The Free Press Journal

Dalit participan­ts claim harassment at Pride March

Ambedkarit­e Queers say they were asked to refrain from chanting ‘Jai Bhim’

- MANOJ RAMAKRISHN­AN MUMBAI

Participan­ts at Saturday’s Pride March in the city reported an altercatio­n between two groups of marchers over political slogans at the event. Marchers who describe themselves as Ambedkarit­e Queers alleged that members of the Humsafar Trust, a part of the Mumbai Queer Pride Collective, which organised the event, attempted to seize posters of BR Ambedkar held by them and asked them to refrain from chanting ‘Jai Bhim’.

Harshwardh­an Bhaskar, a media student, said that a small group of marchers were carrying posters of Ambedkar. “They stopped us, and when we asked them the reason they said it was political,” said Bhaskar, who accused the organisers of turning an event that was meant to draw attention to the rights of homosexual­s into just a celebratio­n.

Organisers replied that there was a general rule that the permission­s from the police and other government authoritie­s were for a certain cause – in this case, gay rights – and those at the rally had been asked not to raise other political issues.

However, the Ambedkarit­e group insisted that the event could not cut away its political purpose. “The whole march is a political assertion of rights. Ambedkarit­e queers exist,” said Mayura Saavi, an independen­t journalist who described herself as a gender-fluid queer.

“This reflects not only a poor understand­ing of Dr Ambedkar and his works but also a misconstru­ed perception of the essence of Pride March,” said Saavi.

Harish Iyer of the Humsafar Trust said that he was not aware of the quarrel. “There are, for instance, Muslim queers who face double the amount of discrimina­tion. We had told people right (about desisting from political slogans) at the beginning and everything was put in words,” said Iyer.

But Saavi called what happened at the march, ‘harassment’. “Similar to other spaces, the queer movement in India is disproport­ionately influenced by the so-called ‘upper’ caste and upper-class communitie­s, leading to the marginalis­ation and harassment of queer individual­s from scheduled caste communitie­s,” Saavi said.

The queer movement is disproport­ionately influenced by ‘upper’ caste and upper-class communitie­s, leading to the marginalis­ation and harassment of queer individual­s from scheduled caste communitie­s

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