If many of these struggles sound familiar, it is because they are. In caste, class, religion, or sexuality, the line between acceptable/unacceptable, normal/abnormal, natural/unnatural and private/public is constructed in the same way. Recogni- sing these connections will help us build a politics that does not emerge from the bounded confines of one movement versus the other, but instead realises that all oppressions work through the same mechanisms of exclusion. This is what will bring the many non-gay marchers to Sunday’s Pride — a recognition that the city they want to live in for themselves is one which makes space for queer rights, and will, by extension, make space for other, linked freedoms, ones that are possibly closer to their lives.

No one believes that if the community wins the ongoing case in the Delhi High Court against Sec 377 India will change overnight. It is events like Pride that will take the battle for inclusion outside the courts into the spaces where queer people live their lives: families, homes, offices, buses, streets, and city spaces. On Sunday, the first step towards an inclusive city will be taken. All those who walk in it will walk for freedom — not just freedom for queer Delhi citizens, but for their own as well.

Gautam Bhan is a writer and civil rights activist

gautam.bhan@gmail.com