Visual Narrative: Different Strokes: How Thailand and India Do Queerness

Travelling in Thailand sometime ago, I was struck by the Pride signage everywhere. In subways, malls, theatres, highways – bright rainbow colours, bands of bright diversity greet you. Thailand is also most sought-after by patients seeking gender-reassignment operations.

On the ground, though, the country still has some way to go beyond the optics. A traditional society makes it difficult outside Bangkok to be open about queer identity. Same-sex relationships are legal, but don’t enjoy many of the rights that straight citizens do. Gay men cannot be blood donors. Thai Red Cross deems this policy an avoidance of risk, rather than discriminatory practice.

Given that the Thai state has at least tried to create an ecosystem of support, though, it doesn’t seem such as an impossible thing to be queer in Thailand. In India, the big cities see some openness, and legal status has had a long battle, but in most states, the environment to live and work in safety simply doesn’t exist.

Little seems to have changed fundamentally in the twenty-five years since I met volunteers at Sakhi, a lesbian support group in Delhi, to do a story on their work. In those days, nobody even knew the word queer; and the few men and women who had opened up were treated as the Western stereotype.

But the overflowing mail boxes at Sakhi’s little office told another tale of rural India. Postcards, inlands, envelopes of all kinds, from what looked like every village or mofussil town in India. Women were reaching out, asking for help in many languages, mostly in Hindi. Telling their stories of being born a lesbian in a society which couldn’t or wouldn’t relate to their identity, their predicament. Bad enough to be a gay man here, but being a queer woman was downright dangerous. Many lived their identity so secretly that I was astounded by their courage in even writing to this support group.

It has stayed with me; the memory of that courage, that passion. And I remembered them anew when I saw this rainbow bridge in Chiang Mai.