.”

Talk more, write more

Last year, the Department of Gender Studies of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) prepared a 115-page training material titled 'Inclusion of Transgender Children in School Education: Concerns and Roadmap.' The guidelines were created in consultation with a celebrated team of external members, which had LGBTQIA+ people onboard. However, as soon as the guidelines were published on the NCERT website, it faced fierce and organised attacks. On a complaint made by an ex-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) pracharak, Vinay Joshi, to the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), who further sent a notice to the NCERT, the guidelines were pulled down from the website. A month later, the Ministry of Education tells the Parliament that the training manual “was dropped because it had to undergo various stages of finalisation before its release", according to a report in the Hindustan Times.

For Kanav Narayan Sahgal, Communications Manager at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy and Nyaaya, “the Supreme Court took far too long to make what I would call a common-sense decision. I credit grassroots organisations like Naz Foundation for taking the matter to the court, fighting against all odds, and the brave people who represented the LGBTQIA+ community.” Regardless, the verdict was “monumental, as I do see better media representation of LGBTQIA+ issues,” Kanav asserts. “Also, it’s a bit easier for me [now] to talk about these issues at the workplace. But this freedom is only limited to a few privileged spaces that I am part of. Otherwise, I think, homosexuality is still viewed as a perversion.”

According to him, change can come if grassroots-level organisations “start getting funding for initiatives that are working for the betterment of the community. It also means taking the issue to rural and semi-urban places where sexuality is sadly not discussed enough. [It’s where] media representation matters, especially in vernacular languages. [Which is why] we need more LGBTQIA+ people to occupy spaces of power in radio and TV.”

A*, An assistant professor at the OP Jindal Global University, on the other hand, feels that conversations play a key role in spreading awareness about LGBTQIA+ issues. While the reading down of Section 377 hasn’t “changed much,” it has certainly opened the doors for conversations, they submit. “But will these conversations change anything, something? I don’t know. However, are they required? Absolutely. Because now even I am quite open about discussing it without worrying someone would put me behind bars.”

In terms of what they feel missing right now, they note: “Society-led interventions lead to big impact. We need to penetrate society to bring about change. For example, at workplaces, multiple gender-sensitisation programmes are conducted. However, let’s say in an educational institute, how many such training programmes are provided to the non-teaching and support staff?”

Beyond 'love is love'

Delhi-based poet and filmmaker Anureet Watta says that “legality only goes so far in a hyper-nationalistic state that is built on caste and transphobia. While post-377 judgement there has been an increase in the ‘visibility’ of queer people, this has failed to extend beyond ‘love is love’. On the flip side, trans people are dying and conversion therapy is rampant.

They acknowledge that “it was a significant moment in history,” but “when it comes to positively impacting queer people, it falls short. As an artist, the way I see the reading down of section 377 is: a lot of profit-seeking people outside of the community now use queer stories and aesthetics to create narratives that speak in place of the community.” So, in that sense, “everything remains to be done. Accessibility of gender-affirmation surgery, the inclusion of queer people in schools and colleges, the repeal of the transphobic Trans Act 2019, and implementation of the NALSA guidelines … all of this is yet to be done.”

Transgender woman doctor, trans rights activist, and the founder of Human Solidarity Foundation (HSF), Dr Aqsa Shaikh feels the same. “For many people from the transgender community, the repeal of Section 377 didn’t change much, as they were provided rights by the NALSA judgment much earlier. However, the repeal helped in undoing [the] harm that was inflicted on sexual and gender minorities, especially gay men and transgender women.”

“While there has been decriminalisation, the gay, bisexual community doesn’t have full rights to live a dignified life. From housing, education, employment, marriage to surrogacy, abortion, and financial services, the community is excluded from everything,” she asserts.

She notes that the laws that grant several civil rights to a cis-het couple deny the same to people in queer companionships. But what worries her more is that “there is no law yet to ban bullying in educational spaces and conversion therapy (see Box 5). There is a widespread exclusion of queer people in the healthcare sector. [Queer people’s partners] are not allowed to make critical healthcare decisions for them. Additionally, MSM [men who have sex with men] and trans people are still not allowed to donate blood.”

Ban on conversion therapy?

Conversion therapies, including electroconvulsive therapies, and unlawful surgeries on newly born intersex children in India are rampant. To curb this and in response to the S Sushma versus Commissioner of Police case and the affidavit filed by the National Medical Commission (NMC) that conversion therapy amounts to “professional misconduct,” Justice N Anand Venkatesh of the Madras High Court called for a ban of the practice. However, it’s just an order (not a law), which also asks for medical organisations to “help prevent [conversion therapies] from happening.” The order also instructs medical institutes to revise “available scientific literature” to not perpetuate bias against LGBTQIA+ people.

*The person requested anonymity.

The author is a Delhi-based queer writer and freelance journalist, who covers books, gender, and sexuality. They can be found on Instagram/Twitter @writerly_life