The Queer Azaadi Mumbai Pride 2018 happened on February 3, this year. It was the second Mumbai pride in which medical and paramedical students from various medical colleges in the city had participated under the banner of ‘Future Doctors For Equality’.
Medical and paramedical students wearing their white aprons, marching forth with the LGBTHQIAP+ community, holding high vibrantly painted posters, with catchy slogans, was a scene to behold. The posters read out slogans like, “Real doctors treat homophobia, NOT homosexuality”, “Real doctors take the Hippocratic oath, NOT the hypocritic oath”, “No discrimination against LGBTHQIAP+ patients”, “Conversion therapies are outdated” and more. I myself was shouting at the top of my voice, “Being queer is NOT a disease!” to which the medical, paramedical and the non-medical crowd reverberated back in unison, “Queerphobia is a disease”.
With the first transgender student of Mumbai University, and clinical psychologist cum Bharatnatyam danseuse par excellence, Sridevi Londhe:
With Hijra activist Urmi Jadhav:
With the first openly queer prince of the Indian province of Rajpipla, His Highness Manavendra Singh Gohil:
The reason to highlight this participation from future doctors in the Pride march is that a large section of the medical fraternity in India is still queerphobic. Being a recently graduated doctor myself, I can say that many of our textbooks which are used as a part of the medical curriculum, and which have been authored by renowned Indian doctors, continue to see alternate sexualities as forms of mental illness or sexual perversion, especially the textbooks of forensic medicine, gynaecology and psychiatry, although the American Psychiatric Association, W. H. O., and the Indian Psychiatric Association have delisted alternate sexualities from the list of mental disorders and sexual perversions.
The medical profession is a profession which is absolutely not for someone who harbours prejudices and preconceived notions in their mind. A medical practitioner does not deserve the tag of a doctor if they have the audacity to discriminate against any of his or her patients, based on their sexuality or sexual orientation.
Therefore, at this juncture, a small fraction of the Indian medical ecosystem has started to look at alternate sexualities as just a normal variation. But it is meeting with considerably tremendous magnitude of resistance from the majority of the same ecosystem. This participation from the medical and paramedical undergraduates who will be the future healthcare providers of the society, indeed, is a clarion call beckoning for all the queerphobic healthcare professionals to live up to the words of the ‘Hippocratic Oath’ and not turn it into a hypocritic one.
So all you doctors out there, update your knowledge or else be ready to be outmatched as quacks by the future doctors who will stand out as the real doctors!