The South Asian community in Britain recently hailed the wedding of a renowned community member - Jasvir Singh CBE City Sikhs Chair and Co-Founder of South Asian Heritage Month. Jasvir told the press that he has not tried to hide his sexual orientation, but it is not something he has talked about publicly. When the news of Singh’s wedding broke on social media, it was received with unprecedented love and congratulatory messages from the community and around the world. It was a rare moment when the south Asian community came together to celebrate a person who was already a champion of diversity and now was being celebrated for his choices. "My husband is white, British, and was not born into a Sikh family. But he understands my Sikhi (Sikhism) and he has respected and embraced that part of my life. We have said we want to have a family and want to bring our children up Sikh. We spoke about the kind of wedding we wanted in great detail, but sadly there was no way of getting married in a gurdwara, even though in my interpretation of the Anand Karaj (the Sikh marriage ceremony), there is no reason for this,” Singh told BBC.
Asian Voice spoke to more members of the South Asian community about where we stand when it comes to embracing, accepting and nurturing the freedom of sexual diversity. While there is a considerable amount of progress that the community has made in empowering LGBTQ+ folks, there is still a long way to go in terms of removing the moral dilemma from sexual diversity.
We can’t pick and choose equality like a bag of pick-n-mix
Director of Change and Communications, Birmingham Pride, Saima Razzaq spoke to the newsweekly at length about where we as a community stand in terms of accepting, embracing and learning about the LGBTQ+ community. Saima said, “In some aspects, we really are starting to see an element of progressive change amongst the South Asian diaspora when it comes to gender identities, predominantly down to South Asian LGBTQ+ individuals and their allies taking a stand to collectively reclaim this narrative. Last year Shiva Raichandani won the Iris Prize; a BAFTA-qualifying LGBTQ+ film festival, for their film Queer Parivaar which explores Queer, trans and non-binary narratives.”
Saima further added, “We’ve also seen the release of Saim Sadiq’s ground-breaking film Joyland. Pakistan’s first Oscar-shortlisted film that tells the story of a married man who falls in love with a trans woman. As a Pakistani, I’d have thought we’d have been celebrating our first entry into the Oscars but no. Instead what we saw was the creation of a smear campaign, based on misinformation that was used to gaslight Pakistanis, both at home and abroad, into thinking that a same-sex marriage bill had been passed in the Pakistani parliament, something that couldn’t be more further from the truth.”
Razzaq thinks that as if this wasn’t bad enough, on 14th February the Pakistani senate of Human Rights passed a regressive amendment to Trans Protection Bill (2018), legislation that was the world’s most progressive trans protection bill in the world. Commenting on this amendment, Saima said, “So it's a bit of a double-edged sword. With far-right ideologies sweeping the world over, this is also having a knock-on effect on South Asians both at home and abroad. These ideologies are providing fuel for patriarchal, far-right factions that exist within our communities - factions who despise the emancipation of women and point blank refuse to even recognise the existence of LGBTQ+ people who live amongst them.”
The Director of Change and Communication also mentioned that on Friday 17th February Birmingham Pride took part in a vigil that was organised in memory of 16-year-old Brianna Ghey (pronounced j-eye). “Brianna was a trans girl murdered by fellow school pupils in the UK, simply because of who she was. During the vigil and while my colleague Eva Echo; Director of Innovation, was being interviewed by the press, a group of South Asian boys started hurling homophobic abuse at those attending the vigil. There were so many of us but these boys really had no shame and one of these South Asian young boys even pulled out a knife on the crowd before running off,” Saima said.
“Birmingham is home to one of the largest South Asian communities in the UK. What are we coming to as a people? We really must understand that we can’t pick and choose equality like a bag of pick-n-mix. Just like we fight against racism we must stand up against the oppression of all minorities,” she added.
Further cementing the sentiment on LGBTQ+, in a previous interview with Asian Voice ahead of the release of Joyland in the UK, director Saim Sadiq told us, “Even just generally speaking, on a political level, when people speak about in movies, especially about sexuality, and coming of age and finding your identity, they almost speak about it as if, you know, freedom is the only and ultimate goal. But it's really not, especially living in a society like this, you can't say individual freedom trumps everything else. It should be equally important to people who are going to continue to live in a society that's like a collective, so you get the freedom in the end that you want, but at what cost is the term and are you okay with it? There's a big heaviness that comes with losing your innocence and coming of age.”
South Asian society has viewed diverse sexuality through that moral lens
Jasvir Singh CBE, City Sikhs Chair and Co-Founder of South Asian Heritage Month recently came out to share the news of his wedding with his partner Nick. Speaking to us, Jasvir Singh told the newsweekly, “The South Asian communities have historically been very welcoming of diverse gender identities and sexualities. The presence of hijras in the region is well known, and there have been same-sex relationships depicted in art and in sculptures such as on the temple carvings of Khajuraho in India for centuries, if not millennia.
“When Victorian British values were imposed on Indian society in the mid-19th century, sadly that millennia-long history was pushed aside in the name of 'morality', and the introduction of section 377 of the Indian Penal Code in 1860 criminalised homosexual acts for the very first time. Since then, South Asian society has viewed diverse sexuality through that moral lens, and the region is slowly emerging from that perspective. Section 377 has been repealed, and there is a case going through the Indian Supreme Court for same-sex marriages to be recognised. Changes throughout the subcontinent are having ripple effects here, and the diaspora communities in Western Europe, North America and the Pacific have benefitted from more liberal and progressive views on the rights of LGBTQ+ people, including on same-sex marriages. However, there is still so much more to be done.
“The mainstream South Asian communities need to be far more welcoming of the diversity of gender and sexuality, for example, and the concept of what constitutes a ‘family’ needs to evolve to reflect the reality of the present day. We also need to view these changes as being us reclaiming our South Asian cultural and societal diversity from centuries gone by rather than as ‘modern’ or ‘Western’ developments, and the more we see this in that manner, the better it will be for proper validation, understanding and celebration of the lives of South Asian LGBTQ+ people in the UK and around the world.”
The trailblazers
Dr Rohit K Dasgupta (Senior Lecturer in Cultural Industries, University of Glasgow, Visiting Fellow in Media and Creative Industries, Loughborough University, Councillor and Commissioner for Social Integration & Equalities, London Borough of Newham) believes that Queer rights have moved from the periphery to the very centre of discussion on South Asian identities. “British South Asian queer artists such as Sunil Gupta, Pratibha Parmar, Ian Iqbal Rashid and others have been trailblazers in creating work that has challenged the homogenous lens through which South Asian identities have often been discussed. In a recent research project with Dr Churnjeet Mahn on South Asian queer migration to the UK we note how mainstream queer histories of organising have often erased South Asians even though there is a rich history of the contribution made by South Asian queer people to anti-racist and anti-caste politics, queer resistance, cultural production and community organising in the UK,” Dr Dasgupta told Asian Voice.
LGBTQ+ History Month: inclusion and diversity across the biggest firms
The Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales released a note in February - which is marked as LGBTQ+ History Month. According to the ICAEW, the 2021 census was a milestone for the LBGTQ+ community in the UK. It marked the first time that the community was counted in the census since this record-keeping began more than 200 years ago and revealed that there are more than 1.5 million LGBTQ+ people living in England and Wales.
But while progress is undeniable, there is more to be done. As we continue to celebrate this month’s LGBTQ+ History Month – a celebration of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer history to promote awareness of the issues facing LGBTQ+ people – we take a look at what the largest UK accountancy firms are doing.
A more fundamental look at how to foster greater inclusion of diverse peoples appears to be gaining traction among firms. They are staging tailored initiatives targeting specific groups to boost diversity, and are also now delving deeper – considering the physical architecture, policies and procedures within their organisations that will assist in promoting greater diversity and inclusion.
Firms acknowledge the challenges faced when measuring the success of various initiatives but are finding numerous ways to gauge progress. Second, only to Pride Month, held in June, LBGTQ+ History Month has become a key time for firms to celebrate LGBTQ+ colleagues and continue to raise awareness through month-long events across the UK.
Grant Thornton: visible role models and a sense of community
At Grant Thornton, the firm’s LGBTQIA+ network has an independent charter and a clear mandate as well as a budget and goals. Its strategy is agreed upon with the senior leadership team, two of whom are sponsors. Bradley Chadwick, a partner and current leader of the firm’s LGBTQIA+ inclusion and diversity strand as convener for Count Us In, says the charter is to promote the interests of and create an inclusive environment for LGBTQIA+ partners and other people working at Grant Thornton. They seek to do this by ensuring there are visible role models, a sense of community and that the firm’s policies are inclusive.
Deloitte: experiences of senior LGBTQ+ people, trans histories and trans futures
At Deloitte, February sees a mix of in-person, hybrid and virtual events across its UK offices, including an event focusing on the experiences of senior LGBTQ+ people, one on trans histories and trans futures, as well as a family-focused event on coming out together. Deloitte’s events for History Month, and throughout the year, are all managed by its LGBTQ+ network which was set up in 2007. Clare Rowe, inclusion lead at Deloitte, says that its LGBTQ community is one of the firm’s five inclusion priorities, along with disability, social mobility, gender balance and ethnicity – all of which are overseen by the firm-wide inclusion team which works in partnership with the LGBTQ+ network throughout the year. Last September, Deloitte also published its headline sexual orientation representation data externally for the first time.
