While homosexuality has been decriminalised in India, the LGBTQIA+ community continues to fight for dignity and access to basic amenities. Changing perceptions takes time, says Rajesh Srinivas of Sangama, an organisation working for the cause.
Rajesh Srinivas: Earlier the argument was that it is a Western construct. It is not an urban construct. According to a survey done in the United States of America, around seven percent of the population identified as non-heterosexual. Multiple studies show that this number ranges from six to nine percent.
Bogey arguments like ‘they don’t understand family’ and ‘they can’t bring up children’ are made repeatedly. This is flawed and problematic.
When we started working in Kerala in 2010-11, the government told us that there are no transgenders in the state. Then in 2013-14 we started working with the government. They commissioned us to undertake the first government survey of transgender people. Today Kerala has a policy for transgender people and a transgender welfare board.
Rajesh Srinivas: We run three Namma clinics for gender and sexual minorities in Hassan, Ballari and Kolar districts of Karnataka to address deep rooted stigma and discrimination. We also inaugurated a Namma centre in Belagavi a few days back.
The clinics and centres provide safe spaces, access to health services including mental health, and create awareness at the society level. We want to see a situation wherein a community member walks in and finds a safe space and gets a range of services at one place.
Rajesh Srinivas: Sangama started in 1999, primarily working with the working class, non-English speaking gender and sexual minorities and people living with HIV. Later we also started to work with sex workers for their labour rights and supporting collectives such as the Karnataka Sex Workers Union.
The work earlier involved organising community members, providing them legal support and working with the government to ensure that the issues faced by gender and sexual minorities become part of the public narrative. During this time a lot of our effort also centered around decriminalising homosexuality (Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code).
We started in Bengaluru and later moved to other parts of Karnataka. We have also worked in Dharmapuri and Hosur of Tamil Nadu, besides Andhra Pradesh and Kerala. In 2009, Sangma was also involved with advocacy works when the Karnataka State Commission for Backward Classes under the chairmanship of C S Dwarkanath considered gender minorities within Backward Classes.
In 2020, we also started to work with urban poor communities in Bengaluru. We also work with children of sex workers, waste pickers and other marginalised groups.
We are also trying to address livelihood concerns with the formation of self-help groups (SHGs) to inculcate savings habits and entrepreneurial development among the community members. We believe in working with other movements on issues of civil liberties and our approach has always been intersectional.
Rajesh Srinivas: Post the apex court’s judgment in 2018, our work has shifted from addressing criminality to citizenship and rights issues. Our demands have been towards access to rights of housing, nutrition and employment.
We are working with over 500 sexual and gender minorities living with HIV to create safe spaces, facilitate a buddy system and provide nutritional supplements to them.
There are laws, but their implementation remains a core issue. Contextually, the struggle has always been this. While celebrating the pride month people tend to forget the historical contexts and only see it as a celebration. But we need to remember struggles such as the Stonewall uprising of 1969 in New York.
It is important that we foreground issues that the working class, economically backward, gender and sexual minorities face. It is about access to public health services in a non-stigmatised, non-discriminatory way. It is about dignity and livelihood. It is about nutritional support and access to gender affirmative care in government hospitals.
Trans men, lesbian and bisexual women are further marginalised because their issues don’t come to the forefront. Surely the judgment has shifted the discourse but people from the community still suffer in rural areas in terms of access.
Let me give you an example. Recently we wanted to open an office in Bengaluru. We visited multiple places but we were denied rental offices because people didn’t want transgender people working there. We are still looking for a place.
Of course there have been developments, but for society to change it will take time. It is a slow process.
Rajesh Sinivas is the executive director at Sangama.
The lead image shows a raised rainbow fist of a man (Photo by A Vidal – Shutterstock)
