No Gay Southeast Asians in New York Parade

New York: Grand Marshall Shilpa Shetty was cheered on, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg stopped by for a few minutes, over 30 floats and several marchers including bagpipers from a Swaminarayan Temple in New Jersey made up the India Day Parade on Sunday.


But one group was denied the right to participate. And so the South Asian Lesbian and Gay Association or SALGA held its own protest march down midtown Manhattan.


LGBT activist in New York, Mario D'Penha says, "They just ignored SALGA's petition to march at the parade. We haven't heard of any other group that has been excluded from the parade and so we have to think there's some kind of homophobia that's at work here."


Organisers of the protest say it was particularly ironic that they were excluded from the parade in the Big Apple especially since in India, the Delhi High Court passed a landmark judgment decriminialising homosexuality.


LGBT activist in New York, Priyanka Mitra says, "Not only is it ironic but it's very sad that while India is beginning its first stage of accepting homosexuality, the immigrants and others from the Indian community here are rejecting us. It's sad that as India is progressing, we seem to be regressing."


The Federation of Indian Associations, the organisers of the India Day Parade, refused to be drawn into the controversy, declining to comment on why the Indian queer community was excluded from the parade.