South Asian Network
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SAN was recently featured in Divyabhaskar, a Gujarati newspaper, for our march in favor of LBGTQ+ South Asian communities in Artesia down Pioneer Boulevard.
Here is a link to the original newspaper in Gujarati with the article found on page 27: https://digital.theindianeye.us/DBNA/070822/.
Keep scrolling to read a translated version of the article:
“On Sunday, June 26, the South Asian Network Group organized a Pride Rally on Artesia’s Pioneer Bee in Los Angeles. The rally was also accompanied by a good group. The South Asian LGBTQ community aimed to raise awareness and demand that they be given the same respect, rights and hobbies as anyone else in the community. May, it is not a shame to be a lesbian. The physical condition given by nature must find a place in society without shame. LGBTQ – lesbian y, transgender, quet, questionmg People have the same rights as other people in the society, there were many people in this rally for the purpose of meeting, every citizen of the world should cooperate to bring awareness about LGBTQ community. These people are ashamed of their sexuality, because people look down on them and do not respect them. His family, friends and society looked at him not out of prejudice, but out of respect and joined hands to ensure that the community had all the rights to join.”
Artesia/Los Angeles
–Divyabhaskar
Shakeel Syed wrote this Op-Ed about Independence Day, the path this nation has been down since our independence, and how independence from the British centuries ago has not meant independence for all.
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We know that the lonely Native American female warrior as the statue of freedom atop the Capitol Dome was cast in bronze by a foundry that used enslaved labor. No different is lady “liberty” (in New York), which was also erected by the enslaved.
And, the White House could not be standing shining all these years if not for the sweat of the enslaved blacks.
Without forgetting this sordid past, let’s fast forward.
The claims of the more recent Presidents occupying the White House ranged from: “Government is not the solution to our problem, Government is the problem,” (Ronald Reagan) to “Money is not the only answer, but it makes a difference,” (Barrack Hussein Obama) to the most recent one by the orange hair monster “Make America Great Again.” In these words, there’s very little of greatness and a whole lot of pettiness. Here is why.
Our petty Presidents and politicians of all persuasions continue tounashamedly plot policies that set back the lives of 99% Americans and advance the lives of the 1%.
Our petty Presidents and the Congress always find ways to give more to thewrongly named “Defense Department’s” budget of $800+ billion, while neither are ashamed to trim down the resources to education, healthcareand other social services.
Today’s Supreme Court is like the Torquemada of American law. Tomas de Torquemada, the 15thcentury Dominican friar who became the grand inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition, who was largely responsible for torturing and the burning of heretics. The modern Tomas de Torquemadais yet to be found with bloody instruments in their hands, but they are the owners of their blood stained pens banishing women of their rights to their bodies.
While the “free” America continues to insist for a safer world for herself, at any cost, it fails to protect her very own. Every day, armed men and women wearing blue uniforms kill unarmed black and brown men and women.
The most dramatic wealth gap is between middling millionaires, who have seen only “modest” gains, and the booming billionaires, who now seem to defy economic gravity.
We claim our nation to be the richest, but it is more debt-ridden and even more debt-dependent than ever before. This indebtedness is what Thomas Jefferson feared the most when he said, “I place economy among the first and most important virtues, and debt as the greatest of dangers to be feared.”
While celebrating this Independence Day let us not forget the immeasurable human pain and poverty that continues to exist amidst us, and let us continue to fight for the oppressed and against the oppressors, in it we shall find our true collective independence and not by waving the cheap Chinese made American flags!
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Shakeel Syed is the Executive Director of South Asian Network.
Hina Ahmed, the Deputy Director here at SAN, recently had an Op-Ed published in India West regarding the recent Roe v Wade ruling. Keep scrolling to read!
Anti-abortion ruling is not taking our country backward. It is moving our nation forward, but to a future that is going to be far more sinister than the pre-abortion era. Here are a few reasons for my concern.
And I can list a few more reasons, but you get my point.
So, what do we do and where do we go…? I suggest we make a few concrete demands from those whom we elected.
In the interim, we must remain agitated and re-commit ourselves to help women access abortions and other reproductive health care and to protect them from the harsh burdens we all will inevitably face.
We can neither afford our nation to go backwards nor can we allow our country to go forward with laws that sets us on a path of self-destruction and for future generations to come.
Rise my people. If not now, then when and if not us then who!
Hina Ahmad serves as the Deputy Director of South Asian Network.
Shakeel Syed, our Executive Director at SAN, recently had an article published in India West—an Indian/Indian-American online publication. Access this link to read the article!
Here are a few short excerpts from the article:
“The recent murder of the innocent people on both coasts reminds us of the mordant wit of the Sufi mystic who said ‘I love the moon because it brightens the sky and helps us navigate the dark night. And I hate the sun because it only comes out during the day when it is bright anyway.’
Most of us are capable of missing what is perfectly obvious, especially when we allow our thinking to become fogged with strong emotion.
Yes, we should condemn the murder and mourn the loss of lives from Laguna Woods to Buffalo but we should also struggle to open our eyes and discern the perfectly obvious patterned behavior here.”
“In an age of connecting the cosmos, America must learn to make connections here on earth between corrosive psychological violence and lethal gun violence, between our tribalism and ‘their’ isolation and alienation, and most obviously between all those bullet-riddled corpses and the smoking guns that any lost soul can so easily buy or steal. Otherwise, we may continue to believe that sunlight is a waste because the days are always bright anyway.”
Oftentimes, it’s easy to forget how recent colonization in South Asia by Europeans ended. In reality, for many of us today, our grandparents, parents, or even ourselves lived through it. While the West was beginning to see progress towards inclusivity in the 1900s, South Asia had just been left by the queerness is provocative and unacceptable during colonization.The UK saw the beginning of organized LGBTQ+ civil rights movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Post-colonization, South Asia simply wanted to live up to the “standards” the west had left behind, so communities in South Asia let go of parts of its histories and cultures. As a result, many South Asian American spaces are not safe or welcoming to LGBTQ+ individuals. The world’s oldest South Asian LGBT magazine, Trikone, was not founded until 1986.
The time of the 70s and 80s was also when there were great waves of migration from South Asia to Britain. Yet, since the very beginning, South Asians played a critical role in this movement. In 1988, the group Shakti was found, representing South Asian lesbian and gay individuals. That same year, a founding member of Shakti, DJ Ritu, also founded a club: Club Shakti. This club raised funds for the larger organization and provided a safe space for British South Asian queer people.
However, this “progressive acceptance” that these South Asian people represented and demonstrated is not something new. I contest that accepting queer people is not “progressive” in regards to South Asian history and culture because being part of this community was once normal. Hinduism, born in ancient South Asian culture, does not condemn LGBTQ+ individuals, unlike other religions. Some Hindu scholars argue Shikhandi, in the Mahabharata, is transgender, but Krishna did not mind sharing a chariot with this warrior. Gods frequently change from one gender to another. One such example is Vishnu, who came in a female form: Mohsin.
As a Bharatanatyam dancer for fourteen years, one of my favorite pieces is Ardhanari—depicting Ardhanareeswara, a God half man/half woman, half Shiva/half Parvati. On one side, River Ganga is flowing out of Shiva’s head; on the other, Parvati’s head is decorated with a beautiful bun. On one side, Shiva has skulls hanging from his neck; on the other, a gold chain hangs from Parvati’s neck. Shiva’s ankle on one side is surrounded by snakes; Parvati’s is decorated with a beautiful anklet. More than just being half Shiva and half Parvati, Ardhanareeswara depicts that the human being is not purely “masculine” strength or “feminine” beauty; the human being must be made of a balance between strength and grace—regardless of gender. Gender does not confine one to the attributes of gender stereotypes.
This is not all to say that queerness is a large part of Hinduism; it’s a part of South Asian history as a whole. Such “form shifting” is part of other religions of the region too. The Lotus Sutra, an Indian Buddhist scripture, tells the story of Avalokiteśvara, the bodhisattva of compassion, who is also associated with Tara, the multi-form female bodhisattva.
Even after homosexuality was made illegal, queerness was not treated as “odd” as in the west at times. For example, in the 1884 case of Queen Empress v. Khairati, Naisargi N. Dave explains in Feminist Studies that Khairati was “clearly a habitual sodomite,” the verdict that found him guilty was overturned because of a lack of precise details, such as “time, place,…other persons involved.” While gender stereotypes were certainly stronger at the time than earlier, this exemplified that even with colonization, South Asian culture is rooted in questioning these boxes and stereotypes. Source after source says that so much ancient South Asian literature and culture is permeated with queerness that it is difficult to separate and identify the queerness; it’s difficult to compile all of this queer South Asian literature because there is so much of it.
An LGBTQ+ group that cannot be overlooked are the Hijra, an identity of intersex/trangender people, that have existed for over 2000 years. Mughal Empire Muslim leaders were patrons of Hijra. However, British colonization led to the criminalization of hijras, leading to stigma and fear despite their significance. Europeans could not fathom a third gender. This long history is a complex one with a complicated set of identities: some just call them transgender; while moreso outside India than outside the nation, this is considered by some a completely different gender—a third gender—all together because ultimately, they are not men becoming women or women becoming men or confining themselves to a box of one of the two in anyway; they are neither male nor female, but they are not transitioning to one either. This group is also known as Aravani, Aruvani, Jogappa, and Kinnar/Kinner.
Despite the setbacks for Hijras caused by the British, they have won some protections since then. Starting in 2007, Pant v. Nepal found that third gender would be protected under the same ruling that legalized same-sex marriage. In 2013, Bangladesh legally recognized people who identified as a third gender, protecting the Hijra community. The following year, 2014, the ruling from National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) v. Union of India paved the way to legally recognizing the third gender; this also meant “sex” based protections are not exclusively for protections for biological characteristics—but also self-perceived gender identity. Today, there are over half a million Hijras in South Asia.
Queerness that has been part of South Asian culture cannot be denied. Nonetheless, we cannot deny the homophobia and discrimination clearly present within the culture today and for many centuries past. As South Asian Americans, us young, “liberal,” and “progressive” kids often want to embrace the diversity and open-mindedness of our history and heritage; in this process, we cannot overlook the damage caused by our ancestors and our own families and friends—and ourselves—resulting in prejudice and damage towards queer South Asians and South Asian Americans today. It is not uncommon to hear uncles and aunties tell us stories of intersex and transgender gods but turn away from LGBTQ+ South Asian American individuals today. We cannot embrace the commonplace of queer South Asians as just history; we must embrace it as part of our culture that will and should exist forever.
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