Indian artists are using their work to advance marriage equality discussions. Aksh Diwan Garg's paintings depict wedding guests, highlighting exclusion and belonging. Shakibul Islam's art celebrates parenthood and love over societal biases. Children's books by Ameya Narvankar and Lavanya Karthik feature lesbian couples. These artists portray queer love and its possibilities within everyday Indian life.
Sometimes art anticipates what even the law denies. On October 17, 2023, the Supreme Court of India declined to grant same-sex couples the right to marry. They may fall in love, live together and share physical intimacy -thanks to the decriminalisation of "carnal intercourse against the order of nature" by the same court in 2018-but marriage, tax benefits, adoption and inheritance rights remain a distant dream. The candle of hope, however, is kept alive as Indian artists step up to broaden the conversation around marriage equality.
Delhi-based artist Aksh Diwan Garg's debut solo show, "Wedding Season: Aap Kiski Taraf Se?", has oil paintings that capture the fanfare of Indian weddings from the viewpoint of someone who stands on the margins and craves belonging.
"Some ideas need to be felt before they can be believed, no matter how sound the logic behind them," says Mihir Thakkar, who curated Garg's show, about the subject of marriage equality. He says when "the morality of a society simply refuses to catch up", it might be more effective "to offer an experience that shifts a person's internal sense of what's true" than "trying to win them over through debate".
Garg's exhibition is unique because he paints only the guests attending the wedding, and not the couple. The canvases are filled with images of aunts and cousins dressed in bright clothes, showing off, applying henna, dancing, gossiping and relishing the wedding feast.
In the painting unko gulab pasand hai, placed in a corner of the gallery, a mustachioed man is nursing a drink. His blue tie is adorned with roses and leaves. His eyes are outside the frame. This man seems to be lurking at the periphery. He is standing by himself, not celebrating with others, perhaps angry and upset at the legal system for not letting him marry the man he loves. One wonders if the question, which is also the title of the exhibition "Aap Kiski Taraf Se?", meaning "Whose side are you?", is being asked of him.
Garg's paintings highlight what exclusion looks and feels like. Garg says he wants to show that "queer experiences can exist within ordinary spaces and everyday situations, rather than only within the familiar visual language of Pride marches".
It is not just Garg. At "Unboxed 2.0", a queer art exhibition that was unveiled during the Pride month of June, there was a striking painting by Shakibul Islam-Family, which shows two fathers and their child enjoying an evening in the park. Islam, who divides his time between Kolkata and Mumbai, says, "I wanted to celebrate parenthood, which is denied to queer couples. Look at them: they are finding so much joy in their child's happiness. This is my artistic vision: where queer people, too, have the opportunity to raise children."
Earlier, Islam had made a splash with his painting Grooms are Waiting at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale. In a society that refuses to legalise same-sex marriages and looks down upon Hindu-Muslim unions, he depicted a gay couple prioritising love over hate-a Bengali Muslim groom wearing a sehra, and a Bengali Hindu groom wearing a topor, their wedding honouring the traditions of both.
Islam says, "In matrimonial advertisements, we see that, apart from religion, Indians are obsessed with skin colour. The preference for a fair-skinned partner is connected to racism and casteism. The men in my painting are comfortable in their brown skin. Love is what matters to them."
Before Garg and Islam began to hang their art on walls, artistic representations of marriage equality reached Indian audiences via children's books. Bengaluru-based Ameya Narvankar wrote and illustrated Ritu Weds Chandni (2022), while Mumbai-based Lavanya Karthik illustrated Reva and Prisha (2021), written by Shals Mahajan, who lives in the same city. Both these books have lesbian couples.
Narvankar, who has a child narrator named Ayesha attending a wedding of two women, says he "chose the backdrop of a big fat Indian wedding because it is something most Indians instantly recognise, even if they have never attended a same-sex wedding". Mahajan and Karthik's book has twin sisters, Reva and Prisha, being raised by two mothers-Runu Yusuf, who is a Muslim college professor, and Pritam Singh, a Hindu writer of detective fiction.
Ritu and Chandni declare their love by dancing in a wedding procession, exchanging garlands with the blessings of the elders and circumambulating the sacred fire. Runu and Pritam's love is presented through a domestic register-one partner in T-shirt and pajamas holding a breakfast bowl and the other hugging her from behind. Karthik says she was inspired by the "sweet, wholesome and life-affirming approach" of Mahajan's prose, which communicates with young readers "without any moralising or lecturing".
These artists defy the mistaken assumption that same-sex love is a Western construct, which persists despite Ruth Vanita and Saleem Kidwai's seminal volume Same-Sex Love in India: Readings from Literature and History (2000). But unlike them, these artists do not use historical antecedents or mythological references to make a case for queer love. They just portray it and its possibilities. As Islam says, "We must create images of what we want to see in the world."
