Planning Delhi's historic first Queer Pride, Jun 29, 2008

Naz Foundation (India) Trust, petitioner in the case against Section 377 in the Delhi High Court, called a national level meeting in April 2008, in New Delhi, to discuss several issues facing the Indian queer community, including 377 and beyond. One of the momentous decisions taken at this meeting was to organise, for the first time, coordinated Queer Pride marches in all the Indian cities which have a large queer presence. The pioneering city of Kolkata had already been organising pride marches for several years on June 29, commemorating the Stonewall Riots in New York, a day on which several cities across the globe erupt in pride celebrations. Going through with this effort would see the first ever queer pride parade in India's capital.

On 7 June, an email went out on all the queer lists in Delhi, asking people to come for a planning meeting at the Indian Coffee House, Mohan Singh Place, birthplace of several progressive movements in Delhi. The reason this venue was chosen was that in initial conversations, activists had decided that Delhi Pride would not being organised by or identified with any one particular organisation or group, but would be a community effort.

Quoting from the introductory email: Delhi will (finally!) join global Queer Pride celebrations with a big event on June 29. Pride is just that, about parading, celebrating and taking pride in our difference onto the streets. It's high time we wrap the national capital in queer colours during Global Pride Week 2008.’

35 queer people in Delhi responded to this email and turned up at Mohan Singh Place on June 16. This group became the Delhi Queer Pride Committee, 'a space for queer and queer supportive individuals based in Delhi who collectively organise annual Queer Pride celebrations and events in the Indian capital'.

At the meeting, quick decisions were made about the route of the parade and that the parade would be followed by a Pride party for queers in Delhi. People volunteered for the work of putting Pride together. This included announcing pride (see next post), getting police permission to march, organising masks for those who were not out but wanted to march, making the queer flag that would lead the parade, making queer badges, buttons and flags, writing the Delhi Queer Pride leaflet, printing this in Hindi and English, handling the media, and much more.

That night the email id delhiqueerpride@gmail.com and the Delhi Queer Pride googlegroup was quickly created for all who attended the meeting. The fact that so many people volunteered for the work and we could coordinate on the googlegroup meant that we had no need to meet again to plan for the Pride, which was just two weeks away. We only met for a raucous placard-making a few days before Pride.

Everybody present that evening had a sense that what we were about to do was historical, and that our parade would be a big event in Delhi and India’s queer history. But none of us, as we left Indian Coffee House on June 16, had an inkling of the massive impact that Delhi Pride would have -- how mindblowing it would be for its queer citizens, how it would capture the curiousity of this city, or of the enthusiastic and largely celebratory response of the national and international media. The new email id was getting excited messages from queers right away. And it seemed as if our phones began ringing instantly with queries from journalists across India and the world.