More than 1,000 to take part in Chennai’s Fifth Rainbow Pride March

Chennai:
More than 1,000 people from the LGBT community and supporters,
including 700 to 800 from Chennai alone, are expected to take part in Chennai’s fifth Rainbow Pride march on Sunday to celebrate visibility of alternate sexualities and gender identities, according to the organizers of the parade.
This time the pride march has a new venue unlike the earlier one in
Marina Beach. The march will commence from 3pm on Sunday at
Rajarathnam stadium, Egmore. It will follow an approximately 2km
route to the end point -- Langs Garden Road, Chintadripet (near Albert Theatre and Hotel Marina Towers), Chennai, said Jaya, general manager of Sahodaran.
Surprisingly, a cultural programme is likely to be conducted for the
first time after the Pride March. A performance event Naangal ('Us') is being organized by Sahodaran, with support from TAI-VHS. Naangal will conclude by 6 pm.
While visibility won’t be there like it has been during the earlier
pride march in Marina, it hasn’t deterred the spirit of volunteers,
who feel they could reach out to people who have not been to Marina.
L Ramakrishnan, one of the volunteers of the Chennai Rainbow
Coalition, said that this is the first time they got permission to
conduct a cultural programme after the Pride March. “This will help sensitise the people about the rights of LGBT community,” he said. The cultural programme include music, play, skit and dance.
This year the Pride March will be backed by corporates, organizations as well as cultural centers. “Last year, Accenture participated in the March. This year we are expecting more companies to participate besides the cultural centers,” he said.
The Pride marches in Chennai have been part celebration, part demands for recognition and rights, and part expression of gratitude to the Tamil Nadu government for its social welfare benefits extended to Thirunangais (transwomen), the most visible segment of the LGBT community in the region. Consistent demands from 2010 onwards have been for the Supreme Court to uphold the Naz Foundation 2009 verdict of July 2, 2009, that read down IPC Section 377 to exclude consensual relationships among adults of the same sex.
The LGBT community and supporters have also urged the state government to respond to the October 2012 writ petition from the National Legal Services Authority asking all states and union territories to grant equal protection and rights to transgenders as every other citizen of India. They urged that both male-to-female and female-to-male transgender people be included in all aspects of national development and access to social welfare schemes.
The LGBT community has also urged the Tamil Nadu Government to continue and build on the work of the Aravani Welfare Board, which remains a unique initiative in the country, and to expand  its scope to include sexual minorities who face harassment and discrimination because of  their gender identity, gender expression and/or sexual orientation. The community will also pay tributes to health activist Shivananda Khan and film director Rituparno Ghosh, who passed away recently, and acknowledge their immense contributions to queer visibility and rights movements in India.

In India, the first Pride march took place in 1999 in Kolkata.
Subsequently, Pride Parades have become a fixture of the Indian
sexuality or gender rights landscape, with marches having taken place in the following cities Bangalore, Bhubaneswar, Bhawanipatna (Odisha), Coimbatore, Chandigarh, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Madurai, Mumbai, Patna, New Delhi, Pune and Thrissur.
In 2009, local groups and collectives working in the areas of
sexuality, gender-identity, human rights and health/HIV groups came together under the banner of the Chennai Rainbow Coalition, and organized a series of events in the city culminating in the first
march, held in the last Sunday of June. The march was a precursor to the historic July 2, 2009, verdict of the Delhi High Court in the Naz Foundation case, decriminalizing consensual sexual relationships among adults.
For information on Naangal and to perform, contact Jaya at 98418-65423 or sahodaranchennai@gmail.com