In the name of love

Yesterday saw the first Queer Azadi march since June’s landmark Delhi High Court decision, effectively decriminalising homosexuality in India. There were a good 2,000 people there, and it was a riot – of colours and sounds, not of the Stonewall variety. In fact the police were positively helpful, happily stopping the traffic to let the march through, which gave the activists a chance to assail the poor trapped car drivers, bus passengers and ox-cart pushers with their assorted paraphernalia. I saw an elderly Muslim taxi driver earnestly reading a queer political pamphlet, pausing only to give me a big cheerful smile.

As you’d imagine, all manner of humanity was represented: from the serious middle-aged academics to the go-go boys, from hundreds of hijras in their best saris to sloganeering lesbian activists. The swine flu outbreak didn’t dampen spirits either: in fact it was an opportunity, to create fabulous multi-coloured protective masks. A lot of people wear masks on the march anyway, because they don’t want their faces to end up plastered over flickr or the Times of India or anywhere else their families and employers might be looking.

Azadi means ‘liberty’, which is a nobler ambition than ‘pride’ I think. Pride used to be a Deadly Sin, of course (there’s an obvious cheap gag but even I’m not that sick. Not today, anyway).

But more than that, there’s an energy to the queer movement in India that disappeared long ago in the West: Pride in the UK is a bit about raising money for good causes and a lot about getting pissed or laid or both, with the politics understandably long forgotten. In India, however, there’s a fight to be won: and it feels – for the first time, I suspect – that the good guys might just be on the winning side.