Sangama

One of the perks of being at Visthar during the School of Peace is that we’ve been invited to attend some of their classes. Lat week we sat in on a session led by a local NGO, Sangama. “Sangama defends the human rights of sexual minorities and others who are oppressed due to their sexual preference and/or gender expression. Their aim is to bring sexuality, sexual preference, and gender identity into the realm of public discourse, and influence class, caste, gender and other human rights and social movements in India. They focus on working class, non-English speaking sexual minorities who otherwise have very little access to resources. Sangama believes in diversity and does not see the different sexual minorities as one monolithic uniform community. We recognize that they come from different classes, castes, genders, religions, languages, cultures, ethnicities, sexual identities, sexual orientations, and political backgrounds.”

Sangama was founded in 1999, and at that point there were groups for gay-identified people in Bangalore (the fifth largest city in India, 8 million people), but they almost exclusively served the upper-strata of society. Very few (if any) resources existed for the lower classes. Samgama began as one small center that focused on twenty-four hour crisis intervention for sexual minorities who had experienced a violation, whether from their home, school, workplace, etc. Their support base has multiplied over the last nine years and they now have offices in Mysore, Chennai (Madras), Hyderabad, Trivandrum, Calicut, Cochin and Gujurat. They employ over 160 people.

It was inspiring, to say the least, to hear the stories from five of the members of this group, who all identified differently. They had all faced persecution because of their identity. Currently, they all work for Sangama as community organizers. From their stories we learned that so often people (somehow) hear that there is a place for people like them, and they find Samgama. After just one phone call they learn that there is community waiting for them.

When we were here as students in 2001 one of our classmates did her research paper on sexual minorities in India, and she was not able to visit this group because at that time it was not safe for them to allow “outsiders” in. It is fabulous to see that after six and a half years Sangama is able to celebrate International Women’s Day on the busiest intersection in the city, and is well-regarded by the NGO community. They are extremely well-networked and are able to mobilize 4,000-5,000 people for protests or events for Dalit women, garment workers, etc.

If you are interested, you can check out their website at www.sangama.org.