NEW DELHI — Next month, Sumati Kaul will take part in her third annual Gay Pride March in India. And for the first time since she began telling some friends and associates that she is a lesbian, she is planning to do so without a mask.
As recently as July, when smaller marches were held in several cities, she kept on her mask and avoided the cameras.
“I didn’t want my family to see me on television,” said the 31-year-old software company manager.
But then the social pressures faced by many Indian women — to marry, to be a dutiful wife, to bear children and carry on the family line — hit her with special force, given her sexual orientation, and forced her hand.
Just two days after participating in the July march with her partner, she found herself in her hometown of Moradabad, a conservative community in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, being taken by her family to “see boys” as they lined up candidates for an arranged marriage.
“I realized after the third meeting with potential grooms that I couldn’t live this way,” Ms. Kaul said.
She told her family she did not want to marry and, when pressed for her reasons, she explained. Then she left home, certain that her relationship with her family had been broken beyond repair.
Coming out to her family was, in one sense, a relief, and she earns enough from her job to continue living independently in Delhi without help from her relatives. But unless she is willing to change her life to conform to her family’s expectations of a proper Indian woman, she said, she cannot return to Moradabad.
“My family won’t talk to me, and my uncles will either force me into a marriage or kill me,” she said, in a matter-of-fact tone.
She sees no possibility of reconciliation. “To my uncles and my father, ‘lesbian’ is a dirty word,” she said. “Unless I get married, there’s no way back for me.”
As she spoke, her partner listened, nodding. She, too, will be in the Gay Pride March next month, but she will keep her mask on. Her family lives nearby in Delhi and is even more conservative than Ms. Kaul’s.
–Nilanjana S. Roy, “Gay Women Face Double the Pressure in India” (2010)
