A look at Bollywood movies that portrayed the LGBTQ+ community with the right sensibility

Depictions of the LBTQ+ community have been present in the film industry ever since its inception more than 100 years ago. But the portrayal of the community and their representation on screen has been a subject of varying degrees of changes due to societal prejudice at different points in time. While gay characters were often used for comic relief and mockery, lesbians were portrayed as someone who talked and looked like a boy.

But over the years Bollywood has been embracing the concept of sexuality beyond cisgenders and has explored new avenues. While several mainstream movies still depict LGBTQ+ in a stereotypical way, there are others that have hit the nail on the mark and given justice to the queer community. Here is a list of Bollywood movies that portrayed the LGBTQ+ community with the right sensibility.

1. Kapoor and Sons

Kapoor and Sons is a mainstream Bollywood film that depicted homosexuality in a non-cliched way. The film revolved around a dysfunctional family who are always out to slit each other's throats and follows two estranged brothers Rahul Kapoor (Fawad Khan) and Arjun Kapoor (Sidharth Malhotra) who really don’t get along with each other. The family reunite as the family patriarch, their grandfather, suffers a cardiac arrest.

Things in the family get worse after Rahul’s mother Sunita Kapoor (Rathna Pathak Shah) is horrified to discover intimate photos of her son and his boyfriend. As the movie comes to an end it is shown how a typical Indian mother accepts her son's homosexuality.

2. Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga 

Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga was another mainstream Bollywood movie that featured a big star representing the LGBTQ+ community. Sonam Kapoor Ahuja played the role of Sweety Chaudhary, the daughter of a fun-loving and traditional Punjabi family. Her father Babir Choudhary (Anil Kapoor) is worried as she keeps rejecting suitors, at the same time Sahil Mirza (Rajkummar Rao) falls in love with Sweety and tries to woo her.

Sweety reveals to Sahil that she is in love with a woman, Kuhu (Regina Cassandra) and is afraid of coming out to her traditional Punjabi family. The movie follows Sweety and Sahil's endeavours as they try to make her family understand the LGBTQ+ community.

3. Fire

The 1996 Indo-Canadian erotic romantic drama film Fire was way ahead of its generation at the time of its release. Fire is one of the first mainstream Bollywood films to explicitly show homosexual relations and the first to feature a lesbian relationship. The movie featured Shabana Azmi and Nandita Das in the lead roles and was based on Ismat Chughtai's critically acclaimed short story, Lihaaf. After its 1998 release in India, activists staged several protests, setting off a flurry of public dialogue around issues such as homosexuality and freedom of speech. 

The movie was pathbreaking in several ways as it encouraged the closeted LGBTQ community to speak out.  A new lesbian rights group, calling itself the Campaign for Lesbian Rights (CALERI), was formed in response to the backlash. This group held their own peaceful gatherings across India.

4. Aligarh 

Directed by Hansal Mehta, Aligarh is based on a true story depicting the tragic life of Professor Ramchandra Siras (Manoj Bajpayee) who was suspended from his job because of his sexual orientation. Siras was heading the department of Classical Modern Indian Languages at Aligarh Muslim University in Uttar Pradesh. One day a local news channel barged into his home and found him having consensual sex with another man. 

Siras gets suspended from his job for "gross misconduct", a journalist named Deepu Sebastian (Rajkummar Rao) learns about his story and comes forward to offer help. 

5. Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan

Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan was another mainstream Bollywood movie to depict the love story of two gay lovers. The movie stars  Ayushmann Khurrana and Jitendra Kumar in the lead roles and tells the story of a gay man and his partner, who have trouble convincing the former's parents of their relation. The movie is a light-hearted take on the serious topic of homosexuality with various elements of comedy. The movie successfully highlights the topic of homosexuality and same-sex lovers without any stereotypical concepts.

(Image: @smzsofficial/@aliaabhatt/@sonamkapoor/Instagram)