Sangh’s views on LGBTQ+ rights signal a shifting tide

The RSS has tweaked its initial opposition to queerness to cautious tolerance. Yet, there is something distinctly remarkable about Bhagwat’s comments

Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) chief Mohan Bhagwat’s comments on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ+) communities have generated polarised responses, swinging between being dismissed as hollow propaganda and celebrated as radical acceptance.

Bhagwat’s statements are part of a larger, long-overdue transformation in the fight for queer rights. (Samir Jana/HT PHOTO)

Of course, this is part of a shift in the Sangh’s attitudes towards gender and sexuality. From Ram Madhav questioning the criminalisation of homosexuality in 2014 to Dattatreya Hosabale asserting that gay sex is not a crime in 2016 (though he later termed homosexuality a “psychological case”), the RSS has tweaked its initial opposition to queerness to cautious tolerance.

Yet, there is something distinctly remarkable about Bhagwat’s comments. For one, they aren’t off-the-cuff remarks at an event. His arguments for a “humane approach” towards the queer community are presented in a prominent interview in his own organisation’s mouthpiece. What’s more, they have been packaged, produced, and disseminated as evidence of the RSS’s progressive stance on LGBTQ+ issues by the same publication that once blamed the “ultra-westernised elite” for “lesbianism and other perversities” after the release of Deepa Mehta’s Fire in 1998.

Bhagwat’s framing of LGBTQ+ acceptance as restricted to the “private space” and his characterisation of the movement as a “minor issue” may be discomfiting to some. But Bhagwat isn’t interested in leaning into existing understandings of acceptance. He wants to redefine inclusion within a Hindu framework. His references to transgender people finding their place within society through the creation of a mahamandaleshwar at the Kumbh Mela, then, should be read as an attempt to include historically marginalised “others” within the Hindu fold — not through a vocabulary of acceptance centred on equality, but one focused on social cohesion.

To me, Bhagwat’s statements are part of a larger, long-overdue transformation in the fight for queer rights. Identity-based rights movements in India can be broadly divided into two distinct categories. Some, such as the disability rights movements, are traditionally coded as politically avalent or neutral with reference to their impact on mainstream politics. Others, such as those for Dalit rights or linguistic states, have been politically valent or charged for decades. LGBTQ+ rights found itself in the former camp for the last two decades, especially as the fight against Section 377 meandered through the courtrooms. Bhagwat’s comments and rising focus on queer-trans issues (such as same-sex marriage) among the political class signals that the fight for queer rights is rapidly moving towards the latter camp.

One might disagree with Bhagwat’s vision of acceptance, but it cannot be dismissed. We need the political class to present an alternative framework of inclusion if it wants to contest the Sangh’s vision. A template for this already exists in Brazil, where President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva stitched together a rainbow coalition of diverse communities to take on the might of Jair Bolsonaro.

For too long, the Indian queer community has depended on breadcrumbs of acceptance. The time has come to recognise queer people as equal stakeholders in political processes and create a new framework — one based on constitutional morality, justice, and dignity.

Anish Gawande is a writer and translator

The views expressed are personal