Forty years ago, a cataclysmic event shook the nation of India. A pesticide factory run by the U.S.-based Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) exploded, releasing 27 tons of MIC, a chemical 500 times more poisonous than hydrogen. Ten thousand people died within three days. Today, over 150,000 Bhopalis are battling chronic illnesses due to the exposures of themselves or their parents, 500,000 lives remain physically and economically harmed by the disaster, and groundwater contamination is ongoing. Investigators blamed the accident on understaffing and poor operational and safety procedures at the plant.
Despite clear evidence of corporate negligence resulting in an indictment of UCC, the U.S. government refused to extradite UCC CEO Warren Anderson from Connecticut to stand trial in India. Ultimately, UCC settled multi-billion-dollar lawsuits by Bhopal survivors and family members for a mere $500 payment to each dead victim, which a spokesperson for Dow Chemical, which bought UCC in 2001, later called “plenty good for an Indian.” Yet many of those survivors have spent years documenting medical harm, setting up a community clinic, and traveling the world to demand accountability. This is powerful testimony to the ability of people to defend their fundamental rights to a healthy environment and to hold corporate polluters responsible for their negligence and violence.
Jim Fitterling, the current CEO of Dow, a Fortune 500 company responsible for the plight of people in Bhopal, has won numerous awards for diversity and inclusion, particularly tied to his being an out gay businessperson. But claims to inclusion ring hollow when companies like Dow cause environmental and social crises and walk away, unwilling to quite literally clean up their messes. (The term “pinkwashing” refers to corporate or government crowing about internal queer inclusion to mask large-scale harm.) Why doesn’t “inclusion” include real financial compensation for the victims and survivors of the Bhopal Gas Leak? During Pride Month a few years ago, Fitterling said, “If you want to make a difference in the world, you have to take action.” What of the action that people in Bhopal have been taking, for 40 years now, for basic access to clean air, water, land, and healthcare? Why ignore their concrete clarion calls to make a difference?
Claims to inclusion ring hollow when companies like Dow cause environmental and social crises and walk away, unwilling to quite literally clean up their messes.
Sanjana Singh, a trans woman survivor of the Bhopal disaster, has said, “Fighting discrimination against LGBT+ people teaches us to fight against all forms of discrimination in society. It is wrong for Fitterling to make claims of inclusivity while heading a company that starkly discriminates against the Bhopal survivors.” Noted British gay human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell wrote to Fitterling in 2021, citing the latter’s outness and urging him to “remedy nearly 40 years of racism, inequality and injustice in Bhopal” by agreeing to fully compensate the Bhopal victims.
Queerness has long held radical promise for an emancipatory, intersectional politics, in part because LGBTQ+ individuals can, by virtue of the social and economic marginalization that often accompanies non-normative sexual identity, be disproportionately at risk to environmental challenges. While there is no data with sexuality or gender as a primary marker of identification in Bhopal in the aftermath of the 1984 gas leak, the issues faced by Bhopalis because of Dow/Union Carbide’s mismanagement of the factory site are issues tied to sexual justice. For instance, the reproductive, congenital, and developmental disabilities faced by women and children in Bhopal because of exposure to toxins are a reproductive justice issue. Who gets to have children and family, how those families look, and what forms of access to care and sustainable futures are available for “different” children are all questions that queer folks have unique perspective on. Like many in the campaign for justice in Bhopal, queer folks have a history of fighting for more expansive visions of survival, choice over our bodies, kinship, and care — a history we owe it to our queer kin and ancestors to continue.
In a time when queerness is easily co-opted in service of narrower visions of individual sexual “liberty,” we have to remember the origins of the movement for queer liberation pioneered by people like Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, and others. As a queer community, we need to hold those accountable who use our identities as a shield against criticism, and we need to expand who counts as the world we care to fight for.
The International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal (bhopal.net) is working with federal lawmakers to designate December 3 as Chemical Disaster Awareness Day. They are also working with local groups to make December 1-7, 2024 a Week of Solidarity with Bhopal. If an organization might hold a solidarity event, they are asked to fill out this form.
