On August 5, over breakfast at 6, Janpath, in New Delhi, I used to be appointed Nationwide Spokesperson for the NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar).
To say that the function got here as a shock could be an understatement. Though I had labored on elections in various capacities for nearly a decade, I had by no means taken up a proper place inside a political celebration. The concept that you may be in and out Indian politics appeared patently absurd — and, regardless of my very own tendencies to be an audacious idealist, I knew that the difficult terrains of desi rajneeti (politics) required you to be a hard-nosed realist.
The final two months have been a rollercoaster experience, with prime-time tv debates complemented by lengthy journeys to the interiors of Maharashtra on the Vidhan Sabha marketing campaign path. The barrage of headlines saying me as “India’s first homosexual nationwide spokesperson” — some salacious, others adulatory, a couple of actually interrogative — have quietened down. Over infinite cups of chai and conversations with karyakartas (celebration employees) and leaders throughout the state, I’ve had the chance to mirror upon what this new journey actually entails and why it issues.
How we received right here
I’m not your standard politician. I don’t come from a political household, nor have I married into one (but). I don’t have a constituency the place everybody is aware of me and I do know everyone.
Though I’ve labored on a number of election campaigns — together with as a door-to-door volunteer on the 2014 Lok Sabha elections with Milind Deora and a strategist on the 2019 Lok Sabha elections with the Maharashtra Congress — I at all times noticed myself as a back-room strategist.
The primary time I noticed the potential for taking up a extra outstanding function was after the creation of Pink Record India, the nation’s first archive of politicians who’ve supported LGBTQ+ rights. I realised that queer political illustration — which I had thus far seen as a distant dream — was truly surprisingly near turning into a tangible actuality in years, not a long time.
My work with Pink Record India launched me to Supriya Sule, or Supriya tai, as she is fondly recognized throughout Maharashtra. We met for the primary time on the Harvard US-India convention in 2020, the place I had invited her to talk on a panel I used to be moderating. Ever since, I saved in contact informally — providing coverage options at some phases, looking for her help with meals aid work I used to be finishing up throughout the Covid-19 pandemic at others. After getting back from Oxford, the place I spent two years as a Rhodes Scholar, I reached out to her earlier than the 2024 Lok Sabha elections to supply to assist out in no matter capability I might to unseat the ruling alliance in Maharashtra.
After stumbling into her on the celebration’s workplace at Mumbai’s Ballard Property, I used to be assigned duties that ranged from analysis for the manifesto to the drafting of press releases. The Lok Sabha elections introduced with them exceptional success, and the NCP (SP) secured a landmark strike fee of 80 per cent by successful 8 out of the ten seats that it contested throughout Maharashtra. With that success, got here further obligations, and a conviction that there was no higher time than now to make the leap into the deep finish of the pool that’s Indian politics. A handwritten letter and a number of other WhatsApp messages later, I discovered myself seated throughout Supriya tai in New Delhi being given the formal accountability of representing the celebration within the nationwide media.
The place we go from now
“Supriya tai picked you up, didn’t she?” Fauzia Khan requested me after we have been in Marathwada’s Karanja final week for a rally. After I shared my story, she revealed how her personal “unintended” entry into politics was made doable by a cellphone name, out of the blue, from Pawar saheb twenty years in the past. “This will solely occur within the NCP,” she added, remarking on how Pawar saheb had seen her work in training and requested her to contemplate a profession in politics. Khan went on to grow to be the primary Muslim girl cupboard minister in Maharashtra, and I’ve now grow to be the primary homosexual man to be appointed as nationwide spokesperson for a political celebration in India.
Over the past two months, I’ve realised the burden of the accountability that comes with the place I occupy right now. After all, there’s the accountability of being the voice and face of the celebration proper earlier than a hotly-contested state election, the place something you say can and might be used in opposition to you — however that’s the simple bit. The extra important, extra difficult accountability comes with the burden of illustration that falls on my shoulders. As a younger boy, I assumed that staying within the closet was the one possibility if I wished to affix politics in any capability. That I can function a job mannequin to others who discover themselves in an identical place right now is a thought that concurrently fills me with delight and dread.
I’ve argued earlier than that illustration is hardly the panacea it’s made out to be. I’m somebody who grew up in Mumbai, with caste and sophistication privilege, after which traipsed off to the US and the UK to pursue levels which have since had no actual connection to the profession I’ve chosen. The “fortunate breaks” I’ve had, when put into the context of the alternatives I’ve been showered with rising up, don’t appear that fortunate. What function, then, does my queerness play within the new path I’ve chosen to tread upon?
That’s a query I’m nonetheless struggling to search out the reply to. For now, I’ve tried to acknowledge that being nationwide spokesperson means defending the celebration line on an entire vary of points — with queer points constituting however a small half. But, I’ve tried to see queerness not as a monolithic entity within the service of simply the LGBTQ+ group however as a lens with which to critically study and reply to the burning points going through the nation right now. Queerness right now has the potential to carry solutions for the creation of recent boards for dialogue and debate, for the managing of competing pursuits, for a reconciliation with the concept we will directly be each oppressed and the oppressor. How that potential is explored, and to what extent, stays to be seen. In spite of everything, this journey’s simply begun.
The author is nationwide spokesperson, NCP (Sharadchandra Pawar)
