Another Pride Month draws to a close. From where I am located at the moment, among many other things, it means several articles on ‘Friendship Walk ‘99’, retrospectively touted as India’s first rainbow pride walk. By now it has become an annual ritual. The customary photograph of the men in yellow in front of a gazebo in Park Circus Maidan in Kolkata, interviews with some of those who walked, particularly, Pawan Dhall, incidentally, also the Editor and Managing Trustee of Varta Trust. One could wonder why this ritual keeps repeating itself every year despite so much online content as well as writings about the walk. But, given the short attention span of our Instagram reel-infused worlds, perhaps repetition is important. However, this piece is not about rehashing the events of July 2, 1999. Rather, let us explore the origin story of the walk in an attempt to open a different possibility of what new meanings might we make under the signs of ‘friendship’ and ‘walk’.
In an anthology, Gulabi Baghi (Queer Ink, 2019), the editor owais contributes a comprehensive essay about the planning for the walk, how it played out on the D-Day, and its aftermath. At one point he talks about how some activists had misgivings about the walk, but inspired by Gandhi’s ‘Dandi March’, owais refused to give up. He writes, “… told them how all the leading lights of the freedom movement had opposed Gandhiji’s plan to make salt at Dandi. ‘Make salt!’ they had snorted. However, in retrospect, there was no other event that focused the Indian polity on its bondage as well as this simple act did.” While for the activists at the Kolkata café where this conversation happened, it was difficult to imagine themselves as queer avatars of Gandhi, owais threatened to walk alone if nobody joined. Eventually, everyone walked and as they say the rest is history.
But history is a conflictual discipline. We know this now more than ever. Was ‘Dandi March’ really the most important event in the history of India’s struggle for independence? Why are we not taught about the ‘Mahad Satyagraha’ of 1927 that predates the ‘Dandi March’? What if our ideas of friendship and walking together in difference were inspired by Babasaheb Ambedkar, the architect of the Indian Constitution, the man who led the ‘Mahad Satyagraha’ for the basic right of the Dalits to drink water from the Chavdar Tank? What is really freedom when the majority of the toiling masses of a country face segregation every day?
As the ‘Mahad Satyagraha’ enters its centenary celebrations, it is more important than ever to question our origin stories of mainstream articulations of queerness. Not necessarily to doubt or question the intentions of senior activists, but to expand our imagination beyond queer exceptionalism. After all, how do we separate the stigma of sexuality from the violence of caste? And silence or obfuscation of history is also violence, no less than non-acknowledgment or denial of queerness.
Perhaps if our starting point was untouchability, then a different history of sexuality could be etched in the mainstream conscious, that is neither reducible to Victorian homophobia (read British colonialism) or a mythic golden Hindu past. The violent segregation that our communities experienced during the height of the HIV pandemic and later during the COVID-19 pandemic could also go beyond simple accounts of sexual stigma. Let’s just look around. From the imposition of diets to who we love, a politics of moral purity is gathering more and more strength every day. Therefore, to understand this politics of purity, we must read and follow Ambedkar. Can we resolve to eschew purity as it circulates in our everyday lives? From the parameters of desirability to diet to who become our icons?
A starting point could be to question everything that we inherit as wisdom and legacy. Let’s return to Gandhi here. Not as the icon of the ‘Dandi March’, but as someone with complex desires. Isn’t it rather queer that a figure who espoused celibacy became an inspiration for a group of queer men (and a few allies) claiming public spaces? While politically I do not believe that every reclamation always lands, owais’ essay reminded me of a hushed phase of Gandhi’s life. A phase that deserves attention. I would refer the reader to Joseph Lelyveld’s book Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India. The book is banned in Gujarat. It gives a vivid account of Gandhi’s deep friendship with the German-Jewish wrestler Hermann Kallenbach (later a Zionist).
A lot can be said or speculated about the nature of this friendship. The Indian government bought all their letters. Some historians note that not everything is publicly accessibly. Some letters are missing, leading to more speculation. Each speculation is a new possibility that goes beyond stale celebration or hagiography. In light of Gandhi’s dubious philosophy on sexual purity and his indefensible position on caste, perhaps this friendship adds a new layer. Just saying, in the spirit of not freezing the men in yellow in that gazebo, a photo we see each year. There is always a new angle to explore and more to learn if we care. And we must care.
With that signing off another edition of the rainbow month in the centenary year of the ‘Mahad Satyagraha’!
Scroll through www.friendshipwalk20.wordpress.com (a website created to mark the 20th anniversary of ‘Friendship Walk ‘99’ in 2019) to read why and how the walk came to be organized – Editor.
