 Every year globally, the LGBTQ plus community celebrates June as Pride Month, remembering the Stonewall riots and the protests and struggles for queer rights that followed after. India too, along with the world, celebrates International Pride Month every year with the Pride March across the country in or around June. This time, due to COVID lockdown, a march was not possible. So Students Federation of India organized a virtual Pride March on June 28, 2020 to celebrate Pride Month with the slogan, Coming out with comrades. With stories of their struggles, they went on to celebrate Pride Month. There is a glimpse. The point of Pride Month is it's all about visibility, because without visibility, acceptance comes very less, more visibility, more acceptance, that's the motto I believe in. Up to I think class 11, I didn't know what I was called. I used to tell my people, I used to tell my very closest friends, they didn't have any idea about it. Then I shifted to Metro Guwahati and there are some friends of mine told me, oh, you are nothing wrong with you, it is homosexuality, the feelings you have for girls being a girl and you are probably called as a lesbian. They didn't have also have some, they had a great idea about it. So I first time Googled it in going to an internet cafe. First thing in my life I did in an internet cafe to Google homosexuality, I still remember. That's how I came to know about all these terms. But during that period and when I joined engineering college that 4 years, I faced the worst kind of homophobia in my life and by the time I knew about me what I am called and lesbian was still used as a derogatory word, you know, lesbo, lesbo. And I heard people talking about me behind me as if I didn't exist, you know, like I could hear it. I could hear it. I could see the differences in their behavior once they came to know about my identity. And that too I didn't come out, one of my friends, she told about me, they didn't allow me to, you know, stay in the main girls hostel. So I think language is very important because in India we speak so many languages and if we are seeing for past one day, then SFI is constantly looking, you know, we are promoting this message through different Indian languages. In Tamil, in Malayalam, in Ahomiya, in Hindi, in Hindi, in Hindi, in Hindi, in English, in Hindi, in Hindi, in Hindi, in English. In Tamil, in Malayalam, in Ahomiya, in Hindi, in Hindustani, in English, in Bangla. So, this shows the diversity also in the community. This also shows that why it is important for us to talk about queer identities or politics in Indian languages. There is no equivalent word of queer in any Indian language. When she was 10 years old, she found out that she is a bit different from other people. She was not feeling very comfortable with her body because as a boy she was feeling to dress up like a girl and decorate herself with more jewelry and all. She was particularly saying, I wanted to put earrings, I wanted to put boondi, I wanted to dress like a girl and all. So, it was very difficult for her at that time and she knew like if she come out to anybody or like if she even tell this openly to anybody, people will not accept. So, she secretly told this to her aunt, her aunt was there and she was telling her like, Auntie, I don't feel like the way I am. I am not comfortable the way I am. I actually want to be like a girl. I rather like to play with the girls. I rather like to behave like girls and this is not something which I am not comfortable around with this body. So, then the social scenarios like that, people won't directly accept that. So, there were questions, why do you feel like that? And they were actually consoling her saying that this is just a misbelief. You are okay, you are okay as like any other 10 year old boy. This LGBT activism is very much urban centric. We speak in English mostly and we generally cater to an middle class, upper middle class and upper caste and class people. We do not reach out to people like Mayuri or we do not reach out to people like Shrija who come from villages or small towns and then they make their life in big cities. While they do that, they also educate themselves, empower themselves. But what happens in both the cases of Mayuri and Shrija is that they do not they did not have the idea of LGBT, the full form also. So, they self-educated themselves. This is because we do not talk about LGBT issues in Indian vashas and then only we will be able to make people aware of it. We are called Gila Mitha, we are called Thakkas, we are called Bodhis, we are called Kothis, we are called several other things. We have appropriated some of them. For example, if you look at the Pride march in the US, they say that being dyke is power because a lot of queer people were termed as dyke and then in a derogatory way. So we have appropriated the term queer also. But the time has also come to give us more terminologies, to give us more definitions. It's not like we are closing ourselves from one, we are taking us from one box and putting it in another box. No, but we are trying to understand what is queer in the Indian context. I came out myself as a trans person when I was in a trans standard. I saw one of the newspaper article of Nalsha judgment which happened in 2014. Then I said that I am one of them. But many of my friends started with me from that time. Then from the high counseling sessions started at the age of 14. After my school, my parents took me to the hospital for the counseling and psychiatric therapies and correction treatments. From that time, from the age of 14, from the school counseling center, my parents took me to the psychiatric counseling and correction therapy because of the depression stress that I have gone through because of the bullying from my friends and from my relatives. Then I used to skip many of my classes and I was a NSS volunteer. But one day my teacher rejected me from my NSS camp because I came out as a trans person in my class. So they rejected me, they said that they don't need people like this in the NSS camp. So that made me really, that put me into depression. Then after that after 10 years, my teachers and the school invited me to a great NSS function which happened in last year. Sexuality, in fact, is a proletariat issue. In the last three years, we have grown up to about 50 people. That has been possible because in our city, the left and women's organizations have given us so much space, given our resources, given our contacts, through which we have been able to grow. The way they have supported us has been crucial for us to grow. If I talk about myself, then in school, of course, there is a kind of queerphobia. We live in that society. So by being from that society, there was internalized queerphobia and homophobia. After coming to the university, during the bachelors' time, in the first, second and third year, when things started to change, slowly connected with the people on the left, then the way politics changed and grew, after that, B.A. finally ended. During the masters' time, there was a kind of political build-up in the university, a queer political build-up, in which the left, of course, as I said, was a strong role. And even today, despite not being from SFI, you have called me here to keep my word. The kind of love and solidarity I have got, it will always be a matter of pride for me. We are perhaps working in a space which has a lot of caste-based atrocities, discriminations and, you know, tortures and operations. Similarly, on Dalit guys and girls from the school level, and that gets more difficult if that Dalit boy or girl is a queer person. That gets further more difficult if that Dalit boy or girl who is queer is also a trans person, identify as a trans person. We have already seen this government in 2009, when homosexuality in Delhi High Court, which was the volume of the 377 constitution, was scrapped. But after that, the organization that runs in the name of religion, they gave it to the Supreme Court again. And in the month of July 2013, the Supreme Court gave the judgment that homosexuality is a criminal offence. And the person who remains in this relationship will be sentenced for 10 years. But after that, in 2014, we saw that the Supreme Court gave a opinion in Nalsa Warden. And the Supreme Court said that the third gender has to be identified and he himself will correct his own identification. But we saw that in 2018, the bill passed, the bill brought to the BJP government, in that bill, we saw that he had kept a screening test in that bill. In that bill, he kept this right not above us, but above the state that the district magistrate will correct who is male, who is female and who is transgender. But in this country, a lot of movement was created. A lot of movement was made, there was a transgender movement, there was a LGBT movement. After that, the government moved back and in the year 2014, the bill passed, the screening test was raised in that bill and along with that, the matter of identification was left to the person himself. But till now, there is nothing like that for which the LGBT community, transgender community can be developed. We have seen that, for any development, they have not written anything in this bill. What has been given for education, what has been given for work, nothing has been given. If any trans children, any trans children, if they had to be a community of transgender, what would they do? What would they do if they had to be in a family what would they do? There is nothing written in that transgender bill. If someone is thrown out of the house, then how should we save them? If someone is killed, then how should we save them? There is nothing written in this bill. We have already said that caste and religion the people who are running the country are running in the name of religion, they are distributing the country in the name of CAA. So what will these LGBT community do?