NEW DELHI: As the

members raptured with pride in many cities of India following the Supreme Court’s judgment decriminalising gay sex, their community in Jammu and Kashmir shared muted self-esteem.

Besides the reason that the apex court verdict is yet to be applicable to the state, the LGBT community in the state, especially the Kashmir Valley, has almost no voice due to religious and cultural orthodoxy, which assumed radical nature following the outbreak of the Islamist militancy in 1989-90.

The Supreme Court’s verdict was in reference to

of Indian Penal Code (IPC), which does not automatically get extended to the state of Jammu and Kashmir, governed by its own Constitution and criminal law—Ranbir Penal Code (RPC).

The RPC, framed on the lines of the IPC during the British colonial rule, also criminalises sexual intercourse other than the one between adult heterosexuals, under its own section 377.

“The Supreme Court judgment is a historic moment in the movement for human rights in the country. It is of huge importance to us because we will now be able to file a petition seeking its extension to J&K too,” Dr. Ajaz Ahmad Bund, the lone crusader for LGBT rights in Kashmir told TOI.

Until 2011, when Bund, a Kashmir University scholar began social work on transgender, no one spoke about the community openly in Kashmir. After breaking the glass ceiling, Bund found many members of the LGBT quietly approaching him to share their tribulations and stories of persecution. He went on to write the first ethnographic book on transgender of the Valley, ‘Hijras of Kashmir – A Marginalized Form of Personhood’ which was published in 2017. Dr Bund also set up a welfare organization that counsels members of the LGBT community and files petitions on their behalf in courts for their rights.

“We are happy that the first step towards humanizing the LGBT community in India has been taken. We had been waiting for this day for a long time,” a lesbian in her 20s from

Srinagar

told the TOI on phone. “We are hopeful that the state-sponsored homophobia will sooner or later end in J&K too. Inshallah, some day, my girlfriend and I will get married,” she said requesting anonymity.

Interestingly, the two former chief ministers,

and

who are usually active on social media expressing their views about almost every national issue, remained silent on the SC judgment.

The state and the political elite are patriarchal, homophobic and generally insensitive towards sexual minorities, Dr Bund said. “The politicians don’t even talk about the rights of women in Kashmir, let alone of LGBT,” he said.

“We are a very complex and strange society. They call love between two men ‘unIslamic’ but how can love be wrong? I cannot come out of closet and speak openly about my love for my boyfriend but then we can’t talk about any truths here. For example, we can’t even ask young boys not to pelt stones and not to harm people. We just gag ourselves because we don’t want to invite the wrath of society,” a gay youth from south Kashmir said pithily.

Three other members of LGBT community that the TOI spoke to, said that there was no way they could come out of their closet in Kashmir. “Neither our families understand nor do they accept that there is such a thing as sexual orientation. We will get killed if they come to know about our relationship,” a gay person from Anantnag said.

DrBund believes that Kashmir which has a population of around 7 million people follows the global estimate for LGBT population, which is about 10 percent. “But they are not visible because society is in denial. The SC judgment, I am hoping, will now initiate a debate and awareness about what it means to be gay or lesbian or transgender in Kashmir,” he said.