Every June, your Instagram feed likely lights up with rainbows. Brands change their logos, influencers do Pride partnerships, and your favourite food delivery app suddenly cares about your pronouns. For a brief moment, it seems like the world is on the side of queer liberation.
But by July, the colours have gone. So have the campaigns. And with them goes any outward indication that these companies ever “stood with the LGBTQIA+ community.” This is not a coincidence. Rather it’s a part of a well-kept and documented trend, which is now referred to as pinkwashing. Pinkwashing helps companies profit off and capitalise on LGBTQIA+ visibility during Pride Month without taking efforts to work on creating actual systematic changes for the betterment of LGBTQIA+ community. And in India, as everywhere else, this tactic is not only empty, it’s actively dangerous.
What Is Pinkwashing?
Pinkwashing can be described as a performative demonstration of LGBTQIA+ allyship, mainly during Pride Month without supporting serious structural reform.
It’s packaged as special edition offerings, rainbow-hued campaigns, Pride playlists, queer- coded advertisements. But what they have hidden beneath these systems is that these organizations:
Don’t provide any workplace protections or inclusive environment to their LGBTQIA+ employees.
Don’t stand up or vocalise during a world wide political crisis. (eg- anti- LGBTQIA+ bills being passed).
Continue to sponsor or advertise with governments, leaders, or advertisers who discriminate against queer communities.
At worst, pinkwashing erases Pride, which is a protest and resistance movement, reducing it into a brand-friendly event that does more for companies than the people that they claim to care about.
The Capitalist Ceiling of Allyship
It is important to note that in a capitalistic world and framework, corporations are inherently going to be profit-driven. So even if few people within the framework genuinely are allies for LGBTQIA+ rights, their actions ultimately will have to be market-motivated.
This makes queer activism a fair-weather business. If it takes courage to defend LGBTQIA+ rights and hurt a company’s profits, through state repression, consumer boycotts, or religious agitation, support is rescinded, and silence fills the gap. That’s why queer freedom cannot depend on corporations alone. Their commitment is shallow and circumstantial.
India’s Pinkwashing Problem
Pinkwashing in India also followed a familiar trajectory. When the Supreme Court read down Section 377 in 2018, brands were jubilant. Corporate social media handles cheered “love winning” and “breaking barriers.” Brands such as Fastrack rolled out bold ads such as “Come Out of the Closet”, and Pride parades had major brand sponsorships. But skip forward to 2023, when the Supreme Court withheld marriage equality for same-sex couples, those same brands went quiet. No loud campaigns or messages of protest.
Let’s take a look at the various layers of pinkwashing in India today.
Performative Pride Campaigns, Without Policies
Most Indian companies restrict their allyship to metro city-level marketing initiatives. Pride logos in June? Absolutely. Queer employees receiving access to partner healthcare or gender-affirming care? Uh, no.
A survey done by Pride CIrcle in 2022, revealed that more than 60% of queer professionals do not feel comfortable enough to come out in their offices, even though few Indian companies do have inclusive policies and have formalized internal diversity programmes for queer workers.
Swiggy, Zomato, and Uber have all put out Pride campaigns in the past, but hardly ever provide information on the ways in which they invest in queer staff or queer-led NGOs. Most campaigns are built around visibility and looks but neglect equity.
Metro-Centric Solidarity
Indian corporate action towards LGBTQIA+ causes is mostly confined to metros such as Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Delhi, where one can perceive the ascendancy of social liberalism. However, in tier-2 cities and towns, the representation is practically nonexistent.
This geographical selectivity conveys one message: queer existence matters only if it falls within urban consumer paradigms. Queerness becomes acceptable when it’s cool, never when it’s in the way.
Silence on Political Setbacks
The 2023 marriage equality ruling should have been an opportunity for companies to be united. Instead, the majority fell silent. Consider how much more energetic their response to the 2018 Section 377 ruling was. The distinction? That decision went along with popular opinion and posed no significant political risk. But marriage equality is more divisive, attached to religious tradition and social conservatism.
By staying quiet, businesses insulated themselves, but left behind the queer communities they promised to support.
Bollywood and Brand Endorsements: A Strategic Avoidance
Bollywood is an important shaper of brand culture in India. Movies like Badhai Do and Shub Mangal Zyada Saacdhan were a big leap for Queer representation in Bollywood. But the cast of these movies was never hired for Pride-themed brand promotions.The majority of brands still support “safe” celebrities instead of overtly queer public figures. Queer-innovators and activists are seldom paid, featured, or offered long-term collaborations.
Corporate Retreat and Self-Censorship
The ascent of right-wing nationalism and state regulation of advertising has become a caution for many Indian corporations. Queer-friendly advertisements can incite outrage or :boycott, particularly on social media.
Therefore, brands have started policing themselves. Advertisements which were once bold are now tight-lipped. Fastrack, which was once celebrated for its queer-edged Pride work, has fallen silent. Even international companies such as Coca-Cola and H&M have toned down exposure in India so as not to provoke political controversy.
India’s Corporate Queerness by the Numbers
While Indian companies are eager to change their logos or social media handles with Pride colours, policy inclusion is not widespread:
A 2022 Randstad India report mentioned that only 9.5% of organisations made very significant efforts towards LGBTQIA+ inclusion. Most firms only offered a surface level of engagement from even the more progressive MNCs. Policy inclusion seemed isolated to a few more junior level hiring over varying levels of token gestures.
Research by the Godrej India Culture Lab provides an overview of the few extent of inclusive work opportunities at India’s few corporate pioneers:
1. Medical coverage for same-sex or domestic partners
2. Support of gender affirmation inclusive policy with gender affirming healthcare, access to hormones, and non-cosmetic gender-affirming surgeries
3. Infrastructure changes to their building(s) such as inclusive gender-neutral washrooms in their Godrej One HQ in Mumbai
An academic report by Abhay Mane, surveyed 103 LGBTQ+ employees working in India, and found that only 16.5% of employees were fully open about their sexual orientation at work. The majority of employees who identified their sexual orientation and identified as LGBTQ+ reported experiencing some level of discrimination, or some other negative standard of treatment.
Global Parallels and Patterns
India is not unique in that regard. Globally, corporations back away from LGBTQIA+ issues when push comes to shove.
In the United States, Target removed LGBTQIA+ products following protests by right-wing forces.
Disney relaxed its position on Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill after withstanding state pushback.
In countries like Poland and Hungary, many corporations have cut LGBTQIA+ content in response to the anti- queer legislation.
The above cases prove that pinkwashing isn’t exclusively an Indian issue, consider it a universal tactic of conditional allyship.
Also read: UK and Hungary’s Dangerous New Laws
Does Corporate Allyship Ever Work?
Yes, but only when it extends beyond visibility and into action. Here are some examples:
Ben & Jerry’s has publicly endorsed trans rights and lobbied for policy change in the US.
Levi Strauss & Co. supports LGBTQIA+ advocacy groups and provides gender-affirming care to workers.
In India, The Lalit Hotel Group has actively hired and empowered trans and queer employees for years, not just during Pride.
Spaces such as The Pink List India have collaborated with businesses to inform voters about LGBTQIA+ political rights.
These are all examples of what happens when businesses listen, collaborate with grassroots organisers, and commit to year-round support through doing real work.
What Can The Companies Do?
If businesses are going to profit from queer identities, they must also protect, support, and raise up those communities. Here’s how that can happen:
1. Internal Change First
Before painting colours of the Pride flag on your logo, they need to ensure that their own workplace is queer friendly.
That is:
- Need to set anti- discrimination policies
- Gender-affirming healthcare and leave
- Sensitivity training across the board
2. Year-Round Engagement
Allyship isn’t seasonal. Brands need to stand by LGBTQIA+ causes year-round, particularly during political defeats for the community, not merely during Pride Month.
3. Support Grassroots Work
Rather than token influencer marketing campaigns, support community-operated queer shelters, mental health initiatives, and legal defense funds. Collaborate with queer-led organizations, particularly those outside of metro centers.
4. Public Accountability
The brands need to be held accountable by the customers, and they need to ask where the money is going? Who is benefiting? Is there a follow-through?
Beyond Rainbows, Towards Responsibility
Queer people are worth more than performative visibility. Pride didn’t start as a celebration, but rather as a protest that emerged out of resistance, survival and dissatisfaction with the society. Today the fight still persists, in the offices, courtroom, schools and homes.
If brands wish to help the community and be part of the movement, they need to do more than post an Instagram story. They need to show up for what it matters. Repetitively and systematically without an apology. Because allyship isn’t a campaign. It’s a promise.
The Damaging Effect of Pinkwashing
Pinkwashing does more harm than good. It seems to depict progress, but in reality it enables corporations to sidestep actual commitments towards LGBTQ+ equality. By pushing queer visibility into short-term marketing gimmicks, corporations are not tackling the structural discrimination, workplace prejudices, and judicial issues LGBTQ+ individuals encounter.
Corporate pinkwashing then also undermines grassroots movements, as big businesses co-opt the visibility during Pride and erase the labour of community organizers calling for actual, real change. Most Pride parades, which were born out of radical protest and resistance, have devolved to become corporation-friendly bashes that care more about sponsorships than activism.
Calling for Real Corporate Accountability
For corporate allyship to be genuine, it must transcend rainbow logos and Pride-themed products. Authentic allyship requires workplace inclusivity, activism throughout the year, and policy action. Consumers must hold corporations accountable by pushing for transparency, boycotting pinkwashing brands, and standing with businesses that invest in protecting LGBTQ+ rights.
As LGBTQ+ rights globally are subjected to increasingly rising assault from governments and reactionaries, businesses have a responsibility to take action. If these firms claim to stand for equality, they need to demonstrate it—not with branding, but with serious, sustained effort.
