New York City:
On a freezing Sunday evening in New York City, the global diaspora rallied in protest against the Supreme Court's decision on gay sex, with many saying India has "regressed" in its global standing and its right wing parties have failed to keep up with the times.
"Grandmother, Mom that there is a way to do this ethically. I will build some other new old kind of masculinity; I will honor the mothers in my history the goddess in my name. I will play the drums for you," said rapper duo Darkmatter's Alok Vaid-Menon and Janani Balasubramanian.
"Rapper activism" was strong in New York City's Union Square on the Global Day of Rage, and the crescendo echoed in a show of solidarity and outrage over the Supreme Court ruling that reinstated Section 377.
"It is shocking that all these years of tireless effort have been lost in a day, but I am encouraged about how very powerful we are across the world, the diaspora of queer Indians refuse to compromise," Alok Vaid-Menon said.
The ruling which came right when the world was remembering the legacy of the greatest fighter of equality of our times, Nelson Mandela, brings to question if a few years on, we would look back and say that this was the civil rights movement of our times.
"The LGBT community has succeeded where no one else has, in uniting all religions, Hindus, Muslims and Christians in India. If we are trying to project a modern, liberal India which takes a stand in in the world on human rights, you cannot have a law like this and keep that position," one of the organisers of the NYC Global Day of Rage, Sabelo Narasimhan, said.
The BJP calling gay sex 'unnatural' is drawing comparisons with the conservatives in America, whose anti-gay agenda has been increasingly discredited in recent elections.
Radha Patel says the anti-discrimination sentiment resonates across the world, "A lot of conservative parties, the BJP, Shiv Sena or the Republican party here seem to unite on fear of discrimination. Homosexuality has been found in more than 400 species in nature, so the argument this is unnatural holds no scientific value."
In America, people are asking if the BJP is trying to emulate the Republican strategy of 2004 which worked for George W Bush, but has failed miserably over the last two Presidential elections. The BJP must choose whether it wants to appease the religious bank or the youth, because by endorsing Section 377, it could fail to get the urban, liberal vote which had seemingly begun to move in its favour. Whether or not America's experience is replicable in India, only time will tell.