Every year, Pride month offers an opportunity. The one where we could unlearn the prejudices within ourselves. Though Pride should be an everyday celebration, highlighting a certain month can help us focus on the betterment of the community. Pride is also a journey from self-reflection to self-acceptance. History, literature, music, and art can be pit stops in that journey of embracing one’s identity. CE presents you with a few pit stops, where you can pause, reflect, and walk ahead.
THE HISTORY LINE
The history of Pride Month dates back to the uprising at the Stonewall Inn. The gay bar was initially a teahouse. On June 28, 1969, officers from the NYPD raided the bar. The crowd protested against the action. By that night, several people took to the streets, chanting “Gay power!” and “Liberate Christopher Street!” The protests continued through the week. Even though Stonewall is often described as the beginning of the LGBTQIA+ civil rights movement, history shows that queer people had been organising political protests since at least the 1950s. Thirty years after Stonewall, India’s first Pride walk took place in Kolkata on July 2, 1999, with 15 people. The Delhi High Court read out Section 377 in 2009 in the Naz Foundation case, decriminalising consensual same-sex conduct. Chennai held its very first queer Pride march on June 28, 2009. On September 6, 2018, the Supreme Court unanimously struck down Section 377. However, in 2023, the court declined to legalise same-sex marriage and returned the question to Parliament. In 2026, the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, which recognises only those with specific socio-cultural identities, was passed by Parliament and received Presidential assent on March 30, 2026. Its implementation is currently on hold. Tamil Nadu was among the first to establish a transgender welfare board and to offer free sex-reassignment surgery in government hospitals. In 2021, the Madras High Court directed the state to sensitise school teachers on LGBTQIA+ issues and recommended that media adopt a community-developed style guide.
THE CLASSICS LINE
In 1927, Ugra’s Choklat presented Hindi readers with its portrayals of same-sex desire. In 1942, Ismat Chughtai published Lihaaf, a story about a lesbian relationship. In 1981, Vijay Tendulkar’s Marathi play Mitrachi Goshta explored a young woman’s love for her friend. The trans poet Vijayarajamallika wrote in Malayalam. Vasudhendra wrote about queerness in Kannada. In 1994, Su Samuthiram published Vaadamalli, the first Tamil novel centred on the trans community. A Revathi wrote a pioneering autobiography, The Truth About Me: A Hijra Life Story, initially in Tamil, later translated into several languages and taught in universities in the United States. In the 1990s, Ashok Row Kavi launched Bombay Dost, India’s first queer magazine. In English, Virginia Woolf’s Orlando follows a poet who changes gender across centuries. Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray explores desire and aestheticism under the pressure of a society that would later imprison its author for “gross indecency.” EM Forster wrote Maurice in 1913 and kept it unpublished until his death. James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room maps the cost of refusing to uphold your identity.
THE CONTEMPORARY LINE
Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is a letter from a son to a mother who cannot read, carrying inside it migration, queerness, and tenderness. Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life is a devastating novel about four men in New York and about the specific ways trauma lodges in a body. Melissa Broder’s Milk Fed is a novel about desire, food, and Jewish identity. Lamya H’s Hijab Butch Blues maps queer Muslim identity through Quranic stories. Jonny Garza Villa’s Ander and Sante Were Here is a queer brown love story set on the Texas–Mexico border. Yael van der Wouden’s The Safekeep — shortlisted for the Booker International Prize in 2024 — is about a Dutch woman whose ordered life is disrupted by a cousin’s girlfriend, with the dispossessions of the Holocaust running underneath. Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half follows twin sisters who choose entirely different lives, one passing as white, the other raising her daughter in the Black community they left behind. Suniti Namjoshi’s The Fabulous Feminist collects decades of fables, poems, and essays. Tamil Nadu-based publishing houses like Thirunangai Press, Aniyam Foundation, and Queer Chennai Chronicles bring in stories in regional languages. Leena Manimekalai’s Ulagiya Azhagiya Muthal Pen poem collection, published in 2010, explores bisexual women’s desires. For younger readers, Harshala Gupta’s The Boy in the Cupboard and Ameya Narvankar’s Ritu Weds Chandni offer entry points into queer stories.
THE FILM LINE
Deepa Mehta’s Fire (1996) depicted a romantic relationship between two women in a traditional household. It was met with vandalism at cinema halls and organised protests. Hansal Mehta’s Aligarh (2015) reconstructed the last months of Professor Ramchandra Siras, a Marathi scholar on whom a sting operation was carried out to determine his sexual orientation. Pa Ranjith’s Natchathiram Nagargirathu (2022) moves across caste, class, gender identity, and sexual orientation, attending to the specific forms of prejudice that obstruct love. The book-to-screen adaptation has produced some of queer cinema’s most enduring work. Brokeback Mountain adapted Annie Proulx’s short story into one of the most carefully observed films about repression and loss ever made. Call Me By Your Name brought André Aciman’s novel about a summer in northern Italy to a wide audience through Luca Guadagnino’s direction. Carol, adapted from Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt, is devastating. Portrait of a Lady on Fire, while not an adaptation, belongs on the same shelf.
On television/OTT: Schitt’s Creek is a utopia where gender identity or sexual orientation is not questioned. Sex Education gives its queer characters full inner lives rather than single storylines. Heartstopper, adapted from Alice Oseman’s graphic novels, is gentle. Heated Rivalry,a romance on the field of ice hockey.
THE MUSIC LINE
Music has always given us belongingness. Troye Sivan’s Heaven asks how he can achieve salvation if he has to suppress his identity to do so; Sufjan Stevens’s Mystery of Love, Visions of Gideon, and Futile Devices are tender songs of love and yearning. Diana Ross’s I’m Coming Out and Lady Gaga’s Born This Way are literal LGBTQIA+ anthems. Clairo’s Sofia, Girl in Red’s I Wanna Be Your Girlfriend, Dodie’s She, and Hayley Kiyoko’s Girls Like Girls softly vocalise desire. Chappell Roan’s Red Wine Supernova brings in both melancholy and euphoria. Tegan and Sara’s Closer captures exhilarating young romance, not just confining to bodily pleasures. And closer to home, we have Aksomaniac, Bhumi, Circle Tone, and M.H.R’s collaboration Amsham telling the story of Manmadhan searching for love.