A historic verdict was pronounced in India on September 6, 2018, as a five-judge Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court decriminalised homosexuality by repealing the 157-year-old colonial-era provisions of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The day marked a victory for the Indian LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, queer) community. Now, discrimination based on sexual orientation is a violation of fundamental rights.
Lesbian stands for the relation between two women, Gay is for the relation between two men, Bisexual can be in love with both man and woman, Transgender are those who identify their gender as they grow up, and the lastly, Queer is an umbrella term to collectively referred to LGBT community.
As part of the LGBTQ rights movement, people use a rainbow flag to represent the community. The flag is also a symbol of LGBTQ pride.
The history of the flag goes back to 1978 when San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker designed the first rainbow flag. Inspired by the rainbow as a natural flag from the sky, Baker chose eight colours for the flag’s stripes. Each colour in the flag had its meaning (hot pink for sexuality, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for art, indigo for harmony, and violet for spirit).
Owing to production issues, indigo was replaced by basic blue, the turquoise and pink stripes were removed. The change in the design led to the contemporary six-striped flag with the red stripe on the top, followed by orange, yellow, green, blue, and violet. The various colours now symbolise the immense diversity and the unity of the LGBTQ community.
The initial version of the rainbow flag, for the first time, was hoisted in San Francisco on June 25, on the occasion of Gay Freedom Day. Baker designed the flag at the behest of a local activist to give an identity to gay society. Baker died in 2017 at the age of 65. He was an openly gay man and a drag queen. By the 1990s, the rainbow flag was truly established as a symbol of the LGBT community across the world.
