In the book, you note your mother’s storytelling influence on you.
At around 14, my mother came to India from what was to become Pakistan. She grew up with an elder brother and her sisters-in-law in Jamshedpur. She’d tell us stories of her younger days. Storytelling was quite a popular pastime back then. It was a different time, without any of the digital distractions. But besides telling stories, my mother used to document things very carefully. Whether it was taking stock of daily rations or the movies she and my father had watched, or the ones we watched together. She wrote poetry and documented stories of domestic workers as well, asking me to type them out in Hindi.
My mother also took great pains to maintain family albums. I’m trying to digitise those photographs, making sure they’re not lost — at least the ones that can still be preserved. Then, my father was a good photographer. He had travelled for work, early on in his career, to Germany and other European countries, bringing back a Kodak camera and projector. He made home videos with 8mm reels, and I have digitised these videos.
So, I think that’s how I may have imbibed all of this: documenting everything happening around me, collecting newspaper clippings that had a mention of either word, gay or HIV, right from the early 1980s. I think my early training in the context of sexual-health programmes, conferences, and capacity-building workshops I used to attend… all of that propelled me towards absorbing the joy and importance of documenting, preserving, and narrating stories.
Why do you believe activists can also be “complicit in perpetrating the systemic discriminations”?
Often, we, as activists, don’t realise where we’re going wrong, and, to me, it comes across as very hypocritical.
Unfinished Equality is about fighting discrimination, but to strengthen the anti-discrimination front, and before fighting with the wider world, we have to begin with ourselves. There are thousands of ways in which we discriminate without being conscious of it. And if it continues, I don’t think we can make a real difference. So, there are many problem areas where we’ve to fight discrimination within queer communities first.
The three-pronged structure that can help elevate the status of queer people — “family acceptance, social change or legal reform” — has always been at odds. What can help accelerate the position of queer individuals in society?
Theoretically speaking, it’s the family where a start can be made. But in practice, it may not happen that way. Maybe, someday, some judge would deliver a verdict that may change queer people’s situation. Or it may come from a legal institution, a lawyer, social worker, teacher, or any other societal actor, but the real difference is made when these efforts are linked to what happens within the family.
For example, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar was able to execute his social-reform activities, perhaps, because he was inspired by his familial environment. Where we’re born into, therefore, influences our work. But despite that, we can’t really keep out social change and legal reforms because, at least for a queer or trans person, all these things are interconnected. For many of them, it may not be the family — parents or siblings, but extended family, neighbours, or others who can provide them with initial support.
So, I don’t want to project an image of a stereotypical family. Who do we count as family anyway? Because if it’s about positive influences, it may come from the domestic workers who work with us. I believe one needs to broaden the contours of the family and include people whom we conveniently leave out because several people play a big role in our growing up years, helping us draw strength to fight stigma and discrimination around us.
What are your views on marriages of convenience?
I don’t have very strong views on marriages of convenience. If it works out for some people, helping them lead happier, more fulfilled, and contended lives, then so be it.
In a more accepting environment, many people wouldn’t choose to be in one. Perhaps some may not choose to marry or be partnered even, and if our social environment would’ve allowed, some of us would be living with friends. It’s linked to your previous question, to the idea of the family. So, I don’t want to pass judgment on people who opt for marriages of convenience at this point of time.
From our Counsel Club days, I remember a couple had expressed donating their time and money to help the group. But it strikes me that they were very happy with each other because they were good friends to each other. For me, that’s a huge tick in a relationship. I’ve written about the importance of friendship in my book, so if it’s that a few people can find in such marriages, why not?
How do you think healthcare communities and setups help queer people access affordable, queer-affirmative mental healthcare?
This is an important, topical question. For some time, in Varta Trust, we’ve been talking about creating a support group for mental-health professionals, especially those who may be queer or trans themselves, or may be working with queer and trans clients. Because of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Amendment Act, 2026, there has been so much confusion, fear, and anxieties among everyone. We received requests for a forum where peer counsellors and psychologists can come together and share their concerns and think of dealing with challenges facing them.
We need many such forums, so that professionals can begin advocating with mental-health bodies like the Indian Psychiatric Society or any other association of psychologists, to hold dialogues and sensitise people around ethical issues, such as informed consent and confidentiality. One strategy can be of healthcare communities creating their own forums, which uphold progressive thoughts and mobilise resources to do larger advocacy to make a bigger impact. They can also team up with NGOs too, which isn’t happening that much. I also don’t see queerphobic doctors, psychiatrists, and psychologists being penalised for not adopting queer-affirmative approaches in their everyday work.
On the Varta website, we have an online locator of queer-friendly lawyers, doctors, counsellors, and psychiatrists spread all over the country. Some of the bigger cities and states are better represented than the others, but all these individuals have been recommended by community members. They’ve filled up a detailed questionnaire to validate their knowledge levels and attitudinal stands. More such online locators and forums where professionals can help queer and trans people without judgment can make a huge difference.
What are your views on the reluctance towards using more sensitised, queer-affirmative language from within and outside the LGBTQIA+ communities?
There’s always going to be newer, better ways of expressing ourselves. And select people will always be uncomfortable with such a change. When it comes to mental-health professionals, I believe queer-affirmative language should become a part of their code of conduct and ethics. More so, it has to be in the syllabi of medical courses and in that of the Rehabilitation Council of India that oversees psychology education. But again, we have to fight discrimination from within queer communities too. Unfortunately, this will be an ongoing battle.
We must not overlook the fact that we are a multicultural society. For example, there are no gender-specific pronouns in Bengali unlike in English and Hindi. Often, the pronoun usage is reflected in the verb choices in Hindi. For example, you can say ve jaa rahe hain, etc., and it isn’t that plural pronouns for singular subjects haven’t been used in English either. It isn’t something that has fallen from the sky. They’ve been there, but I’d like to share an interesting situation here.
In 2019, Varta helped a queer couple with legal aid. During our discussion, we were talking in Bengali and of course we didn’t ask for pronouns because it wasn’t an issue as we were conversing in Bengali. Had we done so, we’d have been met with a blank look. But while writing in English about this couple’s situation in an academic paper, I was faced with the challenge of using appropriate pronouns for one of them, who was transmasculine. I used they/them pronouns for them, but I left a footnote, making it clear that for writing about someone in English who has been educated in Bengali and speaks Bengali, insisting on usage of gender pronouns can come across as alien, so activists may have to (un)learn. We can go full steam ahead and demand right expressions in certain circles, but in others, we need to be open to more possibilities.
How can corporate activism become something that one doesn’t have to enforce and govern?
I’m unsure if corporate India is on track as of now, but it used to be the case when the UN had partnered with corporate bodies to prepare codes of conduct and guidelines regarding diversity, equity and inclusion. At the end of the day, what matters is having the right kind of people in authority. Often, HR policies can read as being fantastically inclusive but, in my experience, such policies aren’t implemented effectively. In fact, the HR department is often the first to leak out information about a queer or trans person.
Yet again, I’m reminded of a situation in Varta when we were guiding a young gay man, who was HIV positive, find a job in a well-known corporate in the hospitality sector. During the interview, the organisation was more prepared to accept him as a gay person. But this man didn’t want to hide anything, for he feared losing his job when his employers would come to know of his HIV status. And lo and behold, his worries actually came true.
These people, who were very warm towards him initially, denied him the chance of working at the front desk, a job he wanted, and instead wanted him to be in housekeeping. HR feared that guests would object to him being at the front desk if they learned about his HIV status. I don’t have to spell out the imagined concerns of their guests. When this man was conversing with HR over the phone he asked them how guests would know about this confidential information. To which, the HR person said that she couldn’t stop people from talking, and that information gets shared eventually. Imagine, an HR person going around telling people that someone is HIV positive.
I believe policy frameworks can’t change much unless the bosses of such organisations change their mindsets, change their body language, and make sure that they are sending signals that any breach of policy is going to have serious consequences, like job loss or pay cuts.
What disruption has social media caused in terms of advocating for queer rights and, at the same time, enabling the spread of misinformation?
Technology always comes with its pros and cons. Social media is no different. Its outreach ability is magically fast but, at the end of the day, when we look at the physical participation levels at events, it hasn’t been higher than in the 1990s and 2000s.
Digital literacy should be a must for all. I include cybersecurity in it, because we don’t know what our phones are capable of: they can be a source of pleasure as well the means of extortion or blackmailing. Some efforts are being made in this direction. For example, Point of View in Mumbai campaigns on digital literacy and cybersecurity. We need more such training on misinformation, fact-checking. Thankfully, more and more people know what WhatsApp University means, but fake news still has an amazing hold on our imaginations. We need more advocacy for digital literacy to become a part of school and college curricula. At our end, in Varta, we’ve been running a citizen journalism program since 2017. It’s a small-scale effort but over the years, we’ve included training on fake news, and the impact of AI on our learning and our environment.
Please talk about ‘queer fatigue’, this unsaid burden a queer person bears alongside shouldering responsibilities to correct systemic discriminations?
This is again an important question. The stress that you have to be the best all the time whether in your studies or in your education, otherwise you’re not good enough because at the end of the day, you’re queer and have to compensate in some manner is where queer fatigue comes from.
At a personal level, I can say that when I used to do peer counselling work, I realised that I was getting irritated with counselling calls or requests for help. With the benefit of hindsight, I know it was burnout, but it was also queer fatigue at a certain level because I used to wonder what more did I have to do to be happy as a queer person or to help others become happy. Fortunately, I was able to pass on this responsibility to other younger colleagues, who have greater mental bandwidth. But, as a 57-year-old, who has been a queer activist, archivist, and researcher for over three decades, sometimes I feel I’ve nothing more to prove to anyone, so why should I go on with this? It’s actually so tiring to face the same issues day in and day out. You may do everything to protect others, but at the end of the day, the state and society may come back at you. Sometimes, I dread reading the morning newspaper and finding something that makes me wonder how it will impact me as a queer person. That’s why the book is titled Unfinished Equality. Perhaps, all we can do is learn to care for ourselves, keep ourselves as happy and fit as we can because the struggle around queerness isn’t going away anytime soon.
Saurabh Sharma (they) is a nonbinary, queer writer, essayist, and culture critic. On X: @writerly_life; Instagram: @writerlylife.
