Rituparna Borah’s life has been one long swim against the tide. The Delhi-based activist has become a prominent figure in the queer-feminist rights movement, drawing attention towards intersectionality and making diversity a prominent part of the discourse. My Kolkata caught up with Borah to understand how the layers within the LGBTQIA+ community, which are invisible from the outside, need to be actually seen.
Borah has long spoken about creating a level-playing field, and feels that simply recognising someone’s queer identity isn’t enough. This comes from her own experience as a lesbian indigenous woman with disability, who grew up in a small Assamese village called North Lakhimpur. “Since I came from an indigenous tribe, I was the second-generation learner in the family, and the first woman to leave the village after Class X to live in a Guwahati hostel for further studies.” She realised the contrast in opportunity when she found that her partner, Amrita Tripathi, came from a Brahmin family and was a 10th generation learner. “When Amrita came to my village, she was surprised at how I made it to where I am, despite coming from a region that didn’t have 4G connectivity four years ago. Luckily, my parents taught at a college, so they always wanted me to study.”
Rituparna as a kid at her village home
After completing her plus-two schooling from Guwahati, Borah moved to Delhi and did her undergrad from Miranda House, where she was first introduced to the women’s rights movement. “Since I didn’t come from wealth, I started giving tuitions in college to fund my education.” She went on to do a MPhil from Jawaharlal Nehru University, under the mentorship of writer and academic, Nivedita Menon. During this time, she also worked as a researcher for the Ministry of Panchayati Raj. While looking for work, her lack of social and economic capital became even more evident. “People who had social capital would just make a call to their contacts to hire their daughters and nieces, but I had no one. I also couldn’t speak English very well, and had an Assamese accent, which led to more roadblocks.”
She then joined Nirantar, an NGO that deals with gender and education. Borah credits her boss, queer-feminist activist Jaya Sharma for mentoring and supporting her during her eight years at the organisation. “Most institutions are riddled with caste politics, and even the queer leadership of this country is from upper classes and castes. It was very difficult to make myself heard, but she sent me to big meetings, trusting that I would speak loud and clear. As an upper caste person, you can help by taking a step aside and allow people from marginalised groups to take centre stage. Today, when I get invitations to these fancy events, I smile with irony.” Borah adds that while she loves her Assamese identity, it was very difficult for her to be recognised as a national leader, since most people from the Northeast are only seen as regional activistists.
Borah spent eight years at Nirantar, working on issues of sexuality and gender. In 2014, she banded together with a colleague from Nirantar and a friend from Pride to start Nazariya, a queer feminist resource group. “Everywhere we went, we were always an add-on because we are queer women. If I was speaking on a panel about violence against women, people would see me and say that the panel had people and a lesbian woman. I became the ‘and’. However, our purpose remained to use our lived experiences to inspire mainstream movements which would change the discourse of family, love and intimacy.”
Rituparna in her village
This desire came because of a consensus over how family violence is the biggest crisis faced by the queer community. The realisation also drove Borah to add nuance to the dialogue surrounding same-sex marriage. “All the marriage petitions were put forth by upper-class people who were mostly gay men. Their narratives didn’t match ours. They constantly spoke about parental support, whereas we were victims of natal violence.” She adds that while marriage is a personal choice, for queer people, their chosen family is everything.
Their stance was backed by lawyer Vrinda Grover and Borah campaigned for a closed-group public hearing on family violence. About 32 queer women and trans persons testified that they had undergone this. “The report spoke about extreme forms of violence, admission to mental asylums, electric therapy, conversion therapy and even attempts to murder. There were also social layers to this, and the violence increased in case of interfaith or intercaste relationships.” She elaborates that the violence doesn’t even depend on the person being in a relationship. Even coming out can be enough.
For this, she argues that people should have the right to choose a family beyond the one they are born in. “You wouldn’t want to nominate an abusive parent for your property or life insurance right? I even picked this chosen family for succession over my partner, because they stood by me for 20 years. Jaya helped me buy a house, a car and was emotionally available when my father died. Just because she isn’t my sexual partner, does it make her less important than Amrita?”
She further argues that the idea of a chosen family is important for everyone, not just queers. “Everyone has the right to form a family by choice, irrespective of marriage. When your husband beats you, you can divorce him, but you can’t do that with your natal family. So many queer people left safe homes in Delhi, hoping to be accepted by their parents, only to return a month later.”
Rituparna during a Pride march
Borah feels that a lot of the younger queer community doesn’t fully understand the politics at play, safeguarded by their privilege. The biggest indicator of this is how many people in parades don’t wear masks, unlike most people during her youth. While she does find it encouraging, Borah takes it with a pinch of salt since she doesn’t find many working class people joining the movement. “A lot of youngsters see Pride as everything in life, but for us, we were a lot more beyond it. Our slogans used to be political, and we campaigned about the annihilation of caste, and police dominance. Today, it all boils down to ‘love is love’ and I don’t really enjoy going to Pride walks as much. People get up on trucks for demonstrations, which aren’t accessible to the disabled community, and most people dancing on it are from upper classes and castes. Today, I have a lot of privilege because I can easily tell everyone that I am a disabled, lesbian woman from an indigenous community. But when I was young, I couldn’t.”
This is precisely why Borah campaigns for going beyond tokenism, and asks for real reforms. The most important one, she feels, is diversity inclusion in workplaces. The goal is to allow diverse lived experiences to inspire the mainstream. “Love is Love’ can’t be seen in isolation. It comes with a lot of rights violations, sacrifices, violence, and caste hierarchy. People need to understand that our struggle goes way beyond who we love.”
