Tag: Pride Month

Pride Month 2023: History, significance of this festival of diversity and inclusion

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Pride month is celebrated in many countries across the globe in June every year. This annual celebration is aimed at creating awareness about the plight of the LGBTQ+ community and to end all kinds of discrimination against them. Pride month is also an opportune time to embrace diversity and create more inclusive societies where the LGBTQ+ community can also enjoy equal rights.

Pride month is a time to honour the progress made in the pursuit of LGBTQ+ rights, spread awareness about the challenges that the community still faces, and promote inclusivity and acceptance. June 28 is marked as Pride Day every year.

History

Pride month is essentially a tribute to those who were involved in the Stonewall riots. The history of pride month can be traced back to these riots. In June 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn gay bar in New York City’s Greenwich Village. This raid triggered a week of violent clashes on Christopher Street between the police and the patrons of the Stonewall Inn.

In the United States, the Stonewall riots ignited a long struggle to bring lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people into the mainstream. This incident proved to be a watershed event in the history of gay rights in the US. It can be said that the incident became a catalyst for a global movement for LGBTQ+ rights.

Bill Clinton became the first US president to officially recognise Pride month in the year 1999 and 2000. President Barack Obama designated the site of the 1969 Stonewall riots as a national monument in 2016.

Significance

While Pride month served as a public celebration, it is also an opportunity to demand action on specific issues such as the AIDS epidemic and same-sex marriage.

New York City’s Pride march is one of the highlights of the month. It was first held on June 28, 1970.

This year, the theme for New York City’s official Pride march is ‘Strength in Solidarity.’

LGBTQ+ communities organise parades, marches, rallies, and other events to celebrate diversity and promote acceptance throughout June. These marches and rallies often feature vibrant displays of rainbow flags, which have become a symbol of the LGBTQ+ community.

Pride month also seeks to educate the public about LGBTQ+ history, rights, and the ongoing struggle for equality.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

How My Brother Nikhil and Aligarh changed the lens for LGBTQIA+ representation in Bollywood

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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There is a scene in Hansal Mehta’s 2016 film Aligarh in which a young journalist Deepu Sebastian, played by a disarmingly elfin Rajkummar Rao, asks Manoj Bajpayee’s Professor RS Siras about his paramour. “Was he your lover?” Deepu questions him as the two sail through the river Ganga in Aligarh on a hand-rowed boat.

Irritated, Siras replies, “Why do you guys get stuck on words? Try to understand love sometimes too. It’s a beautiful word. You are making it sound like a dirty word. I have a problem with this.”

Washed in white, it’s a quiet scene that’s both pristine and pivotal. For it is in this scene that Siras’s backstory is finally revealed to us. Mehta chooses this rare, unguarded moment between the freshly-anointed journalist and the sexagenarian professor to let us into Siras’s opacity.

Though Aligarh shows a few intimate scenes from the fateful night of February 8, 2010, when two men forcefully break into Siras’s apartment and film him having consensual sex with a local rickshaw puller, the film’s idea of a lonely 64-year-old homosexual man trying to find companionship is largely poetic, romantic. Aligarh reminded me a lot of My Brother Nikhil—another landmark film based on the life of Dominic D’Souza, a Goan swimmer who was the state’s patient zero (the first documented case) for HIV. Starring Sanjay Suri and Juhi Chawla in lead roles, it documents his life from 1986 to 1994, a time when there was little awareness about the virus and its spread. It marked the directorial debut of Onir, one of the few out-and-proud gay filmmakers in the Hindi movie-making business.

Through Nikhil, the 2005 film shows how he, who was once a local hero, crumbles under familial, professional, and social ostracisation and shame after he contracts HIV. Despite the story of a real person, the film has the mandatory disclaimer in the beginning declaring it a work of fiction, thus reducing lived struggles and sufferings to a figment of an imagination overrun.  

Aligarh’s case isn’t too different either. Although Mehta uses the real names of professor RS Siras and several others, stages the story in and around the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU) where Siras taught Marathi, and closely follows his misadventures in the last few months of his life, this film opens with a disclaimer too. It says no identification with actual persons, institutions, and places should be inferred. What a travesty.  

Had Onir or Mehta not started their films with these all-too-important disclaimers, they’d have never been able to release them. As a recourse, Onir shot My Brother Nikhil as a documentary, giving it the urgency, the poignancy it merits. His film’s disclaimer may say whatever, he made sure he told people it was based on a real story when he was promoting it around its release. He does it even today. In his new memoir, I Am Onir and I Am Gay, he writes in detail how difficult it was for him to find financiers and distributing partners to make and release My Brother Nikhil. This was when the film does not have any scene that could potentially make you uncomfortable. No holding hands, no peck on the cheek, not even a coming-out scene. In fact, the film does not even reveal how Nikhil got HIV. 

Onir was aware that his debut release may have to deal with stigma, much like the man whose story it was telling did. Therefore, he packaged it as a family film, and told it as an emotional brother-sister story with homosexuality and HIV awareness at its core. And yet, no one went to watch My Brother Nikhil. Unsurprisingly, Aligarh under-performed at the box office too.  

I couldn’t help but notice another eerie commonality between the two films. Despite coveted wins, both their protagonists die tragic, premature deaths. Though the sports authority asks him to leave and offices refuse to hire him, Nikhil finds gainful employment in music and activism in his last days. He even finds his way back home, now reconciled with his parents who had shunned him after finding out about his sexual preference and HIV.

As for Professor Siras, he wins the case against AMU that sacked him on moral grounds after his sex video got public, forcing the management to reinstate him as the head of the Department of Classical Modern Indian Languages. However, Siras was found dead in mysterious circumstances a day before the court’s order reached the university.

It is because films like My Brother Nikhil and Aligarh were made at the time that they were that several other movies and shows such as Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga, Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan, Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui, Badhaai Do, Geeli Pucchi, Sacred Games, and Made in Heaven could follow. Baai, Mehta’s short film in Amazon Prime Video’s recent anthology series Modern Love Mumbai shows its lead gay pair getting married, a rare feat in Indian cinema and society. Badhaai Do has its lavender couple fighting for their right to adopt. The film ends with the two pairs performing a holy hawan for their newborn adopted infant.  

We sure have covered some distance in the last 17 years since My Brother Nikhil’s release. However, we still have an arduous journey ahead. More LGBTQIA+ stories are finding ground today but we are seeing them from the heterosexual gaze. Barring Onir, all other directors and actors in the many films I’ve mentioned are cis-gendered. Hypocrisy much?

I recently did an interview with Onir and he told me how even after 17 years in movies, he still struggles to finance his films and how despite the streaming outbreak in the last five years, no platforms approach him for work or respond to his pitch calls. As another pride month nears an end, we need to move beyond celebrations and parades. We need to do the obvious, that which has been long overdue—move our entitled ass off, make room, and let the folks of the LGBTQIA+ community be the heroes for their own stories.

Read other pieces by Sneha Bengani here.

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Life as queer individual: How far behind is India from the US

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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June is celebrated as Pride Month around the world. It started in the US to mark the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in Manhattan and eventually spread across the globe. The awareness about different sexual and gender identities has increased over the years, thanks to the efforts of queer individuals and allies, but the LGBTQIA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, (questioning), intersex, asexual, and (agender)) community is still grappling for equality.   

Pride: Consciousness of one’s own dignity

“Pride to me is representation, getting the stories out there. Generating awareness, yes, but also celebrating how far we have come,” says Kittu Pannu. 

Kittu Pannu is a teacher in New York. Born and raised in New Orleans, Pannu came out as gay to his parents in 2013. “They told me ‘We’ll love you no matter what’ but they didn’t really understand or fully accept it. Our relationship was strained for about a year.” 

Seeing how his mother’s friends continued showering him with love, Pannu said his mother realised that her fears of him being mistreated and not accepted by society, in general, started to calm, and she realised that it was healthier to just accept him for who he is. Acknowledging the importance of his family’s support, Pannu said, “I’m very blessed in that sense because that’s not the case with most people”

He however added that it takes time. “People of the community need to have patience and understanding. It may not work out the way you want it to, but just because that’s the case, it does not mean it’s not worth sharing who you are.”

Sriram Koppikar moved to the US 20 years ago to escape the abuse he faced back home for his identity. After a fresh start, he explored his sexuality, and started coming out to trusted friends. Five years ago, he came out to his family, who had already figured it out and readily accepted it. “Today I am an openly gay man living happily on my own terms.”

Queer society – India vs the US

A general perception is that the Western world, especially most parts of the US, is more accepting of different gender and sexual identities than India. While it can’t be said that the people and law are perfect when it comes to providing equal rights to queer individuals, civil society in the US is more open to discussions around the fundamental rights of the community than in India. “It is definitely better in the US than back home, I can tell you that,” Koppikar said. 

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in the United States, makes employment and workplace discrimination against any employee of the LGBTQIA community a punishable offence. While a similar counterpart is present for transgenders in India, it is not implemented as strictly as in the US.  

Koppikar said, “It is hard to tell if those who are accepting or ‘seem’ to be accepting of LGBTQ+ folks are as a result of the strict laws or if they genuinely feel so from within. I honestly don’t care as long as they are respectful.” He added that he’s sceptical because some of those who bullied him in India are living as proud allies in the US. “Not once have they had the courage to apologise to me for pushing me to the brink of suicide.”

Pannu, however, said that even though the US prohibits such employment discrimination, employers find some way or the other to discriminate against queer employees. “There have been professional opportunities that I’ve lost out on because of my sexuality,” he added. 

Both Pannu and Koppikar underlined the importance for LGBTQIA individuals in the US to live in states that predominantly vote Democrats and stay in bigger cities. 

Pannu visited India in 2017 and again in 2022. Talking about the changes, he said, “There’s been a pretty big shift in terms of openness. In Chandigarh, I was able to meet and dance with other LGBT people in what was perceived to be a ‘straight’ club. Things were relaxed, and people were a lot more accepting than I was expecting them to be. I was able to have drinks, smile, maybe flirt a little, basically everything I would do at a nightclub in New York.” 

He, however, added, “I don’t know if that’s true for all kinds of cities in India.” 

Utkarsh Kumar, an advocate and partner at a Delhi-based law firm Versatilis Partners, said that the debate in India on the community and their rights has been restricted to a niche section of civil society. 

Also Read: Pride Month: Are companies doing enough to create inclusive workplaces?

According to him, though there is a growing debate on the rights of LGBTQIA individuals in the Indian civil society, the same is still years behind the levels reached in the West. “This is more attributed to the cultural taboo around sex and sexuality in India. The debate is, though, picking momentum,” Kumar said.

Koppikar said, “I like the fact that LGBTQ+ folks have that sense of power here in the US, which we often don’t seem to have back in India.” Talking about acceptance among the Indian community in the US, Pannu narrated a heartwarming incident when an acquaintance asked him about his marriage plans. “This relative asked me if I had a girlfriend. When I told her that I only date guys, instead of stopping the conversation, she went on to ask if I had a boyfriend and when should they start planning the wedding.”  

Is there a change?

One of the five judges, part of the constitution bench that read down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code in 2018, Justice Indu Malhotra had said, “History owes an apology… for the delay in providing redressal for the ignominy and ostracism that they suffered through the centuries”.

But, Delhi-based accessory designer Akassh K Aggarwal, questioned what was rectified that was wrong in the history? “Did we get our rights then and there, why were they left out? Why were maternal/paternal rights left out? Why was the right to get married left?”

Aggarwal further said, “This idea of the coming generation being more empathetic and more accepting is a misconception. I see homophobia and discrimination like never before.”

Koppikar and Pannu, however, had a different view. “My nephew and nieces back in India are very supportive, just like the rest of my family. I have personally not met or heard of younger generation folks engaging in any kind of bigotry towards LGBTQ+ people,” Koppikar said.  

Pannu concurred, “These are just 50-60 Indian kids I’m talking about, but in terms of my interactions with kids from my family in India, I’ve never faced any hatred.” He believes that it depends on the conversation a child sees in the household. “If children are told that differences between people are okay and that you should be accepting and loving of all people regardless of what their religion, sexuality, or race is, you’re raising children who are then going to put that energy into the world.”

About the younger generation in the US, Pannu said that as a teacher, he has seen that unlike before, students pick on each other for their behaviours and characteristics rather than their identities.

However, Pannu highlights that while he has observed a positive change, there are still a lot of pockets, in the US where bigotry and hatred still lie. He recounted how he was called a ‘faggot’, a demeaning term used for gay men. “This would have happened a lot more if I was in the southern part,” he added.

Both men avouched that most Americans and Indian-Americans are genuinely more accepting of differences in people.

The way ahead

“Perception can change through you and me. Us coming out and saying who we are and other people being allies and talking about us. It is the courtship of having allies around the community; going together and taking forward the cause,” said Aggarwal. “The idea of me coming out and saying I’m gay is – I’m normal and it’s okay to be a queer”. 

Talking about the importance of parental support, Aggarwal said, he doesn’t need people to love him as who he is, he rather needs them to love their child for who he/she/they are or can be. “So, the introspection is would you let this be a part of your own home, or would you pick out your own child for being queer,” Aggarwal said. 

There are a lot of things to be done, according to Koppikar. He believes that greater awareness of sexuality and sexual identity is required. Pannu said that what the community is trying to do, and should continue to do is to make sure that the rights are kept. “It’s one thing to fight for it and another thing to maintain it. What’s important is to remember to not just fight for the rights, but to fight to maintain them,” Pannu said.

Talking about the involvement of courts in securing rights for the community in India, Utkarsh Kumar points out that while the judiciary can right the legal wrongs, it is not a forum for correction of social wrongs. “The onus lies on the parliament and state assemblies. Courts have however urged the parliament to debate and discuss laws enabling the exercise of fundamental rights of the community and access to maternal and paternal rights. The abovementioned lack of public debates and consensus over the issue fails to provide the required incentive needed for political parties and lawmakers to formulate such provisions for LGBTQ+ communities.”

“While the judiciary has passed a number of judgements enabling the access to rights of LGBTQ+ communities, the lawmakers still need to develop a willpower to put them into motion,” Kumar added.

Also Read: Onir: It really surprises me that even after so many years, I still face the same resistance 

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Onir: It really surprises me that even after so many years, I still face the same resistance

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

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Onir is one of the few openly gay filmmakers in the Hindi film industry who has not shied away from accepting his identity even if it meant brickbats, hate, and a never-ending struggle for acceptance.

Originally from Bhutan, he was called Anirban Dhar before he started using Onir as his professional name with the release of his first film, My Brother Nikhil, in 2005. Starring Sanjay Suri, Juhi Chawla, and Purab Kohli in important roles, it was a story of a young swimmer navigating life as a gay man in a deeply prejudiced society, who prematurely dies of AIDS. 

Today, several films later, he is ready to share his poignant story that cuts across varied landscapes—Thimphu, Calcutta, Berlin, Paris, and finally Bombay. His memoir, I Am Onir and I Am Gay, traces the journey of a 53-year-old homosexual filmmaker from when was a young boy living in the idyllic mountain nation with his parents and two siblings to finally finding out what it takes to not live a lie and make dreams happen. 

In this pride month exclusive, Onir talks about his new book, which he has co-written with his elder sister — screenwriter-editor Irene Dhar Malik — the perils of claiming his identity and rightful place in a deeply homophobic world, casting a queer actor in the lead role in his upcoming film Pine Cone, his enduring friendship with actor Sanjay Suri, and how, despite more number of queer stories being told now, not much has changed in the last 17 years since he made his directorial debut.   

Q. You have co-written the book with your sister. How involved was she in the writing process?

A. It went off quite smoothly. I would write the first draft and I would send it to her. Especially about childhood, there was a lot of detailing, which I am a little bad with. I’d get mixed up and she’d put things correctly. We started writing during the lockdown. So that was a good way of utilising time. I didn’t expect the first draft to happen as organically and smoothly as it did because as a writer I am very temperamental. There are times when I can write quickly and succinctly. But there are also times when I have a block and can’t write for months. This happens with my scripts too. If I get stuck, I get really, really stuck — for years sometimes. But thankfully, that didn’t happen while writing this book. I was afraid because it was not a planned process. I simply started writing and then it just flew. I’m glad it went that way.

Q. Why write an autobiography or a memoir right now? What about the things that you’ll do from here on?

A. It was quite accidental. I had approached my agent to get the rights to The Carpet Weaver, the first LGBTQIA+ novel from Afghanistan. I was really keen to make a film on it. While negotiating those rights, she kept insisting that it was time that I wrote and I thought it sounded as if I’m retiring, that why should I do it so early. I was very reluctant. But when I discussed it with my sister, she said, “Look, when you grew up, you didn’t have any reference points in life. And now, you are of the very few out-and-proud filmmakers.”

Even generally, not too many people are publicly saying they are gay. So many youngsters, struggling with their own journeys, message me on Twitter and Instagram, wanting to know how they are to come out, how it is to be out-and-proud. This is not a book that tells you how to come out or be, each of us has our own journeys, but it’s good to have a reference point. It’s good to have somewhere where your identity is valued and celebrated. That is what convinced me to write it, as my journey not only as an independent filmmaker but also as an out-and-proud gay man.

Q. In the book, you write, “My sexuality is a part of my identity, a very important one, but not the all-defining factor. I am gay. And more.” And yet a lot of your films revolve around homosexuality and your memoir is titled I Am Onir and I Am Gay. Do you feel limited by your sexuality? How does it play out?

A. It’s anyway bracketed. If you really think, most of my work is not about queer identity. More of my films deal with non-gay relationships. My Brother Nikhil was more about the brother-sister relationship, where the brother happens to be gay. It celebrates the equation between siblings. Bas Ek Pal (2006), Sorry Bhai! (2008), Kuchh Bheege Alfaaz (2018), and Chauranga (2014) have nothing to do with homosexuality. In I Am (2011), two of the four stories talk about themes related to LGBTQIA+. Shab (2017) had gay characters. So it’s not like that’s what most of my work is about. Why does no one ask a straight filmmaker why their work is mostly about straight people? So you anyway get compartmentalised, whether you like it or not.

Similarly, when we were deciding on the book’s title, people told me, “Onir your identity is not just that.” But tell me one book in India in which anyone has claimed their identity with pride, saying they are gay. Everyone is trying to “be subtle” or hide it as if it’s something to be ashamed of, as if you were a criminal. By celebrating this part of my identity, I’m sending out a message to not just the community but the larger world that I want to claim my space which you are denying me.

Because the truth is, till four years ago, we were criminalised by law. Have you ever heard anywhere in the world of a straight person being criminalised by law? Today, even after decriminalisation, we are not treated as equals by law, different agencies, society, family, and very often, even by friends. That’s the reason why it’s more important. People constantly shy away. But why? I would shy away from my identity if I were ashamed of it. This, I feel, is something that everyone should be proud of. Not even proud, it’s just…natural. So why not claim it when everyone is constantly trying to deny it?

Q. In the book, you talk about your friendship with Sanjay Suri with a lot of love and affection. You’ve also dedicated the book to him along with your family members. How has your equation with him evolved over the years? When are you guys making a film together next?

I have just completed shooting a film called Pine Cone, in which Sanjay is one of the producers. We were supposed to start We Are, the sequel to I Am, which has got delayed, but we will make it. Sanjay and his family are like family to me. Sanjay’s wife, who has worked with me ever since My Brother Nikhil, is even now working with me. I blindly trust her. Even his sons. From friends, we have become family over the years. My bond with them is very precious to me.

Q. You have cast a queer actor as the lead in Pine Cone. How important was it to do this? Also, what’s the film about?

A. It’s the journey of a gay man through three decades of his life — when he is a teenager coming to terms with his sexuality, which I have shot in Sikkim and it’s set in 1999 when the first gay pride happened in Calcutta. Then 10 years later in Mumbai when he is 28, trying to make something of his career, he encounters love, lust, and desire. Then finally when he’s 38. This part is set in Kochi in 2019, one year after the Supreme Court verdict. He has now become a cynical man because even after being accepted by the law, society at large is still not accepting. The film is about how he navigates through all these different phases.

For me, Pine Cone was important to make because I constantly see films being made about our lives through the heteronormative gaze, which is all about the heteronormative world accepting us. But why should my existence be only dependent on the heteronormative world accepting me? I have a life. I have desires. I have love. And those are independent. Why are we always looking for validation? I want Pine Cone to not take baby steps toward acceptance because I am not taking baby steps for my life. I’m 53 years old. I have lived my life. The shortcomings of a lot of people not accepting us will not dictate my life. That’s how this film started. It would be the first of its kind because of the way it explores desire.

I am very happy that my lead actor is out-and-proud queer. I got to know about it after I cast him which made me happier because I didn’t cast him only because of his sexuality. I think it is important because when I was casting, most straight actors who I approached for this role would either say that they are uncomfortable, or that it wouldn’t be the right move to do this film at this point in their career, or they would just not reply. I always wonder why straight people feel so insecure about portraying a gay man on screen? They don’t feel as insecure when playing a negative role or a criminal.

So it was important for me to look out for and cast the people who belong to the community and feel empowered and celebrate art. That feeling will come across each frame. When I was working with Vidur Sethi, I felt that energy; the energy of someone who has lived a life I’ve lived and who was not trying to understand what it feels like. He was living it and therefore brought so much more than just understanding to the character. Even for We Are, I’ve cast a transwoman for the role of a transwoman. I’d like to do this more often.

Q. Queerness is everywhere in films and on streaming now. Films like Aligarh, Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui, Badhaai Do, Cobalt Blue, Gangubai Kathiawadi, Geeli Pucchi, and web shows like Sacred Games, Made in Heaven, and Mai. Do you think a lot has changed in how such films are made, viewed, and received since you made My Brother Nikhil 17 years ago?

A. We are the largest film industry in the world but look at the number of queer films we are making. It is really skewed. I also wonder why even after 2018, there is so little work by out-and-proud queer filmmakers on OTT platforms and elsewhere? Who is feeling insecure if we tell our stories the way we want to?

During pride month, everyone celebrates My Brother Nikhil and I Am, but when I send the proposal for We Are or Pine Cone to studios or platforms, there is absolute silence. Perhaps they’ll celebrate these films after another 10 years. But when I’m making them, I feel there is a sense of discomfort because probably these people are struggling to accept us. The heteronormative gaze on queer lives does not reflect or tell our stories the way they need to be told. I feel much more should happen than what is happening.

Look at Made in Heaven. A lot of the story was very similar to the track that I had in My Brother Nikhil and I Am. Even if it is very similar to what I have done, I don’t see me being approached by any platforms and studios for work and I wonder why. Is it because I am out and proud? Are these people homophobic? I don’t know. It really surprises me that even after so many years, I still face the same resistance.

Q. You are very vocal about your views on Twitter, for which you often get a lot of hate. All this mindless trolling can really mess with one’s sense of self and sanity. How do you keep at it?

A. I used to get really worked up earlier when people would say stuff like you should be beheaded with your family. But then I look at all the women, be it Swara Bhasker, Rana Ayyub, or other women journalists. The kind of abuse and trolling they have to face, compared to that, mine is nothing. The kind of nonsense they face, nobody should have to. They give me courage. They show me how important it is to keep on speaking up.

Read other pieces by Sneha Bengani here.

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3 Mins Read

Thursday’s filing dispelled some doubts, though Musk still has work to do. He and his advisers will spend the coming days vetting potential investors for the equity portion of his offer, according to people familiar with the matter

KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow

Pride Month: Are companies doing enough to create inclusive workplaces?

KV Prasad Jun 13, 2022, 06:35 AM IST (Published)

Listen to the Article (6 Minutes)

Pride Month is being celebrated across the globe in June to mark the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in Manhattan, a tipping point for the Gay Liberation Movement in the US. While the world has become more aware and accepting of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) community, a lot needs to be done to embrace diversity in workplaces.

A recent survey conducted by job listings platform Indeed found that 71 percent of respondents feel their organisational diversity and inclusion policies are found wanting.

Nearly half of all the respondents, 48 percent to be exact, reported no discrimination at work. However, a few pockets of disagreement persisted as 27 percent of women, 23 percent of disabled, and 21 percent of employees belonging to the LGBTQ+ community said discrimination exists, according to the survey shared by Indeed with CNBCTV18.com

Meanwhile, 41 percent believed change is incremental and would happen over a horizon of more than a year.

Individual experiences changed over time and geographies

“You cannot separate who you are as a person from what you do as a professional, so bringing the whole person to work is more productive,” says Pooja Jana (she/her), androgynous queer and senior data engineer, Wells Fargo India and Philippines.

Jana joined the company in August 2021 and says there is a vast array of programmes when it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I). She feels safe and secure knowing she works where there is zero-tolerance for any kind of discrimination.

Also Read: How Pride Month is being celebrated around the world – See pictures

But Ketty Avashia did not feel as welcomed when he entered the workforce in the late 1990s when the mention of “LGBTQ+” was a big taboo.

“It didn’t feel safe or comfortable to publicly embrace my identity. So, I tried to navigate that world as a woman,” the 44-year-old transman, who is vice-president and platform integration lead at Wells Fargo India and Philippines, told CNBCTV18.com.

“If you were different and did not conform to the socially accepted hetero-normative behaviour, chances of being sidelined in the professional and personal world were real,” he said. “It would manifest in many ways, including not being put in client-facing roles or having your contributions go unrewarded. Early in my career, I faced a situation where client appreciation for my work as a programmer did not make it into my appraisal, and I received less-than-positive manager feedback.”

Following this, Avashia moved to the US in the mid-2000s, where for the first time, he could express himself without much blowback. “I could embrace my identity for the first time publicly. It was so liberating.” He returned a few years later to increased social acceptance across the board in India, too.

The 2018 Supreme Court ruling

September 2018 marked a watershed moment for LGBTQ+ rights with the Indian Supreme Court’s landmark judgement. On September 6, 2018, the top court decriminalised homosexuality and overruled its own 2013 decision and partially struck down Section 377, a controversial British-era law that banned consensual gay sex. The ban is irrational, indefensible and manifestly arbitrary, the court noted.

“Following this, today’s Gen Z LGBTQ+ tech workforce has witnessed a tectonic shift in how it defines itself and what they expect from their workplace. With higher levels of acceptance today, Gen Z, who will soon make up a majority of the workforce, will only amplify the gains made so far in the DE&I space to create a workplace culture that is even more inclusive and accepting of multiple facets of sexual orientation and gender identity and expression (SOGIE),” said Avashia.

Did the pandemic bring any change?

COVID-19 has made employers tweak their policies more in favour of the LGBTQ+ community than any other category of employees, the Indeed survey claimed. According to the report, 52 percent of all employers, including 94 percent of small-scale organisations, say that their modified policy gives the LGBTQ+ a fairer representation than earlier.

Seventy percent of employers surveyed believe that the policies they have instituted are intact and do not need further improvement and only 23 percent (nearly a third of which are small businesses) think there is scope for their DE&I policies to be made more effective.

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However, 34 percent of employees surveyed claim that the pandemic has not impacted how their organisation manages diversity and inclusion. In fact, nearly a third (31 percent) of employee respondents said their organisations had gotten worse at it.

BFSI (40 percent), automobile (38 percent), consumer durables (35 percent) and healthcare and pharma (33 percent) sectors, across Bengaluru, Delhi/NCR, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Pune contribute to this sentiment, according to the survey.

What must companies do?

Earlier this month, Michael Page, in its report The GreatX, said that companies would need to consider factors like gender, ethnic groups, sexual orientation, education, age, and people with disabilities if they want to build a workforce that’s truly diverse and inclusive.

Most pressingly, India needs to fix its gender pay gap issue, most companies need to start committing to medium and long strategies and set quantifiable targets to ensure they can move the needle on DE&I.

The report added that DE&I must start from the top, meaning leaders must embrace such values authentically.

Also Read: 60% employees are ready to take a pay cut for better office culture and work-life balance

Meanwhile, according to the Indeed survey, 77 percent of the employers believe that not prioritising Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging (DI&B) could adversely affect their organisational performance. “Even on the jobseeker front, Indeed’s data shows, 73 percent of employees wish to work at organizations that actively promote DI&B initiatives, highlighting the importance of such policies,” said Sashi Kumar, Head of Sales, Indeed India.

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KV Prasad Journo follow politics, process in Parliament and US Congress. Former Congressional APSA-Fulbright Fellow