Is Bollywood Ready To Come Out Of The Closet?

Ahad Sanwari probes how LGBT characters are portrayed onscreen these days.

- Ahad Sanwari

The scoop is in: love wins! The Supreme Court decriminalised homosexuality in a landmark judgment where it struck down the infamous Section 377. The country rejoiced, and so did the film industry. Karan Johar called it a “huge thumbs-up for humanity and equal rights”; Preity Zinta said “if you have a heart you should be free to love who you want”; Farhan Akhtar waved 377 bye-bye, and so did everyone else. That doesn’t mean that they’ve cured their own problem with homosexuality. Not yet, at least.

Bollywood as an industry has never been one to shy away from controversy, touchy subjects or awkward silences. Nothing gets the heads turning quite like seeing homosexuality and open sexuality on screen. Sure, it’s fine when John Abraham and Bipasha Basu get their jism on. But if John decides to smooch Abhishek? Tauba, tauba!

It’s a little spotty trying to pinpoint an exact history of homosexuality in Bollywood cinema. It is probably best, however, to gloss over all the years of Bollywood hunks cross dressing for the sake of a few laughs, the gravity of which wasn’t really understood then. It’s weird when you think that even someone like Amitabh Bachchan, in the prime of his career, dressed up in drag for his iconic performance of Mere angne mein from Laawaris. But uncovering the fact that half of the pallus from the ‘ 60s to today had men underneath is a story for a different day.