In the modern landscape of social activism, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO) and their corporate funding parties have left a large footprint in terms of sponsoring and appropriating various movements, whether they be large scale social movements or grassroot movements all over the country. The Pride Walks coordinated by the queer communities in India have received the more or less the same treatment from NGOs and corporate sponsors. But the Hyderabad leg of queer movements and activism differs from that of the cities with similar stature.

This essay will briefly discuss the history of Hyderabad queer movements and the rapid shift in its development following a change of leadership helmed by various trans communities, which took place in the middle of 2014. Further, the essay will focus on the damaging effects of the “benevolent” corporations and their NGO arms through the critical insight Arundhati Roy presented in her short essay The NGO-ization of Resistance.

Brief Historical Context

One of the very first documented gay rights protests in India took place in 1992 at Delhi. The butterfly effect of which later led to a group of activists filing a public interest litigation in the Delhi high court, challenging the constitutional validity of the archaic Section 377. Later half of the 1990s, and the better part of the 2000s, the most visible strain of queer activism, who were and to a degree still are historically and politically imperceptible, were spearheaded by the affluent and privileged gay men; who allocated a vast majority of the resource available to them to mobilise the sexually marginalised communities all over the Indian subcontinent to overcome the legal hurdle of reading down Section 377. But unfortunately, the same people in line to benefit from the activism overlooked the discourse of the community members suffering from multiple layers of marginalisation related to gender, caste, class, sexualities, etc. was not engaged by the privileged and comparatively hegemonic group of gay men within the movement. 

While the queer population in other major cities pushed forward with events like Pride Walk, Hyderabad did not see any such development until 2013. The Pride Walk of 2014 was also for the most part organised by the same affluent gay men, NGOs and corporations as the year before. But a radical shift took place in 2015 with a change in the queer leadership.

NGO-ization in and Around the Queer Space

Coinciding with the gay rights movement was India opening its gate to neoliberalism, which led to the NGO bloom which to this day is on the rise. The consequence of the narrow scope of operation of the activism of the hegemonic parties of the queer movement, and partly funded by the same parties, paved the way for a large number of NGOs to spring up. The escalating activism funded by the said NGOs and corporations resulted in the larger movement itself to be in a zone of steady and systemic NGO-ization, with their target-oriented corporate approach to problem solving in the field.

There were numerous problems that plagued the modus operandi of the NGOs – with the most important being the conundrum of funding. To be kept on their lifelines, NGOs need external funding. And if the problem that they are trying to solve gets solved at a certain point, then the NGOs will not have a reason for existence, since that point onwards, which consequently dries up their funding opportunities. To circumvent this existential crisis, they ironically have to maintain the status quo of oppression and exploitation. There are documented cases of trans and hijra sex-workers being employed by the NGOs to work in the field. But at the same time, these employees are paid unliveable wages, which in turn force them to rely on sex-work to meet their living arrangements (Kumar, 2017). Thus instead of overthrowing the systemic oppression, the NGOs simply become a part of the toolset in the arsenal of the oppression perpetuated by the hegemonic forces of the society.

In his paper Radicalising Community Development: The Changing Face of the Queer Movement in Hyderabad City, the author Pushpesh Kumar writes, “the combined hegemony of NGOs, western funders, and elite gay men has primarily determined the direction of LGBT politics in India, reflecting a reified version of ‘sexual minority politics’, where a neoliberal regime is pegged on to civil rights and sustained through funded NGOs that work around HIV/AIDS. At another level, it is also asserted through the consumerist lifestyles of the privileged LGBT” (Kumar, 2017).

Furthermore, Roy points out that NGOs are patronised by western governments and interests, who recant funding from federal agencies and government programmes – exacerbating the crisis, only to resume a tiny fraction of the funding to NGOs years down the line. “There is an irony in the World Bank putting increasing sums of money into AIDS work in countries such as Brazil and India where the bank’s own policies had helped weaken the health structures that might have already helped prevent the spread of HIV” (Altman, 1999).

There were a few criticisms against the NGO-ization from the pre-trans leadership phase of queer activism in Hyderabad. The first of it being the shallow commitment for the issues and, the often-homophobic stances the corporate sector took. Funding a minimal amount but claiming a larger stake in the community events is another fault activists bring up from then (Kumar, 2017). Unfortunately, Kumar found that very little further critique other than the few stated ones as advocated by the activists of the time.

Although sometimes well-intentioned, NGOs and corporate takeover of pride movements in the city did more harm to the queer movements than it did good. As otherwise independent queer activists and scholars, who could’ve made great grassroot development, spent their time and resources aiding the said NGOs.

Trans Leadership Radicalising the Queer Movement in Hyderabad

Pushpesh Kumar interviewing queer activists of the pre-trans phase writes, “an autonomous non-funded consciousness was critical to the emergence of the movement, but the interviews suggest that such a consciousness may not be able to imagine LGBT politics beyond a reified minority interest politics. Andy’s disenchantment with the corporate sector stems from his awareness of the shallow concerns and homophobic stance of the corporations, but his queer literary sensibilities do not push him to connect LGBT issues with issues of caste, class, gender and political economy” (Kumar, 2017).

Attempting to portray the rich history and politics, whether it is personal or communal, of Hijra, Kothi, and transgender population of Hyderabad is out of scope for this essay. But there have been some major developments in terms of their legal achievements with judgments such as NALSA, and the significant influence they had during the formation of the state of Telangana. The trans activists saw the involvement of NGOs with systemic subjugation the queer population, and the trans population in particular, have been experiencing. Coinciding with the NALSA judgement in 2014, trans activists took charge of the Hyderabad leg of Pride Walk, and removed the influence corporations and NGOs had until the year before. Further, a trans-activist Vyjayanti Mogali argues, “democracy means redistributing power; NGOs cannot redistribute power because that would be self-destructing device” (Kumar, 2017).

Democratising the queer and pride movements in Hyderabad could not have been done without the strong trans activists who took the “brand” away from corporations and NGOs who were trying to appropriate for their own capitalist interests. The trans-leadership have repeatedly critiqued the NGO-ization of the movement prior to their involvement in the forefront, and against the activists who failed to connect the points of NGO-ization with the larger impact on the identitarian politics and activism, as well as the multiple layers of oppression the community members were facing from various aspects such as caste, gender and class. Further, narrowing the scope of the activism itself by the NGOs and corporates limiting their funding to certain issues were also pointed out by the trans-leadership. Moreover, the gay-centric pride walk was made inclusive to the rest of the sexual and gender minority population. The queer space also lent its hand to minority and intersecting groups such as the Dalit coalition when their help was required, and vice versa.

Conclusion

NGOs and corporate sponsors take a large space in the public sector under the guise of “developing” the communities in the absence of the state. But unfortunately, most of them and their work have little long term impact, and sometimes even have extreme adverse effects. The same can be observed in the case of NGO involvement in queer communities of Hyderabad. The critical involvement of transgender activists in democratising the uneven power dynamics which existed before them radicalised the development of the communities involved. Suddenly the spotlight of queer movement was taken away from the exclusive upper class fight for just reading down Section 377 – which had very little effect on a large majority of the trans population, and instead focused on important grassroot level needs of the community.

While NGOs could be helpful in other avenues at times, the same cannot be said in the context of queer movement in Hyderabad; and that was precisely what the trans leadership proved right, after their direct involvement.