To fully embrace the LGBT community, we need to come out of the closet

For years, those part of the transgender community in this country have lived as social outcasts. They have been treated as nothing more than unnecessary entertainment at public functions, freaks who have been the butts of all jokes and puns, and maybe even as a higher class of beggars, who men and women are petrified of, at traffic signals.

However, things are changing now. One of the most ill-treated groups of society has made great strides since the April 2014 ruling of the Supreme Court, which recognised the transgender community as a third gender, along with male and female. On Monday, the community won another victory when Madhu Kinnar, 35, became the country's first transgender mayor. The Independent Dalit candidate beat ruling BJP's Mahaveer Guruji by 4,537 votes - a victory far greater than votes and politics. Though there have been transgender mayors in the past, they were all made to step down from their posts on the grounds of gender. In fact, the first eunuch mayor of the country, Kamla Jaan, who was elected for the post in Katni (Madhya Pradesh) in 1999, was dismissed after a court upheld a petitioner's plea that Jaan could not be elected for a seat reserved for women.

But let's put all of that aside for a bit. While the top court of the country undoubtedly behaved as a role model in this case, empowering a minority to hold public offices, become entrepreneurs and more importantly, lead mainstream lives, it became a part of the worst form of discrimination last year when it overturned a judgement by a lower court decriminalising homosexuality. For a court that has often upheld liberal statements in the past and given many progressive judgements in which common sense and wisdom prevailed over regressive conventions, doesn't the ruling seem too contradictory? An estimated 25 lakh gays and lesbians (as per government data released in 2012) in the country are still branded criminals. Forget becoming political leaders, they cannot even come out to the world without facing a jail sentence that can go up to a life term.

Indeed, we should celebrate our wins. But we needn't shout it out from the rooftops. We needn't shut our eyes to all the other evils of the society and proclaim that this victory is the only victory that matters (until, of course, we win the World Cup, or one of our Bollywood queens goes to Cannes and we thump our chests and congratulate ourselves endlessly).

Instead, we need to be indignant because while our government gives us the power to choose a Dalit transgender as our mayor, it considers us ignorant fools who have not matured enough to accept that we have no right to put our noses in the middle of other people's sexual relationships. That men who have sex with men and women who love women don't ambush religious sentiments. That until the LGBT community can openly come out and approach the healthcare system without facing arrest, HIV/AIDS is going rise to disastrous proportions. That by forcing people to hide in closets is simply flouting basic human rights and curbing the freedom to live a respectful life. We understand that. And our government and judiciary need to understand that we understand that. They need to stop tip-toeing around us.

The Supreme Court, in its ruling recognising the transgender community as a third gender, said: "Seldom does our society realise or care to realise the trauma, agony and pain which the members of the transgender community undergo, nor does it appreciate the innate feelings of the members of the transgender community, especially of those whose mind and body disown their biological sex." So much of that holds true for the LGBT community.

We have come a long way indeed, but equality is still an issue in the world's largest democracy. Let's not congratulate ourselves just yet.