Kashish '16 overcast over rainbow's missing blue

The ongoing Kashish queer film festival has brought to focus fault-lines in the LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) movement. A movement which celebrates sexual diversity and gender variance and fights sexual orientation-based discrimination itself is being questioned for its own often-not-so-subtle discrimination on the basis of caste, class, region and language.

Filmmaker Moses Tulasi should know. His short film on intersectionality – Walking the Walk – uses the brutal murder of Pravlika, a trans-woman, in Hyderabad in March, to intertwine the lives of hijras, gays, lesbians, divorced women, Dalits, people of different castes, and sexualities with their politics and the politics around them.

Arrested on March 22 – along with students and faculty of Hyderabad Central University, while shooting for his film on suicide of research student Rohith Vemula – the director of the acclaimed documentary told dna: “Whether we want to access it or not, being queer gives us a shortcut to sanity. As queers we’re predisposed to stepping aside and take note of what goes on in the name of normativity,” and added, “Our privileges often blind us. We want to fight for our rights but often forget or choose to ignore other forms of oppression. What about queer Dalits? Are they not our own?”

Even as Tulasi spoke, activist Ankit Bhuptani, who was standing by, made a face. This member of the organising committee of Mumbai Queer Pride was very clear about which side of the debate he was on. “Dalit politics and LGBTQ politics are distinctly different. They should keep those agendas restricted to their own platforms. Last Pride, someone at Humsafar Trust tried to do this, I protested and they backed off. Even now if they start bringing in Dalit politics and issues, I’ll step aside.”

Ankit isn’t a minority. It was astounding to see how many people at the Kashish inaugural felt that the LGBTQ movement cannot take the burden of connecting with other movements.

Festival director and national awardee filmmaker Sridhar Rangayan tried to downplay differences. “We’ve always had a strong regional cinema presence at Kashish with some beautiful films which have gone on to get international and national acclaim. Movements have always drawn from and worked with each other and the LGBTQ movement is no different.”

He brushed off charges of the monopolistic hegemony of a metrocentric, upper caste, English speaking clique. “It's changing, and as more and more regional voices from other communities and castes come in, we will see them becoming equally represented in the movement.”

Many others like equal rights activist Harrish Iyer felt it was not alignments but the insistence on absolutes that was the problem. “I’m an LGBTQ rights activist and an animal rights activist. I’m also proactively a part of the anti-superstition movement. Why can’t I carry all these multiple identities without trying to make all the movements one? I’m homosexual not homogenous.”

He pointed out how the nascent LGBTQ movement will have to strategically decide which causes and movements it can and should align itself with. “We should look at how to leverage and lobby about our concerns like Sec 377.”

On the charge that Dalit activists and platforms show equal resistance towards LGBT movement, Tulasi calls it misguided. “In Hyderabad we are trying to keep our paradigms, grammar and context indigenous. We had a Dalit feminist writer Gogu Shyamla inaugurating the Queer Carnival in the city and expressing solidarity with the community. Soon after, renowned Dalit activist and writer KanchaIlaiah inaugurated the Hyderabad Pride walk, 2015.”

He too feels the LGBTQ community needs to align itself more and more with Hijras and Dalits. “Let's not forget that they’re called Bahujan for a reason. It's not for nothing they form the bulwark at the forefront of the fight against state-sponsored terror, police brutalities, capitalism, hyper nationalism, casteism and patriarchy. Aligning with them will give us momentum and raise its negotiating position. Also, no one will call us ‘a miniscule minority’ then, not even courts.”