By: Ruchika Rashya Bhuyan

At the cost of denying the right to love, at the cost of allowing antiquated prejudices to overrule our rationale, at the cost of dismissing someone’s identity as unacceptable, India propagates the bigotry of homophobia. As a country, we definitely have traversed a long way in the history of ensuring the LGBTQIA+ community’s rights to protect their lives, but the journey is far from over. We have miles to go.

Heteronormativity has been hailed in our country for centuries in the practice of upholding ancient ideals, even at the cost of irrational violence, exclusion, and discrimination. But the origin of heteronormativity and gender norms lies not in our hallowed scriptures. In fact, one of the earliest forms of writing known to humankind, the Vedas, acknowledged the presence of genders and sexualities other than their conventional counterparts. Hindu scriptures in fact acknowledged the presence of a third gender termed as a hermaphrodite. Sacred texts like the Mahabharata, the Naradasmriti, and the Sushruta Samhita have several homosexual characters. They do not treat homosexuality as a taboo. Homophobia and punitive measures against homosexuality were earliest visible in texts like Manusmriti and Arthashastra, as well as during the Mughal Rule, but homosexuality still was not a crime until the onset of the British Rule in India. Codification and criminalization of homosexuality in Article 377 were enacted by the British and have been in enforcement for nearly 70 years post the British exiting India, until recently in 2018, the Supreme Court decriminalized homosexuality.

While our progress in overcoming the glorification of heteronormativity and becoming accepting of homosexuality is remarkable, homophobia still pervades. Besides the human costs we incur in upholding homophobia, it also has an economic cost. A case study by the World Bank found that homophobia costs India nearly 1.7% of its GDP, which might seem a minuscule amount when read in percentage, but when worked out to its monetary value, it can be detrimental to a developing economy. The reasons behind this number are multifarious. Members from the LGBTQIA+ community face discrimination and unfair treatment at their workplaces, as well as receive less compensation as compared to their heterosexual counterparts. Social exclusion of the community’s members in such forms as violence, imprisonment, discrimination, denial of opportunities, job loss, pressure for marriage, harassment at school, etc., have resulted in less education, lower productivity, fewer earnings, and more poverty, lower labour force participation and poorer health. This implies that there is lesser money contributing to our GDP than there would’ve been in the absence of homophobia. The impact of homophobia on health disparities is the most concerning, with increased depression, suicidal thoughts, and HIV prevalence in LGBTQ+ folks than the average populace. Research in 2012 revealed that the average health cost that India incurs from homophobia is a shocking $712 million, which approximately amounts to INR 5300 crores.

As an economy with a staggering growth rate, unhealthy inflation rates, increasing poverty, and unemployment, we must ask ourselves: are we really willing to harm our economy by holding on to orthodox beliefs? Are we really willing to cling on to the past instead of progressing forward?

Love is boundless. One cannot inflict shackles upon love. Love knew of no gender until we began placing labels on it.

The belief in the idealism of heterosexuality is not intrinsic. It has been ingrained in our minds from our elders, passed down as a tradition over the generations, and never been brought to question. It is not about pointing fingers at allegations, but about realizing that these ideas are not our own, and pondering that if not our own, are they even worth upholding? Today, we stand in a position to at the least talk about sensitive issues like homosexuality, which had been for centuries been hushed to silence and frowned upon. But it isn’t merely enough to talk about it. At this moment as you read, someone from the community in any part of the world might be getting denied an opportunity or assaulted because of their identity. Time is clicking away. The call for action resonates in the air. We can no longer turn deaf ears to the protests and the imploring cries for justice and freedom. It might take decades for laws to change. But can legal amendments truly filter our minds? We cannot keep waiting for a higher authority to proclaim change if we ourselves aren’t ready to broaden our perspectives; to become undogmatic.

We must unlearn and relearn! (The author is a Class XI student of Dhirubhai Ambani International School)