Three Indian Cities To Hold Gay Pride Marches Today

The nation is draping itself in rainbow colours this Sunday as three cities celebrate their queer pride marches in unison. Delhi, Bangalore and Pune all have chosen to organize their queer pride parades on the 24th of November, articulating a set of diverse and pivotal demands of the queer community.

The Delhi pride, starting at the corner of Tolstoy Marg and Barakhamba road at 3 pm, is the culmination of a long celebration of queer pride in the city, that involved a poster-making session, a candid discussion on queer issues at the Max Mueller Bhavan and a queer bazaar that involved one of Delhi’s first queer open-mics.

Pune too saw its share of pride events. The Pune Pride is scheduled to begin at 11 am at the Pune Sarvajanik Sabha at Rameshwar market. The culmination of the pride will see a press conference. The focus of the pride this year is queer women. Noticing a dirth of articulation of LBT issues, this year the Pune pride will be led by queer women to highlight the needs and concerns of the oft-neglected subset of the queer population.

The Bengaluru Pride will start from City Railway Station (near Majestic Bus Stop) at 2 pm, and end at Town Hall in the evening. Over a 1000 people are expected to take part in the march this year. Throughout November, Bangalore too was witness to various events like panel discussions, story reading, movie screenings, plays, a queer marathon and a diversity fair.