Towards a queer year

As we stare into a brand new year with reflection and hope, we also wonder what is the meaning of the new year for those who are on the fringes of society. Tanisha Saxena gets some to voice their opinions

Anshuman Sathe

Hairsh Iyer

Naaz Joshi

Parmesh Shahani

Sravan Telu Kumar

What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That’s not been said a thousand times?
The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.” American author, Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s poem The year sums up our feelings as the calendar turns from one year to the next. Generally, we retrospect, bid farewell to the ones we lost, make resolutions and express hope for the future — and like everyone, the LGBT+ community have manifestations and hopes. But what do these manifestations or hopes sound like?

Parmesh Shahani, author of Queeristan: LGBTQ Inclusion in the Indian Workplace shares, “What I want to manifest in 2023 is a significant movement towards full equality for me and the millions of my fellow Indian queer citizens. What this means is that legally, whether, in marriage equality or other laws, I would want to see progress. In workplaces, I would want to see more and more queer people being hired, treated respectfully and flourishing. In colleges, I would want queer students to be supported by their professors as well as other students. At home, I want queer people to be loved and cherished by their family members. In every sphere, I want to see respect and equality. That is my wish for 2023.”

The new year brings in new hope, a new challenge and a lot of happiness. As India’s first trans beauty queen, Naaz Joshi, says, “Given a chance one day I would like to be the Prime Minister of the country where I can establish a new discrimination-free country and bring capital punishment for rapes,” says Naaz.

It’s indeed a matter of pride that we have come a long way in the queer movement in India. But what is shocking to see is that in this recorded history of the LGBT+ movement in India — the older population of the sexual minority community remained socially invisible. According to a research journal, “The global situation mirrors this: Several participants in the few studies of older queer men from the West described gay life as “the province of the young and the beautiful.”

Even though we found 42 studies looking at the psychological well-being of this population globally, to our knowledge, no study in India has investigated the health of older queer men.

This dearth in scholarship might exist because of the invisibility of this section of the society.”

One of the most prominent LGBT rights activists in India, Ashok Row Kavi, founder and chairperson of the Humsafar Trust and one of the first people to openly talk about homosexuality and gay rights in the country asserted, “The horrible thing about being an older gay man in India is that you are invisibilised by both, the community and the society. And the double whammy is what keeps the other hope alive that someday we will be accepted.”

In order to broaden our understanding of sexuality and gender, queer books are taking the literary world by storm.

Authors from ancient Greece and Rome, such as Plato and Homer, and in fact Sappho whose reputation as the mother of lesbian poetry is acknowledged by all — queer desires have found their way into literature for thousands of years.

One such recent book is The Many Colours of Anshu, written and illustrated by Anshuman Sathe where he narrates the story of himself as a seven-year-old who embarks on a journey to break free from the gendered blue into a world of colourful possibilities. “I spent my whole life rebelling against the limited and limiting idea of boyhood. I needed more ways of being a kid which went beyond just ‘boy’,” he adds.

Anshuman bears no burden of concluding in black and white, offering readers a world that is vibrant with colour. The book is perfect for parents, caregivers, and educators seeking to initiate conversations about gender play and to equip their children with self-love and self-empathy.

Harish Iyer, a Diversity &Inclusion champion, equal rights activist and the impleader in the Section 377 case, explains, “We are a community that has been through hell and back. We want no equal rights now. We need rights that are equitable.” Echoing a similar thought, Sravan Telu Kumar, a dancer and activist, adds, “I will actively seek out and support organisations that are working to make the world a more inclusive place for people of all sexual orientations. I want to use my voice to advocate for wider acceptance, tolerance, and understanding of queer people.”