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A Tribute to Betu Singh, Lesbian Rights Activist (1964-2013)
Betu Singh, a leading lesbian activist of India, passed away yesterday morning, after being unwell for a while. She had been detected with cirrhosis of the liver recently. She started off her career in Delhi as a security guard, but soon took up the cause of fighting for lesbian rights and set up Sangini Trust in 1997, which is one of the few registered lesbian organizations on India.
“Good-bye Betu Singh, aka Anandita Singh! Lone-ranger lesbian activist who rescued and sheltered lesbians, bisexual women and transgendered men who ran to her from every nook and corner of India looking for solace, cowering from the rage of parents or neighbours wanting to murder, maim or marry them to abusive husbands.
You have been a good friend, a comrade in a war shorn of bogus ideologies and agendas to hurt or defame others with labels that mean nothing. And let those memories come rushing back when we would sit on your well-worn furniture and drink to those jagged jokes crackling with black humour.
Your loneliness and the trauma of seeing so much violence led you to the House of No Return and you did not shy away even from that dark door with little or no help from anyone.
The last time I saw you was two years ago when you stood alone outside your gate defending a poor girl cowering inside your home from her abusive father who had come with goons armed with gas cutters to break down the metal gate and kill his own daughter because she was a lesbian. And you never gave up though every damn glass pane in your house was shattered by bullies and you had a bloodied nose with the police sniggering and standing by.
Go peacefully Betu to that place where you may rest and recoup and be our hope in times to come in this blood-drenched land where nothing is forgotten and nor are sins forgiven over centuries. For this is the Karma we must carry to sail down the Ganges choked with the filth of every mean man and woman.
And like the Ganges, wash us and make us clean, as if that would ever be possible. So go in peace and leave me alone to mourn you.”
-Ashok Row Kavi