The 15th edition of Kolkata Rainbow Pride walk will be held on 11th December, and will see participants walk the stretch between Y Channel, Esplanade to Park Circus Maidan via Lenin Sarani and Mullick Bazar from 2pm. Coincidentally, 11th December is also the date when the Supreme Court of India re-instated Section 377 in 2013.
The theme for the pride walk this year is “Human Rights and Law”. Organisers this year have raised the demands of not just repealing Section 377, but also implementing the NALSA judgement in its spirit and withdrawing the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2016 introduced by the government. The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2016has come under sever criticism from activists as well as the trans community for its failure to implement the NALSA judgement and for not taking into account many of the suggestions by the trans community. End to violence faced by the transgender community and justice for Tara, a trans woman from Chennai who died under mysterious circumstances under police custody, are among the other demands being kept forward by the Kolkata Rainbow Pride Walk 2016.
The walk will also extend its support to struggles by other minorities. “Our struggle as queer people is not a standalone one. We are also implicated in, and in solidarity with, many other struggles and movements. Our queer struggle for justice rests on a vision of an anti-caste, queer feminist, non-ableist, secular world, a world without military occupation, without the suppression of dissent. So when we walk for our rights, we also speak with the many other marginalized people’s struggles and protest movements in India that share our dream,” reads the statement by the organisers of the walk.