Medha Sharma brings you a report on how Indian campuses still have a long way to go before they can be termed gay friendly
Decriminalisation Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code may have brought cheer to the LGBTQI community, but a lot more needs to be achieved in this arena, especially when it comes to students.
For one, despite the decriminalisation, acceptability of altered sexuality is still a distant dream on campuses. Mandira, a first-year undergraduate student at National Law School, Bengaluru, who identifies herself as non-binary and is attracted to women says: “I came out in 2017 but I always knew that I find women more attractive. I was 12-year-old when I had my first girlfriend. I hail from Varanasi, a conservative town. There was no conversation about sex, gender and sexuality. Even though we studied sex in school, we were not exposed to a lot of things. The place where I was brought up you would not expect a 12 -13-year-old to have the vocabulary to express what they are going through. I did not even know the term. I did not know what gay meant. I was always running short of words to express myself. It was not possible for me to express how I felt to my parents or have a conversation about the same,” she recalls.
Talking about one’s sexual preferences is particularly hard in college campuses in the country. With taboos and discomfort associated with this topic, teens don’t come out to their parents or even college friends till they are caught. This lack of communication and acceptability often generates a feeling of isolation and embarrassment. There is a lack of validation and support from parents.
Schools also clearly fail to provide a platform to represent the LGBTQI community or probe discussions about topics surrounding sexuality and gender. This often results in students facing a sense of dejection and despair with no one to talk to.
Trinetta, a 24-year-old trans woman who dropped out of New Delhi’s Deen Dayal Upadhyay College in her final year shares her experience: “In school, I was a closeted gay. I never knew that I was a trans woman. I knew I was attracted to womanly things. I used to enjoy wearing make-up and dressing up. For my feminine traits, I was bullied a lot. So, throughout my school life, I was bullied for my sexuality. My classmates would say things like meetha and chhakka for being feminine,” Trinetta reveals.
From August 2014 onwards, Delhi University began releasing admission forms which included the “third gender” category to improve education access for trans students. It is unlikely, however, that students who identify themselves as the third gender would accept it openly, as the environment in classrooms remains unwelcoming.
India’s youngest drag queen Shabnam Bewafa who is pursuing his under graduation from Motilal College prefers to not admit his sexuality in college. He identifies himself as a homoromantic gay and has recently given a TEDx talk at Kalindi College.
“The biggest irony of my life is that people in my own college don’t know that I perform drag. Nobody in my college knows about my drag. The other day someone asked me, do you know any drag queen for our fest and I though to myself: ‘You have no clue. They have their own assumptions that I am gay and I am quite okay with that. I think I am not ready to be exposed to my college as a drag queen. I do drag for other colleges. I am the most featured drag queen at Kitty Su India. I have been doing drag for a year now. People in my college either find it through some news article or some other ways. I still prefer to keep my sexuality private,” she says.
The transition from school to college is tough with the pressure to fit in and have an identity. The ineffectiveness of judgemental counselling is visible from the number of suicide attempts that are made every year from the queer community. Studies reveal that compared to straight young men, lesbians and bisexual females were more than twice as likely to have prior suicide attempts, and transgender males were almost four times as likely to have such a history.
The absence of a queer community in reputed institutes is the norm which does not come as a surprise to anyone. While a huge part of the student population does take part in pride marches, but the ground reality remains that a majority of campuses in India are not queer friendly.
“There is no queer society in my college. When I walked into the college I realised that I was the only person who was from the LGBTQ community. The students despite being so educated bad mouth the LGBTQ community. ‘Yeh sab bakwaas hota hai’ (All this is nonsense). I was mocked when I attended classes because of the way I dressed. I was judged because I wear make-up. There were whispers in the corner of the room as I would enter or just homophobic jokes were thrown at me. Some would give me the silent treatment, they would avoid eye contact or any form of communication, where some would walk out after knowing my sexuality. In my second year, I was molested by my seniors for my sexual preferences, I dropped out of college after that incidence,” Triinetra tells you.
Non-inclusive environment obstructs queer individuals, growth not allowing them you achieve their full potential. Some college in India, however, has gained a queer-friendly reputation, allowing students to explore and understand what they really want.
Providing a safe space for conversation and living on the motto “closets are for wardrobes and not for people, 19-year-old Dhwani of Sophia College, Mumbai, says: “Luckily Sophia has a reputation of being pro-LGBTQI. I know a lot of people who are community activists working on queer rights. I use the term ‘I am not straight’ because I am still exploring, and my college provides that safe space. I don’t like labels. The only label that I have ever used is queer. It is an umbrella term. If you talk about glitter the entire community is LGBTQ so I am somewhere in the spectrum. It’s not like I have to put a label, put myself in some category to get rights. My college is a safe space. There might be people who are closeted to their families are open about their sexuality in college. I am not out to my parents,” she tells you.
Sophia College has started an elective course on gender inclusivity which is a voluntary extra credit course. This course is optional and allows people to understand queer activism in a holistic way. In other way the queer individuals feel that they belong is through pride. The inception of the Pride March in 1999, in Kolkata, which was joined by just 15 people, has helped people bond over something they were ridiculed for.
Rishi Shukla an 18-year-old gay student says: “I feel that pride should not be considered as the focal point of the queer movement, instead it should be looked at as a kick start. The other aspect is that a lot of queer people who don't have queer friends get an opportunity to interact with other queer people. It helps to shut down the feeling and reflects the fact that you’re not alone,” Shukla tells you and says that it’s great for parents who turn up.
They get to explore the community and it helps them understand their child better. For allies, it's fun because it gives them a purpose. They believe in it, and looking at so many people, they feel that the fight is worth it. Pride is like a little effort to bring this conversation to the mainstream, and hence I feel it’s not enough.
“To bystanders, it appears like a one-day parade wherein people randomly decide to wear funny clothes. So, no, I wouldn’t say it glorifies the difference that is not cared about, because of the short impact it has on the movement when you look at the bigger picture,” Shukla shares.
Gazal Dhaliwal, a Bollywood film writer and actress who was born as Gunraj Singh Dhaliwal in Patiala, Punjab and underwent a Sex Reassignment Surgery to change his gender 2007 at the age of 25 tells you that one of the biggest problems that LGBTQI students are alienated. “The students tend to stay away from LGBTQI because often times they seem to be different. Most people, kids or adults are uncomfortable with whatever is different. We think that if something is different, it is wrong since it is not as per our understanding,” Gazal says.
She opines that the young tend to be more insentive since all their mental and psychological faculties are not fully developed. They work from a very small understanding of the world and the kind of people in it. They can be more insentive than the adults sometimes. They call LGBTQI people names and stay away from them because they feel that if they are seen with them they also may also be considered LGBTQI. Therefore, they shun LGBT kids” Gazal says and tells you that decriminalisation of Section 377 was the most basic human right that the community needed — to be at least at looked at as human beings and not criminals.
“There is a long way to go. The law says that LGBT community are not criminals but in the minds of the society they are still deviants, abnormal and someone that needs to be fixed. This is a challenge. The law is irrelevant when it comes to the society,” Gazal shares and says that our first concept of LGBTQI came from the hijra community that dates back centuries.
“Hijras are not considered to be one of us. Yes, they need to be paid off during weddings but are not part of our society. The very birth of LGBT took root from here. But now that other sexuality are becoming more open and visible the same logic is being applied here and LGB are considered to be abnormal and there is need to stay away from them,” Gazal says.
However, with slow and steady conversation, campuses in India are hopefully becoming queer-friendly and inclusive, or at least one hopes they would soon become so. While issues such as queer acceptance remain a problem in a conservative homophobic student environment. The acceptance is gradual and the pride to explore sexuality is coming slowly but surely. Hopefully, closets would be for only clothes now.
