It’s Indian and Pakistani independence day time. Zindabad! On the Pakistan side, Raza Rumi has a sobering reflection here; a look at Pakistaniat is also recommended. On the Indian side, not much is going on yet in the blog world that I’ve seen, since the actual day is tomorrow. (If anyone has recommended I-Day reading to recommend, please post the link below.)
In New York, they’re having the annual India Day Parade this Sunday, with a couple of Indian A-List celebs (i.e., Shilpa Shetty) airlifted in to add a little glamor to what is otherwise, in my experience, a rather ho-hum affair.
The usual slew of groups will be marching in the parade, from the “Telugu Literary and Cultural Association” to the VHP-A (yes, them again). One group that petitioned to march but was denied is SALGA, the South Asian Lesbian and Gay Association. SALGA has fought in the past to participate, and won that fight. However, the refusal this year carries an extra sting, since it was only a few weeks ago that the Delhi High Court threw out the old ban on homosexuality in India (as I understand it, the Supreme Court later upheld the Delhi High Court’s ruling, making the decriminalization of homosexuality a national fact). Here is what a SALGA supporter named Sapna Pandya wrote in an Op-Ed she has been circulating:
On Thursday, July 2nd, I awoke to very exciting news from my native country of India. A decision was being made 10,000 miles away that would not only impact thousands upon thousands there, but also the community of Indians living in America. After over ten years of intense dedication and advocacy by lawyers, human rights advocates, public health professionals, civil society and many others, the Delhi High Court read down their decision to repeal Indian Penal Code Section 377. This antiquated law, left over from the British Raj, criminalized certain forms of sex that were defined as “against the order of nature,” among which consensual sex among two adults of the same sex was included. In other words, Section 377 made it illegal for gay Indians to have sex, but the Delhi High Court decided what many of us already knew was true: that such a law is unconstitutional and oppressive. This landmark decision, a true victory for human society as a whole and India in particular, was even beautifully linked to the ideals of equality and justice central to India’s freedom movement, as Justice Murlidharan quoted lines from Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s ‘Objective Resolution’ from December 13, 1946 in the official Delhi High Court ruling.
It is disturbingly ironic then, as the community gears up to celebrate India’s 62nd year of independence, that the Federation of Indians in America (FIA), host of the annual Indian Independence Day celebration in New York City, has decided to shut out the area’s Indian American gay community. The South Asian Lesbian and Gay Association (SALGA), a volunteer organization that has served the community for over ten years, submitted an application to participate in this year’s Independence Day festivities, only to be completely ignored and rebuffed by FIA. Despite SALGA’s participation in the same event in the past (which also only came about due to intense advocacy efforts, and at which only limited freedom of expression was enjoyed), the exclusion of SALGA this year of all years represents a backward move on the part of Indian American community organizing: a shameful reminder that while India may be moving forward on human rights issues, our immigrant community here is regressing to the point of ignoring its own members.
In case this bugs you, there is a protest scheduled to happen, though the location hasn’t yet been determined.
And there is a joint Sepia Mutiny/Ultrabrown meetup later in the evening, as already mentioned.
wow, that’s some bs. thanks for posting. please update with more info, action items, etc.
I probably should have included contact info. for FIA in the post itself:
FIA Contact Us.
Office: 163 Washington Valley Road, Suite 104, Warren, NJ 07059 Tel. : 732-369-6626 Fax : 732-369-6628 Email: info@fianynjct.org
I did email them to ask for an explanation of the decision two days ago, but they never responded to my query. FIA also apparently blew off SALGA’s request to join the parade, rather than formally reject it — and they are now simply not responding. To me it looks like they are just trying to brush the issue under the rug, and presume it will go away without ever having to make a distasteful sounding statement.
They are a private group, and I believe they can do whatever they want legally, but if they’re going to do this, they should come out and state that this is their policy.
Thanks for the post, Amardeep.
I’ve been involved in forcing FIA to include SALGA one year in the past. It essentially revolved around the local Community Board in the part of Manhattan the parade runs through forcing FIA to allow LGBT groups to be allowed in the march because they couldn’t hold the march without a permit from that Communtiy Board, and had become pro forma and mildly uncomfortable on race grounds. As a result, I am fairly shocked at this turn of events. Where I had left off was that the Community Board was going to institute a working policy that includes non-discrimination on sexual orientation grounds as a prerequisite. It would probably take about 10 phone calls (at most) to the Community Board to get the FIA to back down, though perhaps things have changed or there are technicalities I’m not aware of or this route has already been tried. I think it’s Community Board 8. There is also the police, who have to grant a sound permit, the Mayor’s office, which has political credibility on the line, and a few other agencies, As well as all of the celebrities and public figures involved. But I would contact SALGA to find out what the most appropriate strategy way to support is.
In any case, it might be more useful to have a public fight than to march in the parade in any case. The first way I learned about LGBT desis as a child was by reading in India Abroad or something like that about SALGA’s efforts to get into the Parade. Now I wouldn’t march in it (mainly out of laziness, though I would probably feel pretty uncomfortable there at this point in my life – I don’t even want to live in New York!).
Shameful behavior, especially since in India itself, LGBT citizens have just won a great victory with the repeal of section 377. I guess it’s another case of the dispora being more conservative than the “old country”.
90% of the people who march in these things are ugly Indians with guts. I dont want them to represent me. Can I petition to have better looking people at these things? When you have better looking people representing you then it presents a better image to outsiders.
An erudite discussion on the issue of Gays in parades (by the noted social commentator R. Peters) is available here
This is very sad. As someone said some of these diaspora types tend to be more conservative than Desis back home. ShallowThinker – there are some thoughts that are best confined to the nether regions of your brain and not typed without good judgement, relevance and discretion.
This is the quite pervasive phenomenon that just because something has been OUTLAWED, doesn’t mean society and social sensibilities catch up to it. Case in point dowries, caste sensibilities etc..and I dont think regular day to day Indians in India are waving rainbow flags just coz some act was repealed…
It is still a stigma to be considered gay or to openly say that you are. Shall we remember a nice little group in Delhi recently that held banners saying “ban Gay Sex”..
I find it amusing to imagine how “ban gay sex” would be upheld…do u bust into a room and prevent people from having sex?…how would u k now its happening?
I hope people will consider coming out to an event taking place tonight in New York City that aims to celebrate and recognize the diversity within the South Asian community…UNIFICATION: A DEMONSTRATION FOR PEACE, will celebrate the independence of both India and Pakistan by bridging the days (literally and figuratively) and call an end to violence, inequality, and oppression throughout the region. UNIFICATION starts tonight, August 14 at 10 pm (with a pre-show reception at 9 pm) and will end around 12:30 am on August 15, and features a great line-up of South Asian artists and performers including comedian Hari Kondabolu, musician/artist/writer Fawzia Afzal-Khan, and spoken word duo Brownstar revolution. Tickets here till 4 pm otherwise you can get tickets at the door.
Relax KolaNut.
I said that as a joke, as in, why stop at not letting gay people be apart of the parade in fear of them making you look bad and take it to not letting people who are not perfect 10’s participate in the parade because they might make you look bad.
This is an image thing, isnt it? And no group of people are as image conscious as Indian people.
Looks like I missed the irony. But you are point on with the image consciousness. It baffles me because homogeneous societies are generally image conscious – the Japanese, Turks etc.
Thanks for including the contact information, A.
just so you know, emails to the FIA contact address bounce.
Regular day to day Indians are also not a homogeneous group and have a variety of opinions. Actually, there are Pride parades in Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta, and I think Bangalore and possibly other places now. There are LGBT groups and parties in Delhi, Bombay, and other palces, and I was half out at my workplace in Delhi when I worked there, at an Indian-owned company with some ties to the U.S., but still staffed primarily by people who had lived their entire lives in India. I also wasn’t the only LGBT person who worked in the office.
I am not saying there isn’t a ton of homophobia in India or that you’re wrong in thinking that legal changes don’t amount to social changes like magic – just that we don’t really know what day to day Indians think about nearly anything, so we should ask or try to find out before we assume they think x y or z.
What did the bounce message say? Is the mailbox full? Anyway, I used the contact form, but who knows where that goes. Will try to provide more info. You can also always call the office.
My entirely subjective perspective has been that most regular people don’t think about it and don’t really care to talk about it. As long as it’s nobody in their family or close social circle they don’t care.
Awareness and pride parades can be a double-edged sword in that sense. On one hand it raises awareness and enhances acceptability among one section of the population. But on the other hand it polarizes people and makes the large mushy bunch of people in the middle who previously didn’t give a damn suddenly start to feel like they need to stake out a position. So people who once may have ignored the issue will now stridently oppose it.
It’s a tough tightrope to walk down, but we can all rest assured that the sensationalist media will guarantee that we will never ever strike an appropriate balance.
From 2005, Community Board 5 resolution:
In fact, this whole archive from CB 5 might have some stuff in it that might be interesting.
I think they should infiltrate the parade wearing baggy pants, bush shirts, and thick glasses with solid black frames, and then rip them all off to reveal body paint and leotards, with “Desi girl” blaring in the background just as the parade winds its way to Jaikishan Heights.
There’s already Queens Pride 🙂
Would they allow something like South Asian Straight People’s Association?
I don’t think so.
I was asked to post this by one of the organisers of the efforts to get SALGA included – there are things that you can do inside as well as contact information for several organisations / individuals. Apologies for the length,. Amardeep – it seemed important enough to post the whole thing or else I would have put it elsewhere.
Meanwhile, down here in New Zealand… our first Gay Indian Dance Party! link: http://www.gaynz.com/articles/publish/2/article_7710.php
Thanks for the updates, Dr. Anonymous. I was part of SALGA when I lived in NY a couple of years ago, and it’s a wonderful organization and easily one of the largest specifically South Asian LGBT groups in the country. Regardless of gay stereotypes that exist, SALGA represents and serves the South Asian community very well.
I’m definitely going to write to Shilpa Shetty — she has been one of very few in Bollywood to actually be outspoken for gay rights, even promoting Bombay’s first and only GLBT magazine.
SALGA marches in many Pride parades (Manhattan, Queens, Jersey City) — would there be a different reaction if the organization was rejected from one of these parades because of race?
Ummmm. Ummmm. How does one even respond to this? (crickets chirp in the background).
Well, you could point out that most South Asian organisations are basically South Asian Straight People’s Associations (or assume that members are straight anyway), but I think your response was just fine 🙂
In that case, why doesn’t the pigment-less mutiny have a blog? 😉
What’s amusing is when people conduct themselves in a discriminatory manner and then forget to take their contact information off the web 🙂
http://www.fianynjct.org/cms/Committee/2009ExecutiveCommittee/tabid/69/Default.aspx
FIA Executive Commitee
President: Dipak Patel 973-464-4515 dipakpatel@fianynjct.org
Executive Vice President Nirav Mehta 732-500-5165 niravmehta@fianynjct.org
Vice President Jaswant Mody 732-236-7084 jmody@yahoo.com
Secretary Haresh Hemrajani 732-766-8888 hareshhemrajani@fianynjct.org
Joint Secretary Deven Patel 732-710-1346 devenpatel@fianynjct.org
Treasurer Ahmed Shakir 917-822-2103 ahmedshakir@fianynjct.org
Immediate Past President Yashpal Soi 917-855-2057 ypsoi@aol.com
You can also find contact information for all their officials, including the people specifically in charge of the parade, at that website. However, I thought it would be most useful to identify a few key people.
Lets not give SRK any more crazy ideas.
lol @ straight people’s association, the whole world is a straight people’s association, unless explicitly stated otherwise
Hi,
Bay Area folks have set up a very nifty form so that you can e-mail all the FIA people at once at this address: http://citizenspeak.org/node/1720 Your message would say the following, though you can tailor it:
I wanted to let you guys know that the protest went really well. There was a good turnout. There were minimal problems with the cops and we got a lot of visibility. Both, Sapna and I were asked by several press members to give interviews. Also, most of the straight desi crowd was very supportive.
Just heard the protest on NPR. There was more coverage of the protests than of the Independence day itself for what it was worth
I’m posting news updates on this issue as they happen. If you’re interested, please see http://www.minalhajratwala.com/blog .
When the L and Gs were marching last time, I waved to them merrily: one young man in a nice, ultra gaudy lehenga, another doing a slightly hijda type dance. I waved and smiled nicely, I think. They looked at me in horror and ducked under veils…. Bemused, I thought maybe they were software engineers undermined by acknowledgment from aunties.
It’s 2009 and India is supposed to embody values of tolerance and pluralism. I can’t even believe SALGA was denied a place in the parade. I’m going to use the FIA form right now to write a letter.
In the spirit of the article, I came across a beautiful story in Punjabi about two gay women. It is on a forum called Punjabizm
It has had over 1300 hits, which shows that there are people who think this is okay…yet I have found out that this story has never been published elsewhere because the Indian media are either too afraid, find it contraversial, or ar plain prejudice…
Enjoy
http://www.punjabizm.com/forums-piaar-da-naan-manzoor-savroop-27634-5-1.html