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Sympathy for Orlando, but not for LGBTQ rights in India?

Strap: Many express shock and anger at what they call 'shallow reaction by PM Narendra Modi to the incident'

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Hundreds of people gather at a makeshift memorial in New York to pay homage to the victims Orlando mass shooting
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While the Indian LGBTQ community has reacted with anger and grief over the way 50 people were killed and 53 injured when a gunman opened fire at a gay nightclub in Orlando, US, many have expressed shock and anger at what they called a "shallow reaction by PM Narendra Modi to the incident".

On Sunday, at 11.32am, the PM tweeted: "Shocked at the shootout in Orlando, USA. My thoughts & prayers are with the bereaved families and the injured."

Mumbai-based national awardee film-maker, film editor and screenwriter Apurva Asrani, who has written and edited the critically acclaimed Aligarh (which highlighted the homophobia that pushed Shrinivas Ramchandra Siras, a professor of Marathi at Aligarh Muslim University, to commit suicide) said he was appalled PM Modi had shied away from any mention of the LGBTQ community. "It's well known that Pulse was a gay nightclub and all the dead and injured are from the community. The silence from the PM on this count really hurts."

He further added, "While Aligarh highlighted Professor Siras' struggle, there are several Siras' who die unsung. Collectively, India has so many Orlandos every year. What about them? The government shied from any mention to the community because it'll have to face up to its own stand on the Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), which criminalises homosexuality and is used to persecute the community."

The editor of 'Satya' (1998), 'Shahid' (2013) and 'CityLights' (2014) also reminded dna of how several BJP parliamentarians had mocked Congress MP Shashi Tharoor's private member's Bill in December last year which sought to amend Section 377. It will be recalled that the bill was shot down before it could be presented in the Lok Sabha for debate.

Asrani also took to twitter to reply to Narendra Modi's tweet with: "Sir, many Indians are victims of hate crimes everyday. Your govt itself deems gay people criminal. Pray for us too..."

Well-known equal rights activist from the community, Harish Iyer, who is currently in the US on invitation from the US state department for the International Visitor Leadership Program on LGBT rights, said: "Making speeches calling India and the US natural allies is one thing and biting the bullet on equal rights for the LGBTQ community like the US quite another," he told dna and added, "It is imperative for visible friends of the US to do more than offer sympathy. I'd want to believe its wrong when people claim it wasn't done because the people killed were gay."

Roy Wadia, grandson of the Indian film industry pioneer JBH Wadia of Wadia Movietone and brother of the late LGBT activist and film-maker Riyad Wadia, told dna: "In this complex web of hate, counter-hate, bigotry, exclusion, 'them versus us', terrorism, fundamentalism, reactionary approaches, and so on, the more one feeds the beast and fuels the fire with discriminatory, stigmatising, hateful speech — and/or with laws that discriminate, persecute, condemn — whether targeted at LGBTI individuals and communities, or any population/group for that matter — the more rhetoric and state-sanctioned ostracisation have a chance to lead to violence, whether random or planned."

Echoing Roy, Iyer too warned against the inflammatory Islampohobia spewed by some on social media in wake of the attack. "Of the over 50 solidarity meets organised at Washington DC, I attended one at Dupont Circle.

There a man was carrying a placard which said: Dear Muslims, leave our country and us alone. The moment he held out the placard, a woman and three men in the gathering engaged him in a conversation and politely discouraged him from Islamophobia. What was nice was that he too agreed, folded up the placard and put it away."

Roy pointed out how keeping Section 377 on the books in India only perpetuates stigma and discrimination, and adds to the regional and global environment of bigotry. "Or, in the US, Donald Trump and the Republicans' vow to overturn same-sex marriage laws, for example, denigrates LGBTQI people and communities, and fuels anti-gay sentiment that is already out there, and encourages the conversion of hate speech into violence."

Author of Gay Bombay: Globalisation, Love and (Be)Longing in Contemporary India, Parmesh Shahani, who heads the Godrej India Culture Lab felt incidents like Orlando are clarion call for the community to come together and speak in one voice against stigma and discrimination. "One has to really look at this from the perspective of the gun culture in America. There are bigots everywhere. But here they are able to actually go out and buy guns to kill people makes it so much more dangerous."

He also felt that incidents like Orlando are a wake-up call to the gay rights movement about how far it still has to go. "If this can happen in the US, you can imagine how bad it is elsewhere."

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