India’s first LGBT+ radio program has been launched with host Harish Iyer hoping to raise awareness about the community and the issues people are facing.
“The idea is to get people acquainted with all sexualities, and speak about the intersectionalities as well,” Iyer tells
Iyer that he wants to make the program on Ishq FM “as inclusive and personal as possible” to give listeners a better understanding of gender and sexuality.
“I think understanding will develop when stories are told, which is all we do on the show.
“Recently, we had a gay couple, where one was Muslim and the other was Sikh, and they spoke about their love despite being from different faiths.”
Iyer is a prominent LGBT+ activist in India and gained public attention in 2015 when his mother posted a newspaper ad advertising for a partner for her son. The ad was criticised because it specified that the suitor be “preferably Iyer”–a Hindu Brahmin caste.
“I was completely oblivious of my own privilege as a Brahmin until the ill-timed light-hearted matrimonial advert hit the stands,” he told .
“I understood that just because one is from a marginalised community, doesn’t make the person non-discriminatory, and everyone still has a lot of other biases to unlearn.
“LGBT people can be as bad as everyone else just as they can be as good as everyone else. We band together – across all sects, beliefs, castes, religions – because as people who have been discriminated against, we know better than anyone else how biases and stereotypes can be completely unfounded and illogical.
“So we must fight for one another, for the overall upliftment of society,” he says.
Same-sex sexual activity is still illegal in India— under the country’s colonial-era penal code—but Iyer says visibility of the LGBT+ community is improving.
“Back when I came out around 15 years ago, we were a snippet in the newspaper, and often had to use pseudonyms," he told the Hindu. "Since the court verdicts, that has changed, but getting these stories out is the order of the day.
“All media has not come out of the closet, but sensitisation is happening thanks to the power of stories. The power of us not becoming a cause, but becoming people.”
Gaydio currently broadcasts across Mumbai, Kolkata and New Delhi.
