More than 1,000 people from the LGBT community and supporters numbering about 700 to 800 from Chennai alone, are expected to take part in Chennai’s fifth Rainbow Pride march on Sunday.
This time the pride march has a new venue unlike the earlier one on the Marina Beach. The march will commence from 3 pm on Sunday at Rajarathnam Stadium, Egmore.
It will follow a 2 km route to the end point — Langs Garden Road, Chintadripet (near Albert Theatre and Hotel Marina Towers), Chennai, said Jaya, general manager of Sahodaran.
A cultural programme is likely to be conducted for the first time after the Pride March. A performance event Naangal (‘Us’) is being organised by Sahodaran, with support from TAI-VHS. Naangal will conclude by 6 pm.
While there would be a lack of visibility unlike their earlier pride march in Marina, the volunteers still hope that they would be able to reach out to people who had not been there for their earlier march.
L Ramakrishnan, one of the volunteers of the Chennai Rainbow Coalition, said that this is the first time they got permission to conduct a cultural programme after the Pride March. “This will help sensitise the people about the rights of LGBT community,” he said. The cultural programme includes music, play, skit and dance.
This year the Pride March will be backed by corporates, organisations as well as cultural centres.
“Last year, Accenture participated in the March. This year we are expecting more companies to participate besides the cultural centers,” he said.
The Pride marches in Chennai have been a part celebration, a part that demands for recognition and rights, and a part that serves as an expression of gratitude to the Tamil Nadu government for its social welfare benefits extended to thirunangais (trans women), the most visible segment of the LGBT community in the region. There have been consistent demands since 2010 to the Supreme Court to uphold the Naz Foundation 2009 verdict of July 2, 2009, that read down IPC Section 377 to exclude consensual relationships among adults of the same sex.
The LGBT community and supporters have also urged the State Government to respond to the October 2012 writ petition from the National Legal Services Authority asking all States and Union Territories to grant equal protection and rights to transgenders.
They urged that both male-to-female and female-to-male transgender people should be included in all aspects of national development and should get access to social welfare schemes.
The LGBT community has also urged the Tamil Nadu Government to expand the scope of activities by Aravani Welfare Board, a unique initiative supporting the transgenders, so as to include sexual minorities who face harassment and discrimination because of their gender identity, gender expression and/or sexual orientation.
The community will also pay tributes to health activists Shivananda Khan and film director Rituparno Ghosh, who passed away recently, and acknowledge their immense contributions to queer visibility and rights movements in India.
In India, the first pride march took place in 1999 in Kolkata. Subsequently, pride parades have become a fixture of the Indian sexuality or gender rights landscape, with marches having taken place in the following cities Bangalore, Bhubaneswar, Bhawanipatna (Odisha), Coimbatore, Chandigarh, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Madurai, Mumbai, Patna, New Delhi, Pune and Thrissur.
In 2009, local groups working in the areas of sexuality, gender-identity, human rights and health/HIV groups came together under the banner of the Chennai Rainbow Coalition, and organised a series of events in the city culminating in the first march, held on the last Sunday of June.