LGBTQ history in India

Common card · No. 434672

LGBTQ people are well documented in various artworks and literary works of ancient India, with evidence suggesting that homosexuality and transsexuality were accepted by the major Dharmic religions. Hinduism and the various other Indian religions were not homophobic and evidence implies that homosexuality thrived in ancient India until the medieval period. Hinduism describes a third gender that is equal to other genders and documentation of the third gender are found in ancient Hindu and Buddhist medical texts. The term "third gender" is sometimes viewed as a specifically South Asian term, and this third gender is also found throughout South Asia and East Asia. It's likely that parts of north western fringes of Indian empires were influenced by homophobia early on through Zoroastrianism (250 BCE) and Islam, both of which explicitly forbade homosexual sex, and that this influenced socio-cultural norms in that region. LGBTQ people in the Islamic communities were persecuted more severely...

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