Newsweek reports on the difficulties of being LGBT in India
“I know there are so many like me, who just want acceptance from their family, but don’t get it. They live a life hiding from a faceless entity, we call society.”
— 20-year-old Sudipta Das, in a story for Newsweek by Shaminder Dulai entitled “Back in the Shadows: The Perils of Being LGBT in India.”
Writes Dulai in the piece:
Years ago, it seemed like Indian society was becoming more tolerant. After decades of discrimination, an Indian high court decriminalized homosexuality in 2009. Whereas gays once lived in fear of discrimination or arrest, now they could move freely, report hate crimes and date whomever—with no public displays of affection of course. (This was still India after all, a place where kissing on screen remains taboo in Bollywood.) Progress came in waves and fear began to subside. Many gays in India decided to come out without fear of repercussions.
Today, however, gays and lesbians in India have once again been forced into the shadows. Roughly a year ago, a member of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist party, known as the BJP, challenged the 2009 law, and the U.S. Supreme Court overruled a lower court’s decision. As a result, many gays and lesbians in India live in fear of prosecution. In October, police arrested a 32-year-old engineer in Bangalore after his wife used a hidden camera to catch him having sex with a man. If convicted, he could wind up spending the rest of his life in prison and his parents, who arranged his marriage, could also face criminal charges. Elsewhere in India, a number of cases against gay men are moving through the courts as a police office had set up a string by luring them for dates using an online dating site.
Source/Photo: Newsweek.com
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