Opening social media has become a living hell for any Indian queer person. Each day you open Twitter to go read about the proceedings of the Supreme Court presentation on marriage equality, you ardently hope for the best. Scroll down into the comment section and you welcome yourself inside a forest of thorns you can't escape.
"We didn't come from Adam and Steve," says a Twitter user with the Ayodhya Ram Mandir picture in his profile and 'jai shri ram' in his bio. "Ab woke CJI kya karega," says a person with a profile picture of Narendra Modi. "This is all Western drama, why are we hampering Indian society with this shit", says a person with 'Radhe Radhe' in his bio.
It has come to a point where I deliberately ignore any tweets or even a slight mention of the proceedings because there is a limit to how much queerphobia a person can handle and not combust beyond their breaking point. Many of my friends and I have decided to not use social media anymore for this month and the next because we are afraid of how much of a toll this will take on us. How much more public queerphobia, and blatant disregard of queer people as humans we can handle.
While talking to one of my friends, they said, "I liked that movie, 'Badhai Do'. I think for the first time I secretly went to the cinema hall and watched it and then came back home saying I went on a shopping trip with my friends. I thought Rajkumar would say something to support us, but alas, all apples are indeed rotten even if one is rotten."
They are right, hauntingly so.
Where is Ayushman Khurana? Starrer in "Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan" and "Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui", the self-proclaimed versatile actor who can act in every kind of social movie and give a great performance. The so-called messiah of Bollywood's wasted takes on social commentary. When promoting your movie you uttered many great words of wisdom, support, and a shitload of usage of the same word 'empathy' again and again, where are you now when we are in this fight alone?
Where is Rajkumar Rao? Starrer in "Badhai Do" and "Aligarh". Many great words were also uttered by you when you were at the press rounds and interviews for your movie. Where are you now?
Where is Bhumi Pednekar? Where is Jitendra Kumar? Where is Vaani Kapoor? Where is Sonam Kapoor? Where is Siddharth Malhotra? Where are the many others of this industry who have acted directly or indirectly in movies telling our stories in their ways, words, and texture and spouting baseless conversations on empathy for the community, support for us, understanding us, and whatnot?
It is horrifying how only a handful have stepped up to speak for us, and thus try to transform the public narrative about us at times like this when queerphobia reaches a fever high.
A careful look at Bollywood's limited and often myopic take on queer relationships and existence shows the horrifying gaps that lie in this understanding. The first fault lies in the people, the directors who direct, the actors who are chosen to portray us, and their understanding of our identities. Let's pin our focus on one case of a certain Khurana and look at it.
Khurana has acted in not one but two major production films based on queer main characters. In an interview with Anupama Chopra, Ayushman Khurana commented how in his college days he didn't want to attend a queer film festival held by a college because he was afraid of what the gays will do to him. His words were: “I just said no, but there was no malice for them. There was that fear ‘ki mere sath kya karenge’ (I was afraid of what they’ll do to me). I am a straight guy. ‘With due respect, I can’t come’.” Khurana has been lauded by the industry and the ignorant audience to be a hero whose work in social films is a mark of great repute, understanding, and courage. Khurana had posted on his Instagram a picture from a magazine photoshoot where he had painted his nails, the caption read "genderqueer". It is indeed great knowing that an actor who has acted in two such films doesn't know that simply painting one's nails for a photoshoot doesn't make one genderqueer.
The second fault lies in the industry, the production houses that produce, the casting directors, and the machinery that runs this gigantic body of movie making and release in Bollywood. Let's again focus on one case.
Director of "Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui", Abhishek Kapoor, had spoken about not casting a trans actor in the film. He told Indianexpress.com, “We went through many avenues and there was a thought about casting a trans person but you know I find everyone is so fascinated just by actors. Why is it that everything is legitimized by an actor? Why can’t a trans person write the film? Why can’t a trans person direct the film? First of all, this fascination is incorrect. Films are not made by actors, they are made by filmmakers and writers. Eventually, there is a representation by an individual actor but I try to see above this because there is a story to be told. You have to reach out to people at large by taking the story to them and I thought this is the best way to take this story there. When you talk to someone, you have to talk to them in their language.” I can only laugh at how a director who wants to make a queer movie to present to a country whose government is extremely queerphobic is so scared to fight production houses for a trans actor portraying a trans character.
The worst thing of all is that as the primary audience for these pieces of cinema, we, whose wings are clipped and mouths are shut for being who we are, attach so much hope to these flickers of representation. We applaud, admire, and desperately seek attention to it because we want that spotlight to fall on us, to enlighten the general mass that we are not aliens, we are not inhuman.
But when we attach so much hope to these fractions of representation, we see how they betray, hide behind their veils, and run away when it comes to calling out and marching out for us, the people who they want to become when it comes to fighting alongside us in these battles. This battle in which if nothing they could show their solidarity and support for our struggles.
Rather, a policy of radio silence has fallen in the industry. No tweets are there, like the row of similar tweets that many A-level celebrities— as if in like a mass Twitter campaign— did back when the Farmers Protest was happening, blindly parroting the government's message. What happened now? What is stopping you? Who is stopping you?
Your radio silence on this makes you complacent with what is and was happening to us. You preen your feathers and act like you have done a humongous social service to us when you act as queer characters on screen but stifle our voices when it comes to real life. You are complacent in this queerphobia, walking hand in hand carefully around the lines of the government's messaging for your benefit. We will remember, we ought to remember. You too need to remember, don't start tweeting congratulations if something good comes to us, don't dare to. You need to remember how you were watching from the sidelines seeing us suffer and fight this battle alone. Your fake activism, and hollow words of empathy sound empty, show your half-hearted understanding of our humanity, and, worst of all, show your indirect nod to the ones that oppress us.