Homosexuality/Bisexuality In India?

Homosexuality may be defined as romance or attraction towards the same gender, but homosexuality is considered an illicit subject in Indian society. Does this act of love sound wrong to you? Well, some might say no but the majority of the people don’t accept it or are not even open to the idea of homosexuality, why? What do people find wrong in this? Well, there may be a lot of reasons and factors influencing this but today I would mainly like to talk about how tradition and culture have affected the subject of homosexuality in a country like India. 

Religion plays a very important role in creating traditions in India, a country with diverse cultures and religions- Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism to name a few. All of these religions have one thing in common, they believe a soul is created by the god and a soul comprises of 2 parts and the soul can be complete when a man(one half) finds his better half(woman) basically different cultures and traditions follow the ideology that a man is only meant to be with a woman. That’s one of the main reasons why homosexuality is frowned upon by the people in our country because they have always learned and believed from the beginning that a man is supposed to be with a woman. Hence the society believes that the people who are homosexual or transgender are wrong or are committing a sin. 

 What do you think - are the people here at fault for thinking this way or the tradition/culture is at fault here? I believe its the tradition and culture which is at fault here. People’s beliefs, attitudes, and ideologies all are influenced by the tradition and the culture they follow. So I believe that it's us who have to change people’s thinking towards such sensitive topics by spreading awareness.  It is us who have to help each other because if we don’t do it there is no-one to help us.

If we just keep our ideology and beliefs which are based on our culture and traditions on one side and then think about it .......what’s the problem? If a man is attracted to another man or even if a woman loves another woman does it affect our personal life? Does it affect your love life, does it affect society in any way? The answer is no, it doesn’t. If someone is gay or a lesbian then first I would like to tell you that’s his/her personal choice which only and only affects his/her personal life. It doesn’t affect the general public around him/her in any way. As we all say and agree and even our constitution allows everyone to have a personal opinion then why can't everybody have their own personal choice relating to their life partner (irrespective of the person’s gender).

Members of the LGBT community face a lot of challenges daily as their “existence” is questioned. In addition to the challenges of living in a predominantly heterosexual world, the diversity within people with homosexual orientation results in many different kinds of issues. It is mandatory to help people in understanding their sexuality and giving them a reason to live, i.e., their own existence, and being proud of who they are. We should accept the people as they are. I would request all of you to give this matter another thought and help create awareness about the same.

Samanyu Sethi