Long before the Nepal Pride Parade commenced, folks from the Nepali LGBTQIA+ community attended Saa Paaru, widely known as Gai Jatra, a Newa tradition in memory of immediate relatives who passed away the previous year. At the festival, they are free to dress up in drag or however they want. It became an occasion for people to express themselves freely.
However, this non-conformist exhibition does not translate to the cultural acceptance of gender diversity. Besides, equating trans identities with merely crossdressing is problematic as it does not translate to trans-friendliness or inclusivity in society.
We needed a Pride march of our own that is for and by the community, where femininity and gender fluidity is not rooted in misogyny and ridicule. There is where Queer Youth Group (QYG), a youth-led network working for Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Sex Characteristics (SOGIESC) rights in Nepal came in and began organizing pride parades in 2019, along with its longtime collaborators, Queer Rights Collective (QRC) and Campaign for Change, the latter of which is an intersex rights organization.
Like in the previous years, this year too, QYG organized its sixth Nepal Pride Parade on the second Saturday of June, in the busy streets at the heart of Kathmandu. Organizing something of this scale is a massive undertaking and needs a lot of human resources. From crowd management to documentation and videography, there are various areas that require participation and supervision to ensure that it is properly executed. Queer Youth Group has managed to organize Pride parades in the past with the support of members of its organizing team, volunteers, and other relevant parties.
Also read: My First Mumbai Pride March
Meet some of the faces behind Nepal Pride
Choyki (she/they) is one among the several faces involved in organizing the Nepal Pride Parade. A member of QRC since 2020, Choyki was introduced to the collective through a friend and has been involved in organizing Pride Parade ever since. Unaware of queer spaces prior to this, it was one of her very first involvements in creating them. This year (like in the last), Choyki was in charge of banners and sign-making. Several other volunteers had also been onboarded and assigned duties.
Dikpal (he/him) is one such volunteer, who became involved after attending the 2022 Pride parade as a participant. Back then, he had brought along some friends who were not deeply-informed in terms of their allyship. This made him recognize the amount of work that remains to be done to sensitize the larger community with respect to their understanding of queerness. However, after the Pride march, he was happy to notice some favorable changes in them, which made him optimistic. Soon after, he began to volunteer with Queer Youth Group.
Also read: How to Start a Queer Club on Campus
Ensuring safety and accessibility at the parade
Since QYG incorporates different national languages in its work to promote awareness in a widely-accessible way, volunteers with knowledge of those languages help in making placards. These languages include Nepala Bhasa, Maithili, Bhojpuri, Dagaura Tharu, Kochila Tharu, Bantawa, Urdu, Hindi, Bajjika, Tamang, Awadhi, Jumli Khas, Nepali (Khas), and English languages, as well as the Nepali Sign Language.
The parade organizing team reuse flex prints with slogans every year at the march. At this year’s Pride, they also made banners and placards with quotes to raise awareness about the genocide in Palestine. They were placards with slogans that linked Pride and the genocide such as “No Pride in Genocide”.
“Volunteers have the creative freedom to incorporate their mother tongue in making appropriate slogans for the parade,” Choyki adds.
During the parade, Dikpal also made it a point to go around reminding people to hydrate and distribute water among the people in the crowd. He found it refreshing to see the gratitude in people’s faces, which gave him the energy boost he needed to hustle under the scorching heat. Dikpal had also been involved in sloganeering and joined in when the marchers began chanting as they walked with Pride.
Since last year, the team has introduced an accessory to mark volunteers, who can be sought out when needed. A ribbon is tied on one arm of all volunteers, making it easier for anyone to find them and reach for support. “All of us involved are assigned equal responsibilities for organizing the march like crowd management, documentation and videography, garbage disposal and so on.” Choyki adds.
Standing firm against corporate influence
The march also makes known its unwavering commitment to community support, free from corporate agenda and pinkwashing. After all, the main objective of the Nepal Pride parade as a community-focused, youth-led initiative, is to organize community-funded events. “The stance of Nepal Pride Parade to not take funds from corporations that only remember queer movements in June and capitalize on it, is what motivated me to join as a volunteer.” Dikpal puts forth.
He wanted to contribute to this community driven initiative because of its power in autonomy. Dikpal believes that oftentimes, no matter how genuine the intentions are, embassies supporting queer movements too censor it to align with what they feel is right.
Also read: Pinkwashing – Moving Beyond Pride Month
“When it’s community-funded, it instills determination and accountability. The organizers have a sense of purpose as well to make it a wholesome experience. The focus becomes about ensuring a safe environment to celebrate and revolt,” he adds, speaking his mind.
It is not to say that they have not had any funding offers or sponsor proposals extended to them by big organizations. A lot of embassies and corporate giants have reached out to the organizing team with donations and monetary aids. But QYG has always refused them, largely due to the fear of being co-opted. It is because once there is involvement of embassies and corporations, the parade will be infiltrated with their company logos and banners. It will cause a major distraction and will shift the focus to their agenda and branding.
“Two years ago there was a case where representatives of a certain organization were present at the pride parade with a big rainbow flag with their organization’s name. It appeared as though they had organized the event,” Choyki shares, recounting an incident of the Nepali Pride march nearly being co-opted that they had heard of.
If you think about it, Pride events are the perfect spaces for branding and outreach. The companies’ representatives get to attend to appear as queer-friendly, while swiftly promoting their brand and pushing the corporate agendas. However, the Nepal Pride Parade has been adamant in preserving its autonomy by rejecting such interference. Time and again, we have witnessed corporate giants like Amazon, Walmart and McDonald’s kickoff Pride campaigns in the West, while simultaneously donating to politicians that discriminate against the queer community.
In the Nepali context, the resistance hits home given the history of feminist movement being co-opted. As stated by by QYG and QRC – “Learning from what unfolded in the feminist movement that was hijacked by Brahmanical patriarchy and the non-profit industrial complex, we realized that we had to come together to figure out what pride meant for us – a celebratory protest for us and about us where every year we move towards queering it more, learning from our mistakes, slowly and steadily.”
A testament to the power of grassroots organizing, QYG has been putting together Pride events for years via crowdfunding and individual donations. Unlike many Pride events worldwide, the Nepal Pride Parade maintains a strict policy against corporate branding. They do not allow any organizations to display their banners or flags, ensuring that the focus remains on the individuals and their stories rather than the companies they represent.
Community-powered pride through grassroots participation and fundraising
Pride, a tradition that can be traced back to the Stonewall riots in June 1969 in New York City, continues to be a protest. While we celebrate to commemorate how far we have come, we continue fighting for intersectional queer liberation. This June too saw a colorful turnout of queer individuals and allies united for love, acceptance, and resistance. The absence of corporate branding created a space where people could freely express their identities without the influence of commercial interests. While this approach highlights the community’s resilience, it also focuses on the importance of genuine support over performative allyship.
Since 2024, QYG has also introduced policies about the Nepal Pride Parade, envisioning it as a structured and organized space for young queers and allies to be brave and experience joy together. And, for ages to come, hopefully it will still be a community-led space for growth and free of corporate greed.
Also read: Is Rainbow Capitalism Truly Queer Liberation?
The queer scene in Nepal is still emerging. Our nation, while appearing queer-friendly on the outside, has its own socio-cultural tides still strongly affecting its queer population. However, in a small country like ours, the presence of youth-led collectives like QYG has been a blessing. Their work in combating the pinkwashing and preserving the true essence of Pride is just a part of their various commendable initiatives.
The Nepal Pride Parade has been for the community and by the community in the sense that they do allow grassroots level queer-led movements and initiatives to show up with their flags and slogans.
“It makes sense when they are queer-led grassroots organizations, but corporations don’t do anything else outside of June, and in Pride, they show up with so many banners. They do not think of it as they would with their own branding.” Choyki explains their frustrations.
Speaking of funds, QYG started organizing Heart to हाट, a queer market fundraiser in 2023 to raise funds for the Nepal Pride Parade. Queer artists and entrepreneurs book separate stalls to sell their creations and products on the day of the market a few weeks before each year’s Pride parade. Choyki believes that Heart2Haat, led by the members of QRC and QYG, has been quite instrumental in raising funds for Pride alongside other forms of community fundraising.
Pride as a space for expression, learning, and growth
In addition to being part of the organizing team, Choyki also performed at this year’s Pride. She cherished being able to express her queerness just as she is and believes that this formed a core memory for her, for years to come.
Dikpal who is on a journey of learning, unlearning and relearning, is thankful for having this opportunity to volunteer, while also expanding his awareness about intersectionality and liberation.
