'We are here, we are queer': Bengaluru Pride march witnesses diverse participation

Bengaluru: By 2:30 pm, the road outside Sree Kanteerava Stadium looked less like a protest assembly and more like a festival waiting to erupt. People kept pouring in – students clutching hand-painted placards, trans women shimmering in sequins, drag performers adjusting their wings in the heat, corporate employees tying rainbow bandanas, and older queer folks quietly taking their place in the crowd as though claiming a long-delayed right.

The dhols began first, and the march surged forward like it had been held back for years. Bengaluru Pride has always carried an undercurrent of defiance, but this year the dominant note was something else, a kind of ecstatic, unfiltered belonging.

Walking with her friends, software engineer Akhila Narayan, 26, laughed as she tried to keep in step with the drumbeat. She said Pride felt “less like resistance and more like home,” adding almost offhandedly, “We’re not asking for space anymore. We’re taking it.” Her voice disappeared quickly into the rising chant: “We are here! We are queer!”

From the other side of the road, another wave of slogans rose, “Namma Pride, Namma Hakku”(Our Pride, Our Right). “Humein chahiye azaadi!” punctuated by a group of Dalit queer activists shouting “Jai Bhim” with their blue flags held high. The diversity of the march stood out in every direction: students; trans elders; migrant workers; corporate queer groups; and volunteers jogging alongside the crowd reminding people to hydrate.

For Charan, a 19-year-old college student who had travelled from Dakshina Kannada, the day felt less celebratory and more like a brief moment of visibility he rarely gets back home. Holding a cardboard placard that simply read "Let Us Live", he shrugged and said, almost shyly, “I’m not asking for much. I just want to exist without someone having an opinion about it.”

The visual chaos was beautiful: Maleficent horns towering above the crowd, wings made of iridescent cellophane, face paint melting in the sun, bright sarees swirling to drumbeats. A drag performer, who strutted down the route with black horns and a staff, laughed when asked how she felt. “Like a villain in a world that finally figured out, I’m actually the hero,” she said, posing mid-sentence as a dozen cameras clicked around her.

Standing near her was Leah Martinez, a 30-year-old visitor from Spain attending her first Pride in India. Watching the drummers and the swirl of colour, she said she had “never seen a Pride march this emotionally charged.” “In Europe, Pride feels like a festival. Here, it feels like a festival and a fight. People are celebrating, but they are also demanding to be seen. It’s powerful," she added.

Though the turnout appeared to be significantly large, the march stayed orderly. Volunteers kept lanes clear, gently redirected marchers at turns, and coordinated with police at crossings. A senior police officer supervising the route told DH that the organisers were “one of the most cooperative teams we’ve worked with,” adding that participants followed regulations closely. “Events should be run like this,” he said. “Even with such massive crowds, there was almost no disruption to traffic.”

The march swelled, danced, and eventually reached Samsa Bayalu Ranga Mandira, where the mood softened. The transition was striking -- from streets vibrating with slogans to a theatre buzzing with anticipation. Hemmeya Sanje, the cultural programme, opened with a folk song in Kannada that briefly turned the noisy crowd into a silent, swaying mass.

In the wings backstage, poet Rhea D’Souza wiped sweat from her brows and smiled nervously before going onstage. “I write because I don’t get this kind of space anywhere else,” she said. “Outside, people debate our rights. Here, nobody debates our existence.”

On a stone bench in the amphitheatre, Mahesh Shenoy, 52, watched the performances with a softness that came only with years. He remembered marching when Pride was barely a gathering of fifty. “Back then we were scared someone might throw stones,” he said, with eyes fixed on the stage. “Now, the police are guiding us safely, children are dancing, offices are sending teams…Bengaluru may not be perfect, but it’s changing.”

As the final performance ended – a contemporary dance piece about longing, chosen family, and freedom – the lights dimmed and applause rose like a tide. People lingered long after, reluctant to let the night end, glitter refusing to leave their cheeks, flags drooping from tired but victorious hands.

The city’s learning, however, remains incomplete. Many of the long-standing demands -- reservations, healthcare access, pensions, housing and welfare for trans persons, and legal protection – still feel out of reach. For someone like Mahesh, who worries about aging without secure social support, or for trans sex workers who marched earlier demanding basic protection, these are not abstract policy points but questions of survival.

However, for a few glowing hours, under the open sky and the hum of music and movement, the city briefly resembled the version so many have fought for, a Bengaluru where identity isn’t hidden, where freedom doesn’t need permission, and where joy itself becomes an act of resistance.

As people began walking out in small clusters, someone shouted over their shoulder—not as a protest, not as a threat, just as a simple truth that hung in the eve air: “We’re here. We’re queer. And we’re not done yet.”