Queer Indians and Urban Spaces: Navigating Public Transport, Safety and Belonging in Delhi

Urban India presents a paradox for its queer citizens. Whilst metropolitan cities promise anonymity, opportunity, and progressive attitudes, the reality of navigating public spaces as a queer person remains fraught with challenges. The question of who truly owns public space becomes particularly acute when examining the experiences of LGBTQ+ individuals who must constantly negotiate their visibility, safety, and authenticity in environments that weren't designed with them in mind.

From the Delhi Metro's carriages to the bustling markets of Sarojini Nagar, from the corridors of shopping malls to the informal networks of street vendors, queer people develop intricate strategies of survival and resistance. Their experiences reveal the complex intersections of identity, class, disability, and regional origin that shape access to urban space. This investigation examines how queer Indians navigate public transport, seek safety in urban environments, and create spaces of belonging in a city like Delhi that simultaneously embrace and exclude them. Through interviews with activists, content creators, and everyday citizens, we explore the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion that define contemporary urban queer experience in Delhi.

The Multiple Marginalisation of Public Space

For queer individuals in urban India, public space becomes a site of multiple negotiations. Rituparna Borah, Co-Founder of Nazariya QFRG, a non-profit queer feminist resource group based in Delhi, embodies this complexity through her intersectional identity as a queer woman from the North-East living with a disability. Her experience illuminates how different forms of marginalisation compound to create unique challenges in accessing public space.

"I'm not just a queer woman, but also a person from the North-East. So, because of my looks, the way I look, I did face a lot of harassment in public places at the beginning," Borah explains. This harassment takes on different dimensions as her identity shifts in public perception. "When I roam around with my lover or partner on the streets, I have faced a lot of weird gazes about two women showing love in public places."

The addition of disability creates another layer of complexity. "The third identity, which is very important to my identity currently, is my disabled body that I carry with me," she notes. "Because they see me walking with a stick, or I walk in such a way that it shows that I have issues with my body, like my physical body. And then I see a lot of sympathy. The eyes are very sympathetic."

This sympathy, however, doesn't translate into genuine accessibility. Borah's experience highlights how urban infrastructure fails to consider the needs of disabled bodies: "For example, going to vote, my partner would need to carry the stool for me so that I can sit there and then I can cast my vote. And it is quiet, you know, it's like, this is your problem, you handle it when it comes to disability."

The challenges extend beyond physical infrastructure to social spaces. "When people invite you for birthdays or parties or something, they don't actually think that climbing four or five stairs or from the place where the cab or the car has dropped me to the place where I will go, that is such a bad news that I definitely can't walk for so long," she explains. This exclusion from social gatherings demonstrates how inaccessibility in public space extends to private social networks, creating a web of isolation.

Borah's analysis of urban spaces reveals how different forms of marginalisation intersect in public settings. Her experience as a queer woman highlights the conditional nature of acceptance in urban spaces: "For queer women, I'm a cis femme queer woman, so I normally get invisibilised when I roam around in the public and wouldn't show my "queerness", so people wouldn't recognise me as a queer person." This invisibility, while sometimes protective, creates its own challenges for authentic self-expression.

She contrasts this with the experiences of more visible community members: "People who visibly look "trans" find it very difficult to access spaces and they are also stopped from accessing places." This observation underscores how visibility politics play out differently across the queer spectrum, with some facing exclusion through hypervisibility while others navigate erasure through invisibility. Her perspective illuminates the complex negotiations queer people must make between safety and authenticity in public spaces.

Strategies of Survival and Adaptation

Yuvraj Acharya, a queer content creator and influencer, offers insight into the daily strategies queer people employ to navigate potentially hostile environments. His experience on Delhi's public transport system reveals the psychological toll of constant vigilance and the adaptive mechanisms people develop.

"In metros also, I always either used to wear a mask or I would try to just use my AirPods or earphones to just block out whatever is happening externally," Acharya explains. This self-imposed isolation becomes a survival strategy, creating a barrier between the self and potential harassment. "There are stares which come all the time if you're dressed in a certain way, if you're not very male passing."

The anxiety created by this constant surveillance follows queer people even when they move to supposedly safer environments. "Even if Mumbai is relatively safer, that they say, and I also have felt that it is, it's like, like people mind their own business. You know, a little bit more, even if they do, I am still conscious and anxious about what is happening around me. Because that is what I have learned through all of these years."

This learned hypervigilance extends to voice modulation as a protective mechanism. "Because I have a relatively much more shriller voice that stereotypically people do not count as a very masculine voice, I have been manipulating it," Acharya reveals. "If I'm talking to an auto bhaiya or a bhaiya in the market, I will use a heavier voice when I'm talking, and it is so ingrained now."

The commercial spaces that urban India prides itself on can become sites of particular humiliation. Acharya recounts an experience at a well-known fashion store: "I took out this crop top. And of course, the crop top was in the women's section. And I took it out and I went to the trial room and the lady who was standing in front of the trial room, she just looked up and down on me." The binary organisation of retail space forces queer people into impossible choices: "Obviously then I went to the male section and the male section had a similar experience for me, and my mind was just like, what the hell is this. That's the first time I felt like this."

The Question of Belonging and Pseudo-Safe Spaces

Despite the challenges, urban spaces do offer pockets of relative safety and belonging. Sharanya Mansigh*, 22, and Shreya Singh*, 21, a lesbian couple, speak about their experience in Connaught Place: "CP becomes this interesting space where you see so many different kinds of people. There's this unspoken understanding that everyone's just trying to exist, and somehow that creates a buffer. We can hold hands walking from the metro to the restaurants without feeling like we're being hunted."

However, this sense of belonging remains fragile and conditional. As Acharya notes about Delhi: "I wouldn't say that surely I belong to some particular place. I would honestly say that I belong to Delhi, it is the city that I love. But I would say that there are places which are much more easier to express than the others."

The concept of pseudo-safe spaces emerges as crucial to understanding queer urban experience. These are locations where community gathering creates a temporary sanctuary, but safety remains contingent rather than guaranteed. "Even CP is unsafe, let's say, sitting at a block with all of your friends, you might still get hate crime," Acharya acknowledges.

The digital realm has created new possibilities for community formation and visibility. "If I hadn't been 17 or 18, if I hadn't seen queerness on the internet, I wouldn't have known myself. At that point in time, it was much, much, much less. I think after COVID, it has grown so much more, the representation has grown so much more," Acharya reflects. This online visibility translates into increased offline presence, but also attracts new forms of harassment.

The Privilege of Passing and Policy Inadequacies

The conversation around urban space becomes more complex when examining the experiences of trans individuals. Kunti*, a 22-year-old trans woman in Delhi, reveals how the ability to "pass" as cisgender creates different forms of access to public space and services.

"Bus conductors don't even ask me and just hand me the pink ticket as soon as they see my appearance. Long hair, dress and jhumkas somehow seem to code them into thinking of a woman. For the first, stigma and notions help," Kunti explains. This experience highlights the arbitrary nature of gender recognition in public spaces and the privilege embedded in conforming to societal expectations of femininity.

However, this passing privilege reveals deeper policy inadequacies. "It's not just me and many of my trans sisters who can 'pass' due to privileges, hormones reacting better, and many more reasons that can avail the facilities of seats and reservations and free bus rides due to the same. The policy thus won't affect much," Kunti continues while talking about the ex-incumbent AAP government's proposal to extend the free-ticket policy to trans individuals as well.

The implementation of transgender-specific policies often fails to address the nuanced realities of trans experience. A government official who identifies as a trans woman offers an institutional perspective: "The transgender certificate serves as more than just an ID; it's enrollment in official government records. While you exist as a person, accessing benefits meant for specific communities requires proving legal eligibility."

Yet bureaucratic requirements often fail to match lived realities. As Kunti observes, "The government avoids discussing the topic because they're unsure themselves. It's a significant policy, but no one fully grasps its impact or how to tackle its flaws."

The intersection of class and queer identity further complicates access to urban space. Acharya notes: "People don't let class come in between openly, 100%. With the acceptance of people in groups, or in how do I say... if, I mean, if, okay, let's talk about queer parties, you see that a person who has not the same class background, I hate saying this word 'class', but okay, it comes in between." This class divide manifests not only in physical access to venues but in the cultural capital required for participation—from designer clothing and makeup to proficiency in English and familiarity with urban social codes—creating hierarchies even within supposedly inclusive queer spaces.

Garima*, a social sector employee who identifies as queer non-binary, emphasises how public safety intersects with queer existence: "Public safety becomes crucial for queer existence but is not seen often as important for gender minorities, even in work spaces. There's this assumption that if you're visible as queer, you're somehow asking for trouble. But safety shouldn't be conditional on invisibility."

The reality of Indian queer experience in urban space reveals a complex negotiation between visibility and safety, belonging and exclusion, policy and practice. Whilst cities offer relative freedom compared to rural areas, true ownership of public space remains elusive for many queer Indians. The challenge lies not just in creating inclusive policies, but in transforming social attitudes and urban infrastructure to genuinely accommodate the diversity of human experience.

As Borah concludes: "I think public in general, don't think about these issues because they think, why should we care? Right? And this is not even in our education system. It is not anywhere taught or told about how we have to be inclusive." The path forward requires not just policy changes, but a fundamental reimagining of who public space serves and how urban environments can become truly inclusive for all citizens.