India is celebrating Azaadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav as India enters its 76th year of independence from colonial rule. The scrapping of Section 377 took place in 2017 after being applied and withdrawn quite a few times.
Kapil Sibal, Rajya Sabha MP and senior advocate, in one of his recent speeches said that despite the scrapping of Section 377 there is no actual change on the ground. He also mentioned the right to privacy which is a joke in this country. He added that the policemen and administration were continuously harassing the LGBTQIA+ community.
Our constitution gives equal rights to everyone regardless of their gender, aex, caste, color, creed or religion but seems like the recent wave of nationalism has overtaken the meaning of patriotism. The same bunch of nation lovers are ironically flouting the constitution. Most radical groups are fueled either by their religion extremists or politicians, sometimes they are the same people.
In the last few months itself, a lot of cases against the community have been reported, not in the police but at the NGO’s and shelter homes. For example, a trans woman was beaten and thrown off a bridge under the suspicion that she had broken a glass. Our question is that even if she broke it, was the assault justified? Clearly, it wasn’t for the glass but the fact that trans people exist. As Alok V Menon said in their interview, our existence is a threat to them.
Not just these cases, when it comes to the LGBTQIA+ representation in cinema, films that explore women, sexualities and genders often face backlash. The Holy Wound, for example, faced backlash by two nuns because apparently being homosexual is a sin. The LGBTQIA+ community is constantly discriminated against at workplaces, clubs, public spaces openly while everybody stands still watching everything happening.
75 years of independence from the britishers but are we really free from their mindset? Are all the citizens in this country really free? Well, the cisgender heterosexual upper class hindu society certainly is while the rest of us continue to suffer.
