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HT THIS DAY: JANUARY 28, 1950 -- INDIA GO GAY ON REPUBLIC DAY
HT This Day: January 28, 1950 -- India go gay on Republic Day The glterg ceremony the Durbar Hall of Government Hoe, the excement of hundreds of thoands of people lg the five-e route through which the Print drove State and the spectacularly lourful para at Irw Stadium where the Print hoisted the Natnal Flag and took the Republic salute will rema people’s memory for long. In 2017, when he told his parents he was gay, their illn of him as the perfect son shattered. Unlike Sourav, who nfintly asserts himself as a gay man spe the phback om his loved on, back the 1980s and 1990s, I had no termology to scribe what I was.
There was emotnal blackmail, cludg beg blamed for his mother’s illns; beg taken by his parents to nsult a homophobic nropsychiatrist who diagnosed him wh a “sexual disorr”, prcribed meditn for and remend unsellg to rrect his ways; and opprsive parental surveillance, aid by the lack of privacy their two-room home. To his horror, she told him that he was “not normal”, followed by advice monly given to young gay men: bee more “mascule”. He believ that if his father had not been homophobic, his mother would have e around by now.
The transphobic and homophobic people peddlg illegal, unscpulo treatments are not likely to disappear overnight.