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Indigo in the Rainbow
Updated On: 11 February, 2024 08:35 AM IST | Mumbai | Arpika Bhosale
The face-off at the Pride March last week has brought a debate to flash point: Do queer places in the city hold space for their Dalit/Ambedkarite stakeholders?
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The recent incident at the Mumbai Pride March where four queer Dalit individuals were asked to stop chanting Jai Bhim has reignited the debate over the lack of inclusivity in mass queer mobilisation movements. Illustration/Uday Mohite
Mayura Saavi, a queer Ambedkarite, was running late on Saturday afternoon for the Pride March that was finally taking place after a gap of four years. Her three friends—two women and a man, all Dalit, queer and in their early 20s—were waiting for Saavi partly because she was the only one who had attended Pride before.
The group made their way towards August Kranti Maidan by 3.30 pm; the march was 30 minutes underway and the band of friends were eager to make up lost ground. One of the friends, a 23-year-old illustrator, says they were handed rainbow flags and banners which they felt didn’t represent them accurately. “It said something like ‘I am gay and that’s okay’ or ‘It’s okay to be Bi’,” says the woman who identifies as Dalit queer. “It felt apolitical, when other Pride marches are more inclusive. We thought it needed more meaningful and representative banners. We looked for a printing shop along the route, and found one on Grant Road. We printed posters of Babasaheb (Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar) and wrote ‘No queer liberation without caste annihilation’ on chart paper.”
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