FROM BADASS TO BINDAAS IN 30 YEARS, BUT MILES TO GO

The LGBTQIA+ movement has witnessed a tumultuous journey marked by several highs and a few gut-wrenching lows that have delivered a better, if not perfect, world for the community

- ASHOK ROW KAVI

I remember the shock and horror as I read the first article on Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code way back in 1991. Having founded the country’s first gay magazine, Bombay Dost, I had commissioned the first piece on Section 377 and what it meant for the LGBTQIA+ communities. The author was the learned criminal lawyer Shrikant Bhat who also lectured at the Government Law College, Mumbai. Just to make sure that he was not misunderstood, Bhat added the disclaimer “I am a heterosexual” to his piece, reflecting how circumspect mainstream society was handling the subject. This was 1991.

His conclusions were clear: We were outright felons and deserved 10 years of rigorous imprisonment or life sentence. Buggery, sodomy or non-vaginal sex were criminalised, and all it needed was penetration to prove it, which ironically is also a gay obsession. That first article in Bombay Dost started a chain reaction in the nascent Indian LGBTQIA+ community. And it took decades to get it off the statute books. Well, not struck down but read down, which meant consenting adults would be outside its ambit.

It would take a book to record the struggles of those years, including significant chapters on how the community’s politics emerged from the underground to carry the fight out in the open, the goings-on in Parliament and the judiciary. So, I will cut to the chase and restrict myself to the main persona involved over the last three decades.