So why Pride, and its eternal unasked question: why the need to be public? “Public” is a word uttered with some trepidation in India, especially when it is in the same sentence as “sexuality”. Queer people have long been objects of description, caricature and violence in public domains: in film, in media, on the streets, in the everyday. They have appeared by choice mostly in response to yet another arrest, or incidence of violence: constantly aggrieved, constantly demanding. Pride is another kind of public presence. It is a claim — a claim to the right to belong to this city, to be treated equally in its public spaces, to see positive images of oneself. This is, in essence, what any movement, any politics is ultimately trying to attain: not just legal but substantive freedom. Not just tolerance, but acceptance. Not just the faces of those eternally repressed, but the images of a community that has come far and that has finally, slowly, begun to find the strength to fight for its rights.

Sexuality is instantly reduced in any conversation in our country to sex. Sexuality is not just about sex. What Pride is taking to the public is not just sexuality, but its politics. It is about identity. It is about self-respect. It is about not being fired from your job because of how you look or whom you share your apartment with. It is about being able to tell your doctors your full medical history without fear. It is about being able to protect your partner and share benefits, taxes, home loans, and health insurance. It is about being able to approach the law as a citizen, rather than with fear. It is about being able to be free of violence. It is about, ironically, being able to forget. To forget that one’s being gay or lesbian or transgendered is just one part of one’s identity, rather than everything that one is. In India today, you cannot forget. You cannot forget your caste if you are a Dalit, your gender if you are a woman, your religion if you are not Hindu or your sexuality if you are not heterosexual. The right to forget is a freedom. Pride is the right to fold sexuality into our everyday, to let it be part of us but not define us, and certainly not define us as a despised, abnormal “other”.

... contd.